Human relations in the works of d. H. Lawrence

1.2 Lawrence and religion: ideological foundations of creativity

According to some critics, Christianity was Lawrence's worst enemy. The writer himself, while writing the novel "Rainbow", speaks of himself as a deeply believing Christian: "I was brought up on the Bible," the writer claims, although in the early 20s he loses his faith, explaining that the church, which he visited, did not support the ideas of innovation and further development. Also noteworthy is the fact that Lawrence was interested in various religions, and therefore it was unacceptable for him to think of Jesus as the only son of God. Nevertheless, the writer claimed that such a figure as Christ admired him [13, 175].

Lawrence has always made a distinction between Jesus the historical figure and the Jesus whose followers preach Christianity today. The latter, in his opinion, deprived the Christian tradition of such an important element as the “body”, thereby misinterpreting religion [14, 5].
Terry Wright, who saw Lawrence's work as an attempt to make a complex and unusual book like the Bible more understandable by interpreting the events described in it in his own way, argues that Christianity was not always opposed to relations between the sexes. Bill Loweder , a New Testament professor at Murdoch University in Western Australia, talks about the misunderstanding of the cross as a symbol in Christianity. The death of Christ is a kind of revelation of what happens when greed and violence take over human nature [14, 8]. In his letter to Middleton, Murray Lawrence wrote: “The longer I live, the less I like Jesus Christ: crosses, nails and all that! He just led us into a dead end" [15, 4].
Lawrence, as he himself later admitted, for many years, publicly called himself an atheist: “By all the rules established by religion, I am an atheist, because I do not have the slightest belief either in private life after death, or in any interference in this private life. be it a deity ... To begin with: our beliefs oblige us to thank life itself in every possible way for the fact that we exist - for all our aesthetic and ethical goals and values, for all our joys, sometimes we understand, declaring ourselves atheists, that We can be believers and non-believers at the same time, but we can’t say that, because the word “believer” too often claims to be synonymous with the word “Christian.” He clearly felt this seeming paradox more keenly than any other writer of his era.
D.G. Lawrence especially appreciated the acute sense of being, the ability to respond to any manifestations of everything that exists, although this is usually most characteristic of simple nature, he demanded to be aware of the "general nature" of things. D.G. Lawrence was fond of natural history, was a natural historian and writer. He valued the “general nature” of things more than the other, more obvious properties and virtues of “their beauty, their social and political weight, their moral significance ... Everything was thrown into the shadows by that dazzling revelation, like a nuclear explosion and capable of changing everything around that their presence in our lives, their existence is simply much more important than why they exist or what they are intended for” [5, 15].
According to Lawrence's concept, modern "mechanical civilization" depersonalizes a person, suppresses a proud, beautiful beast in him. Under its influence, people from free, morally pure, disinterested individuals who feel themselves part of the universe turn into “social beings” [16, 56], into slaves of “objective reality” [16, 54], obsessed with possessive aspirations. Slaves in modern society are representatives of both the upper classes, who consider money to be a deity, and the lower classes, who rebel against this deity, because they are also "castrates of the spirit" who have lost their integrity, originality, unity with the universe, the ability to strongly feel. Denying the class struggle and not accepting socialism, Lawrence dreams of purifying man from everything social, of liberating him from intellectualism. He believes that only the revival of primitive instincts can make the dull, joyless life of a person full and bright, restore harmony between him and the universe, harmony in relations between people. The opposition of the individual to society, the exaltation of a certain mystical power in a person leads Lawrence ultimately to the cult of a strong personality.
Lawrence's early novels - "White Peacock", "Sons and Lovers", the first part of "Rainbow" - reflect some of the essential features of contemporary reality, reveal the psychology of people and the relationship between them. Further, in an effort to tear his characters out of the social situation and put them face to face with the universe, trying to convey what, in his opinion, lies behind the external objective reality - life is only in his eyes, the hidden “other self”, - Lawrence refuses creating concrete, real images. Thus, the desire to exalt the personality turns into its opposite - the personality in his work disappears, appears only as the embodiment of erotic impulses , dark, mysterious forces.
Lawrence's concept was reflected in the composition of his works, which became torn and chaotic, and in his language. Trying to convey the intensity of the inner life of his characters, the manifestations of their "other self", he falls into a solemnly elevated tone, often resorting to symbols, unusual epithets, persistently repeating them like spells.
Representatives of the modernist trends of this period are united by the tendency to escape from the pressing problems of reality, and each chooses his own way of leaving. Lawrence seeks to go back and creates the ideal of a "natural person" freed from all social obligations [2, 357-359].