The Plumed Serpent

by D.H. Lawrence

From one of the greatest—and most controversial—writers of the 20th century comes a mesmerizing work of political imagination about a European woman's self-annihilating plunge into the intrigues, passions, and pagan rituals of Mexico.

Genres: Fiction, Classics, Literature, Novels, 20th Century, British Literature, Religion

465 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1926

About the author

David Herbert Richards Lawrence was an English writer of the 20th century, whose prolific and diverse output included novels, short stories, poems, plays, essays, travel books, paintings, translations, literary criticism, and personal letters. His collected works represent an extended reflection upon the dehumanizing effects of modernity and industrialisation. In them, Lawrence confronts issues relating to emotional health and vitality, spontaneity, human sexuality and instinct.

Lawrence's opinions earned him many enemies and he endured official persecution, censorship, and misrepresentation of his creative work throughout the second half of his life, much of which he spent in a voluntary exile he called his "savage pilgrimage." At the time of his death, his public reputation was that of a pornographer who had wasted his considerable talents. E. M. Forster, in an obituary notice, challenged this widely held view, describing him as "the greatest imaginative novelist of our generation." Later, the influential Cambridge critic F. R. Leavis championed both his artistic integrity and his moral seriousness, placing much of Lawrence's fiction within the canonical "great tradition" of the English novel. He is now generally valued as a visionary thinker and a significant representative of modernism in English literature.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D.H._Law...

Reviews

[MJ Nicholls · Rating 3 out of 5]

The most loathed of Lawrence’s novels, The Plumed Serpent is a hot mess, a vision of a new Mexican-Indian religion based upon repackaged Aztec Gods. The protagonist, Kate Leslie, a mash-up of Frieda and D.H., suffers from that British problem of hanging around far too long on holiday, ending up the missus of a frightening general calling himself Huitzilopochtli when she should have cut the trip short a week sooner. We’ve all been there. Repetitive, maddening, rambling, and repugnant, a novel where all the men wear serapes and the women rebozos, among other overused Mexican words, the book is ambitious and bold in equal measure. Among the famous loathers of this novel include Katherine Anne Porter (“catastrophe”), Harold Bloom (“fascist”), Anthony Burgess (“unconvincing”), F.R. Leavis (“bad”), Kate Millett (“protofascist”), Marianna Torgovnick (“overblown”), L.D. Clark (“perplexing”), Enrique Krauze (“fascist”), Paul Eggert (“pretentious”), Donna Przybylowicz (“anti-democratic”), Lydia Blanchard (“puzzling”, “turgid”, “wooden”, “improbable”), Karen McLeod Hewitt (“nonsense”), Jad Smith (“protofascist”), Vladimiro Rivas Iturralde (“failure”), Debra A. Castillo (“racist”), and David Barnes (“authoritarian”). Then again, Henry Miller, William Burroughs, Michel Foucault, and E.M. Forester were admirers.

D.H. Lawrence RANKED

[Richard Lodge · Rating 3 out of 5]

OK. It's a mad book, no doubt about it. It's full of ferocity and discontent. And it does seem to ask us to take its ideas about cults and gods and blood seriously. It has stupid notions about race. It is infected with a misanthropic disdain for most people. But it is also struggling with all this, fighting against these damaging instincts. It is rescued, as a book, by its ambivalences and self-questioning. It is also dramatic and powerful. It is a kind of challenge, a kind of poison, but it is something, not nothing, not a novel about petty, dull, self-important people. More a novel about grand, pompous, absurd, self-important creatures. I'm happy I've read it. I would not re-read it.

[George · Rating 3 out of 5]

A novel about a forty year old Irish widow, Kate Leslie, who travels to Mexico and meets the intellectual, spiritual and political leader Don Ramon, and General Cipriano, a pure bred Indian. There are many paragraphs of well described landscape and individuals reflecting on who they are and what they want. The first half of the book has a travel writing style as Kate Leslie journeys through parts of Mexico. There is a dramatic short section in the middle of the novel. I found this book a slow read. There is little plot momentum.

Readers new to D. H. Lawrence should firstly read ‘Sons and Lovers’.

[Gregg Bell · Rating 5 out of 5]

D.H. Lawrence came from a day and age when writing was self discovery. It was a way to find out who you were, a way to open up new worlds within yourself. And the people loved reading about it. You grasped a sense of a writer's psyche, his mind, his emotions and soul.

Reading The Plumed Serpent you get all that and more. Lawrence is most famous for Lady Chatterley’s Lover but The Plumed Serpent is by far the superior novel. Always an autobiographical writer, The Plumed Serpent catches Lawrence in the midst of his famed "savage pilgrimage's" North American swing, specifically Mexico.

Well, let me tell you, Lawrence will put you there! You'll be sweaty and a bit dirty too. The flies will buzz and bite your ankles. The sun shining off the matador’s sword will blind you.

Simply put—it's an experience.

And, oh yeah, there's a story running through it too. A woman from Ireland, Kate Leslie, is exposed to the brutality of Mexican culture. The novel opens at a bullfight in Mexico City, and you need to remember that Lawrence is no ordinary writer. Catch this description of how a bull runs into the bullfighting ring for the first time:

He ran out, blindly, as if from the dark, probably thinking that now he was free. Then he stopped short, seeing he was not free, but surrounded in an unknown way. He was utterly at a loss.

Back to the story. Kate Leslie (the Irish woman) is repulsed by what she sees, but then she meets General Cipriano, a pure-bred Indian, and then eventually is introduced to his friend, Don Ramon, a political leader. Both men want to revive the old pagan ways (and this is where Lawrence, obsessed with sexuality and blood, comes in with his phallic power notions), and little by little Kate is drawn under their spell.

The book will impact you. It is powerful and yes, in a pagan, rudimentary, life-force way.

In this snippet Kate begins to realize General Cipriano' primeval appeal:

In the shadowy world where men were visionless, and winds of fury rose up from the earth, Cipriano was still a power. Once you entered his mystery the scale of all things changed, and he became a living male power, undefined, and unconfined. The smallness, the limitation ceased to exist.

The Plumed Serpent is pure Lawrence. It may be a bit strong for some, but for others, perhaps the majority, it will be a welcome literary wallop.

[treva]

I could only get through the first 45 pages of privileged white Americans (and one Irish woman) who move to Mexico and then complain about the Mexicans. Nobody has time for that shit.

*2020 Edit: Guess what? Books about whiny white people are fucking boring. Comments from Whiny White People are also boring, and will be deleted. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

DH Lawrence takes a trip to Mishima Country! This was so crazy I just had to love it.

It's about Kate, Irish widow, who is in Mexico and pretty much hating it and everyone in it. We open at a bullfight (Mishima loved a good matador!) where everything's a bit sad and unEuropean. Kate goes on to say lots of racist things about Mexicans. Which is a downer. But then she meets a local warlord, and then his warlord boyfriend (Mishima loved a man in uniform!), moves to a lakeside villa, and starts falling in love with them and their unique brand of pagan fascism (Mishima loved fascism!).

So crazy. The words "erect", "manhood" or "sperm" are on almost every page. No prizes for guessing what the plumed serpent represents.

But Mexico seems really beautiful. And I'd love to know if Mishima read it.

Mishima bits:
"Cipriano was watching Ramon with black, guarded eyes, in which was an element of love, and of fear, and of trust, but also incomprehension, and the suspicion that goes with incomprehension."

and

"With Cipriano he was most sure. Cipriano and he, even when they embraced each other with passion, when they met after an absence, embraced in the recognition of each other's eternal and abiding loneliness; like the Morning Star.

But women would not have this. They wanted intimacy - and intimacy means disgust. Carlota wanted to be eternally and closely identified with Ramon, consequently she hated him and hated everything which she thought drew him away from this eternal close identification with herself. It was just a horror and he knew it."

and

"'When he comes, all you who strive shall find the second strength. And when you have it, where will you feel it? Not here!' - and he struck his forehead. 'Not where the cunning gringos have it, in the head, and in their books. Not we. We are men, we are not spiders. We shall have it here!' - he struck his breast - 'and here!' - he struck his belly - 'and here!' - he struck his loins."

and

"Ramon knelt and pressed his arms close round Cipriano's waist, pressing his black head against his side. And Cipriano began to feel as if his mind, his head were melting away in the darkness; like a pearl in black wine, the other circle of sleep began to swing, vast. And he was a man without a head, moving like a dark wind over the face of the dark waters."

and

"She walked across the beach to the jetty, feeling the life surging vivid and resistant within her. 'It is sex,' she said to herself. 'How wonderful sex can be, when men keep it powerful and sacred, and it fills the world! Like sunshine through and through one!'"

[Anamaria · Rating 5 out of 5]

O calatorie minunata prin Mexicul mai multor timpuri. Extraordinara, mistica, impletirea prezentului si trecutului. Calatorim in Mexicul legendelor, al ritualurilor, al zeilor puternici si nemuritori care au uman si divin in ei si vorbesc cu oamenii si cu Iisus deopotriva, care ii invata despre spiritualitate, pace si toleranta si, in acelasi timp, ii invata sa fie puternici si sa lupte pentru credinta lor, sa isi asculte chemarea sufletului. Un Mexic fantastic, misterios, in care realul si irealul convietuiesc fiecare cu tumultul sau. Este cu atat mai interesant cu cat toate acestea le privim prin ochii unei femei puternice si independente, straina Mexicului, o irlandeza ajunsa sa locuiasca in aceasta tara si sa se lege de ea prin tainice transformari ale fiintei si experiente unice de viata.

[Richie Kercenna · Rating 3 out of 5]

Often referred to as Lawrence's American novel, this book amounts to a perfect Lawrencian hell in its depiction of life whether in connection with religion, politics, or the existential and psychological states of its characters. At the same time, it offers a rich and diverse study of the modernist culture, politics, the psychology of religion, alienation, class estrangement, the fear of death, and many other topics.

A great part of the novel deals with existential and psychological anxieties such as the fear of death and the meaninglessness of life. Kate Leslie, the widow of an Irish patriot and the central character of the book, is prompted by a feeling of restlessness, caused by her arrival to the threshold of middle age, to travel to Mexico and lose herself in what seems to her a "mysterious vitality of a mysterious race".
Even during her sojourn in Mexico, the fear of death and the meaninglessness of life continued to oppress her in the guise of an antipathy formed towards the passiveness with which the native people lived their lives. The people's custom to live from day to day with no care for the future frustrated her already troubled psychology, which at forty had deemed every hour of every day way too precious to be lost in aimless wandering.

Religion is another pillar in regard to the plot, for it serves two causes in the novel. The first is its universal role of shielding the human psychological foundation against the overwhelming influence of death and a life spent in meaningless suffering. In this capacity, Kate seeks the comfort of a religious belief and accepts the office of Malintzi (The goddess of fertility in the creed of Quetzalcoatl). The second role is political, for it transforms religion into a means to control people in accordance with Friedrich Nietzsche's views on how is morality the best way to lead Mankind by the nose.
In this manner, the novel emphasizes the role of religious and political movements in annihilating the individual, and burry his will in the midst of the masses, which leads to the widespread of herd morality.

When it comes to social phenomenon, the novel analyses alienation between classes and races. At the bullfight, people from different backgrounds could not enjoy the spectacle in the same way. While some had looked upon it as a virile exciting exercise, other only regarded it as a debasing form of entertainment.
The concept of otherness accompanies that of alienation through the struggle between the native Mexicans and the upper class of English and American subjects staying in Mexico.

In connection with Modernism, the use of mythology and the god-figure of Quetzalcoatl serves as a prototype of the rebirth which Lawrence found necessary in a degenerate modernist atmosphere.

[Typewriter · Rating 4 out of 5]

As a writer, Lawrence emits a sense of greatness, of towering above the ordinary and rendering nearly everyone else small-minded by comparison; this is thoroughly in keeping with the attitudes of this very Nietzschean novel. It is the intensity and passion of Lawrence's vision, complemented by astute acerbic insight, that makes him a giant. His stance does tower above more modern, more reasonable, more charitable ones. Do not dismiss him on account of his unpleasant conclusions. It's not what he believes in, it's how he believes in it that matters.

Lawrence is not a slick storyteller, nor does he write with a consistently fluid style. Story, style and Lawrentian philosophy synthesise to produce true greatness at intermittent moments; elsewhere the going can be tough, but there's is always a latent sense of true power. Lawrence's almost relentless misanthropy almost gets too much, but his passion for a life - albeit as an abstract or unrealistic ideal - almost justifies it. By comparison to today's norms, it is perhaps his uncompromising high seriousness that ultimately most appeals. How he would loathe postmodernism.

After a brilliant description of a bullfight in the first chapter, The Plumed Serpent seems to decline into a sour fictionalised travel memoir (of Mexico), but the plot gradually picks up again, from about a third of the way through. I find Lawrence's short stories the most compelling, and I agree with the consensus that Sons And Lovers, The Rainbow and Women In Love are his greatest novels, but The Plumed Serpent is a powerful, memorable work by a most vital original master, with whom it is bracing to engage.

[Laura · Rating 3 out of 5]

My rating: 3,5 stars

Free download available at eBooks@Adelaide.

Quotations:
She felt again, as the felt before, that Mexico lay in her destiny almost as a doom. Something so heavy, so oppressive, like the folds of some huge serpent that seemed as if it could hardly raise itself.

"There is no such thing as liberty,The greatest liberators are usually slaves of an idea. The freest people are slaves to convention and public opinion, and more still, slaves to the industrial machine. There is no such thing as liberty. You only change one sort of domination for another. All we can do is to choose our master."

[Jacques Coulardeau · Rating 4 out of 5]

NOT REALLY CONVINCED

D.H. Lawrence has always been fascinated by women confronted to love. In Lady Chatterley’s Lover, then Women in Love, and then The Plumed Serpent, the main character or characters is or are women in love, in a way or another. The top-aristocrat in love with a plebeian. Two middle-class women in coal country in love with two men, one small intellectual and the other a mine landlord. And here one Irish woman, married twice already with two grown-up children from her first marriage and her second husband, a military activist on the Irish republican Army side who died fighting for what is not yet completed, the independence of Ireland. And here she is in Mexico. She falls in love with the country, with the Indians, after the Mexican revolution, and yet she is not able to really integrate this country because somewhere she sees it as a trap for her individuality, for her Irishness.

From her total rejection of a corrida at the beginning, she will become more and more submissive for all the wrong reasons, and despite her desire to leave and go back to Ireland, she will stay, and yet she will mentally and rhetorically manage to make herself the victim of some kind of hypnotic power of the Indians, a hypnotic power she qualifies as sexual and exclusively sexual. She finds with general Cipriano the perfect husband she needs that enables her to let herself go into the delicate and intense pleasure she finds in her tactile contact with the man she married as a challenge, a crazy dare. She thus becomes the witness of and participant in the revival of the old Mexican gods, in fact, Aztec gods, Quetzalcoatl and Huitzilopochtli. In this old religion, they try to revive, the gods are directly represented by living humans who become the living gods. Ramon becomes the living Quetzalcoatl and Cipriano becomes the living Huitzilopochtli. But each living god needs a wife to be real. Ramon is rejected by his own European-minded Christian zealot of a wife and his two children. When she dies, he marries Teresa, the daughter of a neighbor who had just died in the closest hacienda. Cipriano marries our Irish heroine, Kate, alias Caterina.

I am not sure she is completely convincing in her search for real human happiness because she lives the full contradiction between her deeper mental conviction she has to go back to Ireland because she is being swallowed here in Mexico, on one hand, and on the other hand, the extreme and unique pleasure she finds in the hands of Cipriano, though the price she has to pay is her total abandon in his hands, to his desire, in his know-how as for processing a woman to pleasure and she cannot reach it if she does not drop her individuality, even her personality, her unique self contained in itself that controls her. She has to accept to receive and not to take. I never feel her as being able to get to that point. And yet she stays, after having bought her passage to Ireland on a transatlantic liner.

The vision of the Mexican Indians and consequently of Mexico is today absolutely unacceptable. It is racist, highly segregational, extremely hostile, and short-sighted. It is the maimed vision of a European who is not able to get out her white skin, out of her breakfast-lunch-tea-and-dinner-or-supper, out of her bacon and eggs, lamb roast with mint sauce, and so many other things that are the typical European, British, Irish mental chains that cannot be dropped nor broken. There is not one page without such remarks of hostility and rejection, or such visions of blindness and deafness. She cannot in any way feel any empathy for them, even at the end when she yields to her desire, she must find a way to make herself superior:

“You won’t let me go!” she said to him (Cipriano).

She thus is the victim, and what’s more, the victim of a “crime” is always superior to the victimizer because the victim has committed no crime. I am afraid D.H. Lawrence did not reach the full understanding he claims of what Mesoamerica is, and what Indians are in Mesoamerica. He shows them as barbaric in the end, and nothing else, and when they are not barbaric when they are in love, they become or go back to their boyhood, infancy, at best teenage, and that is why they can suddenly explode into violence and extreme cruelty that makes them kill humans as easily as I would crush a mosquito.

Dr. Jacques COULARDEAU

[Sarah · Rating 1 out of 5]

If ever one day you give D.H. Lawrence’s The Rainbow a try out of curiosity, and it makes rainbows come out of your eyes and sends you on a five-month-long tear of just devouring his writing, not that I'm speaking from personal experience or anything, I have some advice for you. If that ever happens to you, I heartily recommend giving The Plumed Serpent a miss, no matter how intent you are on reading everything he wrote. Let the happy memories of the transcendence you experienced reading The Rainbow and Women in Love and Sons and Lovers and, heck, even The Trespasser and The Lost Girl remain intact and untainted by this racist and sexist cesspool of a novel that's unsatisfying from a literary perspective as well because of its implausible narrative and cop-out ending. It's too bad, because it has the breathtaking descriptions of landscapes and the engrossing snapshots of characters' psyches that are typical of Lawrence.

If you must read at least some of it, put it down after chapter 22 when Kate affirms her identity as being the name she was born with and not the names that men have foisted upon her throughout her life, and then make up your own ending. You'll do a better job than Lawrence did. You'd do a better job if you threw a piece of broccoli at a typewriter.

As for the racism, hoo boy. Pages and pages of the patronizing white protagonist’s inner monologue of reductive and dehumanizing "observations" on the "nature" of indigenous Mexicans. That alone wearisomely* bogged down the novel long before it turned into an anti-woman screed propping up the subjugation of women and the sublimation of their identities.

I know that reading Lawrence and being disappointed by sexism and gender essentialism is like looking into a bag labelled Dead Dove: Do Not Eat (though he did give us Ursula "I'm a bolter" Brangwen, whom I adore), but he really outdid himself here. And the extent to which he did is confusing because it contradicts the idea you see again and again in his writing about how couples should exist in a "star-equilibrium," with each person being a separate, individual entity.

The GR blurb for Quetzalcoatl, an earlier version of TPS, calls it "one of Lawrence's most feminist works," which boggles my mind, considering the published version is by far the most sexist of his novels.

...But all told, it still didn't make me as mad as E.M. Forster's Howards End!

*If Lawrence gets to add "-ly" to words that aren't usually adverbified, then I reserve the right to do the same.

[Stephen Hayes · Rating 2 out of 5]

Meh.

A long rambling waffling book about two men who found a neopagan religion in Mexico and an Irishwoman who marries one of them, and spends half the book trying to decide whether to marry him, and the other half wondering whether she ought to have done so.

Kate Leslie, a wealthy middle-aged Irish tourist on holiday in Mexico, meets a Mexican general, and his friend, a wealthy landowner, and goes to visit there part of the country, where she extends her stay indefinitely. She helps to rescue the landowner from some would-be assassins, and is asked to marry the general and join the pantheon of their neopagan religion, in which the landowner is Quetzalcoatl, the eponymous plumed serpent deity, while the general is Huitzilopochtli. Kate is ambivalent about her assigned role as divine consort to Huitzilopochtli, and remains so to the end.

There are some good descriptive passages in the book, but they are spoilt by going on for too long, being repetitive, and eventually becoming boring. Lawrence seems to get carried away by his own verbosity, and doesn't know when to stop. And the descriptions of the neopagan religion also become very preachy, overdone and boring (see what I did there? That's one of Lawrence's little tricks -- as I repeated "boring", so Lawrence repeats words in his descriptions).

And as Kate is indecisive throughout the book, Lawrence (or at least his characters) can't make up their minds and expound inconsistent ideas. The white and the dark-skinned races should never meet, and should have their own religions, their own cultures, their own way of life -- "own affairs" as the old apartheid ideology used to put it. But this will eventually lead to a new man, with new blood and all will be one. Oh yes, there's lot about blood in this story. It's a very bloody book, starting from the opening bullfight scene and drifting off into the obscure philosophy about how white blood and black blood should never mix, but will eventually become one, or something.

For an expanded version of this review, see my blog post here.

[T Fool · Rating 4 out of 5]

Remember Mexico was still fresh from revolution. Lawrence does tap into the 'political' here, but from that vision of his always textured with body-psychology. Any reader not expecting immersion in liquids denser than simple bathwater should be forewarned.

Lawrence comes as close as any, for a man, to getting at a woman's psyche. Granted, all relationships for him reverberate in a mind encased by nature and saturate the mind with a nature humid with August and not devoid of insects. His world smells and gets felt, annoys and perturbs. In short, it means itself in a context that strikes a reader as seriously real.

Is it possible for moderns to become Aztec gods? Is it possible for two men and a woman to find their 'place' together? We, ourselves, are so blanched with 'science' -- the overnight anchovy left over on the kitchen platter -- that when we reach for myth to explain ourselves, we find cartoons.

DHL records the succulence of life. Sometimes it's pretty, and it's largely frightening.

[Marcus Schantz · Rating 5 out of 5]

I found this book interesting. It is a mix of religion, philosophy, mysticism, cultism and is essentially about rebirth and letting go of what you think you know and giving all of yourself to something. It was like nothing else I've read of Lawrence, but it's a book that will make you think if you read it with an open mind.

[FP · Rating 1 out of 5]

El otro día estaba escuchando un podcast cuando alguien hizo la pregunta “¿Por qué ya no se lee a D.H.Lawrence?”. Me quedé pensando y en realidad no tenía una respuesta. Lo único que podía hacer era leer alguna novela suya. Después de todo, Lawrence era el autor de El amante de Lady Chaterley, la novela que supuestamente es sobre el amorío entre una mujer y su jardinero, pero en realidad es sobre la interacción de clases en Inglaterra (y, de paso, es la clase de libro que no puede describir sin que suene como una trama de editorial Harlequin, sobre todo porque es precisamente la misma clase de trama que publicadores como ellos aprecian). La serpiente emplumada ya estaba en la casa, así que no tenía que hacer ningún esfuerzo extra.

La trama supuestamente es sobre una mujer que conoce a dos hombres en medio de la Revolución Mexicana. Realmente, es sobre espiritualismo y cómo el hombre interactúa con el universo, por decirlo de algún modo. Oh, y sobre cómo las interacciones de las mujeres con los hombres, eso también.

En realidad, no me gustó la novela. Las descripciones son interesantes, pero con una novela tan larga llegan a cansar, sobre todo porque no parecen llegar a ningún lado más que darnos la opinión de la protagonista, Kate, sobre lo que ocurre… si es que no es la opinión del autor. Y la opinión en cuestión es el latero discurso de la diferencia entre razas: los teutones son fríos y civilizados, los indios y mestizos son emocionales, flojos e incivilizados. Cada vez que vemos a un mexicano haciendo algo, hay un recordatorio constante de ello.
La relación de la mujer con el hombre es lo otro a lo que comúnmente se hace mención, pero en general la mujer no suele quedar bien parada en estas comparaciones tampoco. Lo que es molesto es que Kate constantemente insiste en que ella quiere ser su propia persona y no vivir al ritmo de otro, pero muestra una notoria falta de asertividad para decidir qué hacer con su vida, y requiere de la constante presión de los dos hombres protagonistas, Cipriano y Ramón, para tomar decisiones.
Ésa es lejos la peor parte: considerando que ella es la protagonista, es bastante poco lo que hace por la trama. Salvo algunas situaciones puntuales, es totalmente superflua para la trama. Sólo observa y casi no interactúa con lo que ocurre. Los dos hombres le insisten en que ella es clave para el triunvirato que tienen, pero si ella decidiera irse, sospecho que ellos no tardarían mucho en encontrar otra mujer para cubrir el puesto. O tal vez ni se molestarían, considerando el fuerte tomo homoerótico que suelen tener las relaciones entre hombres en este libro.
El libro ocurre con el trasfondo de que se está generando un despertar religioso en México. Específicamente, la antigua religión azteca está volviendo y desplazando a la religión católica, vapuleada por la Revolución. En este contexto es que Ramón se presenta como un sacerdote del nuevo culto a Quetzacoatl. La premisa es que todos tienen que volver a sus religiones más primitivas (cita explícitamente a Wotan y a Thor como ejemplos de lo que deberían hacer los europeos también), al parecer por una apreciación de tiempos y actitudes más simples… salvo que no hay nada de simple en ello. El ‘nuevo’ culto (nuevo en el sentido de que se inventan una teología poniéndole el enchape de una antigua para darle más mérito) se comporta con la misma arrogancia de la antigua, tomándose las iglesias y quemando toda la parafernalia católica en una ceremonia. Me imagino que la idea es darle un aire de ‘el otro lado de la moneda’, pero en realidad sólo da la apariencia de que cualquier religión que no nazca intrínsecamente del individuo y que requiera de una figura de poder va a ser siempre atropelladora y abusiva. Y por cierto, esta novela ocurre en un universo alternativo, en donde México al final termina abandonando completamente el catolicismo.

La novela abunda en imágenes que sirven de paralelo para los temas de los que trata. La historia literalmente parte con una corrida de toros, en donde Kate observa la sed de sangre de los hombres y su excitación por la violencia. También observa el homoerotismo continuo a lo largo del libro. Los cantos religiosos del culto a Quetzacoatl no estarían fuera de lugar en una iglesia normal. La segunda esposa de Ramón tiene una relación con su familia típica en donde la mujer es inferior y sumisa (ella se casó con Ramón para huir de eso, pero si bien él la deja actuar a libertad, no me parece que ella sea TAN libre en verdad). Todos esos detalles, algunos sutiles, otros obvios, le dan gracia a la narrativa. Lástima que el libro al final se sienta tan largo, innecesariamente largo.

Al final… bueno, ¿por qué la gente ya no lee a D.H. Lawrence? No lo sé. Tal vez porque su forma de ver el mundo, las razas, las mujeres es anticuada. Tal vez porque su forma de ver la espiritualidad y las relaciones sociales, si bien interesante, es muy distinta a la de hoy y eso genera disonancia de valores. Tal vez porque no todos los escritores se mantienen vigentes, ni siquiera si en sus días fueron famosos. ¿Quién lee hoy a George Eliot? ¿O a Edward Bulwer-Litton? Tal vez porque Lawrence era leído principalmente en la angloesfera y, al menos con este libro, a nadie le interesaba leer sobre México.

[Jess · Rating 1 out of 5]

Disappointing read. I had a very hard time staying with this story as it was slow and negative. I wanted to put it down multiple times but stayed with it hoping for a lovely finish. Would not recommend like I would Lady C's Lover.

[Michael Flick · Rating 1 out of 5]

A curious mess. Racist, misogynistic, proto-fascistic, misanthropic disdain for most all people, no real understanding or appreciation of the ancient Mexican gods that were to be restored. More a nightmare than a dream.

[Jeremy Neal · Rating 4 out of 5]

Extremely difficult to rate this work, not least because of a myopic cultural view, which I freely admit. This is a complex, deep, unhappy piece of writing. Lawrence is undeniably a genius, in my opinion (which is worth very little of course) possibly the greatest writer of the 20th century, and The Plumed Serpent only underlines his astonishing power. But that does not mean we have to agree with him. In fact, I agree with DHL on very little, philosophically, politically, even emotionally. But his capacity for seeing beauty and humanity was unparalleled. His message is always ruined, where it is ruined, by his bitterness. This is understandable, he was treated abominably by the British government for marrying a German woman and went into an unwanted exile for his last years. His health deteriorated, so he was sick and far from home. He found himself eventually in Mexico and this novel is the result.

There are many correlations here with the shorter and more succinct The Woman Who Rode Away and Other Stories which dwells on the same themes. The subjugation of the white consciousness under a smothering barbarian spirit.

But down on it all, like a weight of obsidian, comes the passive negation of the Indian. He understands soul, which is of the blood. But spirit, which is superior, and is the quality of our civilization, this, in the mass, he darkly and barbarically repudiates.

Our heroine is gradually, and almost sickeningly overcome. Her spirit is subsumed inevitably, because it cannot stand against the primal consciousness. This makes for a powerful and palpable sense of discomfort, but more uncomfortable are the political ideas, and the clash of man against woman. This is the clash within all of DHL's works, but here there is an awkward racial element. I would not say that this work is racist, although it might be interpreted as such, rather it is a product of its time. In many ways Lawrence admires and proclaims the aboriginal powers of Mexico here. He uses songs, chants and hymns, and a great deal of poetry to evoke the subterranean heart of Mexico. Often it is powerful and evocative, and occasionally brutal and disturbing. This becomes yet another expression of his by now classic war of the sexes and his oft visited theme that marriage is a kind of subjugation also. That a man cannot be at peace with a woman until one or other is dominated and reconciled to their inner combatant.

Ah, the soul! The soul was always flashing and darkening into new shapes, each one strange to the other. She had thought Ramón and she had looked into each other's souls. And now, he was this pale, distant man, with a curious gleam, like a messenger from the beyond, in his soul. And he was remote, remote from any woman. Whereas Cipriano had suddenly opened a new world to her, a world of twilight, with the dark, half-visible face of the god-demon Pan, who can never perish, but ever returns upon mankind from the shadows. The world of shadows and dark prostration, with the phallic wind rushing through the dark.

Here there is the added dimension of older gods than those of the Church. Quetzlcoatl becomes a central character in the narrative, and he is manifested through the character of Ramón, who is inevitable and overwhelming.

The novel's central character Kate is a white, middle-aged Irish woman who has spent much time in the United States, and her fiery and independent spirit is eventually overcome. She presents the opportunity for Lawrence to expound his political ideals. Indeed, this must be Lawrence's most political novel.

[T]here are only two great diseases in the world to-day--Bolshevism and Americanism; and Americanism is the worse of the two, because Bolshevism only smashes your house or your business or your skull, but Americanism smashes your soul.'

I would not disagree with this however. And then:

'There is no such thing as liberty. The greatest liberators are usually slaves of an idea. The freest people are slaves to convention and public opinion, and more still, slaves to the industrial machine. There is no such thing as liberty. You only change one sort of domination for another. All we can do is to choose our master.'

These are the same central concepts that build uncomfortably to an apotheosis of powerlessness. You might almost think of it as a fascistic kind of manifesto. That there is a strength and inevitability to some primal drives that cannot be resisted, most especially by the dilettantish 'civilised races', who are too cultured to contend with the unbreakable death stare of the old gods whose language is all blood and bone, which oppresses mere philosophy:

Sometimes, in America, the shadow of that old pre-Flood world was so strong, that the day of historic humanity would melt out of Kate's consciousness, and she would begin to approximate to the old mode of consciousness, the old, dark will, the unconcern for death, the subtle, dark consciousness, non-cerebral, but vertebrate. When the mind and the power of man was in his blood and his backbone, and there was the strange, dark inter-communication between man and man and man and beast, from the powerful spine.

What results is a work which is undeniably brilliant, but very difficult to love or even at times, to agree with. Certainly there is something here which is made up of Lawrence's own bitterness, his rejection and isolation. He is decrying his own powerlessness through the lens of the old Aztec gods. It is a supremely Plutonic work, brooding, dark, uncomfortable.

Not to be taken lightly.

[Mark · Rating 2 out of 5]

DH Lawrence hated people. I mean he really hated people. And for a man who traveled the world, and lived in countless of places, if a man can come out of all that and still hate people, well you can come to expect quite the cynical novel.

Before diving in, it’s best to understand The Plumed Serpent with a little background behind the Mexican Revolution

The Porfiriato.

Mexico’s seven-term president, and of Cinco De Mayo fame, Porfirio Diaz, became a war-hero after fending off the French during Emperor Maximilian’s reign at the Battle of Puebla. The Mexican George Washington (if Washington decided not follow the example of Cincinatus and instead sought to be Julius Caesar) wasn’t immediately granted power; but playing the long game, he would eventually seize it. He was elected president in 1877, and after winning again in 1884, he never left.
But like all ‘great’ dictators, his reign ended in revolution and bloodshed. In 1910, Mexico started their revolution. In 1911, With some US support, Diaz was ousted, the leader of the revolution, Francisco Madero took over, and then the game of thrones began: presidents were murdered, presidents resigned, presidents were overthrown. The Mexicans were granted a more liberal constitution in 1917, and the chaos didn’t somewhat unwind until after the Rebellion of Agua Prieta and the death of elected Constiutionalitst president, Venustiano Carranza. The revolution didn’t officially end until the 1920’s.

The novel takes place in post-revolution Mexico, in transition to a more liberal state. This novel essentially deals with a few competing concepts: religious/ethnic identity, liberty, and a moral society. And what Lawrence believes, the necessity of one underlines the purpose of the others.

In the book, Mexican’s feel that true ethnic identity is Creole (Mixed Ingenious and European blood). The natives of Mexico are considered second-class, Zambo (half-black) and Indio (100% Indian). The death of the old gods materialized under the decree of the Catholic church who, having a huge political persuasion within the republic, were not only heralding monotheistic devotion, but western culture itself (think of the bull fights).

But still with such a large indigenous population being persecuted against, conflict is almost inevitable. In The Plumed Serpent, Lawrence predicts a pandora’s reckoning that revives Mexico's old gods, Quetzalcoatl and Huitzilopochti (through Ramon and Cipriano respectively) which brings a decaying Mexico back to the Aztecs. We experience this reckoning through the mostly ignorant, sententious Irish woman, Kate Leslie; witnessing her servitude to the paganistic cult and her further attempts to remove herself from it as well.

So it goes: They burn Jesus. She plays hero. They execute infidels. She has doubts about the whole thing. You know. All the entertaining parts of any violent, culturally tectonic shift that comes from years and years of power malady: human nature/ bloody conflicts.

“Power just power. Just foolish, wicked power.”

As the story progresses, the protagonist becomes disillusioned by the cult when seeing their revolution come to life: The violence, the consolidation of power. Ramon and Cipriano, different deity, same worship that fuels, yes, more mob rule. The sacrifice of the individual for ‘blood one-ness.” And as Lawrence was heavily anti-labour, anti-capitalist, semi-fascistic Brit, most of what curtails is the individual getting lost among, what the protagonist perceives, a ‘primitive’ society. Kate wants to be the individual, until mid way through the novel she marries Cipriano and then vacillates between the 'is she leaving or is she staying’ (make-up-ya-damn mind!) routine.

The story had a lot of potential, especially after its wonderful, and sadly quite funny, rebuke of tourism for the popular bull-fight. But it’s one thing to go after Western ignorance, and the decline of culture thanks to years of colonial conquest and pillaging; but going after the indigenous from a colonialist perspective seems harsh and overly punitive, when so many Western ideas transmogrified the nature Lawrence is so willing to abhor anyway—the animal abuse, for example.
Even if the concept of a proto-pagan dictator can be broken down to the core of its philosophy: destroy old-boss replace with new-boss. If democracy precipitates chaos and decay; maybe having a racist, loud-mouth protagonist navigating the pillars of rule, might not be the best path towards a moral authority.

[Dillwynia Peter · Rating 3 out of 5]

Thank you, Mr Lawrence – I think.

Much to think about here, but also much that isn’t acceptable or comfortable in a 21st Century world. As the academic wrote in the Introduction to my edition: “if you want a handbook for how to set up your own Fascist group this has it all.” The main theme of this book is the establishment of a Fascist group in Mexico using pre-European type gods to influence the native Indian population to join. The publication date is really important when reading this book, because if you don’t then you can easily run along claiming Lawrence is a supporter of Mussolini & Hitler. The fact that he pre-empts them for almost 10 years says a lot. Intellectual adults who had survived the Great War wanted a change in how governments were run: they felt the previous types – monarchy & democratic capitalism had failed the people. It was a common belief that a charismatic person could rise & save the populous; the two extreme ways were socialist/ communism, or right-wing oligarchies. It is really important that people in Britain thought Mussolini & Hitler were doing great things as they repatriated Italy & Germany. So, I feel we must not condemn Lawrence for his intellectual experiment in this novel. Why he supported an oligarchy of men, ruling over others is a little beyond me- especially as he was a collier’s son.
The concepts of “eugenics” in a broad sense (so, no mixing of blood/ races), new order that uses old religions to break down the power of the Europeans and their corrupt ways - culture, ideas and religion – and thus anti-colonialism, and feminism, are all played out here. The serious problem is Lawrence doesn’t deal well with any of these: he waivers from point of view within the characters and not between the characters. And even her, he is heavy handed. Kate, the European women getting bound up in the all the fervour and excitement is a good case in point. I have no problems with Kate vacillating between getting away from the Mexican madness and joining the cult, but for a satisfactory outcome for the reader, she needed to make a decision on that final page! And then there is the feminist aspect – he produces a free-thinking, independent woman, who then considers being a second fiddle to the men. Really, Mr Lawrence!!!!
Finally, there is the sensuality & sexuality in the book. The men spend most of their bare from the waist up (all very titillating for the early 1920s), the word sperm is used to describe the colour of the water at least 4 times, and we have esoteric metaphysical descriptions of the blood rush when one is sexuality roused, for both men and women. Everywhere the feeling of sensuality abounds – in the raw descriptions of the plants and flowers, the animals, particularly the stallion and oxen scenes. It has that exotic, steamy tropical sensual excitement about it.

My other problem with this novel is the writing style. Lawrence is stodgy. I always forget how stodgy he can be – think swimming through molasses or porridge. For this reason, he can slow down action and description to a boring mess of sentences. However, on the other hand, there are moments of poetic brilliance and beauty. Some of the sentences, aiming to be poetic, instead do feel contrived.
Will I recommend this others?? No. However, if you want to read a book about fascist ideas from an English intellectual, or you want to read all of Lawrence’s novels, then go for it.

[Henrik · Rating 2 out of 5]

Often described as "toxic" and "protofascist", and with Lawrence's obsession with the vitality of Blood, one would expect this book to be more lively, bombastic and interesting than it is. Parts of it are very well written, and I liked the first chapter quite a lot, but the book drags on for too long and gets repetitive. I'll confess to skimming the last 70 or so pages, but I doubt I missed much of note.

Lawrence shows the same fascination (fetishism?) with "the noble savage/primitive" as is shown in other work, with the main character altering between "I hate common people (...) How I detest them!" to "These handsome natives! Was it because they were Moloch-worshippers that they were so uncowed and handsome?" To "she knew he was more beautiful to her than any blond white man". I see this has been missed by other reviewers who quit after 50 pages, preferring novels with likable protagonists.

Lawrence was a controversial author at his time, and many of his views are even less accepted now. In this work he commits the great sin of being both controversial and boring.

[Bookish Tokyo · Rating 1 out of 5]

“The longer I live the more loathsome the human species becomes to me.”
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Perhaps the first book I’ve read in which the introduction mentioned how terrible the book is. How it might offend modern tastes. I hardly ever read introductions because mostly they have a nasty habit of spoiling the book, yet this time it did allow me to go into the book open eyed.
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I’m not sure what to think of the book. Actually I know I very much disliked it. I should have probably DNF’d it. It is weird, poorly edited with words constantly repeated, long rambling pages on obscure aztec belief systems smeared with a very very thick layer of protofascism around blood, soil and race.
.
Lawrence very much a talented writer certainly held some very very odd views and it is hard not to see this as his own personal treatise. All the characters seemed to ventriloquies his own rather odd opinions. I did not enjoy this at all. I dreaded picking it up and if it wasn’t for his gift of writing I would have given it up after page 50.

[Lee Holz · Rating 2 out of 5]

Although one hesitates to give any book by D. H. Lawrence two stars, in this case I must. The Plumed Serpent is no Son’s and Lovers. This late Lawrence book is filled with long-winded, pretentious and repetitive passages of ersatz Aztec religious claptrap and equally ill-conceived mysticism about the savage Mexican Indian as a race. Couple these with a sort of proto-fascism, and one has a pretty nasty book. Lawrence’s take on gender relations in this world of neo-Aztec revival is equally unattractive. At the same time, there are the descriptive passages of great lyric beauty that are pure Lawrence and some earnest wrestling with questions of individualism versus the commonality of humankind. I didn’t like the book, but I’m glad I read it.

[John Seymour · Rating 2 out of 5]

The best thing about having read this book is that I will no longer have it on my reading list. The Plumed Serpent is a mishmash of bad sociology, bad anthropology and bad theology all jumbled together in a noxious stew of racism, sexism and neo-paganism.

[Harry Tear · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book was one of those ones that could be lost to history. The characters were so incredibly annoying and none was worse than Kate the main character. It wasn't even that the virulent racism was jarring, as that was completely to be expected. No, it was her similarity to that friend that will complain bitterly about their situation for hours while constantly making decisions that make everything worse, exasperatingly against the advice of everyone around them. I was truly astonished at the mental gymnastics this woman went through to legitimise extending what was essentially an endless holiday that she was HATING.

She laments constantly as to the utter destitution of the Mexican people and way of life, harping on endlessly about the evil energy permeating Mexico city and the hollow eyes of the natives shining like windows into their tortured, hollow, death-loving souls. She has some of the most insufferable, nonsensical projectile gobbledygook I've ever read, pouring over pages and pages complaining about the evil soul sapping and harrowing energy of Mexico.

I related to her on a deeply spiritual level as I thought that if my consumption of her garbled mental vomit resembles anything like her experience in Mexico I truly pity her. I believe Lawrence was making an attempt at capturing the 'essence' of the native people as only a male English author of this time could ever feel entitled enough to do. I skimmed over pages and pages of this book and it's dialogue and monologue, failing to understand what was getting yarped on about and completely lacking the motivation to even try to comprehend.

Page 115 was a pivotal moment for both of us for despite moaning for almost a quarter of the book she resolutely and stoically reached the conclusion that "I cannot yet leave Mexico" for ~some reason~ which I think can best be explained by a deluded sense of self-importance coupled with a mid life crisis, and thus our fates were sealed. I truly wish she had emancipated both of us from the miserable experience of having to be inside her mind, however it was not to be and I equally felt I must stay the course because I wanted to write this review and it felt unfair to do so without finishing the book.

I kept going with it because I was interested in what would happen when she joined the cult, and gosh damn, it wasn't worth it. In the end it's a book about a group of narcissists with delusions of grandeur, who are nothing but the figments of Lawrence's imagination as to what indigenous Mexicans are like, but are hollow, meaningless devoid of anything whatsoever, rules over by the racist, insufferable, deluded english woman who just will not end her holiday.

One good thing is that this book is actually much shorter than it appears because you can skip large chunks of detritus. Here's a classic example of some of the ramblings of this book

"It was not that their eyes were exactly fierce. But their blackness was inchoate, with a dagger of white light in it. And in the inchoate blackness the blood-lust might arise, out of the sediment of the uncreated past.

Uncreated, half-created, such a people were at the mercy of old black influences that lay in a sediment at the bottom of them. While they were quiet, they were gentle and kindly, with a sort of limpid naivete. But when anything arise that shook them at their depths, the black clouds would arise, and they were gone again in the old grisly passions of death, blood-lust, and incarnate hate. A people incomplete, and at the mercy of old, up starting lusts."

It's not just that it's hideously racist, it's that it's also SO rambling and incoherent, and so completely stupid and projected. Idk what kind of demons Lawrence was fighting but Christ dude, get a fucking grip. There are pages and pages of this sort of rambling at least probably 150. Do not waste your time.

[Michael · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is my third and definitely my last DH Lawrence novel. Chatterly is superb; Sons and Lovers good. This is an unreadable mess. The premise of a 40 yr empty nester Irishwoman with too much time on her hands in post revolutionary Mexico has some potential and is intriguing. The writing is very Hemingwayesque initially with the bull fights representing Western brutality.

Yet the author spends entirely TOO much time describing the settings, over and over, ad nauseum! So many bare chests, black eyes, red hyacinths... Race, tribe and faith make up 90% of the narrative. Yes, Mexicans are darker than Europeans; they are more aboriginal and less educated. Kate the protagonist has a love-hate relationship with the people, the culture and her own now tedious life. Lawrence appears to have White guilt although Britain did not colonize this part of the world. His basic paradigm might be better suited to East Africa, India or even Thailand.

General Cipriano is the dark, small soldier that epitomizes the old Mexico.. rigid, an enforcer mysterious, dangerous. She marries him after he becomes the second fiddle in the new Aztec religious community that worships Quetzalcoatl, the plumed serpent. Kate really loves Carasco, the fairer taller more educated herald or priest or prophet of the Morning Star.. He is now Jesus and Kate a sort of Mary.

The reader experiences the sort of change or revival of old Mexican gods and a rejection of Catholicism as being not appropriate for the nation. Jesus and Mary are asked to leave; priests expelled; churches transformed and a part of the country returning to an old pagan lifestyle. Drums replace churchbells, colored garments symbolizes a new trinity or duality here.

At the very end, literally Kate is still trying to figure out what the Hell she wants to do. Is she too European and individualistic to remain with the savages? At this point it's hard to care. ughh.

[Henry Tuohy · Rating 1 out of 5]

One of the least likeable character I can imagine. A condescending, miserable, racist women who
spends the first 88 pages wailing on Mexicans and their culture. The amount of times I've read the word squalid, is unbelievable.

It is a contradicting, mess of a book. For instance:
Page 14 - "I really hate common people"
Page 88 - "Kate was no snob. Man or woman, she cared nothing about the social class."

Just so you know the above quotations are simply a pure contradiction. There is NO character development between these pages, it is just poor writing.

Depressingly, the introduction to the book says that this account of Mexico is based on Lawrence’s personal experiences and feelings when he travelled there. This is NOT a good reflection of the character of Lawrence.

Anything positive said about Mexico is immediately followed by another sentence beginning with ‘But’ or ‘However’ and is then a dreary rant about… you guessed it, the unrefined, half blood savages that is the Mexican population in the eyes of Lawrence.

This is a torturous test of patience and willpower. I was forever asking myself ‘When will it get good?’ And unfortunately for me, it showed no signs of deviating from its depressing, grim course established even in the opening page.

Do yourself a favour and read a good book.

[Ken · Rating 4 out of 5]

I took several months to read this book, working on it slowly and diligently, trying to enjoy and comprehend each page. In whole, it's really about the ambivalence of the protagonist, Kate, for Mexican culture and people. In parts, it was beautiful, even exciting at one juncture, but mostly slow and darkly atmospheric. I had a lot of trouble staying awake at times, but I'm glad I stuck with it, and I won't forget it anytime soon. I gave it 4 stars, but 3.5 is what I'd like to give it.

[Tom Croskery · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Mexican setting sets up an Old World/Christian - New World/pagan dichotomy which allows Lawrence to establish and unfurl conflict very explicitly. Ultimately I do prefer “Women in Love” as I felt the characters were more fleshed out.