فانتازيا الغريزة

by D.H. Lawrence, عبد المقصود عبد الكريم (-Tranlator)

لطالما عرف القارئ العربي د. هـ. لورانس كروائي وشاعر ومسرحي، ولكنه يجهل أن لهذا الكاتب الإنجليزي كتابات في علم النفس وتأملات في حياة الإنسان. هذا الكتاب الذي ترجمه عبد المقصود عبد الكريم، والذي ترجم للعربية رواية عشيق الليدي تشاترلي كاملة لأول مرة- هو نافذة على عالم الطفل بصورة واسعة، إنه يتتبع نشأة الغريزة عند الإنسان، عبر كل المحيطات به، ابتداء من الأب والأم، وانتهاء بالعوامل الطبيعية كاشمس والقمر. سيجد القارئ دعوات وتصريحات وأقوالًا كانت تبدو وقت جهر بها لورانس غريبة للغاية، ولكنها صارت الآن من متطلبات المجتمع ومما أثبت العلم الحديث صحته. الكتاب –كما يؤكد كاتبه- ليس دراسة علمية، وإنما فيوض وخواطر وتأملات جديرة بالاحترام، والنقد والدرس أيضًا.

Genres: Psychology, Philosophy, Fiction, English Literature, Spirituality

239 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1922

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

[Sunny · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this. In places couldn’t have agreed agree more but in certain places especially when it comes to certain sexist comments I could not have agreed less. Either way though this was a very interesting read. As Lawrence is talking about the unconscious / subconscious (is there a difference – yes there is: one is under, the other is a negation of) there are many references to the subliminal sexual drive that drives mankind according to Lawrence and Freud of course. The book also makes a really interesting point about how while we are cerebral thinking sentient beings we cannot deny that a large proportion of us, physically, literally comprises a mass which is more earthy, natural, less cerebral, more instinctive, more animal. Lawrence talks a lot about the centre of who were are and refers to the solar plexus as being that literal centre. He posits an interesting question which I had never thought about. If I were to ask you “where” in your body do “you” feel the most “you”, where would it be? Is it the heart, is it your head or is it your stomach, your gut? Where do you instinctively feel the most yourself? When I thought about this question I answered in the gut. It’s where I feel the most “me”. There were tons of other really interesting bits. Here are some the most interesting bits as quoted from the book:

•“If my reader finds this bosh and abracadabra all right for him. Only I have no more regard for his little crownings on his own little dunghill … but nothing will ever quench humanity and the human potentiality to evolve something magnificent out of a renewed chaos.”


•“And what is this other greater impulse? It is the desire of the human male to build a world: not to build a world for you dear but to build up out of his own self and his own belief and his own effort something wonderful.”


•“Let us beware and beware and beware of having a high ideal of ourselves but particularly let us beware of having an ideal of our children. So doing we damn them. All we can have is wisdom. And wisdom is not a theory it is a state of the soul.”


•“The little sold of the homo sapiens sets him on his two feet. Don’t ask me to define the soul. You might as well ask a bicycle to define the young damsel who so whimsically and so god like pedals her way along the high road.”


•“For many ages we have been suppressing the avid, negroid sensual will. We have been converting ourselves into ideal creatures all spiritually conscious and active dynamically only on one place the upper spiritual plane. Our mouth has contrived our teeth have become soft and unquickened. Where in us are the sharp and vivid teeth of the wolf, keen to defend and devour? If we had them more we should be happier. Where are the white negroid teeth? Where? In our little pinched mouths they have no room. We are sympathy rotten, and spirit rotten and idea rotten. We have forfeited our flashing sensual power. We have false teeth in our mouths.”


•“The goal is not ideal. The aim is not mental consciousness. We want effectual human beings, not conscious ones. The final aim is not to know but to be. There never was a more risky moto than that: know thyself. You’ve got to know yourself as far as possible. But not just for the sake of knowing. You’ve got to know yourself so that you can at least be yourself. Be yourself is the last motto.”


•“The ideal mind the brain has become the vampire of modern life sucking up the blood and the life. There is hardly an original thought or original utterance possible to us. All is sickly repetition of stale stale ideas.”


•“The supreme lesson of human consciousness is to learn how not to know. That is how not to interfere. That is how to live dynamically from the great source and not statically like machines driven by ideas and principles from the head or automatically from one fixed desire.”


•“The danger of a helpless presumptuous newspaper reading population is universally recognised.”


•“The fact is out process of universal education is today so uncouth so psychologically barbaric that is it the most terrible menace to the existence of out race. We seize hold of our children and by parrot compulsion we fore into them a set of mental tricks. By unnatural and unhealthy compulsion we force them into a certain amount of cerebral activity. And then after a few years with a certain number of windmills in their heads we turn them loose like so many inferior Don Quixotes to make a mess of life.”


•“Instead of living from spontaneous centres we live from the head. We chew, chew, chew at some theory some idea. We grind grind grind in our mental consciousness till we are beside ourselves. Our primary affective centres out centres of spontaneous being are so utterly ground round and automatized that they squeal in all stages of disharmony and incipient collapse. We are a people, and not we alone, of idiots’ imbeciles and epileptics and we don’t even know we are raving.”


•“We can't go on as we are. Poos nerve worn creatures fretting our lives away and hating to die because we have never lived. The secret is to commit into the hands of the sacred few the responsibility which now lies like torture on the mss. Let the few the leaders be increasingly responsible for the whole. And let the mass be free, free save for the choice of the leaders.”


•“Our understanding our science and idealism have produced in people the same strange frency of self revulsion as if they saw their own skulls each time they looked in the mirror. A man is a think of scientific cause and effect and biological process, draped in an idea is he? No wonder he sees the skeleton grinning through the flesh.”


•“Till a man makes a great resolution of aloneness and singleness of being, till he takes upon himself the silence and central appeasement of maturity: and then after this assumes a sacred responsibility for the next purposive step into the future there is no rest.”


•“To make the mind the absolute ruler is as good as making a cooks tourist interpreter a king and a god because he can speak several languages and make an Arab understand that an Englishman wants fish for supper.”

•“Because he said he didn't want to love any more we hate hi for evermore and try to run over him, every bit of him with our love tanks. And all the time we yell at him : will you deny love, you villain? Will you ? And by the time he faintly squeaks “i want to be loved” i want to be loved! We have got so used to running over him with our love talks that we don't feel in a hurry to leave off.”


•“All the bitterness of the conflict with the devil of an amiable spouse who has got herself so stuck in her own head. It is terrible to be young- but one fights one's way through it till one is cleaned; the self consciousness and sex idea burned out of one cauterized out but by bit and the selg whole again and at last free. The best thing i've known is the stillness of accomplished marriage when one possess one's own soul in silence side by side with the amiable spouse and has left off craving and raving and being only half one’s self.”


•“And in your own sould be alone and be still. Be alone and be still preserving all the human decencies and abondanoning the indecency of desires and benevolences and evotions those beastly poison gas apples of the sodom vine and love will … Alone. Alone. Be alone my soul.”


•“Then they took the cart and rubbed it all over with grase. Then they sprayed it with white wine and spun round the right wheel five hundred revolutions to the minute and the left wheel in the opposite direction seven hundred and seventy seven revolutions to the minute. Then a burning torch was applied to each axle. And lo, the footboard of the cart bevan to swell and suddenly as the cart groaned and writhed the horse was born and laying between the shafts. The whole scientific theory of the universe is not worth such a tale: that cart conceived and gave birth to the horse.”


•“Every man and woman should be forced out of bed soon after the sun has risen: particularly the nervous ones. And forced into physically. Soon after dawn the vast majority of people should be hard at work. It not they will soon be nervously.”


•Sexist statement alert: “Pervert this and make a false flow upwards to the breast and head and you get a race of intelligent women delightful companions tricky courtesans clever prostitutes noble idealists devoted friends, interesting mistresses efficient workers brilliant managers, women as good as men at all the mably tricks: and better because they are so very headlong once they go in for mens tricks. But then, after a while pop it all goes. The moment women has got mans ideals and tricks drilled into her the moment she is competent in the manly world - there's an end of it. She's had enough. She's had more than enough. She hates the thing she has embraced. She becomes absolutely perverse and her one end is to prostitute herself and her ideals to sex.”


•“Love is a thing to be learned, through centuries of patient effort. It is a difficult complex maintenance of individual integrity throughout the incalculable processes of interhuman polarity. Even on the first great plane of consciousness, four primary poles in each individual, four powerful circuits possible between two individuals and each of the four circuits to be established to perfection and yet maintained in pure equilibrium with all the others. Who can do it? Nobody, yet we have all got to do it, or else suffer ascetic tortures of starvation and privation or of distortion and overstrain and collapse into corruption. The whole of life is one long blind effort at an established polarity with the outer universe, human and non human and the whole of modern life is a shrieking failure. It is our own fault.”

[Frank Vasquez · Rating 1 out of 5]

I must have read this 3 or 4 times already, at different points in my life, with varying degrees of context for the "ideas" Lawrence expresses here. Make no mistake: it is not "dated" nor "antiquated" nor "fascinating" nor any number of adjectives given to drivel such as this. Herein lies the machinations of a man that sought to support and appreciate spontaneous violence. There is nothing "good" or "worth reading" here. If you're seeking a damned tome of white male supremacy, you have found its Fantasia. There is no mind to glean here without refusing to acknowledge this was the articulation of a man that did not give one whit about anything beyond his self-indulgence.

[Scribh · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was a curious book; a strange mixture of faux-science, spirituality, nature-worship, and the sexist "separation of spheres/male-female natures" fairly typical of the day. Its chief value is obviously in providing an interesting window into Lawrence's opinions of life, the universe, and everything, which are as far-flung as they are extensive.

[Chris · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is a mixed bag of insightful, poetic thoughts that live side-by-side with terribly outdated ideas bordering on sexism, racism, and poor parenting. I'm not entirely sure anyone should even read this book because of the inherent risk of passively accepting the bad along with the good. However, I personally thought the gems were worth the slog. Does that mean I think it is a good book? No. But I do wish some of the ideas would live on. Maybe they do in Lawrence's other books, though written less directly.

It's important to know that this is a follow-up book to Lawrence's book reviewing the ideas of early psychoanalysis as popularized by Freud. There is some decent critical thought by Lawrence here, and his caution about psychoanalytic thought is similar to the caution I would advise when someone approaches Lawrence's own ideas: there's good stuff there, but you have to be careful. Mostly, though, Lawrence felt that psychoanalysis was helpful because it attempted to account for the growing neuroticism in individuals affected by industrialized environments and ideas about wealth, comfort, and relationships. Most notably, instinctual drives and sexuality were being stunted from early childhood onward by bad parenting, popular sexual taboo, longer work hours, and city life. This problem is summarized in Fanstasia as an imbalance of impulse, idea, and tradition; which correlate very closely to Freud's id, ego, superego. More specifically, Lawrence felt that people's natural impulses were being suppressed in favor of ideas. The idealization of sensory experience, adolescence, sex, relationships, and family was subverting the power and potency of foundational instincts that serve as the basis for those very ideas. This, in his opinion, violated the natural order. "…sensation and the remembrance of sensation is the first element in all knowing and in all conception."

There is a lot of nonsense in the book about the centers of impulse, emotions, and cognition, which Lawrence refers to as lower and higher centers of motivation in the body--the lower centers converging in nerve bundles and 'ganglias' which primarily influence emotions. The story of how these nerve centers influence behavior may be symbolically significant, but the more literal the explanation leans, the less useful for our time. However, if Lawrence was right about people needing myth to make facts stick, then his own created myth--however literal he intended it--may have been effective for him and his readers. A more modern expression of instincts and intellect would probably have missed the mark. "Every extraneous idea, which has no inherent root in the dynamic consciousness, is as dangerous as a nail driven into a young tree. For the mass of people, knowledge must be symbolic, mythical, dynamic."

I did appreciate the distinction between static and dynamic consciousness, which essentially divides knowledge between that which is gained from sensory experience and that gained from theoretical understanding. We can be conscious of something by virtue of our participation in an experience or relationship with that person or thing, or we can know about that person or thing through information and mental representation/abstraction. Lawrence believed that secondary, intellectual ideas are no substitute for primary sensual experiences which first give rise to ideas. He believed parents and schools were the primary culprits that caused children to grow up with an idealized identity and sexuality (static consciousness) that was divested of the mystery, danger, and independence of a dynamic consciousness which constituted a more immediate harmony between themselves and their world. Parents do this because they want to hold on to their relationship with a child instead of preparing them to be free, and schools do this to neutralize the more dangerous aspects of children's instinctual drives.

The cure? Let children be children. Worry less over them and let them develop independence. Honor them by granting them the ability to preserve their inner, instinctual darkness that only they can integrate into their adult lives. Lawrence sharply criticizes parents, schools, and marriage partners for not allowing individuality to flourish in the interest of safety and reliability. In the process we are dismantling each other's personalities, especially the personalities of our children, in an attempt to save their best parts for ourselves, ridding them of the elements of their nature that we feel at odds with our purposes, and releasing them after our plundering confused, defenseless, and bored.

Here is a list of quotations that may save someone the work of actually digging through the book for something salvageable.

God has been talked about quite a lot, and he doesn’t seem to mind. (14)

I am glad to be with the profound indifference of faceless trees. (34)

Sight is the least sensual of all the senses. (50)

The goal is not ideal. The aim is not mental consciousness. We want effectual human beings, not conscious ones. The final aim is not to know, but to be. There never was a more risky motto than that: know thyself. You’ve got to know yourself as far as possible. But not just for the sake of knowing. You’ve got to know yourself so that you can at last be yourself. “Be yourself” is the last motto. (52)

Static consciousness - the state of knowing some reality as an idea
Dynamic consciousness - the state of being in dynamic relation with some reality (53-54)

The nearer a conception comes towards finality, the nearer does the dynamic relation, out of which this concept has arisen, draw to a close. To know is to lose. When I have a finished mental concept of a beloved, or a friend, then the love and the friendship is dead. It falls to the level of an acquaintance. As soon as I have a finished mental conception, a full idea even of myself, then dynamically I am dead. To know is to die. (55)

…sensation and the remembrance of sensation is the first element in all knowing and in all conception. (56)

Yet we must know, if only in order to learn not to know. The supreme lesson of human consciousness is to learn how not to know. That is, how to interfere. That is, how to live dynamically, from the great Source, and not statically, like machines driven by ideas and principles from the head, or automatically, from some fixed desire. (58)

Every extraneous idea, which has no inherent root in the dynamic consciousness, is as dangerous as a nail driven into a young tree. For the mass of people, knowledge must be symbolic, mythical, dynamic. (58)

We are imbeciles to start bothering about love and so forth in a child. Forget utterly that there is such a thing as emotional reciprocity. But never forget your own honor as an adult individual towards a small individual. It is a question of honor, not of love. (61)

Most of a child’s questions are, and should be, unanswerable. They are not questions at all. They are exclamations of wonder, they are remarks half-sceptically addressed. When a child says, “Why is the grass green?” he half implies, “Is it really green, or is it just taking me in?” And we solemnly begin to prate about chlorophyll. (71)

[Often] a child arrives at the age of puberty already stripped of it’s childhood’s darkness, bound, and delivered over. (93)

We must live by all three: ideal, impulse, and tradition. (104)

There is no mother’s milk today, save in tigers’ udders…Never for one moment, poor baby, the deep warm stream of love from the mother’s bowels to his bowels. Never for one moment the dark, proud recoil into rest, the soul’s separation into the deep, rich independence. (110)

Oh, parents, see that your children get their dinners and clean sheets, but don't love them. Don't love them one single grain, and don't let anybody else love them. Give them their dinners and leave them alone. You've already loved them to perdition. Now leave them alone, to find their own way out. (113)

It isn’t our business to live anybody’s life, or die anybody’s death, except our own. (116)

There is only one clue to the universe, and that is the individual soul within the individual being. (117)

No man is a man unless to his woman he is a pioneer. (149)

She’ll never believe you until, in your soul, you are cut off and gone ahead, into the dark. (150)

Then you turn to your other goal: to the splendor of darkness between her arms. (150)

[Janette Schafer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Much of the sensibilities in this book are dated, especially in regards to gender identity and roles, but still, Lawrence's writing and enthusiasm is lively and engaging. His brilliant mind and skills as an essayist and philosopher shine through, and his analogies are always thought provoking. The mores of the time however did make me wince on more than one occasion. But, if you approach it from the mindset of it being a period piece representing the thoughts of a bygone era, there is much to enjoy. A chewy piece of brain candy to be sure.

[Doa'a Ali · Rating 4 out of 5]

ليس للقارئ الذي يحتاج لوجبة سريعة سهلة مهضومة
هذا الكتاب لتذوّق فن بناء عالم جديد اخر
الكتاب بالفعل (فانتازيا اللاهوتي، او الغريزة) ،، هو فانتازيا ،، لم يكذب عليك
سيتحدث عن اشياء علمية /على وقته / ولكن بغلاف توريات واستعارات، بأسلوب شعري باهر
عملية التنقيب عن الأفكار عملية لذيذة جدا ،، فقط لمن احب نيتشة مثلًا سيحب هذا الكتاب
طبعًا افكار الكتاب حول الجنس والحب والإنجاب والأطفال كيف ينشؤون ،، حتى عن الاحلام والموت والحياة
افكار فلسفية كثيرة
ستقرأ مرتين ان أحببته ، او ستكرهه من اول جملتين

[Mohamed Ateaa · Rating 3 out of 5]

انا اديتلوه تلات نجوم
لاني مفهمتش هو عاوز يقول ايه
هما لو برا بيكتبه كده او لو بيفكروا كده
يبقي غالبا مفيش تلاقي حضارات ع الاطلاق
الكتاب بيتكلم في كل حاجة انت ممكن متفهماش

يمكن لما اقراه تاني و ان كنت اشك في كده افهم هو عاوز يقول ايه

م ع
مارس 2013

[Islam · Rating 4 out of 5]

المعرفة تعني الموت

[Aelah67 · Rating 4 out of 5]

جميل جدا هذا الكتاب والمترجم المصري " عبد المقصود عبد الكريم " مترجم رائع بلغة سهلة وبسيطة ومفهومة وعميقة في نفس الوقت
أعجبني كثيرا الربط في بعض الفقرات بين عالم الجسد والنفس ، اقتبس من الكتاب هذه الفقرة : (( ان فرض أي مثل على الطفل في مرحلة النمو يكاد يكون اجراما . انه يؤدي الى الافقار والتشويه ، والاعاقة بالتالي . ان مثل الحب والخير ، في ايامنا هي الاخطر . انها تؤدي الى الوهن العصبي ، الى تشوش المراكز الارادية الرئيسة أو انهيارها أو تعطيلها . نلح علي نموذج واحد فقط ، النموذج الروحي . انه يقمع المراكز السفلية الرئيسة ، ويجعل العيش نوعا من نصف حياة ، ويكاد يستنزفنا بواسطة المراكز العلوية . ولأننا نعيش في رهبة وتستنزفنا المراكز العلوية ، فاننا نميل الى السل ووهن القلب العصبي . يستنزف مركز الثدي السمبتاوي الرئيس ، احترقت الرئتان بالالحاح الزائد على طريقة واحدة للحياة ، ومرضتا ، ويشدّ القلب الى نموذج واحد ، نموذج الانبساط ، وينتقم .
لم تعد المراكز السفلية القوية تعمل بنشاط تام ، خاصة العقدة القطنية الرئيسة ، مفتاح غرورنا الحسي الشهواني ومفتاح استقلالنا ، انها تضمر بالقمع .
إنها العقدة التي تحفظ العمود الفقري منتصبا ، ولذا تضعف صدورنا وتستدير أكتافنا ، ونقف مقوسين الى الأمام على أنفسنا ، انعدم الآن نشاطها السمبتاوي تماما نتيجة لكل هذا الحب ولمثالية المحبة ، ولكنها مازالت راسخة ومحددة في عملها الإرادي ((

[Mike Battaglia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Although this book is right up my alley, it’s not an easy read. Mr. Lawrence lets his philosophies pour out in a beautiful rant, using words that require a lot of googling, but you can’t help being swept up with his ire. The book talks about the nature of our consciousness – mainly as an infant and young child – and about where the consciousness resides within the body. If you know anything about energy points and chakras, you’ll understand what he’s talking about. Far from new age mumbo jumbo, Mr. Lawrence paints a highly accurate, highly convincing argument about raising a child, not by providing unconditional parent love, but by leaving them pretty much alone to discover life on their own through their primary and secondary modes of consciousness. Basically he’s scolding us for what we should already know: Make your own mind up about absolutely everything. Use the powers you have been given. Don’t let anyone else’s ideals supplant your own. Let your child discover life through their own senses, not yours. This book is highly advanced for it’s time, and probably holds more relevance today than it ever has. Just be sure to have aspirin handy.

[Jen Seals · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was challenging for me in so many ways. I know too much about the life of D.H. Lawrence and have followed his ups and downs with Frieda as they paralleled his writings. I have also enjoyed theorizing about how his other relationships as well as his own health may have affected his unique perspective on story telling throughout the journey he shared with us so much that I don't think I was able to read this the way it was intended to be read.

That said, I thorougly enjoyed another peek into the mind of this man that changed the literary world and exposed me to a kind of art form I might never otherwise of been inspired by.

[James Kelly · Rating 3 out of 5]

A collector's piece. I read it for the sublime title more than anything else ;). It has some interesting windows into Lawrence's personal philosophies and ideology, but some of the views are murky to modern tastes. At its best it is full of insight and thoughtfulness, at its worst it reflects bombast and cod-philosophy.

[Natalie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Lawrence just went off on one here.

[Hazem Hassan · Rating 1 out of 5]

كتاب محُبط جداً بصراحة...الكارثة الكبيرة ان الكاتب اتأثر جدا بكونه روائي ومسرحي وده اللي حوّل الكتاب الي عمل أدبي بحت ملئ بالمحسنات البديعية الصريحه و أسلوب كله تكلف وتصنُع..نجمة كتيرة عليه :/

[Daniel Adler · Rating 5 out of 5]

utterly profound reflections on the nature of the unconscious and the way the world works--classic lawrence, ngaf, not for everyone, a hidden masterpiece

[Usama Foad · Rating 4 out of 5]

كتاب عبقري، يستحق أن يقرأ، ولكن احذر قبل أن تصدق اي شيئ فيه.