“The Mess of Love” by D H Lawrence…

Good evening,

My Literature professor has been reccomending the reading of a certain poem over a few weeks now. I caught up on it today, and was amazed to find how, well, radical it was! It is almost as if running at a speed of 100 kmph and ramming into a solid wall! A quite different view of “Love” as such! Without much further ado, let me introduce to you, “The Mess of Love” by D H Lawrence…

The Mess of Love

We’ve made a great mess of love
Since we made an ideal of it.

The moment I swear to love a woman, a certain woman, all my life
That moment I begin to hate her.

The moment I even say to a woman: I love you! —
My love dies down considerably.

The moment love is an understood thing between us, we are sure of it,
It’s a cold egg, it isn’t love any more.

Love is like a flower, it must flower and fade;
If it doesn’t fade, it is not a flower,
It’s either an artificial rag blossom, or an immortelle, for the cemetery.

The moment the mind interferes with love, or the will fixes on it,
Or the personality assumes it as an attribute, or the ego takes possession of it,
It is not love any more, it’s just a mess.
And we’ve made a great mess of love, mind-perverted, will-perverted, ego-perverted love.
- © 1929 D. H. Lawrence

Now that we have finished reading and assimilating the poem,  I would like to comment on a few of his ideas. He goes against the very traditional notions that “love is eternal” as narrated by Shakespeare and Wordsworth. He says that if an individual realizes he/she is in love, then it isnt love anymore. In other words, you realize that you’re in love only when the relationship about to fall apart. Quite a shock for movie directors :D .

We see movies and soaps which go like “I love you, I love you, I love you……….”  and so on and so forth. According to Lawrence, that realization is like the last furious flame of a candle before its estinguished. Interesting field of thought. I wouldnt agree much with it, but I cant be too firm in my opinion since I have never been in a true relationship myself.

But then, most of the people disagree with most of Lawrence’s works, thus I guess I’m justified in my opinion. Maybe Lawrence was a revolutionist, and that’s why we fail to recognize the beauty in the work.

Despite all this, and something I found different from the different reviews of the poem I read, is that it seems like the entire crux of the poem lies in the last line “And we’ve made a great mess of love, mind-perverted, will-perverted, ego-perverted love.”  I think that he’s actual opinion is just about the mess of love, rather than the in-eternality of love…

What are your views? Its quite interesting to learn more about love, since as advocates for peace, we keep advocating love, and here we face with a challenge. If any of you have understood the poem in much deeper depth, please do comment.


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Technorati Tags: , , , ,

August 7, 2007 | Filed Under Emotion,Literature,Philosophy | 2 Comments 

Close
E-mail It
Socialized through Gregarious 41