D. H. Lawrence, St. Mawr, and inner vitality

Let us find out more about the 'abyss'. In D. H. Lawrence's St. Mawr- the story of a young woman's unique interest in, and passion for, a stubborn, self-determined, vital horse that could not be completely tamed- we have a literary exegesis on the characteristics of true wildness. In the following conversation between the woman, Lou, and her mother, she extols the virtues seen in the horse which none of the men she knows possess, simply because they all live only by the cleverness of their minds:

"'Why mother!' said Lou impatiently, 'I think one gets so tired of your men with mind, as you call it. There are so many of that sort of clever men. ...It seems to me there's something else besides mind and cleverness, or niceness or cleanness. Perhaps, it is the animal. Just think of St. Mawr [the horse]! I've thought so much about him. We call him an animal, but we never know what it means. He seems a far greater mystery to me than a clever man. ...[Mankind's] thinking seems to me all so childish: like stringing the same beads over and over again. Ah, men! They and their thinking are so paltry...men's minds are so commonplace. ...I would hate St. Mawr to be spoilt by such a mind. ...He stands where one can't get at him. And he burns with life. And where does his life come from, to him? That's the mystery. That great burning life in him, which is never dead. Most men have a deadness in them which frightens me. ...Why can't men get their life straight, like St. Mawr? Why can't they think quick...? Why isn't men's thinking quick like fire, mother? Why is it so slow, so dead, so deadly dull? ...think, mother, if we could get our lives straight from the source, as the animals do, and still be ourselves. ...you've no idea how men just tire me out: even the thought of them. ...It's the animal in them has gone perverse, or cringing, or humble, or domesticated, like dogs. I don't know one single man who is a proud living animal. I know they've left off real thinking. But then men always do leave off real thinking, when the last bit of wild animal dies in them. ...Men are all women, knitting and crocheting words together. ...clever men are mostly such unpleasant animals. ...There is no wild animal left in them. They're all tame dogs, even when they're brave and well-bred. They're all tame dogs, mother, with human masters. There's no mystery in them. ...A pure animal would be as lovely as a deer or a leopard burning like a flame fed straight from underneath. And he'd be part of the unseen, like a mouse is, even. And he'd never cease to wonder, he'd breathe silence and unseen wonder, as the partridges do, running in the stubble. He'd be all the animals in turn, instead of one fixed, automatic thing, which [man] is now, grinding on the nerves. -Ah, no, mother, I want wonder back again, or I shall die." (St. Mawr, p48-50)

D. H. Lawrence then goes on to narrate a scene on the ubiquity of this tragedy:

"[They] stood high at the window overlooking the wet, close, hedged-and-fenced English landscape. Everything enclosed, enclosed to stifling. The very apples on the trees looked shut in, it was impossible to imagine any speck of 'knowledge' lurking inside them. Good to eat, good to cook, good even for show. But the wild sap of untameable and inexhaustible knowledge- no! Bred out of them. Geldings, even the apples." (St. Mawr, p90)

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These excerpts on following the heart and aimless wandering are taken from unpublished chapters of

THE WAY OF WONDER, by Jack Haas