Lady Chatterley and Beauty

　
Thursday, September 15, 2011
　
　
Lady Chatterley and Beauty
　　
　

　
　

Subj:Summer is over now.

But enjoy jogging

on the English Bay!

From: diane03760@vancouver.ca
To: barclay1720@aol.com
Date: Sun, Sep 11, 2011 4:45 pm.
Pacific Daylight Saving Time

Hi Kato,

Reading these wonderful quotes reminded me of you.
You’re amazingly astute at picking up on interesting topics and angles with which to perceive things.
I expect you’re a fan of D.H. Lawrence as well.

Even if you’re not, you may enjoy some of these observations.

“The human soul needs actual beauty even more than bread.”

Who said this?

What was the title of his 1928 novel?

ANSWER:

D. H. Lawrence.

“Lady Chatterley’s Lover.”

D.H. Lawrence Heritage

promotional video

“Lady Chatterley’s Lover” was written in 1928 and first published in Italy.
Considered obscene in England, America, and other English-speaking countries, the book was primarily available only in privately-printed or black-market editions until the first unexpurgated edition was published in England in 1960.

What Role Does Beauty Play in Your Life?

People need beauty even more than some of the other things that are typically viewed as essential.
Yes, we need food, lodging, and other material resources in order to survive.
But we all have a deep aesthetic need as well, and one that must be met in order to truly live.
Christopher Morley put it nicely when he wrote:

“In every man’s heart there is a secret nerve that answers to the vibrations of beauty.”

To find and appreciate beauty in life does not require great financial resources or mean that we must travel to far-off, exotic places:

“Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us or we find it not.”

—Ralph Waldo Emerson

Nor do we need to purchase treasured artistic objects or build opulent homes:

“Remember that the most beautiful things in the world are the most useless; peacocks and lilies for instance.”

—John Ruskin

No, all that is required is that we occasionally step off the treadmill and make a conscious attempt to appreciate the great beauty that exists in the world.
To further advance your thinking on this subject, here are a dozen beautifully-crafted observations on the theme:

“There is nothing that makes its way more directly to the soul than beauty.”

—Joseph Addison

---

“Everything has beauty, but not everyone sees it.”

—Confucius

---

“The pursuit of truth and beauty is a sphere of activity in which we are permitted to remain children all our lives.”

—Albert Einstein

---

“Beauty is a manifestation of secret natural laws, which otherwise would have been hidden from us forever.”

—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

---

“Anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty never grows old.”

—Franz Kafka

---

“The ideal has many names, and beauty is one of them.”

—W. Somerset Maugham

---

“Beauty of whatever kind, in its supreme development, invariably excites the sensitive soul to tears.”

—Edgar Allan Poe

---

“If you foolishly ignore beauty, you will soon find yourself without it.
Your life will be impoverished.
But if you invest in beauty, it will remain with you all the days of your life.”

—Frank Lloyd Wright

I hope you’ll enjoy the above quotes.
Thanks again, kiddo.

Love, Diane ~

Diane, how come you know that I’m a fan of D.H. Lawrence?

Well…just a hunch, you know. :)

Maybe, you think I’m a man of salacious nature, don’t you?

Well…all the men are salacious in a sense, aren’t they? :)

You’re right on, Diane.

So, Kato, you consider “Lady Chatterley’s Lover” to be a beautiful movie—not an obscene movie, don’t you?

Oh yes, I do. 　It’s a beautiful movie. 　No question about that.

Why is that?

You quoted Ralph Waldo Emerson.

“Though we travel the world

over to find the beautiful,

we must carry it with us

or we find it not.”
　
　
— Ralph Waldo Emerson

　

Yes, I did. 　So, Kato, did you think it over last night?

Yes, I did, and I came up with the right interpretation. 　
　
Oh, did you? 　Tell me about it.

Here it is:

　
　

Beauty is within yourself.

Otherwise, you would never find it.
　
You can experience beauty

by intuition.
　
　
—Your truly skinny Socrates, Kato

---

SOURCE: “Diane and Beauty”
(Monday, September 12, 2011)

I see…if you did’t have beauty in yourself, you wouldn’t find beauty in “Lady Chatterley’s Lover.”

You’re right on that point, Diane.

Kato, tell me about “Lady Chatterley’s Lover.”

Lady Chatterley’s Lover

Themes

In Lady Chatterley’s Lover, Lawrence comes full circle to argue once again for individual regeneration, which can be found only through the relationship between man and woman (and, he asserts sometimes, man and man).
Love and personal relationships are the threads that bind this novel together.
Lawrence explores a wide range of different types of relationships.

The reader sees the brutal, bullying relationship between Mellors and his wife Bertha, who punishes him by preventing his pleasure.
There is Tommy Dukes, who has no relationship because he cannot find a woman whom he respects intellectually and, at the same time, finds desirable.
There is also the perverse, maternal relationship that ultimately develops between Clifford and Mrs. Bolton, his caring nurse, after Connie has left.

Mind and body

Richard Hoggart argues that the main subject of Lady Chatterley’s Lover is not the sexual passages that were the subject of such debate but the search for integrity and wholeness.

Key to this integrity is cohesion between the mind and the body for “body without mind is brutish; mind without body…is a running away from our double being.”

Lady Chatterley’s Lover focuses on the incoherence of living a life that is “all mind”, which Lawrence saw as particularly true among the young members of the aristocratic classes, as in his description of Constance’s and her sister Hilda’s “tentative love-affairs” in their youth:

So they had given the gift of themselves, each to the youth with whom she had the most subtle and intimate arguments.
The arguments, the discussions were the great thing: the love-making and connexion were only sort of primitive reversion and a bit of an anti-climax.

The contrast between mind and body can be seen in the dissatisfaction each has with their previous relationships: Constance’s lack of intimacy with her husband who is “all mind” and Mellors’s choice to live apart from his wife because of her “brutish” sexual nature.
These dissatisfactions lead them into a relationship that builds very slowly and is based upon tenderness, physical passion, and mutual respect.

As the relationship between Lady Chatterley and Mellors develops, they learn more about the interrelation of the mind and the body; she learns that sex is more than a shameful and disappointing act, and he learns about the spiritual challenges that come from physical love.

Neuro-psychoanalyst Mark Blechner identifies the “Lady Chatterley phenomenon” in which the same sexual act can affect people in different ways at different times, depending on their subjectivity.

He bases it on the passage in which Lady Chatterley feels disengaged from Mellors and thinks disparagingly about the sex act: “And this time the sharp ecstasy of her own passion did not overcome her; she lay with hands inert on his striving body, and do what she might, her spirit seemed to look on from the top of her head, and the butting of his haunches seemed ridiculous to her, and the sort of anxiety of his penis to come to its little evacuating crisis seemed farcical.
Yes, this was love, this ridiculous bouncing of the buttocks, and the wilting of the poor insignificant, moist little penis.”

Shortly thereafter, they make love again, and this time, she experiences enormous physical and emotional involvement: “And it seemed she was like the sea, nothing but dark waves rising and heaving, heaving with a great swell, so that slowly her whole darkness was in motion, and she was ocean rolling its dark, dumb mass.”

SOURCE:
Lady Chatterley’s Lover, Wikipedia
PICTURES: from the Denman Library

Kato, you’ve simply quoted from the Wikipedia. 　How about your own opinion?

My opinion?…well…”Lady Chatterley’s Lover” has been remade several times. 　In 2006, it was directed by Pascale Ferran, a French woman, in cooperation with the stuff of Belgium and the United Kingdom.

What’s so special about the 2006 film?

It was made by a female director—a French woman.

Are you saying that the French woman appreciated the D.H. Lawrence’s work very much?

Yes, she did. 　She talked about her film—the scene in the woods in particular:

Lady Chatterley

(official trailer)

Pascale Ferran

“It is known that three original manuscripts of ‘Lady Chatterley’s Lover’ remain today.
The first manuscript is something like a draft.
The second was published in the form of a fiction, and the third turned into a film three times in the past.

I made the forth film based on the second manuscript.
In the third manuscript, many characters talked about their own actions while, in the second, unexplained parts remain yet psychological changes revealed themselves, impressing me greatly.

I’ve found a pure love in the story as if a love story was told for the first time in the human history.

Constance (Lady Chatterley) and the gamekeeper, Oliver Mellors, went naked in a hut in the woods and gave each other a floral head decoration. To me, it was two hearts combined together.

Then both lovers ran around in the buff like two playful children while their whole bodies expressed a heart-felt joy. Both scenes are included in the original manuscript and became two important scenes in my film.
I wanted to capture their psychological changes as well as sensual pleasure and smell.
In other words, I wanted to make my film appeal to the senses of the audience.

---

Translated by Kato

SOURCE:
“Obscenity and Lady Chatterley”
(Decmber 2, 2010)
『ワイセツとチャタレイ夫人』
(Japanese Version)

So, the above two scenes are beauty in her eyes as well as in yours, aren’t they?

You’re right on, Diane. 　The film did appeal to my senses beautifully, indeed.

【Himiko’s Monologue】

Wow! Did you see the official trailer?
I think it’s a bit obscene and salacious—especially when both make love in the woods.

LADY CHATTERLEY

de Pascale Ferran (2006)

Constance (Lady Chatterley) mounted on the thighs of the gamekeeper, Oliver Mellors.
She absorbed in the oozing sensation.
Oh, what a sensual scene!
Don’t you think so?

My heart throbbed like mad while I watched the above trailer.
Unity between mind and body is one thing; romance is another.

Come to think of it, I’ve never met a decent man in my life.
How come I’m always a loner?
I wish I could meet a nice gentleman at the library in my town as Diane met Kato.
Well, they say, there is a way where there is a will.

Have a nice day!
Bye bye …

■“Cleopatra”

■“Queen Nefertiti”

■“Catherine de Medici”

■“Catherine the Great”

■“Mata Hari”

■“Sidonie Colette”

■“Marilyn Monroe”

■“Hello Diane!”

■“I wish you were there!”

■“Jane Eyre”

■“Jane Eyre Again”

■“Jane Eyre in Vancouver”

■“Jane Eyre Special”

■“Love & Death of Cleopatra”

■“Nice Story”

■“Scrumdiddlyumptious”

■“Spiritual Work or What?”

■“What a coincidence!”

■“Wind and Water”

■“Yoga and Happiness”

■“You’re in a good shape”

■“Hellelujah!”

■“Ecclesiophobia”

■“Uncorruptible”

■“Net Travel & Jane”

■“Net Love”

■“Complicated Love”

■“Electra Complex”

■“Net Début”

■“Inner World”

■“Madame Riviera and Burger”

■“Roly-poly in the North”

■“Amazing Grace”

■“Diane in Paris”

■“Diane in Montmartre”

■“Diane Well Read”

■“Wantirna South”

■“Maiden’s Prayer”

■“Bandwidth”

■“Squaw House and Melbourne Hotel”

■“Tulips and Diane”

■“Diane in Bustle Skirt”

■“Diane and Beauty”

ィ～ハァ～♪～!

メチャ面白い、

ためになる関連記事

■　『きれいになったと感じさせる

下着・ランジェリーを見つけませんか？』

■　『ちょっと変わった　新しい古代日本史』

■　『面白くて楽しいレンゲ物語』

■　『軽井沢タリアセン夫人 – 小百合物語』

■　『今すぐに役立つホットな情報』

■　『　○　笑う者には福が来る　○　』

■『夢とロマンの横浜散歩』

■『下つきだねって言われて…』

■『銀幕の愛』

■『パリの空の下で』

■『愛の進化論』

■『畳の上の水練（２０１１年３月１５日）』

■『軍隊のない国（２０１１年３月２１日）』

■『士風と「葉隠」（２０１１年３月２３日）』

■『アナクロニズム（２０１１年３月２７日）』

Hi, I’m June Adames.

I like Sylvia Kristel’s Lady Chatterley.

Lady Chatterley’s Lover

Sylvia Kristel (1981)

Talking of Sylvia Kristel, you might as well

remember Lady Emmanuelle.

Emmanuelle 1 – Ouverture

Emmanuelle 2: L’antivierge

Sylvia Kristel (1975)

Well…if you love to visit Paris,

please enjoy the Paris theme:

Sous le Ciel de Paris

by Hideshi Kibi（日本人）

You can find some Japanese musicians in Paris.

Fujiko Hemming also likes Édith Piaf

who sings “Sous le ciel de Paris.”

Sous le ciel de Paris

by Édith Piaf

I like Chanson Française (French song).

How about you?

Kato also love Édith Piaf,

but he considers Juliette Greco’s

“Sous le Ciel de Paris” much beter.

Sous le Ciel de Paris

by Juliette Greco

I believe Yves Montand’s “Sous le Ciel de Paris” is the best of all.

Sous le Ciel de Paris

by Yves Montand

I love Paris, but Vancouver isn’t bad at all.

To tell you the truth, Vancouver is a paradise to me.

ところで、愛とロマンに満ちた

レンゲさんのお話をまとめて

『レンゲ物語』を作りました。

もし、レンゲさんの記事をまとめて読みたいならば、

次のリンクをクリックしてくださいね。

■『愛とロマンのレンゲ物語』

とにかく、今日も一日楽しく愉快に

ネットサーフィンしましょうね。

じゃあね。