The Plumed Serpent

by D.H. Lawrence

Book Overview

Now available for the first time as a paperbook, Quetzalcoatl is D.H. Lawrence's last "unpublished manuscript" and the early version of his great Mexican novel, The Plumed Serpent. Kate Burns is the... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1853262587
• ISBN13: 9781853262586
• Release Date: December 1999
• Publisher: Wordsworth Editions
• Length: 404 Pages
• Weight: 0.61 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 5.0" x 7.7"

Customer Reviews

That Angry Man

Lawrence was the first of the angry men who came to dominate English letters after WWII, only Lawrence was ahead of them by nearly fifty years. It is instructive if not enlightening to read Lawrence here in "The Plumed Serpent" and elsewhere, for example in "Kangaroo," on the subject of the 'masses,' the people, and on democracy. Lawrence who was of working class stock created a reactionary persona who saw himself as an artistic aristocrat who looked down on nearly everyone. The opening scene at the bull ring is a masterpiece of writing. In it, Lawrence weaves his Irish heroine's visceral reaction to the cruelty of bull fighting into her observations of the Mexican people. Her conclusion, and I think Lawrence's, was that the bull's deserve our sympathy, while the people can rot. He was a great hater of the masses, as expressed in "Kangaroo," his survey of the new emerging democracy down under. He was, as he said, afraid of the ant hill, the grinding down of human life to the multitude and its needs. In so many ways he was prophetic, anticipating many of the arguments and observations of the Frankfurt School members, such as Adorno, who came to America and were appalled. This is a great novel in the sense that it fully expresses Lawrence's view of the world. It displays his uniquely expressive prose and contains brilliantly observed details of the Mexican landscape.

Better than critics give credit for

The critics focus on Lawrence's lifelong sexual themes and his colonial-era views on race, but the best part of this book, and the reason it's still important, is that it contains Lawrence's prescription for modern metaphysical ills -- a return to religion, not Christianity but a sort of new paganism which draws at its core on ideas from gnosticism and eastern mysticism. Lawrence thinks that Quetzalcoatl would embody this new paganism in Mexico, but he has Ramon suggest to Kate that, if she returns to Ireland, she should encourage the Irish to similarly reinvent the Celtic gods on the gnostic model. Ramon thinks every culture should revert to its old gods -- which he thinks are all expressions of the same, universal God -- because different "races," or to use more modern, politically correct terminology, different cultures understand the idea of "god" through their own unique experience, history and ways of thinking. Regardless of any other shortcomings, this is a fascinating, thoughtful approach, artfully presented.I liked Lawrence's Quetzalcoatl hymns quite a bit, and thought they added immensely to the above-identified theme. They reminded me a great deal of some the Nag Hammadi manuscripts -- gnostic Christian teachings discovered in Egypt in the 1940s, and famously described by Elaine Pagels in The Gnostic Gospels. What's most amazing is the depth and scope of Lawrence's gnostic philosophy without having had access to those ancient Egyptian texts, which were not discovered until after the writer's death.Those viewing this book through a purely feminist lens will dislike it; those who espouse identity politics will find themselves conflicted. But for anyone interested in a great writer's "practical" solution to the great spiritual dilemmas of the modern era, or who simply enjoys reading 400 pages of top-shelf prose, "The Plumed Serpent" is worth the time investment.

Beautiful and maddening

I must agree with the other reviewers that this book has some wonderful writing. There are passages of description that simply dazzle. The scene in which heroine Kate first sees the gathering of the Men of Quetzalcoatl, where the beats of the drums seem to draw the soul from the earth, is absolutely mesmerizing. Yet for every memorable scene there are pages and pages of wild romanticizing about native values, obscenely outdated musings about race, and odd sentiments about marriage and women. Unlike "Women in Love," this book doesn't present love in a very good light. Kate is seen as a woman torn between her need to be herself and her need to be subsumed by a man. And the answer is unclear at the end. I found her to be a sympathetic character despite her annoying quirks (if she hates Mexico so much, why doesn't she just leave?) and I felt the ending didn't show her growing or changing. I also felt that the other main characters (Ramon and Cipriano) became almost brutal by the book's end, and this development was not resolved in any satisfactory way.I have to admit being profoundly disappointed by the ending, and by the bizarre theorizing about the soul of the "dark races." But, I had to keep remembering that this book was a product of the early twentieth century. And the writing is what still makes it masterful.

Lawrence's Spiritual Journey

One gets the impression that D.H. Lawrence's visit to Mexico in the 1920's was quite difficult; Mexico was rocked by political and social violence and even extremes of climate. Yet somehow, Lawrence has successfully managed to transform his experiences into a novel alive and vital. His characters are early 20th century spiritual seekers in a country that still has not been completely deadened by what Lawrence sees as the century's materialistic malaise. His spiritual ideas are much more profound than what can be found in most modern New Age manuals, and imbedded as they are in a realistic fiction, much more entertaining.

Florid, overheated, savage, goofy, tonally manic-depressive

Lawrence is much like Faulkner in the sense that his prose seems to spew out in gorgeous, confused, confussing, sometimes brilliant, sometimes horrid chunks. Lawrence's technique doesn't flow so much as it purges, and combined with the baroque possibilities of Mexico, it produces a massive and challenging novel that lunges from one extreme to another. I'm still not sure if Lawrence's conception of Kate Leslie was too complex for me to grasp or simply convoluted. The novel begins abruptly and ends in even greater uncertainty... But in between, it is a great book to keep on your nightstand for a month or two.