T H E S I S

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above, it is understandable that we may feel the sense of ridicule
and disgust in sex. Freud says about our animal nature:
“Não devemos ensoberbecer-nos tanto, a ponto de perder completamente
de vista nossa natureza animal, nem esquecer
tampouco que a felicidade individual não deve ser negada
peX&: civilização," (CLP 50)
Lawrence would have liked what Manuel Bandeira9 one of the
major Brazilian poets, says about the separateness of the body:
"Deixa nossos corpos falarem
e se tocarem;
somente os corpos se entendem
porque eles são simples,
Fossas mentes são muito complicadas,
portanto^ elas não podem se entenderes.”(MAJB 93)
However, he would have claimed that this division of mind and body
is the same as the sense of the body as a machine,,
Two pages further in the book Lawrence unfolds a second
stage of the same sexual act previously described, when the bodies,
free of that stupid mentalization, find themselves in the
"primordial tenderness” and in the "mystery of the phallus"«, The
couple achieve a full orgasm together and they know the "sheer
sensuality" which is only possible through what Lawrence calls
"phallic consciousness"*
Lawrence never realised the full power of the phallus and
whenever he comes to this "sheer sensuality" there is a "strange
darkness." The theme of ^darkness" seems related to his dislike
for "daylight" sex or self-conscious sex. Freud might say he carries
it to an extreme because it represents a temptation, "Darkness"
implies an unknown and unutterable temptation for Lawrence.
The phallus as a symbol is always a mystery too. Sometimes the