A short post to share a passage from D.H. Lawrence’s second novel, The Trespasser (1912). Though the novel certainly has several ugh-ish moments (I literally write, “ugh,” over and over again in the margin), there are several remarkable passages and sections in the novel too. (A suicide late in the novel is handled stunningly.) One brief passage that stands out comes from a scene where Siegmund—one of the two main characters on illicit holiday together on the Isle of Wight—plays in the choppy waves of a bay (Freshwater Bay?), at one point cutting his leg. Referring to hid bleeding wound, Siegmund says:
That is I, that creeping red, and this whiteness I pride myself on is I, and my black hair, and my blue eyes are I. It is a weird thing to be a person. What makes me myself, among all these? (Cambridge / Penguin Classics edition, pg. 74)
Oh, Lawrence. Reading on . . .
Sketching a Present 