Logics of Disintegration in Lawrence and Huxley

Abstract

When Lawrence met Aldous Huxley for the first time in London in December 1915, he invited him on the spot to join the colony he planned to launch in Florida. “I like Huxley very much,” Lawrence told their mutual patron, Lady Ottoline Morrell. “He will come to Florida.” Huxley’s account was more hedged, but he remained interested in joining Lawrence and company temporarily. The colony, of course, never transpired, but this meeting provided a venue for the exchange of utopian hopes, as well as skepticism, that expressed themselves in the writings of both authors during the next several years. Indeed Lawrence and Huxley frequently responded critically and satirically to each other’s utopian and dystopian impulses – to each other’s acknowledgment of human tragedy but also their efforts to resist it.

Keywords

• barbarism
• chaos
• anarchy
• isolation
• skepticism
• war