The following is an interview with Rupert Birkin, a central character of D.H. Lawrence’s novel Women in Love.

 

Hi, Birkin.

Hi, Sasha.

Thank you for meeting with me.

Thank you for coming.

~ ~ ~

Tell me about yourself.

I am a student. I study English. I have many friends, though perhaps my definition of “friend” is a loose one. I have many people that I know. I like them all, except a few, and those few I don’t speak to. I am good at that. I would say I am genuine, and I would say I am kind, but I commit my fair share of faux pas, and maybe I tease too much. I don’t say that because I think I am too mean, but because I think I am not funny enough. I love to laugh, but I won’t make you laugh, probably. I think that is okay. I suppose what I am trying to say is, I am earnest.

Earnest?

Yes. I think it is important to be so.

To be straightforward?

That’s not a very good synonym.

Why not?

It makes earnestness seem like a communication tactic.

Is it not?

I try very hard to be earnest.

That doesn’t answer my question.

I think it does, actually. 

What do you care about?

Myself, I think. People I love.

So, nothing important.

I don’t cry often about the state of the world, if that’s what you mean.

Do you feel bad about that?

I am happier than you are, probably. I don’t feel bad about that.

Happiness is everything?

Is that a question?

What is happiness?

Are you asking me?

Happiness is only a notion.

Alright, Birkin.

Do you think you are prepared for the kind of work this job requires?

I think I was born for the role.

What makes you say that?

The women that came before me.

You don’t know them, though. You never knew them.

I feel like I do.

Do you think you know me?

I feel like I do.

~ ~ ~

There is that saying, “I can read you like a book.” I have read you, in a book. I think that means I know you.

So confident in your ability to perceive.

There are other things that make me say that.

~ ~ ~

I  know you. I don’t know.

Do I remind you of anyone?

A little.

Can you tell me who?

No.

Why not?

He could be reading.

What is similar about us?

You both are very concerned with the ought. What one ought to do, how one ought to feel, how one ought to act. You fall out of the world and into hell with that notion, and it is the job of the people who love you to drag you out, back into the material, to where the rest of us are. The rest of us breathe the same air and you feel so entitled. You feel that the world has been divined for you. That there will be something for you at the end, if you play it right. I think it’s a cruel tendency.

Cruel?

Yes. To focus so much on the ought is to forget everything and everyone. That is cruel. 

But why shouldn’t we care about the ought?

The ought isn’t real. Philosophy, it isn’t real. What is the point?

What is the point?

Are you asking me?

What do you mean by, “the point”?

The important thing.

I don’t understand. Do you mean we shouldn’t philosophize?

I think it is anything but a moral pursuit.

To philosophize is to endeavor to understand.

It is also to forego all that is around you, all that is worthy of philosophizing.

I’d like to stop using that word–philosophize–now. I think it is misleading. Everything contains philosophy. Everything contains multitudes. To philosophize insinuates that the thing you are trying to understand is, in its purest form, without philosophy, when it is not. That word insinuates that philosophy is a mutation process, when it is not.

~ ~ ~

And something else, too. I think that philosophy is a practice of going up, yes, beyond, but it is also a practice of coming back down.

You never come down, Birkin.

~ ~ ~

We should move on from this question. 

Is that all that is similar about your friend and I?

You both believe in a weird kind of love.

What makes our conception of love so weird?

Why don’t you tell me what you believe about it, and I’ll tell you after that.

Love between two equals exists outside of space, outside of emotion. It exists on some higher plane. True love is not subject to the laws of society, or attraction, or physics. True love is beyond.

What about sex?

What about sex?

You have sex. You like sex.

Sex is primal. The kind of love I speak about is also primal.

That sounds like an excuse, to me.

An excuse for what?

For being a man, in the way that you are, a little addicted to something only another person’s body can offer, in the way that you are, and for being guilty about it. But guilty men don’t abstain, they excuse, or they never sleep with the women that they love, because how can you look her in the eye after that?

Are you accusing me of something?

Not really.

Do you really think that all men are this way?

No, of course not. Men who look at love and marriage as they should are better, and they are also better off. There are some of those men, but they are few and far between, and often afflicted with other maladies of the male condition.

How should men look at love?

As it is. An institution. One that provides those of us in love with security.

You are in love?

~ ~ ~

How far are you willing to go for us?

I’ll go anywhere. I’ll give anything.

Why?

I feel lonely.

What about all of your friends?

That isn’t what I’m saying.

~ ~ ~

You aren’t understanding me.

You must be content with that.

With being misunderstood?

We are always misunderstood.

You and I?

Yes.

What is similar about you and I?

You are asking too many questions. This is an interview.

Okay, Birkin. Why don’t you take the lead?

What do you think of love?

Like anything, I think it functions within the confines of our world. It obeys the laws of physics, and exists within our bodies, not in an existential sense. Love is how we find meaning. Your conception of love denies its practicality, denies the fact that it is just another feeling. 

Don’t you think it has something to do with our souls?

I don’t understand what you mean by “souls”.

The spiritual part of a human being.

What is spiritual?

Something that has to do with the soul.

You’re talking in circles.

That is philosophy.

What is the point of philosophy?

We exist on some bigger stage, on some grander plane. Philosophy is how we think about that.

But why think about that? Why think beyond our own bodies, our own friends, to omnipotence? 

Do you mean to say God isn’t real?

I mean to say, why are we thinking about that? We are here, and whether God created the Earth or not, it is a beautiful planet, and we have feet and eyes through which to explore it. 

I agree with you, about that.

Why, I’m flattered.

I’m being candid. Earnest, if you will.

But you disagree, at least a little bit.

I think that God created the world, and imbued in the thing upon which we walk with our feet and which we intake with our eyes some kind of other meaning. There isn’t only what we see in front of us. 

Don’t you think you’re being greedy?

Greedy?

You always want more than what you’re given, no matter how much you have. 

You think you know me.

Birkin, I do know you.

You only know what you read of me.

That is all there is.

No. There is more.

Where? I want to see it.

Here. There is more to me here. You can see me, you can ask me anything, and you can find anything you couldn’t find in the book in this conversation.

But I cannot change your mind. Which means, really, that there is nothing about you, not even in the novel. That you are just a body, and inside you are thoughts, but there is nothing more than that. There is no blood, there is no vulnerability. You lack humanity, and in turn cannot be convinced.

I lack humanity, and in turn cannot be convinced.

Yes.

And you can be?

~ ~ ~ 

Why are you here?

To interview.

For what?

To be a woman in love. That is what the ad says, isn’t it?

You took the ad very seriously.

Of course. Was it meant to be a joke?

It was meant to be ironic. 

So, it was meant to be a joke.

It isn’t very hard to be a woman in love. 

I think you are wrong, and that is why it all went poorly, for you.

What all went poorly?

Love. Marriage. You think so much, but never about what matters, and you want so much, but never what you can have.

I think, one day, you will be sitting on my side of the desk.

Goodbye, Birkin.