And there is a sleeping cat, very quick! [1]
It is important to understand that the Lawrentian notion of peace does not imply inertia or a certain deadness. It's more a condition of the heart; a feeling of at oneness with one's surroundings; of being a creature in what he calls the house of life [2].
Like a cat asleep on a chair or stretched out in the sun, yawning. Cats, I suspect, have a much greater sense of peace than most people.
Similarly, they have a certain quickness about them that men and women often lack; an invisible flame of impersonal presence that flickers in their every movement (even when they appear to be at rest) and which keeps them in a fluid and ever-changing relationship with all other objects.
Notes
[1] D. H. Lawrence, 'The Novel', Study of Thomas Hardy and Other Essays, ed. Bruce Steele, (Cambridge University Press, 1985), p. 183.
The photo is of Phoevos the Cat, asleep on the chair and so preventing me from being able to type this post whilst sitting comfortably at the desk.
[2] See the poem 'Pax', in D. H. Lawrence, The Poems, Vol. I., ed. Christopher Pollnitz (Cambridge University Press, 2013), p. 614.
This late poem is somewhat problematic for me by its use of the term God, but I share his thoughts on the peacefulness of a sleeping cat.
For a related post - 'On the Quickness and Allue of Objects' (28 August, 2019) - click here.
