The Manichen Unreality

Gentile attributes to post-Renaissance literary heresy the familiar form of Manicheanism. Body and soul, the Catholic believes, are married indivorcibly in this life: the historical Manichee emphasizes the soul and neglects the reality of the body. Historically the Manichees regarded marriage as sinful, with the consequence that many came to inflict on themselves sterilization, for that was their doctrine in effect. The outcome was soulfulness and Grundyism, which have permeated life and literature ever since. If Gentile errs in applying the emphasis on soul, it is because he neglects the counter-emphasis on the body. The revolt against post-Reformation Puritanism implicit in D. H. Lawrence is a natural though blind realization of the unreality of the spiritual superman exploited in romantic art. It is to a negative religiosity that Lawrence is merciless in his exposure of Miriam who was always begging things to love her. His own romanticist exploitation of sex is mere primitivism, but the Manichean attitude is evident in the fatalistic way logic is dissociated from the world of fact as when the Manichees ignored marriage in spite of its necessity for human preservation. It is useful, therefore, to take the fundamental Manichean spirit as centred obliviously on either body or soul alone, for either way corrupts human integrity and disturbs the unity where body dovetails with soul.The soul-emphasis in literature is reflected in modem aestheticism. This is partly due to the critical tendency which refines every line of the poem and partly to the abuse of art as religion

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