RELATIONS OF DOMINANCE AND EQUALITY IN D. H. LAWRENCE

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himself, his nakedness, his mindlessness.
Even Cipriano he
does not need.
Kate Millet (1971) has an interesting point
about Ramon, Cipriano and Kate which explains part of this
ritual of self love:
The heroes, Ramon and Cipriano, are Lawrentian
men and mouthpieces, intellectual and earthly
respectively. Together with the heroine, they
form a characteristic Lawrentian triangle.
Cipriano and Kate Leslie appear to be in love
with Ramon, who appears to be in love with
himself... Ramon is understandably selfsufficient.
But in more relaxed moments, he
enjoys some peculiarly erotic communion with
Cipriano, as well as the pleasure of withholding
himself from Kate, who is too imperfect to deserve
him (p.284).
Ramon then wants a communion with his dark self, but as he
feels that alone he cannot go any further, mainly in the
Quetzalcoatl business, he comes to Cipriano's initiation as
Huitzilopochtli.
The ritual is another name for the
bloodbrotherhood communion. This initiation takes place in the
darkness where neither Ram5n nor Cipriano is allowed to see each
other's eyes.
They would not be able to perform the act in
daylight because it would reveal their homosexuality to themselves
and they do not seem very much willing to take their masks off.
They meet not as Ram5n and Cipriano: they wear the disguise of
the living Quetzalcoatl and the living Huitzilopochtli.
On the
literal level of personal identity the union of bird and snake
would make no sense.
The ceremony of Cipriano's initiation looks like a scene
of indoctrination.
In it one man forces the other to forget the
light of his conscience in order to enter into the world of
instinct where the only touchable . thing is the darkness. With
the idea of making the initiation more vivid for his purposes,
Ramon veils Cipriano's eyes first with his hands and then with