In 1926: living at the edge of time - Monoskop

310 CODES
from wearing the black shirt of the Fascist Party (Chronik, 94). No
wonder then that Anna, the only female character in Ernesto Forzano's
play Rapsodia Fascista (Fascist Rhapsody), is hoping that her lover, the
young Fascist Orazio, will readily trade his ideological convictions for
her hand and for the seat in parliament which her socialist father is able
to offer him: "Anna: My Orazio a member of parliament! ... How
beautiful! ... Wife of a deputy! ... How happy I am! ... Orazio: Don't
torture me, Anna! Enough! Enough! ... You're digging into my soul
with your words ... digging a hole ... deeper ... and more searing ...
than the one ... that the enemy machine-gun dug ... into my flesh!"
(Forzano,67-68).
In D. H. Lawrence's novel The Plumed Serpent, such asymmetry between
the overwhelmingly strong General Cipriano and his wife, Kate,
who maintains a permanent state of unconditional surrender, is hailed
as the most perfect form of marriage. Not even the momentary bliss of
an orgasm is conceded to Kate: "As she sat in silence, casting the old,
twilit Pan-power over her, she felt herself submitting, succumbing. He
was once more the old dominant male, shadowy, intangible, looming
suddenly tall, and covering the sky, making a darkness that was himself
and nothing but himself, the Pan male. And she was swooned prone
beneath, perfect in her proneness. It was the ancient phallic mystery, the
ancient god-devil of the male Pan ... Ah! and what a mystery of prone
submission, on her part, this huge erection would imply! Submission
absolute, like the earth under the sky. Beneath an over-arching absolute.
Ah! what a marriage! How terrible! and how complete!" (Lawrence,
332-333). The literary General Cipriano becomes the model according
to which Lawrence's wife, Frieda, chooses her lover, Angelo Ravagli, a
lieutenant in the Italian army (Maddox, 388-389). If Frieda, a woman
of imposing weight and stature, has long played the role of protective
mother for the sickly novelist, she now gives him the opportunity both
to despise and to desire her in the role of prostitute.
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