D.H. Lawrence’s Apocalypse and the Eternal Revenge Fantasy
Near the end of 1929, D.H. Lawrence and his wife Frieda rented a run-down bungalow in Bandol, a seaside resort town in southern France. They hoped the sea air and sunshine would improve his health. Times were tough. His controversial novel, Lady Chatterley’s Lover, was privately published in 1928 and had outraged the public. Then, the previous summer, an exhibition of Lawrence’s art in London had been raided by police, leading to the confiscation of thirteen of his paintings for being too pornographic due to their scandalous depiction of pubic hair (Ellis 490).
Lawrence had always been willing to push boundaries and challenge sexual norms long upheld by the puritanical erotophobes of the era. Not that this changed anything. The sexual revolution was still decades away. Censorship and controversy were nothing new for him. His willingness to engage in artistic transgressions put him in a constant struggle to get his work published. This mattered because he wasn’t wealthy.
The son of a common collier, he hadn’t been born with an elite pedigree that opened doors in society. He had to fight his way up from nothing, armed only with a genius for the written word. He did well enough. By the late 1920s, he’d made a name for himself, though money always remained a concern. His refusal to compromise his artistic values is a testament to his integrity as an artist but did little to fill his bank accounts.
Lawrence faced more than just issues with the censors; he was also dying. By early January 1930, when he completed his last major work, Apocalypse, he was confined to bed due to the tuberculosis he refused to acknowledge. Of course, he didn’t know, but he had only a few months to live.
Somehow, though, his mind stayed clear until the end, even as his body deteriorated. So he did what he did best since he couldn’t do anything else: he wrote and gave us Apocalypse. As is typical with Lawrence, this short work ranges far and wide and doesn’t always stay on topic. I don’t mind. I’m glad he didn’t. He’s one of those writers who can get away with a bit of rambling because the rambles are often the best parts.
Apocalypse is no different. What began as a literary analysis of the New Testament’s bizarre finale transitioned at the end into a dying man’s soliloquy about how modernity separates us from the cosmos and one another.
He traces this alienation back to the late first century when John of Patmos wrote Revelation. Lawrence argues that Revelation doesn’t convey a message of love and forgiveness like the Gospels do; instead, it depicts a violent, nihilistic bloodbath that has echoed and resonated down to the present.
He critiques modernity for embracing this apocalyptic mindset—petty, spiteful, envious, and vengeful. What remains is the fragmented individual of modernity, severed from genuine connection and seeking meaning through destruction rather than life-affirming vitality.
The Gospels: The Hard Road is Too Hard
Lawrence’s Apocalypse goes beyond a critique of Revelation; it presents an argument that Christianity was forever tainted by the New Testament’s last book. John's Apocalypse is history’s first dream of a revolution that will overturn the status quo and usher in a new age.
It also represents the Bible’s ultimate revenge fantasy, reassuring the have-nots that the powerful will eventually be cast down and the righteous (them, of course) will inherit the earth. If the Apocalypse is the first conception of revolution in history, it is also meant to be the final revolution and the end of history itself.
However, in Lawrence’s view, it represents nothing but the forever deferred promise of payback. As a result, it lacks any vision of transcendence or renewal; instead, it breeds resentment and bitterness. It’s all negative.
“The grand biblical authority for this cry is the Apocalypse. The weak and pseudo-humble are going to wipe all worldly power, glory and riches off the face of the earth, and then they, the truly weak, are going to reign. It will be a millennium of pseudo-humble saints, and gruesome to contemplate. But it is what religion stands for today: down with all strong, free life, let the weak triumph, let the pseudo-humble reign. The religion of the self-glorification of the weak, the reign of the pseudo-humble. This is the spirit of society today, religious and political.” (Lawrence, 65)
Is this truly what Christianity represents? In many ways, yes. You can't have Christianity without Revelation. It doesn't make sense. Lawrence goes on to make another point that hints at how it got this way: the Christ in Revelation is quite different from the Christ in the Sermon on the Mount.
In fact, reading Revelation, written around 96 AD and likely after the other Gospels, allows one to enter another world—one that seems only faintly aware of the events during Christ's life as recounted in the Gospels. Everything is different: the tone, the message, and the main character, Jesus Christ.
The Gospels present the moral hard road, praised by many yet followed by few. Although not religious, Lawrence, like Nietzsche before him, held a grudging admiration for Christ, considering him an aristocrat of the spirit in line with the likes of the Buddha and Socrates. Only fellow aristocrats of the spirit will find the teachings of these moral exemplars valid guides for their own lives.
The Christ in the Gospels represents the benevolent side of Christianity, indeed its most admirable aspect. Love one another. Forgive your enemies. No! Go further, brothers and sisters! Love your enemies! Be like that Good Samaritan. Minister to the poor. Embrace poverty yourself. Be a peacemaker. Be humble. Be meek. Judge not. Don’t worry about recognition or status. Do good for goodness sake.
That’s it. Everybody knows this.
But when you think about what this means in practice, it’s a wickedly hard road to follow, especially in a culture that celebrates aggression, assertiveness, greed, selfishness, and self-absorption.
Nevertheless, a non-believer like me finds much to admire in the humane approach to life that the Gospels present. If more people embodied Christlike qualities, the world would be a much better place. But look around. It’s not like that, is it? Not today. Not any day. Not ever. Moreover, our leaders and role models embody the crass secular cultural values I mentioned above. Should it be any surprise that our elected officials mimic the values of those who voted for them?
The truth is, many Christians—especially American Evangelicals, those hypocrites par excellence—demand a bit more “Don’t tread on me!” in their faith. Christ’s message in the Gospels is too demanding, requires too much self-sacrifice, and lacks glory, power, and wealth. It’s just not muscular enough for our society today.
Who wants to turn the other cheek? No one. People want Jack Reacher or John Wick. They want a fighter, a violent equalizer who will be the one who strikes those other cheeks—not the other way around. That feels too much like submission, weakness, and passivity.
Who wants to follow Christ’s example by living in poverty while serving the poor? Ha! No thanks! Let’s instead worship billionaires and money and other symbols of worldly success.
The average Christian will never express it this way, for they are savvy enough to pay lip service to an example they’ll never follow. Still, there’s frankly something a bit too effeminate and beta about Christ’s humble and gentle example, at least in the Gospels. It’s truly embarrassing, this homeless hippie who hung out with whores and tax collectors.
This will not do. Let's skip over those parts. A Christianity with sharper edges is necessary.
Fortunately for them and unfortunately for everyone else, there’s a book in the Bible that offers these folks just what they desire: Revelation.
D.H. Lawrence on Revelation: The Deferred Dream
Lawrence elaborates on the dissonance between the two distinct portrayals of Christ in the New Testament. In Revelation, Christ returns as a cosmic warrior, riding a white horse with a sword in hand, leading an army of the faithful to vanquish the wicked.
Now we’re talking!
That’s a Christ the average secularized Christian can understand—a Christ of real power, with a snarl and a weapon, ready to smite anyone in his way. It’s not going to end at Golgotha next time.
The humble man of peace from the Gospels is gone. Look at where that got him: crucified on a cross and forcing his disciples to spin that dreadful event into some kind of long-term master plan that would culminate in the Apocalypse.
The enduring genius of Christianity is that it placed a text like Revelation in the Bible, which resonates with the darker impulses of human nature—our thirst for power, violence, and retribution, which is offered here on a cosmic scale. There’s a little something in the New Testament for every type of person, from the peace-loving saint to the armed Crusader.
Thus, the Christ of the Gospels is transformed into something a bit more Alpha male. Warrior Jesus is what everyone has wanted all along, even during his lifetime. That approach didn’t succeed then—the Romans were too powerful—but Revelation claims it’ll go better next time. This is a Christ who speaks their language, a language of violence and power.
This feels so much better than the hard road, doesn’t it? One doesn’t have to do anything but wait for the Apocalypse (and wait forever, it seems). But, oh, if it happens! No! When it happens! Behold! At long last, the wicked and the elites (same thing) will face judgment and eternal punishment, tossed into the flames of hell. That will be a glorious day. The weak shall inherit the earth, and the wicked will be cast into perdition!
And as those sinners tumble into the flames, the righteous will finally get to proclaim, "Told you so!"
Here’s the kicker: this impulse didn’t end with Revelation. It has echoed throughout modern history with bourgeois, communist, and fascist revolutions that promised earthly vengeance now and utopia later. More recently, it can be observed in today’s populist rage and the contemporary anti-elite movements that fantasize about tearing it all down and starting anew. Whether it’s “Eat the rich!” on the left or “Drain the swamp!” on the right, the spirit of Revelation is alive and well today.
The final Apocalyptic Revolution is merely exchanged for violent secular upheavals, each replete with guillotines, gulags, and concentration camps. What does the future hold? Perhaps yet another revolution, another mass mortality event followed, inevitably, by another disappointment when people wake to find they’ve traded rapture for rubble, tranquility for terror, with nothing left but to pick up the pieces and begin the cycle anew. Human nature remains unchanged; only the symbols shift.
Lawrence knew this was coming. He observed how the fragmented modern individual, cut off from genuine connection, sought meaning in destruction and submission in exchange for the promise of a reckoning. He recognized how alienated people, unable to attain wholeness through love and connection, found it in hate and grievance instead.
Isolated and fragmented people can’t really love or trust. Not for long, anyway. But they can seethe; they can hate. They can do this very well.
They are wary of the world and perceive everyone as a potential threat. They serve as human fodder for revolutions, whether populist or otherwise, and as useful idiots to those who would take advantage of their discontent.
There is an impulse in human nature to dominate, destroy, and force others into conformity. This still holds true today in our shaky pluralistic democracies, which endure only as long as one radical ideology does not achieve overwhelming political dominance. This struggle for supremacy is ongoing, and some of the main actors desire nothing more than the chance to compel everyone to submit to their worldviews.
Lawrence writes, “But if his country is powerful and democratic, then he will be obsessed with a perpetual will to assert his power in interfering and preventing other people from doing as they wish, since no man must do more than another man. This is the condition of modern democracies, a condition of perpetual bullying. In democracy, bullying inevitably takes the place of power.” (Lawrence 147)
When that happens, misery and suffering follow. Even a free and democratic society is filled with those who hate it and want to bring it down. In our world, these include the resurgent neo-fascists, the intolerant far-left progressives, and other garden-variety comment-section nihilists who dream of the day when they can fire up their bulldozers and demolish what they view as a corrupt and rotten system.
And replace it with what, exactly? That's never clear. They’re always vague on that part. They'll figure it out later. All wannabe revolutionaries are like that. They see everything wrong with the world but lack the vision to improve it. So they destroy and then dominate what’s left over.
Lawrence recognized this in 1929, just a few years before the calamitous events of the 1930s and 1940s confirmed his insights. He understood how resentment, rather than renewal, would shape future movements. He knew that as long as people favored grievance over love, the cycle would continue indefinitely.
The descendants of Revelation remain with us to this day. They hate joyfully. They rage proudly. They dream of grinding their enemies into dust, just as John of Patmos did 2,000 years ago.
Final Thoughts
On the last page of Apocalypse, in a jarring tone shift from the dark pessimism of the previous chapters, Lawrence wrote something quite extraordinary. I want to quote it at length to capture the full scope of what he's saying since it feels so contrary to all that had come before.
“For man, the vast marvel is to be alive. For man, as for flower and beast and bird, the supreme triumph is to be most vividly, most perfectly alive. Whatever the unborn and the dead may know, they cannot know the beauty, the marvel of being alive in the flesh. The dead may look after the afterwards. But the magnificent here and now of life in the flesh is ours, and ours alone, and ours only for a time. We ought to dance with rapture that we should be alive and in the flesh, and part of the living, incarnate cosmos. I am part of the sun as my eye is part of me.
That I am part of the earth my feet know perfectly, and my blood is part of the sea. My soul knows that I am part of the human race, my soul is an organic part of the great human soul, as my spirit is part of my nation. In my own very self, I am part of my family. There is nothing of me that is alone and absolute except my mind, and we shall find that the mind has no existence by itself, it is only the glitter of the sun on the surface of the waters” (Lawrence 148).
These are some of the most beautiful words I’ve ever read about the pure ecstasy of being alive—not just existing as an isolated individual disconnected from the world, the cosmos, and each other. Indeed, “we ought to dance with rapture.” We ought to, but so often, don’t. I don’t, anyway. I tend to mope, sulk, and scowl like a cave troll. These dying man’s words remind us that the things we take for granted might not always be this way. If there is a way out of the endless Apocalypse, perhaps it lies in this reminder.
I guess.
That sounds hopeful, doesn’t it? Like I’m trying to end an otherwise dreary essay on an upbeat note. I’m not that naive, and I know you aren't either. Feel-good platitudes alone won’t stop the bulldozers. Fair enough, but Lawrence’s eloquent celebration of life’s one-shot grandeur should remind us of what is at stake.
The kind and virtuous people of the world—the true heirs of the Christ of the hard road—must oppose those who would burn everything to the ground without a second thought. If no one resists the nihilistic Revelation mindset, John and his ideological descendants will get to be the ones who define everyone's reality.
That must not be allowed to happen again.
Works Cited
Ellis, David. D. H. Lawrence 3, Dying Game, 1922-1930. Cambridge University Press, 1998.
Lawrence, David Herbert. Apocalypse: And the Writings on Revelation. Cambridge University Press, 1980.
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Paul D. Wilke
Dry Grove, Illinois
February 2025