Compare Happiness And Life Between D. H. Lawrence’s “You Touched Me” And
Friedrich Nietzche’s “The Use And Abuse Of History Taken From The Twilight Of
The Idols.” Essay, Research Paper

Compare Happiness and Life Between D. H. Lawrence’s “You Touched Me” and

Friedrich Nietzche’s “The Use and Abuse of History Taken From The Twilight Of

the Idols.”

INTRODUCTION

In this paper, I won’t stick to only one topic. I will compare different

topics, such as happiness and life between two romantic writers, D. H. Lawrence

and Friedrich Nietzsche from D. H. Lawrence’s You touched me and Friedrich

Nietzche’s The use and abuse of history taken from The twilight of the Idols. I

will start talking about life and happiness by giving my own little definition

of each of these two terms.

LIFE

Life: one word, many meanings. Life: one word, one precious thing.

We see life in a total different way by the two writers. Life, in D. H.

Lawrence’s You touched me, is one, short and precious thing. We see life through

the eyes of a dying father and his two daughters, who loves their father a lot

and an adopted son enrolled in the army. The father continuously fights his

disease, battling to stay alive. We see life as a fragile, vulnerable thing. It

can also vanish unexpectedly. What I mean by “life can also vanish unexpectedly”

is that you never know when something terrible could happen to you and see it

taken away.

Friedrich Nietzshe explains us a lot more his perception of life.

Unfortunately, I didn’t understand most of the things he meant, but I will

explain what I think I understood. Nietzshe describes life with the help of a

man and a beast. The beast always forgets what he wants to say and what he said.

This behaviour is also called forgetfulness. He (Nietzshe) claims that [life in

any true sense is absolutely impossible without forgetfulness]. He also says

something about death. [And when death brings at last the desired forgetfulness,

it abolishes life and being together, and sets the seal on the knowledge that

"being" is merely a continual "has been", a thing that lives by denying and

destroying and contradicting itself]. He also mentions a universal law about

living things. [A living thing can only be healthy, strong and productive within

a certain horizon: if it be incapable of drawing one round itself, or too

selfish to lose its own view in another's, it will come to an untimely end.]

HAPPINESS

Happiness: everybody’s ultimate goal. Unfortunately, happiness is very

hard goal to reach.

D. H. Lawrence demonstrate the failure of reaching happiness through

money and other goods. Emmie and Matilda were two girls of a rich man. But these

two girls were not quite happy. They couldn’t get married because they were

expecting too much of men. Their (Matilda and Emmie) minds were based on money

or valuable goods, restricting them from a lot of things. Hadrian was not a rich

kid but he seemed to be happy the way he was. He wanted freedom and that’s how

he was happy. The two girls were captives of their rich lives. Hadrian

understood that happiness wasn’t about money, but about other superficial things,

such as freedom and love. When Matilda touched Hadrian, Hadrian suddenly fell in

love with her. He wanted to marry her now to be happy, not for her money, even

though he didn’t dislike the idea of the father that if Matilda wouldn’t marry

Hadrian, everything that the father had would go to Hadrian when he (the father)

dies. The father also understood that happiness wasn’t in the money. So, as we

can see, what D. H. Lawrence is trying to tell us is that happiness is not about

being rich, but more about freedom.

Friedrich Nietzshe got a more complex view of happiness. Actually, since

it’s pretty complex and I can’t explain it well, I will site an extract from The

use and abuse of history.

[If happiness and the chase for new happiness keep alive in any sense

the will to live, no philosophy has perhaps more truth than the cynic's: for

beast's happiness, like that of the perfect cynic, is the visible proof of the

truth of cynism. The smallest pleasure, if it be only continuous and make one

happy, is incomparably a greater happiness than the more intensive pleasure that

comes as an episode, a wild freak, a mad interval between ennui, desire, and

privation. But in the smallest and greatest happiness there is always one thing

that makes it happiness: the power of forgetting, or, in more learned phrase,

the capacity of feeling "unhistorically" throughout its duration. One who cannot

leave himself behind on the threshold of the moment and forget the past, who

cannot stand on a single point, like a goddess of victory, without fear or

giddiness, will never know what happiness is; and, worse still, will never do

anything to make others happy. The extreme case would be the man without any

power to forget, who is condemned to see "becoming" everywhere. Such a man

believes no more in himself or his own existence, he sees everything fly past in

an eternal succession, and loses himself in the stream of becoming. At last,

like the logical disciple of Heraclitus, he will hardly dare to raise his

finger.]

Conclusion

In conclusion, D. H. Lawrence’s point of view about life and happiness

seems to be quite different of Friedrich Nietzshe’s perception. Although

Nietsche’s perception was more complex to understand, it seems that Nietzsche

has a more correct view of life and happiness.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

D.H Lawrence,You touched me, from The complete stories

volume two, 1920

Friedrich NietzscheThe use and abuse of history from The

twilight of the Idols.