imates. Her body was long and elegant, her face was crushed
tiny like a beetle's, she had rows of round heavy collars, like a
column of quoits, on her neck. He remembered her: her astonishing
cultured elegance, her diminished, beetle face, the astounding long
elegant body, on short, ugly legs, with such protuberant buttocks, so
weighty and unexpected below her slim long loins. She knew what he
himself did not know. She had thousands of years of purely sensual,
purely unspiritual knowledge behind her. It must have been thousands of
years since her race had died, mystically: that is, since the relation
between the senses and the outspoken mind had broken, leaving the
experience all in one sort, mystically sensual. Thousands of years ago,
that which was imminent in himself must have taken place in these
Africans: the goodness, the holiness, the desire for creation and
productive happiness must have lapsed, leaving the single impulse for
knowledge in one sort, mindless progressive knowledge through the
senses, knowledge arrested and ending in the senses, mystic knowledge
in disintegration and dissolution, knowledge such as the beetles have,
which live purely within the world of corruption and cold dissolution.
This was why her face looked like a beetle's: this was why the
Egyptians worshipped the ball-rolling scarab: because of the principle
of knowledge in dissolution and corruption.

There is a long way we can travel, after the death-break: after that
point when the soul in intense suffering breaks, breaks away from its
organic hold like a leaf that falls. We fall from the connection with
life and hope, we lapse from pure integral being, from creation and
liberty, and we fall into the long, long African process of purely
sensual understanding, knowledge in the mystery of dissolution.

He realised now that this is a long process--thousands of years it
takes, after the death of the creative spirit. He realised that there
were great mysteries to be unsealed, sensual, mindless, dreadful
mysteries, far beyond the phallic cult. How far, in their inverted
culture, had these West Africans gone beyond phallic knowledge? Very,
very far. Birkin recalled again the female figure: the elongated, long,
long body, the curious unexpected heavy buttocks, he long, imprisoned
neck, the face with tiny features like a beetle's. This was far beyond
any phallic knowledge, sensual subtle realities far beyond the scope of
phallic investigation.