Page 630 - women-in-love

Then he seemed to stiffen, shrugged his shoulders, and
went on:
‘Sculpture and architecture must go together. The day for
irrelevant statues, as for wall pictures, is over. As a matter of
fact sculpture is always part of an architectural conception.
And since churches are all museum stuff, since industry is
our business, now, then let us make our places of industry
our art—our factory-area our Parthenon, ECCO!’
Ursula pondered.
‘I suppose,’ she said, ‘there is no NEED for our great
works to be so hideous.’
Instantly he broke into motion.
‘There you are!’ he cried, ‘there you are! There is not
only NO NEED for our places of work to be ugly, but their
ugliness ruins the work, in the end. Men will not go on sub-
mitting to such intolerable ugliness. In the end it will hurt
too much, and they will wither because of it. And this will
wither the WORK as well. They will think the work itself
is ugly: the machines, the very act of labour. Whereas the
machinery and the acts of labour are extremely, madden-
ingly beautiful. But this will be the end of our civilisation,
when people will not work because work has become so in-
tolerable to their senses, it nauseates them too much, they
would rather starve. THEN we shall see the hammer used
only for smashing, then we shall see it. Yet here we are—we
have the opportunity to make beautiful factories, beautiful
machine-houses—we have the opportunity—‘
Gudrun could only partly understand. She could have
cried with vexation.

630 Women in Love