The Philosophy of D.H. Lawrence and Bloodborne

since the release of the game, i see Lovecraft getting passed around very often here as the main source of inspiration for Bloodborne's world outlook and design, and i'd like to take an opportunity here to counter some of that.

Lovecraft is only half of what makes this game tick, at most. the other half is the work of a relatively obscure late 19th century poet by the name of D.H. Lawrence. i'd argue that Lawrence is so goddamn important to this game they even reference him by name, as a main character AND a boss.

you have probably never heard of D.H. Lawrence though, and i don't blame you. he was a controversial and ill-respected writer even in his time largely because of his ideological ties to what would be known later as fascism. he was also one of the most unpleasant people to ever walk the earth according to many who met him and worked with him, a bitter racist, misogynist, abusive drug addict and alcoholic with a propensity for violence (not all that different from Lovecraft incidentally but i digress).

but the other thing he was known for was a peculiar theory he created largely as a response to the rise of Freudian ideas about psychology. this theory he dubbed "Blood Consciousness". and instead of going out of the way to explain it myself, i will allow some of his quotes from his letters to explain themselves:

"Blood is the essential foundation of one's being."

"when I take a woman, then the blood-percept is supreme, my blood-knowing is overwhelming. There is a transmission, I don’t know of what, between her blood and mine, in the act of connection. So that afterwards, even if she goes away, the blood-consciousness persists between us, when the mental consciousness is suspended; and I am formed then by my blood consciousness, not by my mind or nerves at all."

"now I am convinced of what I believed when I was about twenty - that there is another seat of consciousness than the brain and the nerve system: there is a blood-consciousness which exists in us independently of the ordinary mental consciousness, which depends on the eye as its source or connector. There is the blood-consciousness, with the sexual connection, holding the same relation as the eye, in seeing, holds to the mental consciousness. One lives, knows, and has one’s being in the blood, without any reference to nerves and brain. This is one half of life, belonging to the darkness. And the tragedy of this our life, and of your life, is that the mental and nerve consciousness exerts a tyranny over the blood-consciousness, and that your will has gone completely over to the mental consciousness, and is engaged in the destruction of your blood being or blood-consciousness, the final liberating of the one, which is only death in result."

"...the conscious life...is no more than a masquerade of death: there is a living unconscious life. If only...we were all struck blind, and things vanished from our sight:...We should find reality in the darkness."

"We and the cosmos are one. The cosmos is a vast body, of which we are still parts. The sun is a great heart whose tremors run through our smallest veins. The moon is a great gleaming nerve-centre from which we quiver forever. Who knows the power that Saturn has over us or Venus. But it is a vital power, rippling exquisitely through us all the time... Now all this is literally true, as men knew in the great past and as they will know again."

"We have lost the cosmos, by coming out of responsive connection with it, and this is our chief tragedy...And we have lost the moon, the cool, bright, ever-varying moon. It is she who would caress our nerves, smooth them with the silky hand of her glowing, soothe them into serenity again with her cool presence. For the moon is the mistress and mother of our watery bodies, the pale body of our nervous consciousness and our moist flesh. Oh, the moon could soothe us and heal us like a cool great Artemis between her arms. But we have lost her, in our stupidity we ignore her, and angry she stares down on us and whips us with nervous whips. Oh, beware of the angry Artemis of the night heavens, beware of the spite of Cybele, beware of the vindictiveness of horned Astarte."

these are just a handful of quotes but i think you can already see what i'm saying. he also speaks of the "reverberation" of ancient blood from stones in Cornwall where he believed blood sacrifices were held by pre-Christian civilizations... sounds a little similar to something we use in the game, hmmm??

anyways, not much more to this post than that. just thought it was interesting that he has never been brought up here outside of a few discussion i've had with other people when his philosophy is such a fundamental part of the game's world and narrative. there are many other fascinating references to classic art and literature as well as actual history throughout the game and i think it's a shame that people focus so heavily on Lovecraft when that is literally just the surface of the stunning deep sea (frenzy res +200).