Towards the end of his life, Deleuze would compose several essays on literature. Of these, the most widely disseminated is probably his piece on Herman Melville's (1819–1891) novella Bartleby, the Scrivener, titled ‘Bartleby, or the Formula’ (CC, 68–90/89–114). Here, however, we wish to take up a different essay, which deserves more attention: ‘Nietzsche and Saint Paul, Lawrence and John of Patmos’, on D. H. Lawrence's (1885–1930) Apocalypse.

In this book Lawrence discusses the ‘Book of Revelation according to John’. There were no fewer than three people who went by the name of John in the early Christian community: John the Baptist, baptiser of Jesus; the apostle John, author of the fourth gospel; and John of Patmos, author of the Book of Revelation, who was incarcerated on the island of Patmos for religious crimes against the Roman Empire. Though today almost completely discredited, there once existed a theory which claimed that the gospel author John was the same person as this John of Patmos. It is into this debate on authorship that Lawrence makes his intervention: ‘[i]t's not the same [person], it can't be the same [person] …’ (CC, 36/50).

For the Book of Revelation tells of the apocalypse and the Last Judgement, the victory of the believers over the unbelievers; its thematic is a tribunal upon this world, a verdict which thirsts for revenge. Its content is diametrically opposed to that of the gospels, which trade in human and spiritual love. Revelation gasps for fulfilment of the rights of the ‘poor’, the ‘weak’. However, these ‘are not who we think they are’. Permeating its pages is what Deleuze calls the ‘collective soul’. These ‘are not the humble or the unfortunate, but those extremely fearsome men who have nothing but a collective soul’ (CC, 38/53).

The collective soul desires power as vehemently as it seeks its destruction, impelled as it is by hatred for power and those in power. Deleuze also quotes the words of the painter Gustave Courbet (1819–1877) to explain it like this: these cry out, ‘I want to judge! I have to judge!’ Moreover, the collective soul is a ‘carnivorous lamb’. This lamb wails, ‘Help! What did I ever do to you? It was for your own good and our common cause.’