Part 4
AT last came death, sufficiency of death, and that at last relieved me, I died. I buried my beloved; it was good, I buried myself and was gone. War came, and every hand raised to murder; very good, very good, every hand raised to murder! Very good, very good, I am a murderer! It is good, I can murder and murder, and see them fall the mutilated, horror-struck youths, a multitude one on another, and then in clusters together smashed, all oozing with blood, and burned in heaps going up in a foetid smoke to get rid of them the murdered bodies of youths and men in heaps and heaps and heaps and horrible reeking heaps till it is almost enough, till I am reduced perhaps; thousands and thousands of gaping, hideous foul dead that are youths and men and me being burned with oil, and consumed in corrupt thick smoke, that rolls and taints and blackens the sky, till at last it is dark, dark as night, or death, or hell and I am dead, and trodden to nought in the smoke-sodden tomb; dead and trodden to nought in the sour black earth of the tomb; dead and trodden to nought, trodden to nought.
V
GOD, but it is good to have died and been trodden out trodden to nought in sour, dead earth quite to nought absolutely to nothing nothing nothing nothing.
For when it is quite, quite nothing, then it is everything. When I am trodden quite out, quite, quite out every vestige gone, then I am here risen, and setting my foot on another world risen, accomplishing a resurrection risen, not born again, but risen, body the same as before, new beyond knowledge of newness, alive beyond life proud beyond inkling or furthest conception of pride living where life was never yet dreamed of, nor hinted at here, in the other world, still terrestrial myself, the same as before, yet unaccountably new.
VI
I, IN the sour black tomb, trodden to absolute death I put out my hand in the night, one night, and my hand touched that which was verily not me verily it was not me. Where I had been was a sudden blaze a sudden flaring blaze! So I put my hand out further, a little further and I felt that which was not I, it verily was not I it was the unknown.
Ha, I was a blaze leaping up! I was a tiger bursting into sunlight. I was greedy, I was mad for the unknown. I, new-risen, resurrected, starved from the tomb starved from a life of devouring always myself now here was I, new-awakened, with my hand stretching out and touching the unknown, the real unknown, the unknown unknown.
My God, but I can only say I touch, I feel the unknown! I am the first comer! Cortes, Pisarro, Columbus, Cabot, they are noth- ing, nothing! I am the first comer! I am the discoverer! I have found the other world!
The unknown, the unknown! I am thrown upon the shore. I am covering myself with the sand. I am filling my mouth with the earth. I am burrowing my body into the soil. The unknown, the new world!
VII
IT was the flank of my wife I touched with my hand, I clutched with my hand rising, new-awakened from the tomb! It was the flank of my wife whom I married years ago at whose side I have lain for over a thousand nights and all that previous while, she was I, she was I; I touched her, it was I who touched and I who was touched.
Yet rising from the tomb, from the black oblivion stretching out my hand, my hand flung like a drowned man's hand on a rock, I touched her flank and knew I was carried by the current in death over to the new world, and was climbing out on the shore, risen, not to the old world, the old, changeless I, the old life, wakened not to the old knowledge but to a new earth, a new I, a new knowledge, a new world of time.
Ah no, I cannot tell you what it is, the new world I cannot tell you the mad, astounded rapture of its discovery. I shall be mad with delight before I have done, and whosoever comes after will find me in the new world a madman in rapture.
VIII
GREEN streams that flow from the innermost continent of the new world, what are they? Green and illumined and travelling for ever dissolved with the mystery of the innermost heart of the continent mystery beyond knowledge or endurance, so sump- tuous out of the well-heads of the new world.-- The other, she too has strange green eyes! White sands and fruits unknown and perfumes that never can blow across the dark seas to our usual world! And land that beats with a pulse! And valleys that draw close in love! And strange ways where I fall into oblivion of uttermost living!-- Also she who is the other has strange-mounded breasts and strange sheer slopes, and white levels.
Sightless and strong oblivion in utter life takes possession of me! The unknown, strong current of life supreme drowns me and sweeps me away and holds me down to the sources of mystery, in the depths, extinguishes there my risen resurrected life and kindles it further at the core of utter mystery.
GREATHAM
_ELYSIUM_
I HAVE found a place of loneliness Lonelier than Lyonesse Lovelier than Paradise;
Full of sweet stillness That no noise can transgress Never a lamp distress.
The full moon sank in state. I saw her stand and wait For her watchers to shut the gate.
Then I found myself in a wonderland All of shadow and of bland Silence hard to understand.
I waited therefore; then I knew The presence of the flowers that grew Noiseless, their wonder noiseless blew.
And flashing kingfishers that flew In sightless beauty, and the few Shadows the passing wild-beast threw.
And Eve approaching over the ground Unheard and subtle, never a sound To let me know that I was found.
Invisible the hands of Eve Upon me travelling to reeve Me from the matrix, to relieve
Me from the rest! Ah terribly Between the body of life and me Her hands slid in and set me free.
Ah, with a fearful, strange detection She found the source of my subjection To the All, and severed the connection.
Delivered helpless and amazed From the womb of the All, I am waiting, dazed For memory to be erased.
Then I shall know the Elysium That lies outside the monstrous womb Of time from out of which I come.
_MANIFESTO_
I
A WOMAN has given me strength and affluence. Admitted!
All the rocking wheat of Canada, ripening now, has not so much of strength as the body of one woman sweet in ear, nor so much to give though it feed nations.
Hunger is the very Satan. The fear of hunger is Moloch, Belial, the horrible God. It is a fearful thing to be dominated by the fear of hunger.
Not bread alone, not the belly nor the thirsty throat. I have never yet been smitten through the belly, with the lack of bread, no, nor even milk and honey.
The fear of the want of these things seems to be quite left out of me. For so much, I thank the good generations of man- kind.
II
AND the sweet, constant, balanced heat of the suave sensitive body, the hunger for this has never seized me and terrified me. Here again, man has been good in his legacy to us, in these two primary instances.
III
THEN the dumb, aching, bitter, helpless need, the pining to be initiated, to have access to the knowledge that the great dead have opened up for us, to know, to satisfy the great and dominant hunger of the mind; man's sweetest harvest of the centuries, sweet, printed books, bright, glancing, exquisite corn of many a stubborn glebe in the upturned darkness; I thank mankind with passionate heart that I just escaped the hunger for these, that they were given when I needed them, because I am the son of man.
I have eaten, and drunk, and warmed and clothed my body, I have been taught the language of understanding, I have chosen among the bright and marvellous books, like any prince, such stores of the world's supply were open to me, in the wisdom and goodness of man. So far, so good. Wise, good provision that makes the heart swell with love!
IV
BUT then came another hunger very deep, and ravening; the very body's body crying out with a hunger more frightening, more profound than stomach or throat or even the mind; redder than death, more clamorous.
The hunger for the woman. Alas, it is so deep a Moloch, ruthless and strong, 'tis like the unutterable name of the dread Lord, not to be spoken aloud. Yet there it is, the hunger which comes upon us, which we must learn to satisfy with pure, real satisfaction; or perish, there is no alternative.
I thought it was woman, indiscriminate woman, mere female adjunct of what I was. Ah, that was torment hard enough and a thing to be afraid of, a threatening, torturing, phallic Moloch.
A woman fed that hunger in me at last. What many women cannot give, one woman can; so I have known it.
She stood before me like riches that were mine. Even then, in the dark, I was tortured, ravening, unfree, Ashamed, and shameful, and vicious. A man is so terrified of strong hunger; and this terror is the root of all cruelty. She loved me, and stood before me, looking to me. How could I look, when I was mad? I looked sideways, furtively, being mad with voracious desire.
V
THIS comes right at last. When a man is rich, he loses at last the hunger fear. I lost at last the fierceness that fears it will starve. I could put my face at last between her breasts and know that they were given for ever that I should never starve never perish; I had eaten of the bread that satisfies and my body's body was appeased, there was peace and richness, fulfilment.
Let them praise desire who will, but only fulfilment will do, real fulfilment, nothing short. It is our ratification our heaven, as a matter of fact. Immortality, the heaven, is only a projection of this strange but actual fulfilment, here in the flesh.
So, another hunger was supplied, and for this I have to thank one woman, not mankind, for mankind would have prevented me; but one woman, and these are my red-letter thanksgivings.
VI
To be, or not to be, is still the question. This ache for being is the ultimate hunger. And for myself, I can say "almost, almost, oh, very nearly." Yet something remains. Something shall not always remain. For the main already is fulfilment.
What remains in me, is to be known even as I know. I know her now: or perhaps, I know my own limitation against her.
Plunging as I have done, over, over the brink I have dropped at last headlong into nought, plunging upon sheer hard extinction; I have come, as it were, not to know, died, as it were; ceased from knowing; surpassed myself. What can I say more, except that I know what it is to surpass myself?
It is a kind of death which is not death. It is going a little beyond the bounds. How can one speak, where there is a dumbness on one's mouth? I suppose, ultimately she is all beyond me, she is all not-me, ultimately. It is that that one comes to. A curious agony, and a relief, when I touch that which is not me in any sense, it wounds me to death with my own not-being; definite, inviolable limitation, and something beyond, quite beyond, if you understand what that means. It is the major part of being, this having surpassed oneself, this having touched the edge of the beyond, and perished, yet not perished.
VII
I WANT her though, to take the same from me. She touches me as if I were herself, her own. She has not realized yet, that fearful thing, that I am the other, she thinks we are all of one piece. It is painfully untrue.
I want her to touch me at last, ah, on the root and quick of my darkness and perish on me, as I have perished on her.
Then, we shall be two and distinct, we shall have each our separate being. And that will be pure existence, real liberty. Till then, we are confused, a mixture, unresolved, unextricated one from the other. It is in pure, unutterable resolvedness, distinction of being, that one is free, not in mixing, merging, not in similarity. When she has put her hand on my secret, darkest sources, the darkest outgoings, when it has struck home to her, like a death, "this is _him!_" she has no part in it, no part whatever, it is the terrible _other_, when she knows the fearful _other flesh_, ah, dark- ness unfathomable and fearful, contiguous and concrete, when she is slain against me, and lies in a heap like one outside the house, when she passes away as I have passed away being pressed up against the _other_, then I shall be glad, I shall not be confused with her, I shall be cleared, distinct, single as if burnished in silver, having no adherence, no adhesion anywhere, one clear, burnished, isolated being, unique, and she also, pure, isolated, complete, two of us, unutterably distinguished, and in unutterable conjunction.
Then we shall be free, freer than angels, ah, perfect.
VIII
AFTER that, there will only remain that all men detach themselves and become unique, that we are all detached, moving in freedom more than the angels, conditioned only by our own pure single being, having no laws but the laws of our own being.
Every human being will then be like a flower, untrammelled. Every movement will be direct. Only to be will be such delight, we cover our faces when we think of it lest our faces betray us to some untimely fiend.
Every man himself, and therefore, a surpassing singleness of mankind. The blazing tiger will spring upon the deer, un- dimmed, the hen will nestle over her chickens, we shall love, we shall hate, but it will be like music, sheer utterance, issuing straight out of the unknown, the lightning and the rainbow appearing in us unbidden, unchecked, like ambassadors.
We shall not look before and after. We shall _be_, _now_. We shall know in full. We, the mystic NOW.
ZENNOR
_AUTUMN RAIN_
THE plane leaves fall black and wet on the lawn;
The cloud sheaves in heaven's fields set droop and are drawn
in falling seeds of rain; the seed of heaven on my face
falling--I hear again like echoes even that softly pace
Heaven's muffled floor, the winds that tread out all the grain
of tears, the store harvested in the sheaves of pain
caught up aloft: the sheaves of dead men that are slain
now winnowed soft on the floor of heaven; manna invisible
of all the pain here to us given; finely divisible falling as rain.
_FROST FLOWERS_
IT is not long since, here among all these folk in London, I should have held myself of no account whatever, but should have stood aside and made them way thinking that they, perhaps, had more right than I--for who was I?
Now I see them just the same, and watch them. But of what account do I hold them?
Especially the young women. I look at them as they dart and flash before the shops, like wagtails on the edge of a pool.
If I pass them close, or any man, like sharp, slim wagtails they flash a little aside pretending to avoid us; yet all the time calculating.
They think that we adore them--alas, would it were true!
Probably they think all men adore them, howsoever they pass by.
What is it, that, from their faces fresh as spring, such fair, fresh, alert, first-flower faces, like lavender crocuses, snowdrops, like Roman hyacinths, scyllas and yellow-haired hellebore, jonquils, dim anemones, even the sulphur auriculas, flowers that come first from the darkness, and feel cold to the touch, flowers scentless or pungent, ammoniacal almost; what is it, that, from the faces of the fair young women comes like a pungent scent, a vibration beneath that startles me, alarms me, stirs up a repulsion?
They are the issue of acrid winter, these first- flower young women; their scent is lacerating and repellant, it smells of burning snow, of hot-ache, of earth, winter-pressed, strangled in corruption; it is the scent of the fiery-cold dregs of corruption, when destruction soaks through the mortified, decomposing earth, and the last fires of dissolution burn in the bosom of the ground.
They are the flowers of ice-vivid mortification, thaw-cold, ice-corrupt blossoms, with a loveliness I loathe; for what kind of ice-rotten, hot-aching heart must they need to root in!
_CRAVING FOR SPRING_
I WISH it were spring in the world.
Let it be spring! Come, bubbling, surging tide of sap! Come, rush of creation! Come, life! surge through this mass of mortifica- tion! Come, sweep away these exquisite, ghastly first- flowers, which are rather last-flowers! Come, thaw down their cool portentousness, dissolve them: snowdrops, straight, death-veined exhalations of white and purple crocuses, flowers of the penumbra, issue of corruption, nourished in mortification, jets of exquisite finality; Come, spring, make havoc of them!
I trample on the snowdrops, it gives me pleasure to tread down the jonquils, to destroy the chill Lent lilies; for I am sick of them, their faint-bloodedness, slow-blooded, icy-fleshed, portentous.
I want the fine, kindling wine-sap of spring, gold, and of inconceivably fine, quintessential brightness, rare almost as beams, yet overwhelmingly potent, strong like the greatest force of world-balancing.
This is the same that picks up the harvest of wheat and rocks it, tons of grain, on the ripening wind; the same that dangles the globe-shaped pleiads of fruit temptingly in mid-air, between a playful thumb and finger; oh, and suddenly, from out of nowhere, whirls the pear-bloom, upon us, and apple- and almond- and apricot- and quince-blossom, storms and cumulus clouds of all imaginable blossom about our bewildered faces, though we do not worship.
I wish it were spring cunningly blowing on the fallen sparks, odds and ends of the old, scattered fire, and kindling shapely little conflagrations curious long-legged foals, and wide-eared calves, and naked sparrow-bubs.
I wish that spring would start the thundering traffic of feet new feet on the earth, beating with impatience.
I wish it were spring, thundering delicate, tender spring. I wish these brittle, frost-lovely flowers of pas- sionate, mysterious corruption were not yet to come still more from the still- flickering discontent.
Oh, in the spring, the bluebell bows him down for very exuberance, exulting with secret warm excess, bowed down with his inner magnificence!
Oh, yes, the gush of spring is strong enough to toss the globe of earth like a ball on a water-jet dancing sportfully; as you see a tiny celluloid ball tossing on a squint of water for men to shoot at, penny-a-time, in a booth at a fair.
The gush of spring is strong enough to play with the globe of earth like a ball on a fountain; At the same time it opens the tiny hands of the hazel with such infinite patience.
The power of the rising, golden, all-creative sap could take the earth and heave it off among the stars, into the in- visible; the same sets the throstle at sunset on a bough singing against the blackbird; comes out in the hesitating tremor of the primrose, and betrays its candour in the round white straw- berry flower, is dignified in the foxglove, like a Red-Indian brave.
Ah come, come quickly, spring! Come and lift us towards our culmination, we myriads; we who have never flowered, like patient cactuses. Come and lift us to our end, to blossom, bring us to our summer we who are winter-weary in the winter of the world. Come making the chaffinch nests hollow and cosy, come and soften the willow buds till they are puffed and furred, then blow them over with gold. Come and cajole the gawky colt's-foot flowers.
Come quickly, and vindicate us against too much death. Come quickly, and stir the rotten globe of the world from within, burst it with germination, with world anew. Come now, to us, your adherents, who cannot flower from the ice. All the world gleams with the lilies of Death the Unconquerable, but come, give us our turn. Enough of the virgins and lilies, of passionate, suffocating perfume of corruption, no more narcissus perfume, lily harlots, the blades of sensation piercing the flesh to blossom of death. Have done, have done with this shuddering, delicious business of thrilling ruin in the flesh, of pungent passion, of rare, death-edged ecstasy. Give us our turn, give us a chance, let our hour strike, O soon, soon!
Let the darkness turn violet with rich dawn. Let the darkness be warmed, warmed through to a ruddy violet, incipient purpling towards summer in the world of the heart of man.
Are the violets already here! Show me! I tremble so much to hear it, that even now on the threshold of spring, I fear I shall die. Show me the violets that are out.
Oh, if it be true, and the living darkness of the blood of man is purpling with violets, if the violets are coming out from under the rack of men, winter-rotten and fallen we shall have spring. Pray not to die on this Pisgah blossoming with violets. Pray to live through.
If you catch a whiff of violets from the darkness of the shadow of man it will be spring in the world, it will be spring in the world of the living; wonderment organising itself, heralding itself with the violets, stirring of new seasons.
Ah, do not let me die on the brink of such anticipation! Worse, let me not deceive myself.
ZENNOR
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