Lawrence and the songs of Resurrection
EASTERTIME held immense significance for D.H. Lawrence. Christ crucified was only half the Passion, half the truth, he writes.
Christ was resurrected in the flesh, his body becoming “the blossom and the fruit of the year.”
Lawrence’s “Risen Lord” seeks “life and the pure contact with life,” not riches, glory, honour!
For “only life is lovely,” and Mammon prevents life, Lawrence’s reborn Christ asserts.
“I love to see a squirrel peep round a tree,” or “hear a man singing to himself.” If it’s “an old, improper song, about the fun between lads and girls,” that’s “all the better.”
But, “beastly, mealy-mouthed Mammon” would stop squirrels peeping, arrest anyone singing “a gay song.”
So, let’s “push you off the face of the earth, Mammon, you mob-thing, fatal to men.”
In Lawrence’s The Man Who Died, the “shrill, wild crowing” of a black and orange cockerel, with red comb and “tail-feathers streaming lustrous” (a “saucy, flamboyant bird”!), wakes the entombed saviour, who shivers as from “an electric shock.” The Greater Day is calling!
Lawrence’s “silver-speckled, incandescent-lovely” thrushes, blackbirds, pigeons burst into life combustibly, whistling, piping their first spring songs amidst the surging fountain of “new creation.”
When Lawrence’s ex-lovers Cyril and Muriel sing Du bist wie eine Blume (“You are so like a flower”), they’re reunited “in the poetry of the past.”
“Daffodils,” Cyril says softly, “his eyes full of memories.” Muriel quivers with emotion. He’d taught her the song sitting on the hill, “where the wild daffodils stood up to the sky.”
100 YEARS AGO, April 4, 1924, Lawrence assures Mollie Skinner their Boy in the Bush “is a fine book.” He’s “glad” Mollie likes it “on the whole,” understanding her feelings “about the things” she’d “like modified.”
The Lawrences are “at the foot of the Rockies” again, “among the Indians - 7,000 feet up.” “The winter in Europe wearied” Lawrence “inexpressively. There seems a dead hand over the old world.” Lawrence informs Thomas Seltzer “Taos is very nice,” alternating “between hot sun and birds singing, and deep snow and silence.” Mabel’s “very mild,” “wiser,” and “has given Frieda the ranch above Lobo - legally made over.” Lawrence is pleased Martin Secker’s son Adrian has been born, and “drank a drop of moonshine to him.” Weatherpermitting, they ride “mustang ponies.”
Dorothy Brett, too. “Fun!” His new stories “are a bit Europe wintry and smitten.” His “soul isn’t thawed out yet.”
He sends three tales to Curtis Brown. Writing them helped “work off the depression of” Europe. Riding “in the sun across the sage” helps him “forget those disastrous cities.”
Lawrence’s “Risen Lord” seeks “life and the pure contact with life,” not riches, glory, honour!