D. H. Lawrence and the Idea of Sacrifice

In a short series of related poems Lawrence explored the idea of sacrifice. 

Initially, he seems quite keen: the sacrifice of an animal in what he thinks of as the splendid pagan manner is an act of vital necessity to which he enthusiastically lends his support:

"... blood of the lower life must be shed

for the feeding and strengthening of the handsomer, fuller life."

This is an active practice of sacrifice that is about affirming mortal existence and giving thanks to the gods; it is not about atoning for sin (a concept Lawrence explicitly repudiates), or seeking to appease a God who forever sits in judgement upon us:

"There is no such thing as sin.

There is only life and anti-life.

And sacrifice is the law of life which enacts

that little lives must be eaten up into the dance and splendour

of bigger lives, with due reverence and acknowledgement."

But, unfortunately, this old, pre-Christian idea of sacrifice as life affirmation has given way to one that invariably takes place within the shadow of the Cross and is fatally tied to disastrous notions of self-sacrifice, joy in suffering, and martyrdom. Lawrence wants nothing to do with these things. Self-sacrifice, he writes, is an ethically objectionable and mistaken idea - particularly when it involves the slaying of what is best in us:

"It cannot be anything but wrong to sacrifice

good, healthy, natural feelings, instincts, passions or desires ..."

In other words, to sacrifice what Nietzsche would term our innocence is the vilest cowardice:

"But what we may sacrifice, if we call it sacrifice, from the self,

are all the obstructions to life, self-importance, self-conceit, egoistic self-will ..."

Lawrence develops this theme in a later verse:

"Oh slay, not the best bright proud life that is in you, that can be happy,

but the craven, the cowardly, the creeping you, that can only be unhappy ..."

"Oh sacrifice, not that which is noble and generous and spontaneous in humanity

but that which is mean and base and squalid and degenerate ..."

If we learn how to shed those things which poison the blood - rather than our blood itself - then we might perhaps find a way to live beyond good and evil and free from bad conscience. And that would make a pleasant (and profound) change would it not ...

Notes

See the following four poems by D. H. Lawrence: 'Self-Sacrifice', 'Shedding of blood', 'The old idea of sacrifice' and 'Self-sacrifice'. They can be found in The Poems, ed. Christopher Pollnitz, (Cambridge University Press, 2013), Vol. I, pp. 585-87. The lines quoted are taken from these verses.