Ian McKellen as D. H. Lawrence and Janet Suzman
as Frieda Lawrence aboard a train in Priest of Love
(dir. Christopher Miles, 1981)
as Frieda Lawrence aboard a train in Priest of Love
(dir. Christopher Miles, 1981)
I.
To be honest, I would probably associate trains more with the cinema than with literature; I'm thinking of Hitchcock's films for starters and, of course, the Lumière brothers' L'arrivée d'un train en gare de La Ciotat (1895).
Having said that, I can recall several novels featuring trains and/or railway stations as a prominent motif: Tolstoy's Anna Karenina (1878) would be one example; as would Zola's psychological thriller La Bête humaine (1890). Then there's Graham Greene's Stamboul Train (1932) and, of course, Agatha Christie's Murder on the Orient Express (1934) ...
But one author whom I wouldn't immediately think of in relation to trains, is D. H. Lawrence. And yet, as two recent essays by Lawrence scholars have shown, trains are actually quite a crucial and recurrent feature of his work ...
II.
According to Indrek Männiste, "one of the most idiosyncratic ways in which Lawrence realizes the cantus technicus in counterpoint is his frequent use of the train trope” [183].
He explains:
"While the more sensationalist drama of Victorian times focused mainly on the dangers of rail travel and its shock elements, Lawrence uses trains synecdochally as the ambassadors of modernity, and plays them out, as always, as threatening on a more metaphysical plane. Trains are described habitually as intruders on nature and as estranging to certain characters." [183]
Indeed, trains – along with cars and buses and other motor vehicles – force the countryside itself to retreat into its own isolation, making it evermore mysteriously inaccessible. As Lawrence notes in a late essay: "People have more 'joy-rides and outings [...] but they never seem to touch the reality of the country-side' (LEA, 15-16)." [185]
And yet – to deploy my own adversative conjunction if I may – trains play a positive role in Lawrence’s fiction too ...
Helen Baron demonstrates how they "occur frequently in his novels, stories, and poems" [191], often advancing the plot, heightening the drama, or helping him reveal things about his characters. She also explores "the variety of ways that Lawrence subtly focused on trains […] to coerce – overtly or subliminally – the reader’s feelings and responses” [191].
So, for all his siderodromophobia, it's possible that Lawrence was a secret locomotive lover after all and one thinks of his poem 'Kisses in the Train', in which, as Baron notes, the erotic element is intensified by being set on a speeding train. The opening two stanzas of the poem read:
To be honest, I would probably associate trains more with the cinema than with literature; I'm thinking of Hitchcock's films for starters and, of course, the Lumière brothers' L'arrivée d'un train en gare de La Ciotat (1895).
Having said that, I can recall several novels featuring trains and/or railway stations as a prominent motif: Tolstoy's Anna Karenina (1878) would be one example; as would Zola's psychological thriller La Bête humaine (1890). Then there's Graham Greene's Stamboul Train (1932) and, of course, Agatha Christie's Murder on the Orient Express (1934) ...
But one author whom I wouldn't immediately think of in relation to trains, is D. H. Lawrence. And yet, as two recent essays by Lawrence scholars have shown, trains are actually quite a crucial and recurrent feature of his work ...
II.
According to Indrek Männiste, "one of the most idiosyncratic ways in which Lawrence realizes the cantus technicus in counterpoint is his frequent use of the train trope” [183].
He explains:
"While the more sensationalist drama of Victorian times focused mainly on the dangers of rail travel and its shock elements, Lawrence uses trains synecdochally as the ambassadors of modernity, and plays them out, as always, as threatening on a more metaphysical plane. Trains are described habitually as intruders on nature and as estranging to certain characters." [183]
Indeed, trains – along with cars and buses and other motor vehicles – force the countryside itself to retreat into its own isolation, making it evermore mysteriously inaccessible. As Lawrence notes in a late essay: "People have more 'joy-rides and outings [...] but they never seem to touch the reality of the country-side' (LEA, 15-16)." [185]
And yet – to deploy my own adversative conjunction if I may – trains play a positive role in Lawrence’s fiction too ...
Helen Baron demonstrates how they "occur frequently in his novels, stories, and poems" [191], often advancing the plot, heightening the drama, or helping him reveal things about his characters. She also explores "the variety of ways that Lawrence subtly focused on trains […] to coerce – overtly or subliminally – the reader’s feelings and responses” [191].
So, for all his siderodromophobia, it's possible that Lawrence was a secret locomotive lover after all and one thinks of his poem 'Kisses in the Train', in which, as Baron notes, the erotic element is intensified by being set on a speeding train. The opening two stanzas of the poem read:
I saw the Midlands
Revolve through her hair;
The fields of autumn
Stretching bare,
And sheep on pasture
Tossed back in scare.
And still as ever
The world went round,
My mouth on her pulsing
Throat was found,
And my breast to her beating
Breast was bound.
Revolve through her hair;
The fields of autumn
Stretching bare,
And sheep on pasture
Tossed back in scare.
And still as ever
The world went round,
My mouth on her pulsing
Throat was found,
And my breast to her beating
Breast was bound.
Notes
Indrek Männiste, 'Poetics of Technology: D. H. Lawrence and the Well-Tempered Counterpoint', in D. H. Lawrence, Technology, and Modernity, ed. Indrek Männiste, (Bloomsbury, 2019), pp. 175-189.
Helen Baron, 'Trains in D. H. Lawrence's Creative Writing', in D. H. Lawrence, Technology, and Modernity, ibid. pp. 191-202.
D. H. Lawrence, 'Kisses in the Train', Poems Vol. I, ed. Christopher Pollnitz, (Cambridge University Press, 2013), pp. 83-4.
For my review of D. H. Lawrence, Technology, and Modernity, see The Lawrentian, ed. David Brock, (Autumn Edition, 2020). For a revised extract from this review in the form of a post on Torpedo the Ark, click here.
Helen Baron, 'Trains in D. H. Lawrence's Creative Writing', in D. H. Lawrence, Technology, and Modernity, ibid. pp. 191-202.
D. H. Lawrence, 'Kisses in the Train', Poems Vol. I, ed. Christopher Pollnitz, (Cambridge University Press, 2013), pp. 83-4.
For my review of D. H. Lawrence, Technology, and Modernity, see The Lawrentian, ed. David Brock, (Autumn Edition, 2020). For a revised extract from this review in the form of a post on Torpedo the Ark, click here.
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