Winter Solstice with D. H. Lawrence

Winter Solstice by the Sea (SA/2023)

 

"Now in December nearer comes the sun

down the abandoned heaven ..."

 

I. 

 

I am always happy when the shortest day and longest night of the year have come and gone.  

 

Several cold months may still lie ahead, but it triggers a genuine transformation of mood to know that the sun has reached its lowest point in the sky and, having stood still for the briefest of moments, thereafter begins its slow ascent; that, no matter what happens, it can't get any darker. 

 

I know the birth of baby Jesus around this time of year excites the imagination of many, but it means nothing compared to the symbolic rebirth of the invincible sun and I understand why the winter solstice has been marked by ritual celebrations within many cultures for millennnia. 

 

The prehistoric pagans who erected Stonehenge - and even the modern day Druids who still meet there now - aren't idiots and Yule means more to me than the Nativity.     

 

 

II. 

 

As one might guess, D. H. Lawrence was another fan of the winter solstice, as he was of all events on the solar calendar that chart the movements of the sun and the wheeling of the year. In a poem written in November 1928, he speaks of how "As the dark closes round him" the sun "draws nearer as if for our company".

 

Interestingly, Lawrence also claims that there exists a tiny sun within him - situated at "the base of the lower brain" - that communes with the great star above, exchanging "a few gold rays" [1]. 

 

III.

 

It would appear, reading this verse, that for Lawrence - as for many others who share his predilection for philosophical vitalism - the sun is more than a material object that can be adequately described and understood by physicists and astronomers. 

 

And if, primarily, Lawrence is concerned with the relationships between men and women, he nevertheless insists on the crucial importance of the relation between humanity and the sun. Perhaps the term that best describes this relation is correlation. For there is clearly a notion of mutual interdependence between the sun and humankind in Lawrence's work; i.e., we can't think one without thinking the other. 

 

And yet, correlation doesn't sound a very Lawrentian term and I think he would be happier speaking about correspondence. For correspondence implies a far closer level of intimate proximity between terms; they become not merely interdependent, but analogous at a certain level:

 

"There certainly does exist a subtle and complex sympathy, correspondence, between the plasm of the human body, which is identical with the primary human psyche, and the material elements outside. The primary human psyche is a complex plasm, which quivers, sense-conscious, in contact with the circumambient cosmos." [2] 

 

What Lawrence really wishes to do is reverse the idea that life evolves from matter and argue instead that the material universe results from the breakdown of primary organic tissue. Unfortunately, as much as I love Lawrence's work, I cannot share his anti-scientific thinking. Thus, I don't believe, for example, that: "If it be the supreme will of the living that the sun should stand still in heaven, then the sun will stand still." [3] 

 

This is simply an occult conceit; the frankly preposterous fantasy that there can be a magical suspension of the laws of physics at the behest of human will power. It's one thing wishing to project oneself into the "the great sky with its meaningful stars and its profoundly meaningful motions" [4] in order to release the poetic imagination, but it's something else believing the astrological heavens revolve around the figure of Man.  

 

 

Notes

 

[1] See D. H. Lawrence, 'November by the sea', in The Poems, Vol. I, ed. Christopher Pollnitz, (Cambridge University Press, 2013), pp. 394-95. This poem can be found also in the LiederNet Archive: click here.

 

[2] D. H. Lawrence, 'The Two Principles', (First Version, 1918-19), Studies in Classic American Literature, ed. Ezra Greenspan, Lindeth Vasey, and John Worthen, (Cambridge University Press, 2003), p. 260.

 

[3] D. H. Lawrence, 'Nathaniel Hawthorne's Blithedale Romance' (1920-1), Appendix IV: Studies in Classic American Literature, p. 395. 

 

[4] D. H. Lawrence, 'Introduction to The Dragon of the Apocalypse, by Frederick Carter', in Apocalypse and the Writings on Revelation, ed. Mara Kalnins, (Cambridge University Press, 1980), p. 46. 

 

 

Some of the material in section III of this post is revised from the essay 'Sun-Struck: On the Question of Solar Sexuality and Speculative Realism in D. H. Lawrence', which can be found on James Walker's Digital Pilgrimage website: click here. 

 

I Would Like to Know the Stars Again: Reflections on Astronomy and Astrology in the Work of D. H. Lawrence

"I would like to know the stars again ... I would like to be able to put my ego into the sun, 

and my personality into the moon, and my character into the planets, 

and live the life of the heavens." - D. H. Lawrence

 

I. There's a Star Man Waiting in the Sky

 

To his credit, Lawrence was always open and honest about his preference for astrology over astronomy. 

 

For him, the former is an ancient body of esoteric knowledge - a lost science - concerning the vital relationship between man and the universe; whilst the latter is merely an attempt to restrict human consciousness and kill the true splendour of the heavens, as his Introduction to Frederick Carter's The Dragon of the Apocalypse makes clear:

 

"I have read books of astronomy which made me dizzy with the sense of illimitable space. But the heart melts and dies, it is the disembodied mind alone which follows on through this horrible hollow void of space, where lonely stars hang in awful isolation. And this is not a release. It is a strange thing, but when science extends space ad infinitum, and we get a terrible sense of limitlessness, we have at the same time a secret sense of imprisonment. Three-dimensional space is homogeneous, and no matter how big it is, it is a kind of prison. No matter how vast the range of space, there is no release."*      

 

Works of astrology, on the other hand, bring a marvellous release of the whole imagination:

 

"In astronomical space, one can only move, one cannot be. In the astrological heavens, that is to say, the ancient zodiacal heavens, the whole man is set free, once the imagination crosses the border. The whole man, bodily and spiritual, walks in the magnificent fields of the stars [...] and the feet tread splendidly upon [...[ the heavens, instead of untreadable space." [46]

        

Essentially, Lawrence is contrasting two types of experience and privileging one over the other:

 

"To enter the astronomical sky of space is a great sensational experience. To enter the astrological sky of the zodiac and the living, roving planets is another experience, another kind of experience; it is truly imaginative, and to me, more valuable. It is not a mere extension of what we know: an extension that becomes awful, then appalling. It is the entry into another world, another kind of world, measured by another dimension. And we find some prisoned self in us coming forth to live in this world." [46] 

 

It's not that Lawrence wishes to deny the first experience. But he much prefers the sense of being part of the macrocosm that astrology affords him:

 

"I become big and glittering and vast with a sumptuous vastness. I am the macrocosm, and it is wonderful! And since I am not afraid to feel my own nothingness in front of the vast void of astronomical space, neither am I afraid to feel my own splendidness in the zodiacal heavens." [47]  

 

Astrological symbolism may only be a type of fantasy - may not be factually correct or true in the scientific sense that astronomy is true - but it provides one with a feeling of joy and sense of power as well as freedom: "So we need not feel ashamed of flirting with the zodiac. The zodiac is well worth flirting with." [47]**

 

 

II. Transcendental Egoism à la D. H. Lawrence

 

Let me begin by saying that I understand Lawrence's objection to positivism and his response to the inhuman scale of the cosmos as given to us within astronomy. When you first encounter the facts and figures of the universe you can indeed become dizzy with the sense of illimitable space. 

 

However, I think we should accept the challenge of this and affirm our vertigo and our imprisonment - Lawrence's word - within a godless and, for the most part, lifeless universe. Nihilism is not something to fear, or seek to overcome, but, as a form of intellectual integrity, something to celebrate.***

 

Alas, in order to guarantee imaginative freedom, Lawrence is prepared to dismiss empirical evidence in favour of subjective truth and to cheerfully exchange scientific knowledge for religious myth. As a fantasist and a theo-humanist, of course he prefers astrology to astronomy. And why not, when the former is so much more flattering to one's sense of self-importance.

 

By his own admission, placing his feet upon the heavens makes him feel alive and powerful; and that's not a minor consideration when you are as close to death as Lawrence was when writing here. Small and insignificant, Lawrence wants to project himself into "the great sky with its meaningful stars and its profoundly meaningful motions" [46]. He wants to declare his unity with the cosmos and, in so doing, achieve a certain immortality. 

 

But this dying man's wish is surely the same kind of transcendental egoism that Lawrence elsewhere ridicules in others. He boasts that he is not afraid to feel his own nothingness before the vast void of astronomical space, but, actually, he does seem frit when confronted with reality and ontological hollowness. 

 

However, scared or not, Lawrence at least knows what it is he wants: a release of the imagination in order that it might make him feel stronger and happier. Science doesn’t provide this, he says. At best, it satisfies the intellect by giving us a sun and a moon that are "only thought-forms […] things we know but never feel by experience" [51].

 

This, I have to say, is a bit rich: for so too are the sun and moon given us by astrology only thought-forms - and, arguably, nothing but colourful thought-forms, whereas the sun and moon spoken of within astronomy have some actual basis in material reality.

 

 

III. A Coda on Correlationism

I think it's fair to say that Lawrence's thinking can be characterised by what Quentin Meillassoux terms correlationism. Thus his preference for astrology over astronomy. For Lawrence is not really interested in the stars and planets, so much as he is interested in their relation to him and his relation to them. 

 

In other words, the paradox at the heart of Lawrence's writing is that whilst he rages against modern people for falling out of touch with the living reality of the cosmos, his fundamental concern is with human consciousness and language and he's not even going to try to conceive of the universe as existing in itself regardless of whether we are thinking it or not.

 

Perhaps this is why Lawrence instinctively hates what science tells him about the universe, in terms of its size, its age, its formation, etc. Statements, for example, such as the universe is 13.7 billion years old obviously posit a pre-human and non-human cosmos and Lawrence - for all his professed anti-humanism - simply doesn't want (or know how) to think events that are "anterior to the advent of life as well as consciousness".****

 

Ultimately, what Lawrence reveals himself to be in his late work is a subjective idealist; one who desperately wants to belong to a meaningful universe and is incapable of conceding that what science tells us about matter existing independently of man might be true. Indeed, he comes dangerously close at times to resembling one of those religious lunatics who insist that ancient wisdom is true because they feel it to be true and want it to be true. 

 

And that's disappointing to be honest ...

 

 

Notes

 

* D. H. Lawrence, 'Introduction to The Dragon of the Apocalypse by Frederick Carter', in Apocalypse and the Writings on Revelation, ed. Mara Kalnins, (Cambridge University Press, 1980), p. 46. Future page references to this work will be given directly in the text.

 

** To be fair, Lawrence does later qualify this by adding: "But not in the rather silly modern way of horoscopy and telling your fortune by the stars." [51]

*** I agree with Ray Brassier, who argues that nihilism is an important speculative opportunity and an "unavoidable corollary of the realist conviction that there is a mind-independent reality". See the Preface to Nihil Unbound: Enlightenment and Extinction, (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), p. xi.

 

**** Quentin Meillassoux, After Finitude, trans. Ray Brassier, (Continuum, 2009), p. 9.

Just to be clear on this important point: it doesn’t matter whether Lawrence chooses to think such events true or false, but the fact that he is completely unconcerned with the modern scientific discourse which describes these events, does, I think, bring shame upon him. As Meillassoux points out, it is this discourse that allows us to have a rational and meaningful debate "about what did or did not exist prior to the emergence of humankind, as well as what might eventually succeed humanity" [ibid., 114]. In other words, it is science - and only science (not myth, religion, or poetry) - that can posit dia-chronic statements and makes dia-chronic knowledge possible (i.e. knowledge of a world without witness). Whether Lawrence likes it or not, no man, god, or sentient being need be on the scene for a mind-independent universe to exist and to carry on just as it has always carried on.

Some of this material has been extracted (and revised) from an essay entitled 'Sun-Struck' published on James Walker's Digital Pilgrimage: click here. The picture of a cosmic-looking D. H. Lawrence used at the top of this post is a detail from an image created by Walker to illustrate the essay as it appeared on his blog.   

Uranus

Uranus photographed by Voyager 2 in 1986

Then felt I like some watcher of the skies / When a new planet swims into his ken

One of the things I like about being an Aquarian is that I have Uranus as my ruling planet. Some love Venus, some love Mars - but, for me, the electric blue ice giant that is Uranus is the most beautiful of all the bodies orbiting the sun.

Like the other giant planets, Uranus has a ring system and multiple moons. But - and this is what makes it so attractive to me - images taken by Voyager 2 revealed the planet itself to be almost featureless; there's nothing overly dramatic about it - no storms, no scenes, no nonsense. It's just cold and blue and perfect in its neutrality.    

That's how I like my planets and gods to be; completely impersonal; neither attention-seeking nor awe-inspiring.

In fact, so unshowy and content was Uranus to remain outside the classical solar system, that, although visible to the naked eye, it didn't allow itself to be recognised as a planet by ancient observers. It wasn't until 1781 that the astronomer and composer Sir William Herschel took a long look through his telescope and declared it to be such (and even he initially mistook it for a comet).

As for the name, Uranus, the Latinised form of the ancient Greek Οὐρανός [Ouranos] - meaning sky or heaven - this was given by the German astronomer Johann Elert Bode, after Herschel failed to come up with a catchy suggestion of his own.

(His proposal that it be known as Georgium Sidus, in honour of his patron King George III, wasn't well received and so Bode's name for the new planet quickly gained wide - eventually universal - acceptance).   

Interestingly, on this subject of names, fans of a certain cinematic space opera might be amused to hear that in one of its Thai translations Uranus is known as Dao Maritayu or Death Star. Indeed, as a thanatologist, this pleases me too ...

Birthday Musings of an Aquarian

It is very easy to sneer at astrology, but perhaps the ancient heavens of the zodiac continue to offer us what D. H. Lawrence describes as a truly imaginative experience and the entry into another world of being; one that is vital and meaningful, even if it is a world of which our astronomers and physicists know nothing. Perhaps.

At any rate, without quite feeling the ecstatic sense of joy that Lawrence experiences when released into this other world of mytho-cosmic splendour, I have always been pleased that I was born under the sign of Aquarius like many of the figures I have at one time or other loved and admired (from Mozart to Malcolm McLaren).

However, although feeling blessed to be a child of the 11th House, I have never been very happy that Aquarius is symbolized by a water-bearer; certainly not when other signs of the zodiac have marvellous starry beasts to call upon and find totemic satisfaction in. Who wants someone with a jug, when there are lions, bulls, goats and even crabs on offer?

It doesn't even help to discover - as I have only recently discovered - that this someone with a jug happens to be the iconic gay figure of Ganymede; i.e. a beautiful boy who, when all's said and done, is but an eternal servant and sexual plaything of the gods, offering not only libation but soft lips, nimble fingers, and strong thighs.

Now, whilst I've no moral objection to the Greek social practice of paiderastía, I don't like the idea of any mortal down on their knees before the divine - particularly when they have been kidnapped, raped and forced into slavery.