Jo Davidson's clay bust of D. H. Lawrence made four days before the
latter's death on 2 March 1930. Lawrence judged the result mediocre;
others have since found it slightly macabre.
I.
Tomorrow is the 92nd anniversary of the death of D. H. Lawrence.
That's quite a long time ago: long enough, I'm guessing, for a fair few of his atoms to have penetrated me, you, and everybody else on the planet, making us all neo-Lawrentians at some infinitesimal level - just as, indeed, we are all the other names in history (Louis XIV didn't know the half of it).
I've written elsewhere on Torpedo the Ark about atomic reincarnation and how even the dead don't rest in peace [click here]. But it's a subject that, as a thanatologist, I never tire of and which I'm always happy to resurrect given the opportunity.
So, once more unto the grave dear friends ...
II.
In February 1923, Lawrence famously consoled a grieving friend: "The dead don't die. They look on and help." [1]
And, for the most part, that's true ...
For whilst the dead don't look on - obviously - they never really die because the atoms that made them are immortal: they are in the food you eat, the water you drink, the air you breathe, etc. It's a category error to equate the personal death of the individual with non-being.
And, in as much as the dead lend us their atoms, I suppose they could be said, in a very real sense, to help us.
III.
Now, as Jennifer Aniston used to say, here comes the science bit - concentrate ...
According
to the theoretical astrophysicist Ethan
Siegel, one out of every 2.1 × 10^16 hydrogen atoms and one out of every
2.6 × 10^16 oxygen atoms in your body was formerly in any dear departed individual you care to name.
That maybe doesn't sound like a lot, until you remember that "there are 4.3 × 10^27 hydrogen atoms and 1.7 × 10^27 oxygen
atoms in a typical human body" [2].
Which means that there are approximately 200 billion hydrogen atoms and 65
billion oxygen atoms gathered from dead souls.
Siegel further notes that, because atoms are so outrageously numerous, if you do the maths you'll discover that "approximately one atom in
everyone's lungs, at any moment" [3], came from D. H. Lawrence on his death bed as he exhaled his final breath.
And you thought coronavirus was the only thing to worry about in your respiratory system ...
Notes
[1] D. H. Lawrence, letter to John Middleton Murry (2 Feb 1923), in The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, Vol IV, ed. Warren Roberts, James T. Boulton and Elizabeth Mansfield, (Cambridge University Press, 1987), p. 375.
[2] Ethan Siegal, 'Ask Ethan: How Many Atoms Do You Share With King Tut?', Forbes, (14 May, 2016): click here to read online.
[3] Ibid.
