On Oblivion

 

I. 

 

I was interested to hear the Chairman of the D. H. Lawrence Society, Mr Alan Wilson, claim in a recent sermon streamed live from St. Mary's Church, Greasley, on the theme of (so-called) Lawrencian Spirituality [1], that Lawrence was searching for something "beyond ultimate oblivion".

 

For although he was right to identify the importance of the term oblivion in Lawrence’s late poetry [2] - and whilst I would agree with Mark Fisher that "awareness of our own Nothingness is [...] a pre-requisite for a feeling of grace" [3] - there is no beyond oblivion; that's the tremendous challenge of the concept and why it is incompatible with the fundamental Christian belief of eternal life.  

 

In other words, if you subscribe to the idea of oblivion, you must accept the final sinking of one's soul into the magnificent dark blue gloom and the total erasure of self. To hope for life beyond oblivion, is as absurd as wishing to be remembered after one has been completely forgotten.     

 

 

II.

 

Whilst there may be some religious adherents who subscribe to the idea of oblivion [4], I tend to think of it more as a philosophical (and neuroscientific) concept, associated with those for whom death means what it says on the tin: the cessation of all consciousness (or subjective experience) and complete non-existence in any personal sense of the term. 

 

Socrates famously considered the question of oblivion when he was sentenced to death. Addressing the court, he first considers the possibility that his soul will migrate from this life and this world to the next life and next world. 

 

Although this idea appeals to him - because then he'll be able to discuss philosophy with all the great thinkers of the past - Socrates is nevertheless prepared to accept that death might, in fact, be terminal. This prospect doesn't frighten him, however, as oblivion essentially means to his mind a dreamless and uninterrupted sleep [5].  

 

Later thinkers, including the great Roman philosophers Cicero and Lucretius, basically came to a similar conclusion; i.e., that death was either a continuation of consciousness or cessation of it, and that if the former, then there is no reason to fear death; while if the latter is true, then there's also no good reason to be deeply troubled (for one will know nothing, feel nothing, be nothing).

 

As Epicurus famously put it in his Letter to Meneoceus: 'When I am, death is not; when death is, I am not.'

 

 

III.

 

Ultimately, oblivion is really just a term for a mind-independent reality; i.e., a reality which, despite the presumptions of human narcissism, "is indifferent to our existence and oblivious to the 'values' and 'meanings' which we would drape over it in order to make it more hospitable" [6].   

 

I don't know if saying that makes me a nihilist, a naturalist, or an extinctionist. But it certainly makes it difficult to subscribe to Lawrence's vitalism which makes oblivion strangely inviting; like a relaxing bath that we pop in and out of, feeling refreshed and reborn into a new body.

 

What such a cosy idea ignores is the fact that, as Ray Brassier reminds us, ultimately there will be no cosmos to be reborn into; that one day - roughly one trillion, trillion, trillion years from now - "the accelerating expansion of the universe will have disintegrated the fabric of matter itself, terminating the possibility of embodiment" [7]. 

 

Brassier continues: 

 

"Every star in the universe will have burnt out, plunging the cosmos into a state of absolute darkness and leaving behind nothing but spent husks of collapsed matter. All free matter, whether on planetary surfaces or in interstellar space, will have decayed, eradicating any remnants of life based in protons and chemistry, and erasing every vestige of sentience - irrespective of its physical basis. Finally, in a state cosmologists call 'asymptopia', the stellar corpses littering the empty universe will evaporate into a brief hailstorm of elementary particles. Atoms themselves will cease to exist. Only the implacable gravitational expansion will continue, driven by the currently inexplicable force called 'dark energy', which will keep pushing the extinguished universe deeper and deeper into an eternal and unfathomable blackness." [8]

 

In other words: oblivion über alles ...

 

I'm sure some believers will mumble about this universal annihilation all being part of God's plan, but, of course, we know that's bullshit - this is the disintegration of God's plan and the return to formless and empty chaos marks the triumph of evil.  

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Those with an hour and twenty minutes to spare and who are interested, can watch Wilson and two other speakers, Anthony Rice and John Patemen, discuss their understanding of Lawrentian Spirituality on the D. H. Lawrence Society YouTube channel by clicking here. The event took place on Saturday 18 November, 2023, at Greasley Church (Nottinghamshire).

 

[2] See the poems beginning with 'The Ship of Death' and ending with 'Phoenix', in 'The Last Poems Notebook', in D. H. Lawrence, The Poems, ed. Christopher Pollnitz, (Cambridge University Press, 2013), pp. 630-641. Almost every poem in this sequence contains the word oblivion. The amusing thing is that Lawrence explicitly warns that any one who attempts to ascribe attributes to oblivion is guilty of blasphemy - but that, of course, is precisely what he's doing.   

 

[3] Mark Fisher, Ghosts of My Life: Writings on Depression, Hauntology and Lost Futures, (Zero Books, 2022), p.157. 

 

[4] In Christian theology, for example, there is a notion of annihilationism which opens up the idea of oblivion. In sum, it's the belief that after the Last Judgment, all damned human souls and fallen angels - including Lucifer - will be totally destroyed and their consciousness extinguished. 

      Annihilationism thus stands in contrast to both the belief in eternal torment and the belief that everyone will ultimately be saved and given eternal life. Although the idea has come in and out of vogue throughout the history of the Church, annihilationism has tended to be a minority view. In 1995, the Church of England's Doctrine Commission declared that Hell may, in fact, be a state of total non-being (i.e., oblivion), rather than a place of eternal suffering.

 

[5] One could, if one was tempted to do so, challenge Socrates on this idea of death as a kind of sleep - just as one might challenge Lawrence's poetic descriptions of death as a plunge into darkness, or the idea that we are merely dipped in oblivion so as to be reborn on the other side. 

      In his paper 'Death, Nothingness, and Subjectivity', the naturalist philosopher Thomas W. Clark critiqued such flawed descriptions and the temptation (even amongst some atheists) to imagine that we might still - in some miraculous manner - experience or know death. By using the language of darkness, silence, and peaceful oblivion we effectively reify nothingness; i.e., make it into a positive condition or quality, into which the deceased individual can then be conveniently lodged.

      Clark's paper was originally published in 1994 as a lead article for the Humanist. It was reprinted in The Experience of Philosophy, ed. Daniel Kolak and Ray Martin, (Oxford University Press, 2005) and in The Philosophy of Death Reader, ed. Markar Melkonian, (Bloomsbury, 2019). It is also available to read on Clark's website Naturalism.Org: click here.

[6] Ray Brassier, Nihil Unbound: Enlightenment and Extinction (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), p. xi.

 

[7] Ibid., p. 228.

[8] Ibid.

 

 

This post is in memory of David Foster Wallace (1962-2008), whose final collection of short stories was published under the title Oblivion (Little, Brown and Company, 2004). The image at the top of this post is based on artwork by Mario J. Pulice for the cover of the first edition of this work.  

Commemoratio omnium fidelium defunctorum: A Post for All Souls' Day in Memory of My Mother

Traditionally, candles are used on All Souls' Day to provide 

light for the poor souls languishing in purgatorial darkness.

 

 

All Soul's Day is a day of prayer and remembrance for those who have departed this world but failed to make it straight into heaven; i.e., those poor souls who find themselves hanging about in that afterlife destination known as purgatory [1].

 

To be clear, these people are men and women of faith; they are not evil-doers who are ultimately bound for hell. Nevertheless, due perhaps to the taint of venial sin, or having failed to fully atone for past transgressions, they require some form of spiritual cleansing before they can ascend unto that place inhabited by angels and saints. 

 

The Church - and when I say the Church I mean the Catholic Church - teaches that this purification of souls in purgatory can be assisted by the actions of the living (thus the call to commemoration) and I like the idea that just as the dead can look on and help us, so too can we help them and, indeed, have a duty to be kind and generous to the departed. 

 

It's wrong for the dead to haunt the living and to resent their happiness; but it's also wrong of the living to curse the dead and deny them their entry into the highest place where they will know the gladness of death (which some believe to be oneness with God and others think of as oblivion). 

 

D. H. Lawrence was often respectful and tender towards the dead in his late poetry. He asks us, for example, to show pity towards the dead that were ousted out of life, but are not yet ready to make the final journey and so linger in the shadows like outcast dogs on the margins of heaven [2].            

 

In a very beautiful poem entitled 'All Souls Day', Lawrence writes:

 

 

Be kind, oh be kind to your dead

and give them a little encouragement

and help them to build their little ship of death.

For the soul has a long, long journey after death

to the sweet home of pure oblivion.

Each needs a little ship, a little ship

and the proper store of meal for the longest journey

Oh, from your heart

provide for your dead once more, equip them

like departing mariners, lovingly. [3]

Ultimately, it is our love and warm memories which purify the souls of the dead; the compassion of still-living hearts that helps them on "to the fathomless deeps ahead, far, far from the grey shores of marginal existence" [4].   

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Although many people confuse and conflate the terms, purgatory is not limbo and whilst the former is Church doctrine, the latter isn't - despite the fact that many Catholics believed in it and wrote about it, including Augustine and Thomas Aquinas. 

      Whilst purgatory is reserved for souls ultimately bound for heaven, limbo was believed to be the final destination for the souls of babies that had died without being baptised. In other words, a kind of posthumous neonatal unit either on the edge of hell or the lip of heaven. In 2007, Pope Benedict XVI requested that Church theologians reconsider this idea and argued that the truly Christian thing to do was to pray that God's mercy be shown to all deceased babies.     

      As for purgatory, it's probably best to think of it as a state of being or condition of the soul, rather than a place. That way, one can avoid having to try and give coordinates as to its location. This seems to be the line that is presently taken by the Church.  

      Readers who are interested in this subject may like to see Diana Walsh Pasulka's book Heaven Can Wait: Purgatory in Catholic Devotional and Popular Culture, (Oxford University Press, 2014). 

 

[2] See Lawrence's poem 'The Houseless Dead' in The Poems, Vol. I., ed. Christopher Pollnitz, (Cambridge University Press, 2013), pp. 635-36. 

[3] D. H. Lawrence, 'All Souls Day', in The Poems, Vol. I, p. 635. 

      I read this poem in full at my mother's funeral service in February of this year: click here.

 

[4] D. H. Lawrence, 'After All Saints Day', in The Poems, Vol. I, p. 637. 

 

This post is also in memory of Felisa Martinez and Angeliki Thanassa.   

Excessive Brightness Drove the Poet into Darkness

Damien Hirst: Black Sun (2004) 

Flies and resin on canvas (144" diameter)

Photograph: Prudence Cuming Associates 

© Damien Hirst and Science Ltd.

 

 

I. 

 

For D. H. Lawrence, darkness is not thought negatively as a total lack or absence of visible light. 

 

In fact, for Lawrence - as for Heidegger - the dark is the secret of the light [1]; an idea that reminds one of the esoteric teachings of Count Dionys on the concealed reality of the sun and the invisibility of fire.

 

According to the latter, the brightness of sunshine is epiphenomenal and there would be no light at all were it not for refraction, due to bits of dust and stuff, making the dark fire visible: 

 

"'And that being so, even the sun is dark [...] And the true sunbeams coming towards us flow darkly, a moving darkness of the genuine fire. The sun is dark, the sunshine flowing to us is dark. And light is only the inside-out of it all, the lining, and the yellow beams are only the turning away of the sun's directness.'" [2]

 

Thus our luminous daytime world is really just a surface effect; the underlying reality is of a powerfully throbbing darkness, as great thinkers have always understood and which is recognised within various religious mythologies [3].

 

 

II. 

 

Some of Lawrence's loveliest poetry is written, therefore, beneath the dark light of a black sun [4]. But he also acknowledges the chthonic reality of darkness and likes to write of the hellish aspect of flowers, insisting, for example, that they are a gift of Hades, not Heaven [5]. 

 

This is clear in these lines from his famous poem 'Bavarian Gentians':    

 

"Bavarian gentians, big and dark, only dark

darkening the day-time, torch-like, with the smoking blueness of Pluto's gloom" [6]     

 

In 'Gladness of Death', meanwhile, Lawrence dreams of actually becoming what some might term a fleur du mal:

 

"I have always wanted to be as the flowers are

so unhampered in their living and dying,

and in death I believe I shall be as the flowers are.

I shall blossom like a dark pansy, and be delighted

there among the dark sun-rays of death. 

I can feel myself unfolding in the dark sunshine of death

to something flowery and fulfilled, and with a strange sweet perfume." [7]

 

At other times, however, Lawrence's dark musing is less floral in character and takes on a more nihilistic aspect as he longs for complete non-existence:

 

"No, now I wish the sunshine would stop,

and the white shining houses, and the gay red flowers on the balconies

and the bluish mountains beyond, would be crushed out

between two halves of darkness;

the darkness falling, the darkness rising, with muffled sound

obliterating everything. 

 

I wish that whatever props up the walls of light

would fall, and darkness would come hurling heavily down,

and it would be thick black dark forever.

Not sleep, which is grey with dreams,

nor death, which quivers with birth,

but heavy, sealing darkness, silence, all immovable." [8]

 

Now, I know that post-Freudians - even really smart ones like Julia Kristeva [9] - will tend to read a poem like this in terms of dépression et mélancolie, but those of us who know Lawrence will understand the necessity of being made nothing and dipped into oblivion [10].   

 

Notes

 

[1] Martin Heidegger, Basic Principles of Thinking (Freiburg Lectures, 1957), in Bremen and Freiburg Lectures, trans. Andrew J. Mitchell, (Indiana University Press, 2012), p. 88.

      In a poem entitled 'In the Dark', the narrator (whom we can assume to be Lawrence) tells a frightened female figure (whom we can assume to be Frieda) that even when she dances in sunshine, it is dark behind her - as if her shadow were the essential aspect of her being. 

      See D. H. Lawrence, The Poems, Vol. I, ed. Christopher Pollnitz, (Cambridge University Press, 2013), pp. 170-71. And cf. this stanza from 'Climb down, O lordly mind': "Thou art like the day / but thou art also like the night, / and thy darkness is forever invisible, / for the strongest light throws also the darkest shadow." The Poems, Vol. I, p. 411.     

 

[2] See D. H. Lawrence, The Ladybird, in The Fox, The Captain's Doll, The Ladybird, ed. Dieter Mehl, (Cambridge University Press, 1992), p. 180. 

      Lawrence probably got this idea of the black sun from Mme. Blavatsky's Secret Doctrine (1888), though it by no means originated in theosophy; the ancient alchemists, for example, also wrote of the sol niger. Today, it's our physicists who talk of dark energy and dark matter; and neo-Nazis who fetishise the symbol of the black sun.       

 

[3] In Greek mythology, for example, Erebos was one of the primordial deities; born of Chaos, he was a personification of darkness.

 

[4] Lawrence's 'Twilight', for example, opens with the line: "Darkness comes out of the earth". See The Poems, Vol. I, p. 12.

 

[5] See 'Purple Anemones', The Poems, Vol. I, pp. 262-64.       

[6] D. H. Lawrence, 'Bavarian Gentians' [1], The Poems, Vol. I, p. 610. 

      See also 'Glory of Darkness' [1], The Poems, Vol. I, p. 591, in which Lawrence eulogises the darkness embodied in some Bavarian gentians which make "a magnificent dark-blue gloom" in his sunny room.  

 

[7] D. H. Lawrence, 'Gladness of Death' [2], The Poems, Vol. I, p. 584.  

[8] These are the first two stanzas of Lawrence's '"And oh - that the man I am might cease to be -"', The Poems, Vol. I, pp. 165-66. 

      This theme of an annihilating darkness can also be found in 'Our day is over', ibid., p. 369.

[9] See Julia Kristeva, Black Sun: Depression and Melancholia, trans. Leon S. Roudiez, (Columbia University Press, 1989). 

      For Kristeva, depression is a form of discourse with a language to be learned, rather than strictly a pathology to be treated. This depressive discourse often reveals itself in poetry or other creative forms of self-expression. See Garry Drake's M.A. thesis - D. H. Lawrence's Last Poems: 'A Dark Cloud of Sadness', (University of Saskatchewan, 2008) - which reads Lawrence's work in light of Kristeva's theory: click here. 

[10] I'm referring here to one of Lawrence's last poems, 'Phoenix', which can be found in The Poems, Vol. I, pp. 641-42. 

Most of the poems by Lawrence that I refer to in this post can be found online:

 

'In the Dark' - click here.

 

'Twilight' [aka 'Palimpsest of Twilight] - click here. 

 

'Purple Anemones' - click here. 

 

'Bavarian Gentians' - click here. 

 

'Glory of Darkness' - click here.

 

'And oh - that the man I am might cease to be' - click here.

 

'Our day is over' - click here. 

 

 

For a sister post to this one, click here.