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.
