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27 May 2019

D. H. Lawrence and the Poetry of Evil



Surprisingly, evil isn't an idea that features very often in Lawrence's poetry. 

Indeed, prior to the handful of late verses that I wish to comment on here, I can recall only two earlier poems in which the concept appears: 'Cypresses', wherein Lawrence makes the Nietzschean claim that life-denial is the only real form of immorality; and one of the Pansies in which he suggests that the root of our modern iniquity is free trade and so calls for a religiously inspired communism (as if that wouldn't result in the tyranny of evil men). 

Happily, the Last Poems Notebook provides some further reflections on the question of evil ...


Evil is homeless

In this verse, Lawrence challenges the conventional idea that evil is located in (or leads to) Hell. Hell, he says, is the "home of souls lost in darkness", not of evil. For evil is decentred and without dwelling-place. It flourishes on the "outskirt fringes of nowhere"; a non-place [ου-τοπία] where grey carrion-eaters roam in perpetual twilight and human beings fall into fixed automatism.


What then is Evil?

The invention of the wheel is often seen as marking a great leap forward for humanity, having a fundamental impact on the development of civilisation. For Lawrence, however, "the wheel is the first principle of evil" - both within the external world of things and material activity and within the inner workings of the psyche.

For when the mind consists of a circle in a spiral and a wheel within a wheel, turning "on the hub of the ego" and driven by the will - and when "the wheel of the conscious self spins on in absolution", liberated from "the great necessities of being" (such as strife and kisses) - then, says Lawrence, we witness the birth of pure evil.  


The Evil World-Soul

Although he doesn't here speak of the demiurge, Lawrence does insist on the existence of a malevolent world-spirit. However, he again blames this on man and technology; "it is the soul of man only, and his machines / which has brough to pass this fearful thing called evil".   

Using a word that was very much in vogue in the 1920s - having only recently entered the English language via Karel Čapek's seminal sci-fi play R. U. R. - Lawrence declares: "The Robot is the unit of evil. / And the symbol of the Robot is the wheel revolving."

Later in this series of verses, Lawrence identifies more familiar sources of evil, such as war,  although it's important to note that he insists that strife is a good thing and that killing one's mortal enemy may in fact be a pure form of passion and communion

Murder, however, is always evil and modern warfare fought with guns, explosives and chemical weapons, is essentially murderous and thus, as such, profoundly evil. 


Departure

Finally, we come to a poem in which Lawrence calls upon a few individuals to find their courage in the face of the corruption that threatens them and decisively turn their backs on it: "Now some men must get up and depart / from evil, or all is lost." 

Lawrence also extends his list of evil things to include not only old favourites, such as spinning wheels, but also all forms of abstraction: as found in the fields of finance, science, education, popular culture, politics, etc. We must say no to all these things - setting up a profitable business, turning on the radio, believing the false claims of astronomers - if we are to make ourselves impregnable against evil.     

Of course, this would mean leading a life at such odds with almost everyone and everything that one might question both the feasibility and desirability of doing so ...


Notes

All of the above poems may be found in D. H. Lawrence, The Poems, Vol. 1, ed. Christopher Pollnitz, (Cambridge University Press, 2013), as can the related verses 'Doors', 'Death is not Evil, and 'Evil is Mechanical'. 

Readers might be interested to know that Lawrence originally wrote a 123-line poem entitled 'When Satan Fell' which he then broke into the evil series of verses discussed here. 

The poem in Pansies that I mention is 'The root of our evil' (ibid., 418-19). 

Surprise musical bonus: click here

 

5 comments:

  1. It's neither feasible nor desirable to continue our deadly embrace with these evils at the door of Life.
    Our obligation is to be at odds with them.
    The financiers, scientists, educators, politicians, pop culture merchants and, yes, radio stations and astronomers, all keep soinning evilly on their fixed hub.
    Now they are hell-bent on forcing their evil robot tyranny upon the vulnerable world.
    It is only by being 'at odds' that we can stop them. Let's rouse the creatures of our soul - as in The Triumph of the Machine - hold Lawrence and Rananim dear to our hearts (never letting talk of lesser, tiny tyrannies put us off our stride), until the short sad century of this machine hell is in smoking ruins.

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    1. I thought you quite liked listening to the radio ...

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    2. Only Radio 4, in order to monitor BBC lies and bias.
      And Radio 3 for the solace and uplift of Mahler and Bruckner in live broadcast.

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    3. Alas, evil is all about exceptions to the rule; the lapses, the shortcomings, the temptations ...

      Lawrence doesn't care about the content of the radio broadcast - it's the act of listening to a machine that's problematic for him. Even what you call a 'live broadcast' is a simulation and the sound you hear (and draw solace and inspiration from) a form of virtual music.

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  2. A fascinating (too brief) post, Stephen, to which I'm gratefully indebted in the poetic context. The (literally utopian) decentredness of evil is itself something to conjure with - as is sometimes said, like death, it can erupt anywhere.

    The notion of the wheel, which was only 'invented' by its replication of the archetypal circle, points for me to a quasi-Gnostic idea of evil as world-originating, as signalled by the reference here to the unmentioned - but mentioned - 'demiurge'. Lawrence seems confused about evil and war/conflict, which, in James Hillman's words, is the 'terrible love' of humanity.

    Of course, the idealism of turning away from/having done with evil is pie in the sky, as it's given with the universe and the human condition. Evil is what we leave behind, or rather leaves us behind . . .

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