D. H. Lawrence, Ship of Death

[JBI]

Welcome back JingJang - I hope that won't detract you from joining in - you are quite the insightful poster.

[Dark Muse]

What is not to love about this poem? It is right up my alley. Absolutely gorgeous! This might be my favorite thing Lawrence rote EVER! Including novels and short stories. It is so laden with such deep rich imagery, and I think that it also draws from myth a great deal as well in so much of the symbolism which is alluded to within this poem.

First of all on reading this the first and most prominent thing which had come into my mind was the Vikings, throughout the poem I think Norse Lore was strongly drawn upon. The metaphor of the "ship of death" was something that the Vikings literally did. Upon the death of a Viking, an actual ship was constructed in which the corpse of the dead was placed and then sent out to sea and the ships would be lain with relics of the material living world in the same way in which the poem speaks of placing food, wine, and clothing upon the ship of death.

The mention of ash within poem and alluding to fumes, also suggests the old Viking tradition.

And death is on the air like a smell of ashes!
Ah! can't you smell it?
And in the bruised body, the frightened soul
finds itself shrinking, wincing from the cold
that blows upon it through the orifices.

And yet out of eternity a thread
separates itself on the blackness,
a horizontal thread
that fumes a little with pallor upon the dark.

Is it illusion? or does the pallor fume
A little higher?
Ah wait, wait, for there's the dawn
the cruel dawn of coming back to life
out of oblivion

Wait, wait, the little ship
drifting, beneath the deathly ashy gray
of a flood-dawn

For the Viking ships of the dead would be used as funeral pyres and once set adrift they would be then set afire.

There was also the mention of violence, suggestion of battle, weaponry.

And can a man his own quietus make
with a bare bodkin?

With daggers, bodkins, bullets, man can make
a bruise or break of exit for his life;
but is that a quietus, O tell me, is it quietus?

Surely not so! for how could murder, even self-murder
ever a quietus make?

[JBI]

That's actually an angle I had never considered - thank you for that, it kind of makes sense, and seems justifiable by the text.

In that sense then, the building of the ship could be on par with gaining the reputation and respect that would warrant a ship to be sent off for you on death - the quick not "quietus" was then, could suggest a lack of fulfillment and achievement in life - a rotting of the apples before they can be picked, and a sort of uselessness, without the descent into Valhalla into the halls of the heroes - certainly the pessimistic outlook of Lawrence on his last days could support such an argument.


A very interesting observation!

[Dark Muse]

Glad I was able to offer something insightful on this dicussion, my personal love for mythology generally casues me to hone into those sorts of details and suggestions before anything else.

[stlukesguild]

I'll need to pull out my volume of Lawrence's poetry and try to join in tomorrow...too tired for any deep thinking tonight.

[JBI]

Also, what do you guys make of the Hamlet reference - in the Quietus, to Hamlet:

For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
Th' oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
The pangs of despis'd love, the law's delay,
The insolence of office, and the spurns
That patient merit of th' unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin .

Are we to take this as somewhat of an answer to it, or a building upon it - I know Lawrence, for instance, hated the Prince, but the reference isn't dismissible - The Prince too is brought to a premature death, but the point of the poem is that he is fulfilled in the end, by defeating Claudius, and restoring order to Denmark. The bare Bobkin quietus though implies a sort of old age, and a readiness to slowly pass peacefully away - there is no peace in this poem though, there is no preparation, one feels that the poem is constantly remarking on the lack of time to "make quietus", and the failure to build the ship, to go peacefully, as nothing is set into order, and there is no time to "build a ship".

[JBI]

I'll need to pull out my volume of Lawrence's poetry and try to join in tomorrow...too tired for any deep thinking tonight.

http://rpo.library.utoronto.ca/poem/1251.html#129

This is a good edition - they've got much of the major Lawrence poems on this site too, if you cannot find your text.

[Dark Muse]

This poem could also be seen in some ways as akin to Tennyson's Ulysses, as they both play upon similar themes, in relating to death as being like preparing for a voyage at sea to some distant and far away place for which there could be no return.

And upon looking at it through the idea of lack of fulfillment and achievement, as JBI mentioned above, Ulysses plays with these ideas as well, in which he is now lamenting as an older man his more docile youth, and seeks to once more taste adventure and go out upon the last great voyage of his life, to try and regain something of his lost youth and former greatness.

And in The Ship of Death, Lawrence mentions this idea of being born anew

And die the death, the long and painful death
that lies between the old self and the new.

And laments the ebbing strength of the body and the weakening of the soul

Piecemeal the body dies, and the timid soul
has her footing washed away, as the dark flood rises.

We are dying, we are dying, we are all of us dying
and nothing will stay the death-flood rising within us
and soon it will rise on the world, on the outside world.

We are dying, we are dying, piecemeal our bodies are dying
and our strength leaves us,
and our soul cowers naked in the dark rain over the flood,
cowering in the last branches of the tree of our life.

which can also be seen in Tennyson's Ulysses in his desire to go out one last

[Dark Muse]

Also, what do you guys make of the Hamlet reference - in the Quietus, to Hamlet:

I am not that familiar with Hamlet, as I haven't read that one yet, so I am not adequate to comment upon that.

[stlukesguild]

This is a good edition - they've got much of the major Lawrence poems on this site too, if you cannot find your text.

Shelved chronologically and by language. The only books I have a problem finding are the ones piled up in teetering stacks on the floor until I get around to re-shelving them.

[stlukesguild]

First of all on reading this the first and most prominent thing which had come into my mind was the Vikings, throughout the poem I think Norse Lore was strongly drawn upon. The metaphor of the "ship of death" was something that the Vikings literally did. Upon the death of a Viking, an actual ship was constructed in which the corpse of the dead was placed and then sent out to sea and the ships would be lain with relics of the material living world in the same way in which the poem speaks of placing food, wine, and clothing upon the ship of death.

The mention of ash within poem and alluding to fumes, also suggests the old Viking tradition.

And death is on the air like a smell of ashes!
Ah! can't you smell it?

Wait, wait, the little ship
drifting, beneath the deathly ashy gray
of a flood-dawn

For the Viking ships of the dead would be used as funeral pyres and once set adrift they would be then set afire.

Yes... the Viking burial is an image that this poem immediately brought to my mind as well. I also wonder whether the choice of the term "rose" and "pink" in describing the light/dawn at the poem's ending do not reinforce the seafaring imagery of the Vikings with an allusion to Homer and especially the Odyssey where we repeatedly confront the image of "rose-fingered dawn"?

[stlukesguild]

The allusion to Hamlet (the Dane) certainly further strengthens the connection to the Vikings. Beyond that, Hamlet, in his famous soliloquy ponders death... suicide... as a means to finally achieve peace... an end (quietus). He finally comes to the question as to whether death really shall bring peace/quietus:

To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause: there's the respect
That makes calamity of so long life;
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
The pangs of despised love, the law's delay,
The insolence of office and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscover'd country from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all...

Lawrence seems to suggest a like trepidation... a like uncertainty as to whether death is truly a "quietus"... an end:

And can a man his own quietus make
with a bare bodkin?

With daggers, bodkins, bullets, man can make
a bruise or break of exit for his life;
but is that a quietus, O tell me, is it quietus?

Surely not so! for how could murder, even self-murder
ever a quietus make?


O let us talk of quiet that we know,
that we can know, the deep and lovely quiet
of a strong heart at peace!

How can we this, our own quietus, make?

I am especially struck by the conflicting or perhaps ambiguous... uncertain terms used to describe this end:

...the dark and endless ocean of the end...


...the little ship is there; yet she is gone.
She is not seen, for there is nothing to see her by.
She is gone! gone! and yet
somewhere she is there.
Nowhere!


It is the end, it is oblivion.

And yet out of eternity a thread
separates itself on the blackness

[stlukesguild]

The Tennyson/Ulysses link is especially intriguing. Certainly Lawrence does suggest a similar frustration... disgust with his deteriorating/dying body.

[Dark Muse]

Yes, there does seem to be some conflicting or ambgious ideas about death or "the end" within this poem, as Lawrecne brings back the idea of oblivion more than once, yet at the same time he also refers to death as being born anew, which contradicts the idea of it being a complete oblibvion.

The journey is portrayed to sound as a sort of neverending one, while the details remain unknown as to just what awaits, if it is just an endless driifting down the sea.

[jinjang]

I modified my last post by adding a few more lines:

I went to a library. The complete collection of his poems has two other versions of the poem in appendix, one of which is shorter.

The shorter version has repetitions of "build your ship (Noah's Ark in my opinion), nothing matters, to prepare your longest journey to oblivion (heaven and complete peace), instead of not quietus (not death but hell) where you will wail in agony." What is in the quote is my impression from the shorter version.

I think I prefer my first and second impressions, instead of the last one.