D. H. Lawrence, Ship of Death

[JBI]

With the somewhat success of The Man With the Blue Guitar thread, I thought it may be a good idea to start a thread on this great poem by D. H. Lawrence, The Ship of Death - available here: http://www.poetryconnection.net/poet...Lawrence/15630

I

Now it is autumn and the falling fruit
and the long journey towards oblivion.

The apples falling like great drops of dew
to bruise themselves an exit from themselves.

And it is time to go, to bid farewell
to one's own self, and find an exit
from the fallen self.


................................

V

Build then the ship of death, for you must take
the longest journey, to oblivion.

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

Already our bodies are fallen, bruised, badly bruised,
already our souls are oozing through the exit
of the cruel bruise.

Already the dark and endless ocean of the end
is washing in through the breaches of our wounds,
Already the flood is upon us.

Oh build your ship of death, your little ark
and furnish it with food, with little cakes, and wine
for the dark flight down oblivion.

Any takers - what do you make of it? Seems a strange sort of poem to me, loaded with a dark sort of irony - I'll post more on it later with some other observations if other people feel like responding.

[Paulclem]

This poem reminds me of the image of John Donne in the shroud that he had done shortly before his death.

http://images.google.co.uk/imgres?imgurl=http://www.harpers.org/media/image/blogs/misc/donne-shroud2.bmp&imgrefurl=http://www.harpers.org/archive/2007/08/hbc-90000970&usg=__0ZIt5eEOEW5rNbZjYjMIDhn441U=&h=661& w=500&sz=969&hl=en&start=24&tbnid=c7wNprMJ7koiWM:& tbnh=138&tbnw=104&prev=/images%3Fq%3Djohn%2Bdonne%26gbv%3D2%26ndsp%3D18%26 hl%3Den%26sa%3DN%26start%3D18


There is a brave attempt to give the reader hope in both Lawrence and Donne. I've always like Bavarian Gentians as well. One of Lawrences redeeming qualities is his willingness to face life and death.

[Virgil]

Oh cool. I think I've read this, but I can't remember it. I'll read it over the weekend.

[JBI]

Well, I guess this thread is killed now, since it is moved to an invisible corner of the forum.

[Paulclem]

Why was it moved?

I agree its a strange poem - to say that Leavis called him the Priest of Love, there is a lack of God or anyone in this poem. It's oddly solitary, despite all the biblical imagery. It seems to have a secular kind of resurrection within it, though it nods to mythology and the bible.

And where is the love he's been banging on about all his years. Perhaps thats the scary thing he's considering - the loneliness of death.

[Virgil]

Originally Posted by Paulclem

Why was it moved?

I agree its a strange poem - to say that Leavis called him the Priest of Love, there is a lack of God or anyone in this poem. It's oddly solitary, despite all the biblical imagery. It seems to have a secular kind of resurrection within it, though it nods to mythology and the bible.

And where is the love he's been banging on about all his years. Perhaps thats the scary thing he's considering - the loneliness of death.

Leavis doesn't always get Lawrence correct. He was one of the first to bring Lawrence to the forefront, but a lot of criticism on Lawrence in the 1950', while a boost to his reputation, didn't get it completely right. It took the give and take of critics to settle into a better understanding of Lawrence.

I wonder why this was moved? But we'll keep it alive.

[jinjang]

First time I read it, it gave me an odd pang with the word "oblivion" repeated.
Second time, it rang me a sense of renewal in oneself, shedding old "fallen or bruised self." Loneliness is not bad if one transcends its negativity and takes it in detachment and peace. I felt indeed a kind of 'resurrection' after reading it.

[Logos]

Yes it was moved, with a 4 day re-direct from General Literature

Please see:

http://www.online-literature.com/for...ad.php?t=45800

--

[Paulclem]

JBI suggests there is a dark irony in the poem. t is crtainly ironic that a writerso obsessd with relationships should finally eschew them for this solitary voyage. There no sense of anyne at the other end either- just peace. I wonder if he finally thought that others were a kind of hell. Certainly he moved around to escape the taint of the establishment.

It is also a curious image of resurrection too. A polished shell. What ae your thoughts on that?

[Paulclem]

Pardon my sausage finger netbook typos.

[JBI]

Have you built your ship of death, O have you?
O build your ship of death, for you will need it.

The grim frost is at hand, when the apples will fall
thick, almost thundrous, on the hardened earth.


That to me seems a tad ironic - have you built your ship of death, you will need it - as if in death you will need such a ship, to get past anything into the abyss. Anyone think the apples though are a reference to Frost's After Apple Picking, or is that just too big a stretch?

In that sense perhaps, if we call that an allusion, which could bring interesting things, though I am not sure if I can justify that (Frost wrote his poem in 1914, available here: http://www.online-literature.com/frost/741/).

The apples falling though, the poem, though talking about death though, I would argue, talks more about life - have you built the ship of death, to me means something like have you picked the apples, or have you lived your life - the suicide comparison in the earlier part seems to suggest such a reference:

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?

The ship, ironically, seems to dominate as a romantic image, but the irony falls on the state of the poet himself, I would argue, dying before his time in a sort of unfulfillment - I am told that his letters from this period betray a sort of pessimistic view on his life as sort of wasted, and on the futility of literature as a means to existence.

But I think the question though, is what is really the point of the ship in this scheme - if the boat is sailing to oblivion, wouldn't said daggers and whatnot make just as quiet an ending - what is this piece to be found in the fullfilment of the journey? The poem to me suggests something completely different than, for instance this bit from Roethke:

Let seed be grass, and grass turn into hay:
I'm martyr to a motion not my own;
What's freedom for? To know eternity.
I swear she cast a shadow white as stone.
But who would count eternity in days?
These old bones live to learn her wanton ways:
(I measure time by how a body sways.)

From I Knew a Woman by Theodore Roethke.

Is Lawrence though, perhaps suggesting that he did not have time to build this ship, or to set things in order - is he suggesting that there is no peace for him on this voyage, and that it isn't a peaceful decent, but rather a violent, premature one, but even so, what is the significance of that, how is that any less "quietus" - hmm.

[Janine]

I have read this poem many times and I love it. I think he wrote it very late and in the time his own death was quite evident to all. I will comment later on. I don't have the time now, but DHL is my favorite author; so no doubt, I will find something to say about it. I will look up the time slot and the influences and what exactly was going on in DHL's life during this period.

Now that I read it again, and plan to read the full version online tonight; I see I could interpret this in two ways. One is the burning down/rebirth - Phoenix idea, that dominated Lawrence's work; the other is his own actual physical mortality/immortality/death. I will go into details later on, when I get back home and have more time to respond.

[Dark Muse]

Well the words Ship and Death have caught my interest. I will take a look at this poem as soon as I am able to do so.

[jinjang]

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

It does not seem to me that the death here is our physical death but rather our mind death, a transition to a different world because you become a new person. A long and painful struggle to shed a rotten old self to become a fresh new self. I remember seeing fallen apples in autumn, they are mostly rotten.

Already the dark and endless ocean of the end
is washing in through the breaches of our wounds,
Already the flood is upon us.

Oh build your ship of death, your little ark
and furnish it with food, with little cakes, and wine
for the dark flight down oblivion.

I am reading a few lines at at time and I may not see a whole picture yet.
Noah's Ark is brought back to represent a sort of cleansing in small scale because it applies to an individual not a human race. One can shed and forget his or her rotten thoughts and habits, one may redeem himself with innocence and in oblivion.

Originally Posted by JBI

The ship, ironically, seems to dominate as a romantic image, but the irony falls on the state of the poet himself, I would argue, dying before his time in a sort of unfulfillment - I am told that his letters from this period betray a sort of pessimistic view on his life as sort of wasted, and on the futility of literature as a means to existence.

It makes sense with the quote you put up, but I did not sense pessimism. Maybe he is considering fatalism.

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?

Is it part of the poem? I can't get to the link somehow. I could interpret this part as to say that he does not want to fight what is inevitable and because it is not quietus.

Never mind my network was slow and let me read the complete poem first.

[jinjang]

I have to take back a lot of what I said. I read the whole poem and now I have a totally different interpretation. I withdraw from here and I apologize.

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.