Reflections on the death of a porcupine and other essaysLawrence, D. H. (David Herbert)
Philosophy
Reflections on the death of a porcupine and other essays
Lawrence, D. H. (David Herbert)
English essays -- 20th century
It is we who are carried past in the seethe of mortality. The flower is
timeless and beyond condition. It is we who are swept on in the
condition of time. So we shall be swept as long as time lasts. Death is
part of the story. But we have being also in timelessness, we shall
become again absolute, as we have been absolute, as we are absolute.
We know that we are purely absolute. We know in the last issue we are
absolved from all opposition. We know that in the process of life we are
purely relative. But timelessness is our fate, and time is subordinate
to our fate. But time is eternal.
And the life of man is like a flower that comes into blossom and passes
away. In the beginning, the light touches the darkness, the darkness
touches the light, and the two embrace. They embrace in opposition, only
in their desire is their unanimity. There are two separate statements,
the dark wants the light, and the light wants the dark. But these two
statements are contained within the one: “They want each other.” And
this is the condition of absoluteness, this condition of their wanting
each other, that which makes light and dark consummate even in
opposition. The interrelation between them, this is constant and
absolute, let it be called love or power or what it may. It is all the
things that it can be called.
In the beginning, light touches darkness and darkness touches light.
Then life has begun. The light enfolds and implicates and involves the
dark, the dark receives and interpenetrates the light, they come nearer,
they are more finely combined, till they burst into the crisis of
oneness, the blossom, the utter being, the transcendent and timeless
flame of the iris.
Then time passes on. Out of the swoon the waves ebb back, dark towards
the dark, light towards the light. They ebb back and away, the leaves
return unto the darkness of the earth, the quivering glimmer of
substance returns into the light, the green of the last wavering iris
disappears, the waves ebb apart, further, further, further.
Yet they never separate. The whole flood recedes, the tides are going to
separate. And they separate entirely, save for one enfolded ripple, the
tiny, silent, scarce-visible enfolded pools of the seeds. These lie
potent, the meeting-ground, the well-head wherein the tides will surge
again, when the turn comes.
This is the life of man. In him too the tide sweeps together towards the
utter consummation, the consummation with the darkness, the consummation
with the light, flesh and spirit, one culminating crisis, when man
passes into timelessness and absoluteness.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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