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 thus, seeking consummation in the utter darkness, that I come to
the woman in desire. She is the doorway, she is the gate to the dark
eternity of power, the creator’s power. When I put my hand on her, my
heart beats with a passion of fear and ecstasy, for I touch my own
passing away, my own ceasing-to-be, I apprehend my own consummation in a
darkness which obliterates me in its infinity. My veins rock as if they
were being destroyed, the blood takes fire on the edge of oblivion, and
beats backward and forward. I resist, yet I am compelled; the woman
resists, yet she is compelled. And we are the relative parts dominated
by the strange compulsion of the absolute.
Gradually my veins relax their gates, gradually the rocking blood goes
forward, quivers on the edge of oblivion, then yields itself up, passes
into the borderland of oblivion. Oh, and then I would die, I would
quickly die, to have all power, all life at once, to come instantly to
pure, eternal oblivion, the source of life. But patience is fierce at
the bottom of me; fierce, indomitable, abiding patience. So my blood
goes forth in shock after shock of delirious passing-away, in shock
after shock entering into consummation, till my soul is slipping its
moorings, my mind, my will fuses down, I melt out and am gone into the
eternal darkness, the primal creative darkness reigns, and I am not, and
at last _I am_.
Shock after shock of ecstasy and the anguish of ecstasy, death after
death of trespass into the unknown, till I fall down into the flame, I
lapse into the intolerable flame, a pallid shadow I am transfused into
the flux of unendurable darkness, and am gone. No spark nor vestige
remains within the supreme dark flow of the flame, I am contributed
again to the immortal source. I am with the dark Almighty of the
beginning.
Till, new-created, I am thrown forth again on the shore of creation,
warm and lustrous, goodly, new born from the darkness out of which all
time has issued.
And then, new-born on the knees of darkness, new-issued from the womb of
creation, I open my eyes to the light and know the goal, the end, the
light which stands over the end of the journey, the everlasting day, the
oneness of the spirit.
The new journey, the new life has begun, the travelling to the opposite
eternity, to the infinite light of the Spirit, the consummation in the
Spirit.
My source and issue is in two eternities, I am founded in the two
infinities. But absolute is the rainbow that goes between; the iris of
my very being.
It may be, however, that the seed of light never propagates within the
darkness, that the light in me is sterile, that I am never re-born
within the womb, the Source, to be issued towards the opposite eternity.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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