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 possible then to deny it?
Having declared the One God, then the partial soul, fulfilled of the
darkness only, proceeds to establish this God on earth, to devour and
obliterate all else.
Rising from the darkness of consummation in the flesh, with the woman,
it seeks to establish its kingdom over all the world. It strides forth,
the lord, the master, strong for mastery. It will dominate all, all, it
will bring all under the rules of itself, of the One, the Darkness
lighted with the lamps of its own choice.
This is the heroic tyrant, the fabulous king-warrior, like Sardanapolus
or Caesar, like Saul even. These warrior kings seek to pass beyond all
relatedness, to become absolute in might and power. And they fall
inevitably. Their Judas is a David, a Brutus: the individual who knows
something of both flames, but commits himself to neither. He holds
himself, in his own ego, superior either to the creative dark
power-flame, or the conscious love-flame. And so, he is the small man
slaying the great. He is virtuous egoistic Brutus, or David: David
slaying the preposterous Goliath, overthrowing the heroic Saul, taking
Bathsheba and sending Uriah to death: David dancing naked before the
Ark, asserting the oneness, his own oneness, the one infinity,
_himself_, the egoistic God, I AM. And David never went in unto Michal
any more, because she jeered at him. So that she was barren all her
life.
But it was David who really was barren. Michal, when she mocked, mocked
the sterility of David. For the spirit in him was blasted with
unfertility; he could not become born again, he could not be conceived
in the spirit. Michal, the womb of profound darkness, could not conceive
to the overweak seed of David’s spirit. David’s seed was too impure, too
feeble in sheer spirit, too egoistic, it bred and begot preponderant
egoists. The flood of vanity set in after David, the lamps and candles
began to gutter.
Power is sheer flame, and spirit is sheer flame, and between them is the
clue of the Holy Ghost. But David put a false clue between them: the
clue of his own ego, cunning and _triumphant_.
It is unfertility of spirit which sends man raging to the woman, and
sends him raging away again, unsatisfied. It is not the woman’s
barrenness: it is his own. It is sterility in himself which makes a Don
Juan.
And the course of the barren spirit is dogmatically to assert One God,
One Way, One Glory, one exclusive salvation. And this One God is indeed
God, this one Way is the way, but it is the way of egoism, and the One
God is the reflection, inevitably, of the worshipper’s ego.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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