[77] Bavarian Gentians

Forwarding Thomas's poems while he's away...

Not every man has gentians in his house
in soft September, at slow, sad Michaelmas.

Bavarian gentians, big and dark, only dark
darkening the daytime, torch-like, with the smoking blueness of Pluto's
	gloom,
ribbed and torch-like, with their blaze of darkness spread blue
down flattening into points, flattened under the sweep of white day
torch-flower of the blue-smoking darkness, Pluto's dark-blue daze,
black lamps from the halls of Dis, burning dark blue,
giving off darkness, blue darkness, as Demeter's pale lamps give off
	light,
lead me then, lead the way.

Reach me a gentian, give me a torch!
let me guide myself with the blue, forked torch of this flower
down the darker and darker stairs, where blue is darkened on blueness
even where Persephone goes, just now, from the frosted September
to the sightless realm where darkness is awake upon the dark
and Persephone herself is but a voice
or a darkness invisible enfolded in the deeper dark
of the arms Plutonic, and pierced with the passion of dense gloom,
among the splendor of torches of darkness, shedding darkness on
the lost bride and her groom.

    -- D. H. Lawrence

Published posthumously.
From 'Last Poems', 1932.

Lawrence's 'Bavarian Gentians' hypnotizes the reader with its rolling,
flowing sounds, its gently rising and falling cadences, its almost
soporific repetitions... as the soft and sweeping syllables wrap
themselves around you, you become entranced, slipping into the world of
"Pluto's dark-blue daze", falling under the spell of the gently spoken
words...

thomas.

[Commentary]

This poem, written close to Lawrence's death, is much more meaningful if
you know what a Bavarian Gentian looks like. It's a blue tubular flower
and was one of the symbols that Lawrence claimed as his  own, along with
the phoenix, dark sun, and rainbow symbols.

Here he relates the flower with the Persephone myth. Persephone, a
daughter of Zeus and Demeter, was abducted by Pluto, King of Hades. For
six months of the year she must reign as Queen alongside Pluto but is
allowed to return to the surface for the other six. Persephone carries
the flower torch-like into the underground to light her way to Pluto's
chambers. Or rather it is Pluto's "blue-smoking darkness" which
overtakes the light of day, her consciousness. "Black lamps from the
halls of Dis." It is Death which has come, and the flower acts as guide
into the "sightless realm." But like the phoenix, Persephone will once
again be resurrected for she is a symbol of springtime rebirth. And
although Lawrence's body is dead, his consciousness arises again each
time we read his words.

In a letter to Ernest Collings dated Jan. 17, 1913, Lawrence writes:
    "I conceive a man's body as a kind of flame, like a candle flame,
forever upright and yet flowing: and the intellect is just the light
that is shed on to the things around. And I am not so much concerned
with the things around--which is really mind--but with the mystery of
the flame forever flowing, coming God knows how from out of practically
nowhere, and being itself, whatever there is around it, that it lights
up. We have got so ridiculously mindful, that we never know that we
ourselves are anything--we think there are only the objects we shine
upon. And there the poor flame goes on burning ignored, to produce this
light. And instead of chasing the mystery in the fugitive, half-lighted
things outside us, we ought to look at ourselves, and say 'My God, I am
myself!'"
		    (p. 563-64/The Portable D.H. Lawrence/Penguin)

This is what's known as Lawrence's "belief in the blood" speech. I
quoted the second half of the speech first because it's important to
understand that Lawrence wasn't so much anti-intellectual as he was
anti-self-conscious. He was himself both self-conscious and
intellectual, and therefore knew that these things came at a high price.
So here then is the first part of that speech:

"My great religion is a belief in the blood, the flesh, as being wiser
than the intellect. We can go wrong in our minds. But what our blood
feels and believes and says, is always true. The intellect is only a bit
and a bridle."

The blue gentian, the "forked flame" which plays a part at the end of
Lady Chatterley's Lover, is also the body of man. It is our bodies that
wilt and die, drawing us to Pluto's chambers in the "marriage of the
living dark." We are all virgins to Death. And the reason not everyone
has "gentians in his house in soft September" is because not everyone
knows how to be truly alive in the flesh. Not everyone knows how to
"achieve your own beauty as the flowers do" -- existing instead in a
kind of living-death so that the "nuptials" are replaced with apathy.
Lawrence relished the contrast between life and death, day and night,
male and female. It is the "marriage of the living dark" at which he is
"wedding guest."

    -- Tina Ferris, from the WWW.