Lapsing Out: Ideas of Mortality and Immortality in Lawrence
Donald Gutierrez
Twentieth Century Literature 1978 DOI: 10.2307/441126 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Theoretical or philosophical paper Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Citations | 1 |
| Key points | Argues that D. H. Lawrence, following the English Romantic poets, explored states of dissolution—what Keats called "self-destroying"—as a way of arriving at deeper modes of being, treating these motifs both positively and negatively in Women in Love. The essay traces this theme across several Lawrence works and closes by examining the late poem Shadows. |
Abstract
Colin Clarke, in River of Dissolution: D. H. Lawrence and English Romanticism, has developed the thesis that the nineteenth-century English Romantic poets explored states of dissolution as a way of arriving at strange modes of being.' He states, further, that D. H. Lawrence, deeply influenced by this tradition, elaborates motifs of dissolution both positively and negatively in Women in Love with considerable sophistication. Like the Romantics, Lawrence is endlessly concerned with what Keats has called 'self-destroying'-the process of into being, the lapsing of consciousness which is yet the discovery of a deeper consciousness, the dissolution of the hard, intact, readydefined ego ... (p. 3). This essay will attempt to describe and analyze dying into being in several key Lawrence works, ending with a scrutiny of an important yet seldom discussed late poem entitled Shadows.