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We have bit no forbidden apple,
Eve and I,
Yet the splashes of day and night
Falling round us no longer dapple
The same Eden with purple and white.
This is our own still valley
Our Eden, our home,
But day shows it vivid with feeling
And the pallor of night does not tally
With dark sleep that once covered its ceiling.
My little red heifer, to-night I looked in her eyes,
—She will calve to-morrow:
Last night when I went with the lantern, the sow was grabbing her litter
With red, snarling jaws: and I heard the cries
Of the new-born, and after that, the old owl, then the bats that flitter.
And I woke to the sound of the wood-pigeons, and lay and listened,
Till I could borrow
A few quick beats of a wood-pigeon’s heart, and when I did rise
The morning sun on the shaken iris glistened,
And I saw that home, this valley, was wider than Paradise.
I learned it all from my Eve
This warm, dumb wisdom.
She’s a finer instructress than years;
She has taught my heart-strings to weave
Through the web of all laughter and tears.
And now I see the valley
Fleshed all like me
With feelings that change and quiver:
And all things seem to tally
With something in me,
Something of which she’s the giver.
D.H. Lawrence’s Renascence offers a visceral exploration of renewal, human-nature symbiosis, and the reconfiguration of spiritual paradigms. Written during a period of profound personal and artistic evolution for Lawrence, the poem transcends mere pastoral reflection to interrogate the boundaries between primal instinct and transcendent awakening. Through its vivid sensory imagery, mythic undertones, and philosophical urgency, Renascence crystallizes Lawrence’s lifelong preoccupation with the raw, unmediated experience of existence.
Lawrence composed Renascence amid early 20th-century modernism’s fractured ethos, yet his work diverges from contemporaries like Eliot or Pound by embracing organic unity over fragmentation. The poem’s title-evoking rebirth-resonates with post-WWI cultural anxieties and Lawrence’s own disillusionment with industrialized society6. Rejecting Victorian moral strictures, he sought a “new religious consciousness” rooted in sensory immediacy, a theme central to Renascence4. The poem’s Edenic imagery subverts traditional Christian narratives, reframing paradise not as a lost ideal but as a dynamic, lived reality shaped by human emotion1. This aligns with Lawrence’s broader critique of institutionalized religion, which he viewed as stifling the “dark gods” of instinct and vitality6.
Lawrence employs visceral imagery to dissolve the boundary between observer and landscape:
Tactile Vitality: The “little red heifer” and “sow snarling” inject raw, almost violent life into the pastoral scene, mirroring Lawrence’s belief in nature’s amoral fecundity1.
Chromatic Contrasts: “Purple and white” days versus nights that “no longer tally” with sleep evoke the tension between conscious perception and unconscious primal states7.
Kinetic Syntax: Enjambed lines like “the old owl, then the bats that flitter” mimic the erratic pulse of natural cycles, rejecting rigid formalism for organic flow3.
The poem’s structure-free verse punctuated by irregular rhyme-reflects Lawrence’s rejection of artifice, prioritizing emotional authenticity over metrical constraint3.
The valley, initially a “still” Eden, becomes “wider than Paradise” through the speaker’s awakened perception. This transformation critiques static religious dogma, proposing instead a paradise forged through sensory engagement. Eve, reconfigured as a “warm, dumb wisdom,” symbolizes instinctual knowledge that surpasses rational thought-a hallmark of Lawrence’s anti-Cartesian philosophy47.
Life-death cycles (the calving heifer, the sow’s brutality) underscore nature’s indifferent creativity. The speaker’s ability to “borrow / A few quick beats of a wood-pigeon’s heart” signals a dissolution of human-nature hierarchies, echoing Lawrence’s belief in cosmic interconnectedness6.
The shift from observation (“I looked in her eyes”) to visceral participation (“I woke to the sound…glistered”) mirrors Lawrence’s concept of “blood consciousness”-a primal, pre-linguistic way of knowing7. The valley’s fleshed “feelings that change and quiver” anthropomorphize nature while grounding human emotion in biological rhythms.
Lawrence’s rural upbringing surfaces in the poem’s agrarian motifs, yet his portrayal of nature avoids romanticization. The sow’s “red, snarling jaws” recall his childhood exposure to mining communities’ harsh realities, where beauty and brutality coexisted1. Philosophically, the poem embodies his rejection of dualism:
Body-Spirit Synthesis: Eve’s role as “instructress” bridges sensual and spiritual realms, challenging Cartesian divides4.
Anti-Mechanism: The “shaken iris glistened” epitomizes Lawrence’s preference for organic flux over industrial rigidity6.
These ideas align with his later works, such as Women in Love, where human relationships mirror natural forces1.
While Renascence shares thematic DNA with Lawrence’s Snake (primal encounters) and Bavarian Gentians (mythic transcendence), its tonal optimism contrasts with Eliot’s The Waste Land. Where Eliot fractures narrative to depict spiritual desolation, Lawrence constructs coherence through sensory immersion-a “web of all laughter and tears” that binds human and non-human36.
Renascence distills Lawrence’s revolutionary vision: paradise is not a distant ideal but a palpable reality woven from instinct, emotion, and the unceasing pulse of life. By fusing mythic resonance with unflinching naturalism, the poem enacts its own rebirth-a testament to poetry’s power to bridge the visceral and the sublime. In an age of alienation, Lawrence’s work remains a clarion call to embrace the “dark gods” within and without, finding divinity in the very act of feeling.
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