Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-v9fdk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-09T19:46:27.009Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

13 - Apocalypse now (and then). Or, D. H. Lawrence and the swan in the electron

from Part 2 - Contexts and critical issues

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 May 2006

Anne Fernihough
Affiliation:
Girton College, Cambridge
Get access

Summary

Look then

where the father of all things swims in a mist of atoms

electrons and energies, quantums and relativities

mists, wreathing mists,

like a wild swan or a goose . . .

And in the dark unscientific I feel the drum-winds of his wings

Lawrence, ‘Give Us Gods’

Prophecy versus postmodernism: Lawrence at the millennium

Inevitably, so Lawrence might have said, death and rebirth, or at any rate transformation of some kind, have been both projects and subjects for the much anticipated and perhaps overhyped millennium, an event towards which he and his cohort of modernists seem to have been far more sensitively attuned than we ourselves. Rough beasts and second comings, chantings in orgy on summer morns, new styles of will, deaths of the old gang, strange lights in the sky, doves descending and swans arising: the apocalyptic ambitions of Lawrence's generation loom as grandly over ours as Stravinsky heaves high over MTV, Virginia Woolf over Fay Weldon.

Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2001

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×