Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-4rdpn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-19T03:53:47.736Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
This chapter is part of a book that is no longer available to purchase from Cambridge Core

Afterword

Bruce Clarke
Affiliation:
Texas Tech University
John Holmes
Affiliation:
University of Reading
Get access

Summary

D. H. Lawrence has a disarming short poem in his late collection Pansies, titled ‘Relativity’. It begins:

I like relativity and quantum theories

because I don't understand them

(ll. 1–2)

Nothing in the contemporary realm of the modern sciences is any more esoteric than these topics were in their own time of emergence, already most of a century ago. Confronting such matters, most poets and readers of poetry merge into the mass of humanity without specialised scientific training. The difference may simply be that poets and readers of poetry are more likely than others even to bring the matter to mind, to engage in some fashion with, perhaps to meditate upon, the cultural effects of their being among those who find such sciences compelling despite being incomprehensible in their mathematical details. Perhaps they are also more likely than others to find something in that situation fruitful rather than merely frustrating. Lawrence's poem continues:

and they make me feel as if space shifted about like a swan that can't settle,

refusing to sit still and be measured;

and as if the atom were an impulsive thing

always changing its mind.

(ll. 3–6)

The speaker's implication would be that, while such deep physical matters may not be understandable per se, nonetheless, for the lay observer of science they are still graspable in their implications. With the assistance of popular expositions one can gather the gist of what modern physics suggests about the complementarity rather than mutual exclusion of different locations or states of being; one can still appreciate the challenge that modern physics was then posing to classical verities regarding absolute space and time.

Type
Chapter
Information
Science in Modern Poetry
New Directions
, pp. 210 - 214
Publisher: Liverpool University Press
Print publication year: 2012

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.

  • Afterword
  • Edited by John Holmes, University of Reading
  • Book: Science in Modern Poetry
  • Online publication: 05 August 2012
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.5949/UPO9781846317743.014
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.

  • Afterword
  • Edited by John Holmes, University of Reading
  • Book: Science in Modern Poetry
  • Online publication: 05 August 2012
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.5949/UPO9781846317743.014
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.

  • Afterword
  • Edited by John Holmes, University of Reading
  • Book: Science in Modern Poetry
  • Online publication: 05 August 2012
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.5949/UPO9781846317743.014
Available formats
×