Vence, Alpes -Maritimes, France) Genre
Modernism philosophical fiction : became famous writing novels about sex. But his best stories—and his most profound achievements—reside elsewhere. : Lawrence was an English writer, novelist, short story writer, poet and essayist. His modernist works reflect on modernity, social alienation and industrialization, while championing sexuality, vitality and instinct. Several of his novels, Sons and Lovers, The Rainbow, Women in Love, and Lady Chatterley ‘s Lover, were the subject of censorship trials for their radical portrayals of sexuality and use of explicit language. His famous Short stories:
“Odour of Chrysanthemums”
“The Rocking-Horse Winner”: Lawrence resided at Ranch, Taos, New Mexico, U.S. Lawrence’s opinions and artistic preferences earned him a controversial reputation; he endured contemporary persecution and public misrepresentation of his creative work throughout his life, much of which he spent in a voluntary exile that he described as a “savage enough pilgrimage”. At the time of his death, he had been variously scorned as tasteless, avant-garde, and a pornographer who had only garnered success for erotica; however, English novelist and critic E. M. Forster, in an obituary notice, challenged this widely held view, describing him as “the greatest imaginative novelist of our generation”. Later, English literary critic F. R. Leavis also championed both his artistic integrity and his moral seriousness.
Grey Evening : : By D H Lawrence ; : : :
When you went, how was it you carried with you
My missal book of fine, flamboyant Hours?
My book of turrets and of red-thorn bowers,
And skies of gold, and ladies in bright tissue?
Now underneath a blue-grey twilight, heaped
Beyond the withering snow of the shorn fields
Stands rubble of stunted houses; all is reaped
And trodden that the happy summer yields.
Now lamps like yellow echoes glimmer among
The shadowy stubble of the under-dusk;
As farther off the scythe of night is swung
Ripe little stars come rolling from their husk.
And all the earth is gone into a dust
Of greyness mingled with a fume of gold,
Timeless as branching lichens, pale as must,
Since all the sky has withered and gone cold.
And so I sit and scan the book of grey,
Feeling the shadows like a blind man reading,
All fearful lest I find the last words bleeding:
Nay, take this weary Book of Hours away.
“Grey Evening” First appeared in the 1916 collection, Amores By David Herbert ( D H ) Lawrence is About Pictorial “blue-grey twilight”of An Automnal “Evening” in fancy and showy “flamboyant Hours” , the “earth under gleaming shadowy dusk”of “lamp like yellow” colour as well as the natural melancholy in the nighttime of departure of love : : : :
Stanza 1 : : “When you went, how was it you carried with you 1
My missal book of fine, flamboyant Hours? 2
My book of turrets and of red-thorn bowers, 3
And skies of gold, and ladies in bright tissue?” 4 : : lines 1 To 4 : : : :
About A Christian Man or Woman attending a Mass Of Roman Catholic Church who celebrates with the gathering of devotee’s responsive reading or singing different prayers which are contained in a book 📖 called ” missal book” 📚 : A gothic old fashioned reflection of the Middle Ages referred here ( in lines 1 & 2 ) as ” missal book of ( “fine , flamboyant” , that is ‘showy’ ) Hours” ( line 2 ) which draws a picture of “turrets” , “red -thorn bowers” and “ladies in bright tissue ” and skies of gold” 🪙 ( lines 3 & 4 ) : The “turrets” are small 🗼 towers extending above a building ( of a Church ? ) whereas ” bowers ” are pergola of the arbour – like Trees , here “red thorn” trees that provide a shady ‘resting place’. These pictorial images represent a Christian man’s or woman’s incomprehensible allusions and a puzzling 🤔 terseness depicted by the Speaker in this exoteric expression of a common man of public in a modernist poem. That is why the speaker asks a Christian devotee or worshippers , ” how was it when you carried my “missal book of Hours” with you when you went to a mass /prayers ( understood by enlightened inner circle only ) of the Church ! ? ( lines 1 & 2 ) : : The howdy , here is cryptic. However, the “book of Hours” signify the fine showy hours of Church – Going ‘Day’ of a fine “flamboyant” season in late Autumn time. 🍂 🍁 ( line 8 ) : : : :
Stanza 2 : : ” Now underneath a blue-grey twilight, heaped 5
Beyond the withering snow of the shorn fields 6
Stands rubble of stunted houses; all is reaped 7
And trodden that the happy summer yields.” 8 : : lines 5 To 8 : : : :
About a rural ‘ Countryside’ Evening appearing in as a “blue – grey twilight” heaped of the “shorn fields” ( lines 5 & 6 ) , Meaning, the crops in the “fields” have been already “shorn” or reaped, as if cut ( or ‘clipped off’ like , in the hair curls of the babies , or in the wool of the sheeps. ) , and large quantities have been arranged in the “heaps”or in stacks. : : “all is reaped” ( line 7 ) : all natural products of crops have been ‘harvested’and ‘gathered’ : : “stands rubble of stunted houses; ( line 7 ) Meaning, the rubble ( the remains ) of houses are still standing ( holding firm upright ) as if destroyed , or say they are like in a condition ‘in need of repairs’. And this repairing condition indicates a marking that something has happened which has made to seem belittled of their worth. : : The “weathering snow” of the fields ( line 6 ) indicates the snowy Day of the event of snow ❄️ falling 🌨️ or influence of the weather in late Autumn time that must have impaired in vigour. : : : :
Stanza 3 : : ” Now lamps like yellow echoes glimmer among 9
The shadowy stubble of the under-dusk; 10
As farther off the scythe of night is swung 11
Ripe little stars come rolling from their husk.” 12 : : lines 9 To 12 : : : :
About an Urban Scene where ” lamps like yellow echoes glimmer” ( line 9 ) which shines brightly among twilight. In “The shadowy stubble of the under – dusk ; ” ( line 10 ) , The Poet Speaker draws a colourful picture of the ‘brighter Sunshine’, here in its last gleam of the yellow colour lights resembling the lamp light. Husks are The plants materials ( pieces of coverings , stems and small leaves separated from the grain- seeds ) not gathered and remained in the “shorn fields” which have been in – mixed and are echoic or mirrored in 🌇 gloaming of the nightfall that appears soon as The “shadowy stubble of the under – dusk.” ( line 10 ) : : ” the scythe of night 🌃 is swung” ( line 11 ) : Meaning , the green grass of the grain plants cut with the scythe( sidh ) , actually an edge tool with a curved blade and long handles for both hands , but the Poet Speaker calls it “scythe of night” which is “swung”that is, the night has moved in a curve or arc , parallel to the field(s) to spread the thickness of shadow on the earth through its shears. : : The outcome is thankfully and hopefully brilliant ; As “Ripe little ⭐✨ stars come rolling from their husk.” ( line 12 ) : The word , “rolling” narrates the grains , fruits , etc. Produced and harvested in the fields are very much like Stars ( emitting shining light ) seemingly rolled down from their husks similar to the shadows of the darkness of the sky spread across the landscape at the end of the day. : : “Ripe(ness)” suggests the ‘ready to eat’ state of the grains. ; as well as ripe time suitable for some changes in the life at social and personal levels of the changing mindsets with man’s advanced growth and expected development in the changing seasons ahead. : That is how an onset of ( late ) “Automnal Night” happens from its earlier “Grey Evening” time of the Day which has been metaphorically endured in a way– artfully cut and engraved in to a precious gem of poem. : : : :
Stanza 4 : : ” And all the earth is gone into a dust 13
Of greyness mingled with a fume of gold, 14
Timeless as branching lichens, pale as must, 15
Since all the sky has withered and gone cold.” 16 : : lines 13 To 16 : : : :
About “earth gone in to a dust” ( line 13 ) that is broken or fallen apart in to the dusty fragments “Of greyness mingled”, that is mixed up to combine together ” with a fumes of gold.” ( line 14 ) : : “timeless as branching lichens” ( nice simile ), “pale as must”( line 15 ) : branching “litchens ” are thallophytic plants with crusty patches or bushy growths found on tree trunks or rocks or ground. The Poet Speaker compares their paleness with “must” named to a grape juice before or during fermentation processed in winery. The colour occuring alongside the grey Evening is thus inmixed also with purplish red colour essentially of the alcoholic Wine 🍷 🍷 🍷 🍷 “All the sky has withered”, that is , all the freshness , vigour or vitality have been lost and has “gone cold” ( line 16 ) since the grey Evening too has withered and nightfall is being turned out to an Automnal Night with the end of an Day. : : : :
Stanza 5 : : ” And so I sit and scan the book of grey, 17
Feeling the shadows like a blind man reading, 18
All fearful lest I find the last words bleeding: 19
Nay, take this weary Book of Hours away.” 20 : : lines 17 To 20 : : : :
About seeing what would happen to a blind man, reading “the book of grey” with his fingers, fearing he may find “the last words bleeding” and about the same shadowy feeling and fearfulness of the Poet Speaker as he says ,” I sit and scan the book of grey” lines 17 to 19 📖 : : The reset of the scene of Jesus Christ’s last moments in His bleeding — of the redness which has to be inmixed with the 🌧️ Rain that has to occur at the Nightlong Hours of His taking all pains from the lives on Earth . : The thrust of This “life in death” and The aforesaid feeling and fearfulness , together with the finding of the “last words of bleeding” by the Poet Speaker brings for himself , A ‘Melancholy‘ of the overwhelmingly bleak , and desolate atmosphere of the Death in the Shadowy nightfall and Night of Darkness on “His Departure”: : The poet Speaker himself has plundered this finding of His “last Words” from the ” book of Hours“which he reads with unbearable pain. Hence The last line 20 , “Nay, take this weary Book of Hours away.” 20 : :
Carol Rumen writes in Guardian about the last line 20 : “.. . quaintly poetic on account of the “Nay”’, but the word may have other connotations for Lawrence, who had earlier experimented with poems in the Nottinghamshire dialect. It may simply emphasise how plainly and passionately the new, lover-less Book of Hours is rejected. : The Poem ‘ Grey Evening’ will rarely find its way into the popular anthologies. All the same it expresses the force of Lawrence’s personality : it has original organic life. It may partly imitate “a missal book” but it’s alive with “fine, flamboyant Hours” and the raw melancholy of their loss. ” : : : : ( “Quaintly” poetic manner is a strange old fashioned yet not unpleasant manner. ) : : : :
” Grey Evening “, By D H Lawrence Information Appreciation and poem Analysis Presented by V Jayaraj Pune India August 9 , 2023 : : : : : : : :
MADHU MALTI 