WL <\/em>91-2).<\/p>\nShirley noted that Lawrence was mainly raised on the King James Version<\/em> (1611), but that he also praised James Moffatt\u2019s version of 1924, which divested the Bible of its Jacobeanism, and indicated typographically (in its New Testament) when the Old Testament was being quoted \u2013 an intertextual feature that he may well have found useful in writing Apocalypse<\/em>.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n
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She also noted the frequency with which Lawrence\u2019s cadences are inflected by the language of the Bible. For example, in Kangaroo <\/em>Somers\u2019s curse on his inspectors: \u201cbecause they had handled his private parts, and looked into them, their eyes should burst and their hands should wither and their hearts should rot\u201d, resembles the parallelism of Zechariah<\/em> 14.12: \u201cTheir eyes shall rot in their sockets, and their tongues shall rot within their mouths\u201d (Moffatt).<\/p>\nShirley then began her concentration on patriarchs – not on Adam and David, who have already been much discussed in Lawrence studies, but on Noah, Abraham, Lot and Jacob.<\/p>\n
Jacob is the type of the patriarch in The Boy in the Bush<\/em>, where Jacob Ellis is one of two brothers. His brother Esau has died, and his nephew is also called Esau. This Lawrencian Jacob, too, has many children, and Lennie is said to be the \u201cBenjamin\u201d (ie favourite son) of his father (BB<\/em> 141).<\/p>\nNoah was known even to young children, in part because of the nursery toys (such as arks and rainbows) associated with his child-friendly story. In Twilight in Italy<\/em> Lawrence writes: \u201cThere were hundreds of cattle painted standing on meadows like a child\u2019s noah\u2019s-ark toys arranged in groups: a group of red cows, a group of brown horses, a group of brown goats, a few grey sheep.\u201d (\u201cA Chapel Among the Mountains\u201d in Twilight and Italy and Other Essays<\/em>, p. 33). Frieda mentions Noah\u2019s ark in relation to an excursion that they made: \u201cWe went into a huge old Noah\u2019s Ark of a boat, called \u2018Esmeralda,\u2019 on the lake of Chapala, with two other friends and Spud.\u201d\u00a0 (Not I but the Wind<\/em>, Southern Illinois UP, p. 140).<\/p>\n <\/p>\n
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The Noah story formed an archetype, for Lawrence, between the old world and the new – the latter comprising the noblest survivors from the old world. Lawrence wrote about his Noah\u2019s Flood <\/em>play project in these terms: \u201cin my idea they still belong to the old demi-god order – and their wives – faced with the world and the end of the world: and the jeering-jazzing sort of people of the world, and the sort of democracy of decadence in it: the contrast of the demi-gods adhering to a greater order: and the wives wavering between the two: and the ark gradually rising among the jeering\u201d (3 March, 1925, Letters <\/em>5.217-18). He had already, a decade before, conceived of the apocalypse which he considered humanity to deserve in terms of a great flood: \u201cIt would be nice if the Lord sent another Flood and drowned the world. Probably I should want to be Noah. I am not sure.\u201d (14 May, 1915, Letters <\/em>2.338-40).<\/p>\nYet in The Rainbow<\/em> (Shirley cited Virginia Hyde as positing), Tom Brangwen can be thought of as \u201ca latter-day Noah who drowns in the flood of modernism\u201d. Thereafter a matriarchal era begins with \u201cAnna Victrix\u201d and continues in \u201cFirst Love\u201d, when Ursula reworks the story of the flood in feminist terms by imagining naiads who witnessed the flood and are amused at the four men in the ark thinking themselves masters of the post-flood universe. Shirley pointed out that Ursula\u2019s vision resembles a fifteenth century Biblical illumination in which mermaids swim around the Ark.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n
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Continuing this theme Shirley informed us that a Woman\u2019s Bible <\/em>was published in the year that Lawrence was born: Elizabeth Cady Stanton\u2019s selection of Biblical verses with a feminist commentary. Lawrence\u2019s next novel, Women in Love<\/em>, had had as one potential title Noah\u2019s Ark<\/em>(3 Letters<\/em> 183), the implication presumably being that Ursula and Birkin are held, together, above the floodline.<\/p>\nTurning to Abraham Shirley noted that in Kangaroo<\/em> the eponymous character compares himself to Abraham carrying his people. He asks Somers: \u201cAnd if I have to be a fat old Kangaroo with \u2013 not an Abraham\u2019s bosom, but a pouch to carry young Australia in \u2013 why \u2013 do you really resent it ?\u201d (K<\/em> 120). Abraham is also the type of the patriarch in The Boy in the Bush<\/em>, where Jack\u2019s household, including flocks, employees, and the latter\u2019s wives and children, resembles Abraham\u2019s. He justifies his \u201clegal marriage with Monica\u201d and his \u201cown marriage with Mary\u201d on the grounds that:<\/p>\nThe old heroes, the old fathers of red earth, like Abraham in the Bible, like David even, they took the wives they needed for their own completeness, without this nasty chop-and-change business of divorce. Then why should he not do the same?<\/p>\n
Mollie Skinner queried this ending, which raises feminist questions, since Sarah submitted to Abraham.<\/p>\n
Finally Shirley turned to Lot, whose parting from Sodom, and his wife\u2019s turning to a pillar of salt on turning to look back, is narrated in Genesis <\/em>19. Chapter titles in Aaron\u2019s Rod<\/em> include \u201cThe Pillar of Salt\u201d and \u201cMore Pillar of Salt\u201d.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n
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Aaron\u2019s wife being called \u201cLottie\u201d – a feminine Lot – is therefore a Biblical joke, and in chapter 4 Aaron leaves her. Yet he twice comes back \u2013 once to watch his wife through a window (when he \u201cstood motionless as if turned to a pillar of salt\u201d, AR<\/em> 44), and once to fetch his flute (when he is described as immobile whilst his wife cries, whereas it was the tears of Lot\u2019s wife that turned her to salt, AR 125-26<\/em>). The theme is treated again in Lawrence\u2019s 1912 poem \u201cShe Looks Back\u201d, which appeared in Look! We Have Come Through!<\/em>. However, here the Lot\u2019s wife character is Frieda turning back to her children, and the salt burns Lawrence.<\/p>\nFinally Shirley noted Lawrence\u2019s scattered, subtle, references to Moses. For example Lawrence describes the Australian \u201cfiery bush\u201d, invoking Moses\u2019 encounter with the burning bush. In \u201cSt Luke\u201d in Birds, Beasts and Flowers <\/em>(1920), Moses is presented with:<\/p>\nHorns
\nThe golden horns of power,
\nPower to kill, power to create
\nSuch as Moses had, and God,
\nHead-power.<\/p>\n
Indeed, Michelangelo\u2019s statue of Moses in the church of San Pietro in Vincoli in Rome, which Lawrence may have known, presents Moses with horns.<\/p>\n
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However, this was due to a mistranslation by St Jerome of a Hebrew word to \u201chorned\u201d instead of \u201cradiant\u201d \u2013 the radiance that Moses possessed after his encounter with God on Mount Sinai. Jerome\u2019s was an honest mistake, whereas Lawrence\u2019s reworkings of the Bible were creative misprision, used to express his own vision, to distinguish it from Biblical type, and to invoke intense emotion. These references require shared knowledge on the reader\u2019s part, which many may no longer possess \u2013 but the editors of the Cambridge edition of Lawrence\u2019s work helps readers supply the gaps. They also present issues to the translator of Lawrence into other languages, since it is impossible to retain Lawrence\u2019s intertextuality with specific English translations of the Bible.<\/p>\n
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THE DISCUSSION<\/strong><\/p>\nPicking up on the patriarchal vs. feminist theme of the talk, Nahla Torbay asked whether Lawrence could in general be considered to be patriarchal. Shirley replied that Lawrence\u2019s inconsistency on this point, as on others, was reflected in his various treatment of Old Testament patriarchs, but in general, even when male voices dominate, a female voice can also be heard coming through. Moving away from the Bible, Sue Reid speculated that the nymphs in Ursula\u2019s vision and the mermaids in the woodcut might also owe something to the Sirens in The Odyssey<\/em> \u2013 a work beloved of the modernists and also evoked in The Rainbow<\/em>.<\/p>\nPaul Filmer noted Lawrence\u2019s metaphor of \u201csaturation\u201d when (in Apocalypse<\/em>) describing his early contact with the Bible, and wondered whether Lawrence turned against the Bible in later works. Shirley responded that he retained it as a resource even whilst he questioned it, and that he could not have written as he did without having been saturated in the cadences of, especially, the King James <\/em>Bible.<\/p>\nCatherine Brown asked whether Lawrence ever considered the Old Testament as specifically Jewish scripture. Shirley noted that Lawrence must have discussed the Hebrew Bible with his Jewish-Ukrainian friend Samuel Koteliansky, but that of these there is unfortunately no record. Catherine also asked whether Lawrence was ever as critical of any of the Old Testament patriarchs as he was of Christ. Michael Bell responded that David was the Old Testament focus of his criticism; Lawrence didn\u2019t like the Florentine statue of him, nor having the name David himself, since he saw David as a Hamlet-figure tending towards Christ and the problems of modernity. Shirley agreed and noted that in Lawrence\u2019s play David<\/em> one feels this ambivalence. Whereas Samuel has an intimacy with God that is positive, when David arrives this intimacy is lost.<\/p>\nThe meeting concluded with Michael Bell reaching out to Marina Ragachevskaya in Minsk \u00e0 propos the Russian invasion of Ukraine which started one month before the meeting, on 24th<\/sup> February. Marina expressed her concerns about lack of political free speech in her own country and was not, at the time, sure that she would be granted the support of her university (the Minsk State Linguistic University) to travel to Paris for the University of Nanterre Lawrence conference in April. In the event, fortunately, she was.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n
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[1]<\/sup><\/a>Nehls\u00a047-48.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Report of the Twentieth Meeting of the London D. H. Lawrence Group Shirley Bricout D. H. Lawrence and the Patriarchs of the Book of Genesis Thursday 24th March 2022 By Zoom 18.30-20.00 UK time ATTENDERS 26 people attended, including, outside of England, the presenter Shirley Bricout, in Vannes, Britany, Tim Gupwell […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4437,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[291,286,11,235,234],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/catherinebrown.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3382"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/catherinebrown.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/catherinebrown.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/catherinebrown.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/catherinebrown.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3382"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/catherinebrown.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3382\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4439,"href":"https:\/\/catherinebrown.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3382\/revisions\/4439"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/catherinebrown.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4437"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/catherinebrown.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3382"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/catherinebrown.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3382"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/catherinebrown.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3382"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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