WRFH/Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM - The Poetry Fix: Bavarian Gentians

Episode Date: April 30, 2024

In this episode of The Poetry Fix, we explore one of D. H. Laurence's final works: "Bavarian Gentians."

Welcome to the Poetry Fix on Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM. I'm your host, Erica Kaiba, bringing you your weekly fix of poetry from across time. Today we're reading Bavarian Gensions by D.H. Lawrence. When D.H. Lawrence wrote this poem, he was very close to death, suffering from tuberculosis. He uses flowers called Bavarian Gensions to symbolize the decadent, dark beauty he finds in death. Bavarian gentians are dark blue flowers that have a tubular shape like foxglove and columbines do. They would not be a common choice to decorate a home because of how sombre they look, which Lawrence points out. The poet chooses to surround himself with gentions to prepare himself for death.

Lawrence sets the poem during the fall, a period of decadence. Winter approaches and with winter the decay of natural life. Yet the gentians themselves are vividly alive. They stand as a sort of paradox, living symbols of death, dark sources of light. Lawrence describes them as darkening the daytime, and then goes on to say that they are torches. They stand as an in-between point, crossing the boundaries between life and death, and they are what Lawrence imagines himself using as a guide to the underworld.

Lawrence uses allusions to the classical world to build his conception of death. He likens his own descent to the underworld to Persephone's descent to be with Pluto, her husband. You may be familiar with the Greek myths in which Persephone is abducted by Pluto the god of the dead and taken to the underworld to be his wife. Persephone's mother, Demeter, goddess of the harvest, is devastated by this and ravages the face of the earth until Persephone is returned to her. Persephone does return but not before consuming six pomegranate seeds, which means that she must spend six months out of the year with her husband in the underworld. Persephone is known as the goddess of spring or of flora more generally. So when she goes back to Pluto, that marks the start of fall.

In the context of Bavarian gentians, then, D.H. Lawrence deliberately links himself to Persephone, as he is preparing for his descent into the underworld, just as she does. Now, do we choose to view this poem as having a positive conception of the afterlife or not? For the most part, D.H. Lawrence does seem to be building up an optimistic view of death. For example, he uses the name Pluto instead of Hades to describe the god of the underworld. In modernity, it's much more common to use H. H. Lawrence to talk about this god, but D.H. Lawrence chooses Pluto. In Greek mythology, the name Pluto came to be associated with a more optimistic view of the afterlife, which celebrated Pluto's union with Persephone and his rule over the underworld as a just king.

Moreover, the language Lawrence uses to describe his descent into the underworld is marked by a sense of agency. he is fully in control, seeming to be at peace with his impending death. With all that said, let's dive in. Bavarian Gentians by D.H. Lawrence. Not every man has Gensions in his house, in soft September, at slow, sad, Michaelmus. Bavarian Gensions, big and dark, only dark dark darkening the daytime, torch-like with the smoking blueness of Pluto's gloom, ribbed and torch-like, with their blaze of darkness spread down, flattening into points, flattened under the sweep of white day.

Torch flower of the blue-smoking darkness. Pluto's dark-blue days, black lamps from the halls of dis, burning dark blue, giving off darkness, blue darkness, as Demeter's pale lamps give off light. Lead me, then. Lead me the way. Reach me a gention. Give me a torch. Let me guide myself with the blue forked torch of this flower, down the darker and darker

stairs where blue is darkened on blueness, even where Persephone goes just now, from the frosted September to the sightless realm, where darkness was awake upon the dark. And Persephone herself is but a voice or a darkness invisible, enfolded in the deeper dark of the arms plutonic, and pierced with the passion of dense gloom, among the splendor of torches of darkness, shedding darkness on the lost bride and groom. You've been listening to The Poetry Fix with Erica Kaiba. Join me next week and we'll be reading Philip Larkin's churchgoing.