Analyse the poem Bavarian Gentians

 Analyse the poem "Bavarian Gentians" --

The poem 'Bavarian Gentians' is included in the collection Last Poems and More Pansies. For Lawrence, the phenomenal world of flora and fauna held a mystical aura, often teaching human beings the higher moral values of life. The subject, be it a bird, beast, plant or a flower, stands as a symbol of various facets of human nature. 'Bavarian Gentians' is a poem of death and eternal life. There are two versions of the poem with the texts differing in the latter half. "The poem itself is a complex web, a trance like dream that suggests both a gravitation towards death and a transcendence beyond", says Ferris. The cadence of the poem is haunting in its ruminant mood, made possible by repetition of words and phrases, and its spiraling motion suggesting descent into death. Written in vers libre or free verse, with a liberal use of enjambement or run-on lines, and extended sentences with appended clauses, the poem captures in its stylistic peculiarities, the slow and inexorable movement towards death. Bavarian Gentians' is a deep and dense poem invoking darkness of death, loaded with personal symbolism and interwoven with mythological allusions. Lawrence niakes use of an extraordinary symbol-that of Bavarian Gentians; one which embodies and reinforces Lawrencian duality of death and life, darkness and light

The poem begins with a casual yet unusual two line statement by the poet who comments upon the rarity of the flower. It is not found in every house at Michaelmas during 'soft September'. Michaelmas which falls on the 29th of that month heralds the coming of the autumnal season. The poet defines Michaelmas as slow and sad, underscoring the relentless advent of chilly frost of September as determined as death making steady progress on him. His use of "frosted September" later in the poem testifies to the chill. The adjectives "soft", "slow" and "sad" that the poet uses in the line, beautifully and poignantly convey the fee. ing of the silent, inexorable and dismal creeping of death. Gentians are big and dark. Their blue darkness is brilliant like torchlight, evoking the blueness of Pluto's darkness. Contrarily, their intense blue darkens the daytime during which they flower. Lawrence uses an oxymoron 'blaze of darkness' to convey this contradictory nature. His sharp powers of observation capture every single feature of the flower, from its ribbed, tubular torchlike shape, to its blue petals flattened to a point, making it blaze forth like a torch, spreading blue darkness, invoking the trance of Pluto's underworld. He calls them black lamps from the halls of Dis, burning dark blue, which contrary to Demeter's pale lamps of the day, give off only darkness. It is then that the poet openly states about the journey he himself is about to undertake into Pluto's dark realms. All these minutely detailed descriptions from the beginning were leading to this imperative "Lead me then, lead me the way" making clear the function of the Bavarian Gentians for him. The task of the gentian is to show him the way, blazing forth as a torch, lighting his descent to the halls of Dis. The poet clearly equates the gentian with a torch. He wants to be guided by this blue forked torch down the dark stairs, getting darker still as he descends. Just as Persephone goes to visit her bridegroom in the Hades at the advent of autumn, after spending her time on the earth during spring and summer seasons, he is ready to make his fated journey during the "first-frosted September", which is a phrase that Lawrence uses in another version of the poem. He wants to go into those dismal and sightless realms where darkness is awake upon the dark. Like Persephone, the lost bride, who is nothing but a voice in the darkness, is enveloped and pierced with the passion of dense gloom by Pluto, Lord of the underworld and the king of darkness, lying awake and waiting to enfold her in his strong arms and celebrate their nuptials in the chamber lit with torches of darkness, the poet too envisages being enveloped in the eternal arms of darkness. Death turns celebratory. While life on the earth is painful, eternal repose in the enveloping darkness of death is like being in the hands of one's lover. Lawrence's identity fuses with that of Persephone who celebrates her nuptials with her eternal lover. Lawrence seems to say that we are all brides to death, virgins to be pierced with the passion of dense gloom, to be enveloped in "the arms Plutonic". Using the symbolism of the phantasmal underworld of classic mythology, Lawrence invokes the transcendental nature of death. The blue gentian is the body of man, lit with living flame. It is with the help of this flame that one can seek eternal repose in the arms of death. And the reason why everyone has not "gentians in his house in soft September" is be ause not everyone knows how to be truly alive in the flesh. Written in free verse, the continuous enjambement or run-on lines spilling from one to another, to the end of each stanza, invokes the feel of a meandering and spiraling movement of a descent downwards, keeping in tune with the motif of a journey. As Milton describes it in Paradise Lost, Bavarian Gentians makes "darkness visible". Lawrence has been able to capture the intensity and density of a palpable darkness through the reiteration of words "blue" and "blueness" and "dark" and "darkness" throughout the poem. The use of soft sib:lants and liquid sounds creates a feel of being lovingly cocooned in the "embalmed darkness". Heavily alliterative and reiterative, the poem is able to conjure up a trance-like mood, slowly and hypnotically gravitating towards the vortex of death. The pathos of the final line inherent in the expression "the lost bride" is reverted by the reference of her conjoining with her groom. Though Persephone is lost to the earth, as man is at death, she reaches the safe haven of the arms of her Plutonic lover. suggesting that 'heaven' lines is the warm embrace of death for man teo thus emphasising the transcendental nature of death.