D. H. LAWRENCE

And so I cross into another world, shyly and in homage linger for an invitation from this unknown that I would trespass on. I am very glad, and all alone in the world, all alone, and very glad, in a new world where I am disembarked at last. I could cry for joy, because I am in a new world, just ventured in; I could cry with joy, and quite freely, there is nobody to know. And whosoever the unknown people of this unknown world will be, they will never understand my weeping for joy to be adventuring among them, because it will be a gesture of the old world I am making, which they will not understand, because it is quite, quite foreign to them.

I was so weary of the world I was so sick of it. Everything was tainted with myself; sky, trees, flowers, birds, water, people, houses, streets, vehicles, machines, nations, armies, war, peace-making, work, recreation, governing, anarchy, it was all tainted with myself, I knew it all to start with because it was all myself. When I gathered flowers, I knew it was myself gathering my own flowers; when I went in a train, I knew myself going in my own train; when I heard the cannon of the war, my ears listened to my own cannon, when I saw the torn dead, I knew it was my own torn dead body, it was all me, I had done it all.

I shall never forget the maniacal horror of it, in the end, when everything was me, I knew it all already, anticipated it all; because I was the author and the result I was the God and the creation at once; Creator, I looked at my creation, Created, I looked at myself, the Creator. It was a maniacal horror in the end.

I was the lover, I kissed the woman, and, God of horror, I was kissing also myself; I was a father and begetter of children, and oh, oh horror, I was begetting myself in my own body.

At last came death, sufficiency of death, and that at last relieved me, I died. I buried my beloved—it was good; I buried myself and was dead. War came, and hatred, and every hand raised to murder. Good, very good, every hand raised to murder! Very good, very good, I am also a murderer! It is my desire. It is good; I can strike and strike and see them all fall, the mutilated, horror-struck youths, in a multitude, one and another, and then in clusters together, smashed, and broken with blood, and then burned in heaps, going up in fetid smoke to get rid of them, the murdered bodies of youths and men and me, in heaps, heaps, in heaps, in horrible reeking heaps, till it is almost enough, till I am killed perhaps: thousands and thousands of gaping, hideous foul dead, that are youths and men and me, being burned with oil, and consumed in corrupt thick smoke, that rolls and taints and blackens the sky, till at last it is dark, as dark as night, or death, or hell, and I am dead, and trodden like earth in the sodden earth, dead, and trodden to nought in the sour black earth, dead, and trodden to nought, trodden to nought.

Ah, but it is good to have died and been trodden out! Trodden to nought in black, dead earth, quite to nought to nothing; absolutely to nothing.

When it is quite, quite nothing, then it is everything. When I am trodden quite out, quite, quite out, every vestige gone—then I am here, discovered, setting my foot on another world, landed, claiming another terrestrial life, disembarked from the voyage of death—not risen, not born again, but disembarked from out the horrible foul ship, into a new heaven and earth, new beyond knowledge of newness, alive beyond life, glad beyond glory and furthest conception of pride, living where life was never yet dreamed, where nothing was hinted at, that is, now, in the world, with me and with life.

I put out my hand in the night, one night, and my hand touched that which was verily not me, verily it was not me. Where I had been, was a sudden blaze, a sudden flaring blaze of new being. So I put my hand out further, again, and further felt that which was not I, it verily was not I. It was the Unknown. I was a blaze leaping up, I was a burst of light, a tiger, I was greedy, I was mad for the Unknown, I, new-landed, new-risen, starved, disembarked from the tomb, starved from a life of selfless consuming myself, here was I now, arriving, with my hand stretched out and touching the real Unknown, the Unknown, the Unknown. And oh, I can only say that I can touch, I can feel the Unknown; I, the first comer. Cortes, Pisarro, Columbus, they are nothing, I am the first Comer I am the discoverer I have found the other world. Eureka! The Unknown, the Unknown! I am thrown upon the shore, I am covering myself with the sand, I am filling my mouth with the earth, I am burrowing my body into the soil: the Unknown!

It was the flank of my wife I touched with my hand, I clutched with my hand, rising, reaching from the tomb, it was the flank of my wife, whom I had married years ago, at whose side I have lain for a thousand nights, and all the while, she was I, she was I, I touched her, it was I who touched and I who was touched. Yet rising from the tomb, flung from the ship, stretching out my hand, my hand flung like a drowning man’s hand on the shore, I touched her flank, and knew myself carried by the current in death over to the new world, touching the other shore, flotsam, jetsam, thrown and washed back on the shore, yet grasping the new world, clutching to climb out on the new and timeless world.