D. H. Lawrence's Biblical Play David

D. H. LAWRENCE'S BIBLICAL PLAY DAVID There is no break in the great adventure in consciousness. Throughout the howlingest deluge, some few brave souls are steering the ark under the rainbow. (D. H. Lawrence, "Books," Phoenix) In the Bible the name David is given to no one except the great king of Israel. The Hebrew meaning of the word is "Beloved," and according to one interpretation it was even at one time a title for a sun-god. David has come to signify both kingly and divine qualities, and the name of the youngest son of Jesse, of Bethlehem, is often associated with the celebrated life and exploits of a shepherd, minstrel , courtier, warrior, poet, statesman, prophet, king. Concurrently, it connotes the deeper human feelings of loyalty and kindness and tenderness expressed by a friend and husband and father. David Herbert Lawrence was certainly to be fully aware of the fact that he was to bear a name of ancient and goodly reputation, although from his early days in Eastwood he disliked his first name. To the name "Bert," as used by his family and friends, he responded without hesitation; yet, this "delicate brat with a snuffy nose, whom most people treated quite gently as just an ordinary little lad,"l defied and enraged his teachers when he refused to answer to David. Indeed, to the end of his life the English novelist maintained this antipathy against his name, and in most of his letters and all his works he appeared simply as D. H. Lawrence. Nevertheless, though Lawrence disliked and avoided the name David, he still could not escape, deprecate, or disown its significance. Indeed, the actual figure of David was to represent for him "the pride of life," "the pride of the fulfilled self." And his instinctive admiration of David was not dimmed in any way by his disapproval of the name. This can be seen, for example, in a lovely essay in which he records his impressions of a David in a piazza in Florence. He describes the statue as seen one bleak moming-"Dark, grey, and raining with a perpetual sound of water." In this "great city on Amo's fair river," as Dante once described Florence, the statue of David, according to Lawrence, now represents "the trembling union of 1 See D. H. Lawrence's "Autobiographical Sketch" in Assorted Articles (London, 1930 ). 164 1963 D. H. LAWRENCE'S BIBLICAL PLAY David 165 southern flame and northern waters," "corpse-white and sensitive." Waiting "with that tense anticipation," he is the perfect embodiment of potency and vitality, of what Lawrence termed the creative and spontaneous fullness of being. "David, with his knitted brow and full limbs, is unvanquished," Lawrence further asserts. "Livid, maybe, corpse-coloured, quenched with innumerable rains of morality and democracy. Yet deep fountains of fire lurk within him."2 The ancient figure of David evoked for Lawrence the most dynamic and positive elements of light and love and life. It would not be far-fetched to claim, in fact, that Lawrence actually identified himself with the Biblical figure of David. In him he may have seen both inner and outer affinities with his own poetic temperament, his humble background, his love of life and nature, his passionate religious fervor and faith. Moreover, David perhaps mirrored his own problems and conflicts and trials with those forces of life overcome by a "bad spirit," and seeking to "do dirt on life." Like David Lawrence saw himself filled with immortal yearnings, plagued with terrible doubts and contradictions, unsure at times which road to take, a little fearful of the future as he looked out on a sometimes brutally indifferent and hostile world. Lawrence could not but sympathize with David's plight, as the mere shepherd-boy learned the real world with all its hate and torment, its hollow fame and whispering calumnies. David, thus, was not only a mirror of his own storm-tossed soul but also a poignant illustration of the hardship and suffering that try one's strength of purpose and that must, in the end, be endured. Perhaps more than anything else, then, it was the trait of endurance itself that Lawrence envisaged...