Copyright 2020 by Gary L. Pullman
Although
it was not D. H. Lawrence's intention to provide such a paradigm in
his poem “The Snake,” he offers a template for a type of horror
fiction of which we have seen but little in the past few hundred
years and see even less today.
The
poem recounts the encounter of a man and a snake at a “water
trough” at which each has come to drink. Although the
“water-trough” may symbolize the source of life, since water
often represents life, the speaker of the poem considers the trough
to be his: “A snake came to my water-trough”
(emphasis added).
Certainly,
he or another human being built the trough through which the water
runs, but the water itself is provided by nature; the man owns this
resource no more than the snake does. Besides, the snake has no
concept of personal property; the trough is to it no more than the
bed of a creek through which water runs. From an objective,
disinterested point of view, the notion of “my water-trough” is
absurd. Seen against such a perspective, the speaker's first-person
point of view is arbitrary, an attitude he imposes upon nature,
rather than an aspect of reality itself.
The
snake wears only its own skin, but the speaker of the poem is dressed
in his “pajamas,” his clothing, like his notion of personal
property (and, indeed, his first-person point of view), further
distinguishing him from the snake. He is also removed from the world
inhabited by the snake by the “pitcher” he carries, having
brought it to transport water from the trough to his house. The
snake, incapable of the technology required to fashion a pitcher and
unable to plan or prepare for the future, lives in the moment,
drinking only when it is thirsty and water is available. The
speaker's ability to anticipate and prepare for the satisfaction of
future needs shows that, unlike the snake, he is not wholly defined
and limited by nature.
The
trough is located “in the deep, strange-scented shade of the great
dark carob tree.” The adjectives Lawrence uses, “deep,
strange-scented,” “great,” and “dark,” suggest the
speaker's sense of separation from the natural world: it is strange
and mysterious; it is also “great,” or vast. He is both part of,
and transcendent to, the natural world, situated both in and beyond
nature. The part of him that is above nature is both awed at, and
amazed by, the snake, a creature fully immersed in the natural world.
Both
the appearance and the movement of the snake are alien and
fascinating to the speaker of the poem:
He
reached down from a fissure in the earth-wall in the gloom
And trailed his yellow-brown slackness soft-bellied down, over the edge of the stone trough
And rested his throat upon the stone bottom,
And where the water had dripped from the tap, in a small clearness,
He sipped with his straight mouth,
Softly drank through his straight gums, into his slack long body, Silently.
And trailed his yellow-brown slackness soft-bellied down, over the edge of the stone trough
And rested his throat upon the stone bottom,
And where the water had dripped from the tap, in a small clearness,
He sipped with his straight mouth,
Softly drank through his straight gums, into his slack long body, Silently.
Lawrence's
description of the snake allows readers both to “see” the snake
and to appreciate its otherness. It neither looks nor behaves in any
way remotely human; it is altogether a creature different from human
beings, strange, mysterious, sinuous, and alarming to behold.
The
speaker compares the snake with cattle, but the comparison soon
fails, as the snake's behavior and appearance, once again, defies the
contents of everyday human experience, as is suggested by the latter
half of the stanza in which the untenable comparison is offered:
He
lifted his head from his drinking, as cattle do,
And looked at me vaguely, as drinking cattle do,
And flickered his two-forked tongue from his lips, and mused a moment,
And stooped and drank a little more,
And looked at me vaguely, as drinking cattle do,
And flickered his two-forked tongue from his lips, and mused a moment,
And stooped and drank a little more,
Being
earth-brown, earth-golden from the burning bowels of the earth
On
the day of Sicilian July, with Etna smoking.
The
reference to Etna, a volcano that, for the time being, is dormant,
but which, as its smoke suggests, could erupt at any moment, suggests
that nature is an unpredictable force with which to be reckoned. The
snake, which the poem associates with the volcano, is likewise
unpredictable and potentially dangerous—all the more so because it
is nonhuman.
The
speaker, an animal that has attained consciousness and
self-awareness, is part of nature, but, at the same time,
transcendent to the natural world. “The voice” of his
“education,” representing the beliefs and teachings of culture,
tells him the snake “must be killed.” However, a change has
occurred in the speaker's perception of the snake. It is not merely
an animal to him now, but a fellow creature; he refers to the snake
not as an “it,” but as “he”: “He must be killed.” This
shift in perception shows that the speaker, for the moment, at least,
recognizes the snake as an equal: like the snake, the speaker himself
is a part of nature.
The
line, “For in Sicily the black, black snakes are innocent, the gold
are venomous” indicates that the speaker is educated; his culture
has the knowledge, and has transmitted it to him, by which to
distinguish between harmless, nonvenomous and deadly, venomous
snakes. This knowledge, as relayed to the speaker by the “voice”
of his “education,” sets him apart from, and puts him at odds
with, the snake, despite his own inclusion among it and other
animals, as a part of the natural world. Again, he is both in and
beyond nature. He shares the natural world with the snake, but the
snake cannot share with him his consciousness and his “education,”
which separate them. This is the speaker's dilemma, and it is the
poem's major source of conflict.
His culture states that, as
“a man,” it is his duty to “take a
stick and break him [the snake] now, and finish him off.” The
speaker does not deny that he has such a duty, but, at the same time,
he admits that he likes the snake, finding the reptile a welcome
visitor, or “guest.” The continued personification of the snake
shows that the speaker continues to regard it as a fellow being,
equal, in the world of nature, at least, to himself. The snake is
neither a beast, nor an enemy, but a “guest.” Part of the
speaker's appreciation of the snake also seems to come from the
creature's “thankless” departure after having slaked its thirst.
It has no sense of gratitude; it merely takes what it needs.
Gratitude, like the concepts of propriety and personal property, are
strictly human notions or, one might say, affectations.
The
speaker's refusal to heed the “voice” of his “education”
causes him to question his motive in having done so: “Was it
cowardice, that I dared not kill him?/ Was it perversity, that I
longed to talk to him?/ was it humility, to be so honoured” by the
snake's visit?” Instead of an answer, the questions end in an
affirmation: “I felt so honoured.” The “voices” (plural now,
for the first time, echoing not merely education, perhaps, but also
human society itself) are not silenced by the speaker's admission;
they persist, saying, “If you were not afraid, you would kill him!”
The charge elicits a confession: “And truly I was afraid, I was
most afraid.” His fear, however, is only part of the reason for his
defying the demands of culture and its voice, “education,” for he
remains “honoured/ That he should seek my hospitality/ from out the
dark door of the secret earth.”
In
Modern
Painters
(1843-1860),
John Ruskin coins the term “pathetic
fallacy,”
defining it as the “poetic
practice of attributing human emotion or responses to nature,
inanimate objects, or animals.” Certainly, Lawrence's speaker
commits this fallacy, as he projects his own sentiments onto the
snake, personifying it according to how he
sees
it, so that it embodies and expresses his own feelings and attitudes.
Although this practice is as old as poetry itself, Ruskin saw its
overuse as “the mark of an inferior poet.” If so, not only
Lawrence, but such celebrated poets as T. S. Eliot and Ezra Pound,
among others, are “inferior poets.” Another possibility is that
such personification may be used for rhetorical purposes, creating an
ironic point of view, for example, that contrasts human experience,
especially as it is shaped and influenced by education, society, and
culture, with the natural human condition exclusive of such
influences, which seems to be Lawrence's purpose in using this
approach in “The Snake.”
Unconcerned
with such matters as those which concern the speaker, the snake, a
creature motivated only by stimulus and response, its innate inner
drive for equilibrium, and its inborn instinct for survival, takes
its leave after slaking its thirst. In departing, the snake appears
to the speaker as a “god.” Modern readers wonder, perhaps, in
what way a snake could seem a “god” (although people in earlier
times knew full well the numinous quality of the serpent). “Now his
back was turned,” the speaker finds his courage, as the snake's
withdrawal into the “horrid black hole” from whence it had come
horrifies him. The snake's origin, like its appearance and movement,
appall
the man:
And
as he put his head into that dreadful hole,
And as he slowly drew up, snake-easing his shoulders, and entered farther,
A sort of horror, a sort of protest against his withdrawing into that horrid black hole,
Deliberately going into the blackness, and slowly drawing himself after,
Overcame me now his back was turned.
And as he slowly drew up, snake-easing his shoulders, and entered farther,
A sort of horror, a sort of protest against his withdrawing into that horrid black hole,
Deliberately going into the blackness, and slowly drawing himself after,
Overcame me now his back was turned.
Its
return to “the blackness” of the “horrid black hole” repels
the speaker, the nature of the serpent's domicile emphasizing the
vast difference between the reptile and the man, who exchanges one
tool of civilization, his pitcher, for another, a weapon: he throws”
a clumsy log . . . at the water-trough.” Its “clatter” startles
the snake, hastening its departure, as it convulses “in undignified
haste.” Immediately, the speaker feels “petty” for his having
committed a “paltry . . . vulgar . . . mean act,” and detests
himself and “the voices of [his] accursed human education.”
He
thinks of the albatross in Samuel Coleridge's poem, The
Rime of the Ancient Mariner.
The ancient mariner, visited by an albatross during a lull of the
ocean wind, shoots the bird, supposing it has portended the cessation
of the wind, which leaves his ship stranded at sea. As a result,
spirits pursue the ship, driving the vessel off course. The crew hang
the dead bird around the ancient mariner's neck to punish him for
having killed the bird. It is only when, after his crew dies and he
is left alone, to live in a state of death, forced to travel the
world and tell his tale, that the ancient mariner is able to pray and
blesses the creatures of the deep, whereupon the albatross falls from
his neck. The speaker of Lawrence's poem sees, in his own act of
hurling the log at the snake, a reflection of the mean act of the
ancient mariner, who shot the blameless albatross. The speaker's
humanity has prompted him to behave in an inhospitable, inhumane
manner. Having “missed [his] chance with one of the lords/ Of
life,” he feels he has “something to expiate:/ A pettiness.”
Lawrence's
poem provides a template for chthonian horror, a subgenre of which we
have seen but little in the past and see even less today. The word
“chthonian”
refers
to the underworld. In early Greek mythology, the gods of the
underworld, the chthonian deities, were opposite to, and sometimes
opposed, the Olympian divinities. Later, this opposition declined as
the personalities of the gods were developed, and they began to
exhibit qualities once associated only or primarily with their
counterparts. However, the gods of the underworld retained their
association with subterranean abodes and with death.
The
speaker of “The Snake” refers to the reptile as a “god,” and
the poem makes it clear that the snake's habitat is subterranean. In
this sense, the serpent is of a chtonian nature. It is “dark” and
mysterious, venomous and deadly, and at odds with the transcendent
rationality and historical continuity of the speaker as a member of
the human species, whose education links him to humanity's past. As
such, the snake is typically regarded as a threat that is best
eliminated.
Although
the term “chthonian” is often linked with H. P. Lovecraft's
so-called Cthulhu Mythos, it also refers to the underworld deities of
ancient Greek mythology and to the sea monsters of The
Rime of the Ancient Mariner,
among many other earlier works, which shows that Lovecraft's fiction
is not the word's only, or even its primary, referent. Likewise, the
term's use to refer to the sea serpents in Coleridge's poem and to
the serpent in Lawrence's poem indicates that “chthonian” need
not allude only to divinities.
In
further defining the term, we might suggest that its meaning
includes:
- traditional elements of the horror genre
- a reference to a physical underworld (e. g., the Greeks' Hades, the Norse's Hel, Coleridge's ocean depths, Christianity's hell);
- possible symbolic significance (e. g., the Freudian or Jungian unconscious, irrationality, madness, non-being, spiritual death);
- the effects of wanton cruelty, wrongdoing, or sin;
- the so-called fleshly, or natural, aspects of human existence, including animality, as opposed to the transcendent aspects of human existence (e. g., consciousness, intelligence, will, autonomy);
- non-cultural influences upon human beings (e. g., genetics, instincts);
- a potentially threatening quality or attribute; and
- its being as the integral, vital, pervasive, and predominant core of the narrative as a whole.
By
this definition, Neil Marshall's 2005 horror movie The
Descent,
Douglas
Preston and Lincoln Child's 1997 horror novel Reliquary,
and
James Rollins's 1999 horror novel Subterranean
are
relatively recent chthonian works, since they depend upon an
underworld setting which influences and determines every aspect and
element of their respective stories. By contrast, Mitchell
Lichtenstein's horror movie Teeth
contains
elements of the chthonian (Dawn O'Keefe's visits to the cave), as
does Gordon Douglas's 1954 Them!,
a feature film that is about equal parts science fiction picture and
monster movie (the concluding scene of which occurs inside a tunnel),
but these sequences are only scenes, and, although the scenes may be
integral and vital to the stories, they are not the pervasive and
predominant cores of the entire narratives.