The Man Who Died aka The Escaped Cock

I have always been intrigued by this story by D.H. Lawrence. Prompted by the discussion of it in messages 117 -123 of the Books Published in 1929 thread, by Rob, Mary, Deborah and Jane, I have been slowly rereading and annotating the story. It is, I think, worth thinking about, even today. I will post my thoughts in a day or two.

Today I came across some comments about Jose Saramago which I think are relevant in this context:

"His views have aroused considerable controversy in Portugal, especially after the publication of The Gospel According to Jesus Christ. Members of the country's Catholic community were outraged by Saramago's representation of Jesus Christ as a fallible human being. Portugal's conservative government would not allow Saramago's work to compete for the European Literary Prize, arguing that it offended the Catholic community. As a result, Saramago and his wife moved to Lanzarote, an island in the Canaries."

This is very, very interesting, polutropos... I'm wondering where I can get a copy of this story. I'm looking forward to reading your thoughts on it.

If you mean The Man Who Died, it is in many Lawrence collections. The one I have is a Penguin called Love Among the Haystacks and other stories. The Saramago book I do not have and am hoping to find myself.

Sorry, yes, I meant The Man Who Died, and I'm delighted it's in that Penguin edition, because I happen to have it on my shelf. Excellent.

Wonderful! I have a copy of Love Among the Haystacks. Now I just have to go find it.

SPOILER ALERT (I am not sure that is needed here, but better safe...)

In the Lawrence universe sexuality is paramount. In Lady Chatterley’s Lover, the clash of cultures and classes is exhibited most clearly through sexual congress. In Women in Love his thought is again developed through the various couplings, the most significant one being a homoerotic one, the men wrestling nakedly in front of a fire, having gotten beyond the need for a woman. It is then no surprise that in “The Man Who Died” Lawrence portrays the resurrected Christ as becoming eventually complete and fulfilled only through sex.

Upon resurrection, Lawrence’s Christ sees himself a failure, with his mission unfulfilled. Mary Magdalen sees that “his youth was dead. This man was middle-aged and disillusioned, with a certain terrible indifference...This risen man was the death of her dream” (138). Faith, he says, is nothing but compulsion and torment and no benefit derives from it. “Nothing is so marvellous as to be alone” (142).

“The Man Who Died” is also known as “The Escaped Cock”, and Lawrence hammers the reader time and time again with obvious imagery, predominantly sexual and of the cock. The story begins with a young cock of a certain splendour, a fiery bird of a flamboyant colour. He is good for twenty hens, and even tied to a post with a string, “the life in him was grimly unbroken” (126). This cock, which becomes Christ’s, defeats another in a battle to the death and having found his kingdom lives, fulfilling his mission, entertaining his harem. The disillusioned, indifferent, asexual Christ himself wanders the world till he encounters the priestess of Isis. She sees him as Osiris, the fulfillment of her mission and for his part, looking at her for the first time “his loins stirred” (157). Feeling first fear and then joy, he comes to a need to “be warm again, and I am going to be whole” (167). In their “knowledge” of each other, he says, “On this rock I built my life” (168). His wounds are no longer hurts but suns and “Great gods are warm-hearted, and have tender goddesses” (169). When the time comes for Christ to depart from the woman, he is no longer alone, for he has “sowed the seed of his life and his resurrection” (173).

In 1929 these ideas titillated and were appealing to many.

Well, I have to say that these excerpts confirm my opinion that Lawrence was mostly an execrable writer, apart from his views on sex. 'His loins stirred'? gimme a break.....are there 'heaving breasts' as well? Can we do a cliche count?

Anthony Burgess in his Flame into Being, has a few interesting things to say about The Escaped Cock.

Burgess says of Lawrence's Christ that "He sees fear of death, which is really fear of the life-cycle, and mad assertion of the ego (he is leaping out of Jerusalem into Vienna) (Burgess editorialising) , so he rejects the city and moves on.

Later, again Burgess interpreting Lawrence's point about Christ, says "In preaching a tangential life, a straight line shooting up to a fleshless heaven, Jesus Christ sinned against the sun and the self-renewing cosmos." ..."Christianity, implies Lawrence, has been a dangerous deviation, but, with Lawrentian help, even the devotees of the Congregationalsit Chapel may be led back ito the light."

"It is curious that the story did not provoke general outrage, but it has to be conceded that Lawrence was cunning in not letting in the sacred name. And the whole work is so masterly a piece of prose poetry that it has the capacity to disarm even the faithful."

"You do not, (Burgess claims that Lawrence is saying), have to accept Christianity as dogma, and such items in the orthodox Christography as the miracle of the loaves and the fishes do not need to be explicated in terms of historical truth. IT IS THE WONDER THAT MATTERS." (Emphasis mine).

"It may be argued that the only possible form for great poetry in this age of science and realism is the novel or prose story, and there can be no question that Lawrence's poetic genius finds its fullest expression in prose works like The Rainbow, Women in Love, St Mawr and The Man Who Died."

V. de S. Pinto, D.H. Lawrence: Poet without a mask, in D.H. Lawrence, Complete Poems.