BOOK REVIEW – D. H. LAWRENCE – THE SNAKE in
STORIES, ESSAYS & POEMS 1969 Everyman Press. Anyone who
thinks Lawrence only wrote sexy and controversial novels like The Rainbow and Women In Love will be
surprised by this unrhymed, visually descriptive poem. Lawrence, travelling in Sicily between the wars, heads to a countryside water pipe to routinely fill his canteen. He is amazed to see a snake has got there before him, and daunted by having to queue behind the magnificent creature, which looks at him in curiosity. The absurdity of having to wait his turn behind a snake that seems almost sentient in its intelligent use of the flowing pipe is very apparent. The snake is of a poisonous variety, but it presents itself as no threat to the author, who stays a safe distance from it, watching. Slowly, it dawns on Lawrence that the authorities encourage men to kill the dangerous snakes in the interests of public
safety. Lawrence is first moved to admire the snake, and then begins to wonder if he is not trying to kill it out of personal, even unmanly squeamishness and cowardice. As the snake finishes drinking and moves away, Lawrence attempts to kill it by throwing a rock at it. The rock glances harmlessly off the snake’s back and the snake slithers quickly away to safety, giving its attacker a look of intense betrayal. Lawrence now feels an utter traitor and failure, having both admired such a potentially deadly creature, and in having failed so pitifully to destroy it. There is a simple honesty about Lawrence’s sense of impotency in failing to assert himself over the natural world here. The poem isn’t particularly symbolic or representative of anything – it reads like simple observational reportage, and yet it resonates and stays with the reader, saying much beyond that too. Arthur Chappell