The Man Who Died [Hardcover]

D.H. Lawrence (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 21, 1994

This tale is about a man who rises from death and has a love affair with a priestess. There is some mild erotica in this tale. (Two 60's)

--This text refers to the Audio Cassette edition.

Editorial Reviews

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Chapter One

There was a peasant near Jerusalem who acquired a young gamecock which looked a shabby little thing, but which put on brave feathers as spring advanced and was resplendent with arched and orange neck by the time the fig trees were letting out leaves from their end tips.

This peasant was poor, he lived in a cottage of mud-brick, and had only a dirty little inner courtyard with a tough fig-tree for all his territory. He worked hard among the vines and olives and wheat of his master, then came home to sleep in the mud-brick cottage by the path. But he was proud of his young rooster. In the shut-in yard were three shabby hens which laid small eggs, shed the few feathers they had, and made a disproportionate amount of dirt. There was also, in a corner under a straw roof, a dull donkey that often went out with the peasant to work, but sometimes stayed at home. And there was the peasant's wife, a black-browed youngish woman who did not work too hard. She threw a little grain, or the remains of the porridge mess, to the fowls, and she cut green fodder with a sickle, for the ass.

The young cock grew to a certain splendour. By some freak of destiny, he was a dandy rooster, in that dirty little yard with three patchy hens. He learned to crane his neck and give shrill answers to the crowing of other cocks, beyond the walls, in a world he knew nothing of. But there was a special fiery colour to his crow, and the distant calling of the other cocks roused him to unexpected outbursts.

"How he sings," said the peasant, as he got up and pulled his dayshirt over his head.

"He is good for twenty hens," said the wife.

The peasant went out and looked with pride at his young rooster. A saucy, flamboyant bird that has already made the final acquaintance of the three tattered hens. But the cockerel was tipping his head, listening to the challenge of far-off unseen cocks, in the unknown world. Ghost voices, crowing at him mysteriously out of limbo. He answered with a ringing defiance, never to be daunted.

"He will surely fly away one of these days," said the peasant's wife.

So they lured him with grain, caught him, though he fought with all his wings and feet, and they tied a cord round his shank, fastening it against the spur; and they tied the other end of the cord to the post that held up the donkey's straw pent-roof.

The young cock, freed, marched with a prancing stride of indignation away from the humans, came to the end of his string, gave a tug and a hitch of his tied leg, fell over for a moment, scuffled frantically on the unclean earthen floor, to the horror of the shabby hens, then with a sickening lurch, regained his feet, and stood to think. The peasant and the peasant's wife laughed heartily, and the young cock heard them. And he knew, with a gloomy, foreboding kind of knowledge, that he was tied by the leg.

He no longer pranced and ruffled and forged his feathers. He walked within the limits of his tether sombrely. Still he gobbled up the best bits of food. Still, sometimes, he saved an extra-best bit for his favourite hen of the moment. Still he pranced with quivering, rocking fierceness upon such of his harem as came nonchalantly within range, and gave off the invisible lure. And still he crowed defiance to the cock-crows that showered up out of limbo, in the dawn.

But there was now a grim voracity in the way he gobbled his food, and a pinched triumph in the way he seized upon the shabby hens. His voice, above all, had lost the full gold of its clangour. He was tied by the leg and he knew it. Body, soul and spirit were tied by that string.

Underneath, however, the life in him was grimly unbroken. It was the cord that should break. So one morning, just before the light of dawn, rousing from his slumbers with a sudden wave of strength, he leaped forward on his wings, and the string snapped. He gave a wild strange squawk, rose in one lift to the top of the wall, and there he crowed a loud and splitting crow. So loud, it woke the peasant.

At the same time, at the same hour before dawn, on the same morning, a man awoke from a long sleep in which he was tied up. He woke numb and cold, inside a carved hole in the rock. Through all the long sleep his body had been full of hurt, and it was still full of hurt. He did not open his eyes. Yet he knew that he was awake, and numb, and cold, and rigid, and full of hurt, and tied up. His face was banded with cold bands, his legs were bandaged together. Only his hands were loose.

He could move if he wanted: he knew that. But he had no want. Who would want to come back from the dead? A deep, deep nausea stirred in him, at the premonition of movement. He resented already the fact of the strange, incalculable moving that had already taken place in him: the moving back into consciousness. He had not wished it. He had wanted to stay outside, in the place where even memory is stone dead.

But now, something had returned to him, like a returned letter, and in that return he lay overcome with a sense of nausea. Yet suddenly his hands moved. They lifted up, cold, heavy and sore. Yet they lifted up, to drag away the cloth from his face, and to push at the shoulder bands. Then they fell again, cold, heavy, numb, and sick with having moved even so much, unspeakably unwilling to move further. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 101 pages
• Publisher: Ecco; 1st edition (March 21, 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0880013532
• ISBN-13: 978-0880013536
• Product Dimensions: 7.5 x 5.4 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,870,590 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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17 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars DARING MASTERPIECE!!!, November 6, 2003

By 

Michael Stephens (Ft.Worth, Texas United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Man Who Died (Hardcover)

Anyone who has a passing interest or knowledge of the origins of Christian Myth will recognize those roots in this final masterpiece by D.H. Lawrence. It is amazing how prescient Lawrence was here. Remember, this was written some 20 years before the discovery of the Gnostic Gospels at Nag Hammadi. Although gnosticism was known of, and to some degree what some of the gnostics believed about Christ, it was rarely acknowledged beyond the study of heresy within the Catholic and Protestant seminaries. Laypeople knew almost nothing of the origins of Christianity. That most original Christians had very different ideas about their Savior, and that indeed many believed that He was a sexual creature (and some even a homosexual), was blasphemy of the highest degree. And that many also equated Christ and Mary with the myth of pagan Isis and Horas (which many today believe is the real precusor of Chritianity), would have been unthinkable even as late as the 1930s.
But Lawrence was an autodidact when it came to religion, and like many autodidactics, had some very strange and original ideas about that and Christianity in particular. Essentially a mystical deist, he found much to despise in organized, modern Christianity. Like so many of his generation, he blamed it, correctly, as one of the main causes of the First World War and the ills of the modern world. He also had an abiding interest in pagan religions of all types (read his The Plumed Serpent), but especially Roman/Etruscan paganism. How much he knew of the Egyptian Isis-Horas/Mary-Jesus connection I have no idea, but it was probably intuitive: Isis was one of the most popular godesses of late-pagan Rome, which Lawrence was very familiar. Did he know that certain early Christians also worshipped Isis and, indeed, believed in a sexual union between the two? I can't say. But knowing of Lawrence's interest in "mystical" sexuality, mixed with his other interests, it was probably natural that he would combine these into one of the most daring novels of all time.
While simple-minded, prejudice readers might find this work blasphemous, it is in fact one of the most original and exciting novels written about Christ. This has none of the nonsense of Kazantzakis'Last Temptation of Christ, which was essentially a reverent and wholly orthodox work (but which also has an element of original Christian philosophy -- and thus the unjust controversy). Lawrence dispenses with all that, and somehow discovered and revealed the pagan heart at the core of much Christian philosophy. In his tale of a Christ who "survives" the crucifixion, has a sexual relationship with a priestess of Isis, and then renounces aesthetism for the wordly pleasures of the flesh, Lawrence typically and bravely went for the jugular, while also retaining his elegant, inimitable style. What emerges is one of his most profound and poetic works, and not surprisingly, as he was to die a year later, also pretty much sums up his philosophies in one, neat little package. If you have the chance to read this small, but rich and powerful work, you will have discovered one of the true masterpieces of one of the greatest writers of all time.

16 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Allegory still relevant?, May 1, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: The Man Who Died (Paperback)

Lawrence's last novel describes a resuscitated Christ carrying his wounds and meeting old friends. He does not want them to touch him. He needs to move away from this life. He wanders onto the property of a priestess of Isis. She believes him to be Osiris and she is to heal his wounds and bear a child with him. This is how Christ leaves behind his body and blood. The erotic interplay between Christ and the priestess evokes in him a revelation that this is the mystery of life that the Father has not allowed him to experience. In Lawrence's day, the demythologizing of Christ and the erotic interplay underline incarnation. Today it seems a bit much. Forcing Christ into sexual liaisions betrays an emphasis on an erotic gnosticism apparent in contemporary "spiritual" movements. But at the time this novel was written, it may have had some relevance in challenging mystical applications of the Christ myth. The writing is beautiful.

5.0 out of 5 stars Beautiful Short Story, February 5, 2011

By 

Mr. Rogers "Books Are Good For You" (New York, NY USA) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: The Man Who Died (Dodo Press) (Paperback)

A lovely short story from one of my favorite writers. The language is beautiful. The story is an intriguing take on Jesus. Highly recommend.