In his essay, "Ulysses, Order and Myth," T.S. Eliot invigorates a central ambiguity concerning the function of myth as modern artists and lay people alike grappled with questions of meaning, value, and order in the universe. Eliot’s essay opposes the notion of myth as a vehicle for the conception of meaning against the notion of myth as a vehicle for the recognition of meaning. As a vehicle for conception, myth functions to impose a human-created "conception" of meaning, value, and order onto a universe that is objectively void of these qualities. In contrast, as a vehicle for recognition, myth functions to facilitate the human "recognition" of meaning, value and order in a universe that is inherently constituted by these qualities.

        Beneath the surface of this ambiguity concerning the function of myth looms a profound metaphysical dilemma. This dilemma concerns humanity’s enduring quest to understand the "true nature of reality." For the modern artist, this quest to understand the "truth" of reality was complicated by current notions of science and philosophy and growing skepticism of any inherent meaning in the objective world.

        In light of this skepticism, modern artists struggled to explain the undeniable human experience of order, value and meaning in the universe. Was this experience merely a fabricated "conception" of meaning, which was already eroding, or was it the valid "recognition" of qualities that existed outside the subjective human construct. Clearly, the ambiguity concerning the function of myth and its relationship to meaning was deeply imbedded in this metaphysical dilemma over the source of meaning in the human experience.

        On the one hand, Eliot seems to assert that the function of myth is to fabricate a conception of order. According to Eliot, Joyce activates the power of myth in Ulysses by "manipulating a continuous parallel between contemporaneity and antiquity." In explaining the achievement of myth used in this way, Eliot argues it is "simply a way controlling, of ordering, of giving a shape and significance to the immense panorama of futility and anarchy which is contemporary history" (Eliot 177). In the way Eliot views myth as "giving" or imposing "a shape and significance" onto an anarchic world vacant of order, Eliot seems to see the function of myth as a vehicle for the conception of otherwise absent meaning and order.

        However, Eliot also offers the opposing view of myth as a vehicle for the reception of order. This function of myth is hidden in Eliot’s analogy connecting the artist Joyce to the scientist Einstein. Eliot equates Joyce’s "discovery" of the ordering function of myth with the scientific discoveries of Einstein. In a different way than literature, science is often seen as an objective tool for understanding the "true" nature of the universe, certainly providing the dependable recognition of its structure and order. By linking Joyce and his tool of myth to Einstein and his tool of science, I argue Eliot ushered in this second notion of myth. Myth, like science, can function to illuminate dependable realities of the order and structure of the universe. Through such discoveries, myth permits the recognition the realities of order, value and meaning inherent in the objective world.

        Eliot offers no reconciliation between these two opposing views of the function and power of myth, leaving instead its stubborn residue for other modern artists and critics to encounter. Yet for many of Eliot’s contemporaries, this ambiguity admitted clear solution. Nicholas Berdyaev, a Russian critic and philosopher and close contemporary of Eliot, is one example.

        In his radical contemplation "Myth as Memory," Berdyaev takes for granted the function of myth as a tool for the recognition of real truths of the human experience and objective reality. However, for Berdyaev, the real power of myth in directed internally, to "bring to life" the deep secrets of time and history "buried in the depths of the human spirit." Berdyaev explains that every man is a "sort of microcosm" containing a "world in its own right." Myth facilitates the recognition of this world by stimulating and extending the limits of man’s consciousness. This extension of consciousness allows man access to the "whole world of reality and all the great historical epochs" which "coexist" in his inner nature. The consciousness of this inner "world of reality" facilitated by myth allows for a "self-consciousness of the whole history of the world."

        For Berdyaev, the product of this "self-consciousness of the whole history of the world" is recognition of the "historical destiny" of humanity as a whole. In other words, Berdyaev implies that the "history" that can be apprehended contains not only the history of cultures and "epochs" of the past, but also the "history" of cultures and epochs of the future. Fundamentally, for Berdyaev, this "concrete destiny" and the "mysteries of the divine as well as of the human and world life" it contains are only apprehensible through a "concrete mythology" (671).

        Berdyaev’s view may seem esoteric and impalpable in his conviction of the power of myth to evoke recognition not only of true meaning, value and order in the world, but also recognition of its ultimate historical destiny. However, this radical notion of a mythic recognition of a historical structure reaching from past to future is reflected elsewhere in modern literature. Certainly, the epiphany experienced by Rupert Birkin in D.H. Lawrence’s Women in Love and the "historical destiny" of the world around him which he glimpses is a powerful case.

        Birkin’s epiphany is stimulated by a mythic encounter with the African statuette stashed in his memory. Eliot's definition of myth in his Ulysses article provides the template for viewing Birkin’s identification with the African statuette as a mythic encounter. For Eliot, myth is the "continuous parallel between contemporaneity and antiquity" (177). Returning to Lawrence, though the statuette exists in the present within Birkin’s memory, she remains for him a timeless figure of antiquity who has "thousands of years of purely sensual, purely unspiritual knowledge behind her" (253). The mythic "parallel between contemporaneity and antiquity" between Birkin and this statuette is established through Birkin’s identification of this figure as "one of his soul’s intimates." Through this identification, Birkin implicates himself in a mythic connection between his place in "contemporaneity" and the "antiquity" of which the statuette is a powerful symbol.

        As Berdyaev might describe, Birkin’s mythic connection with the African statuette, "bring(s) to life some deep stratum buried in the depths" of Birkin’s spirit (Berdyaev 671). As if encountering a hidden knowledge just beneath the liminality of his consciousness, Birkin experiences sudden insight into "thousands of years" of historical tradition. With jarring clarity, he realizes that "thousands of years ago that which was imminent in himself must have taken place in these Africans" whom the statuette represents (253). Birkin recognizes this "death-break" which has occurred as a break from "goodness" and holiness," condemning "these Africans" to live "purely within the world of corruption and cold dissolution," the world in which Birkin continues to find himself (253).

        Birkin’s mythic connection with the African statuette does not end with the mere "recognition" of this "death break." Rather, from this epiphany, Birkin glimpses what can only be described as the "historical destiny" not only of West Africans, but also of all of humanity within his worldview. Through wave after wave of realization, Birkin identifies three "ways" in which this "historical destiny" is being fulfilled. The first two routes are the "awful African process," which has already been fulfilled in "sun-destruction," and the way of "the white races," which is to be fulfilled in a "mystery of ice-destructive knowledge" (Lawrence 253).

        In contemplating this way of the "white races," Birkin experiences a vision of Gerald, and wonders if Gerald is also "fated" to be "fulfilled in the destructive frost mystery" and be put to "death by perfect cold" (254). It is not until the end of the novel that the prophetic character of Birkin’s epiphanic vision is sealed in the reality of Gerald’s "death by perfect cold." This mythic climax of Women in Love, and its implications as to Lawrence’s view of myth and meaning are addressed in the conclusion of this paper.

        Wearied by the inevitable destruction of the first two routes, it is only in a final epiphanic wave that Birkin apprehends a third route of this historical destiny (254). "There was another way, the way of freedom." This third route is the way of "Paradisal entry into pure, single being," which can be achieved only through marriage and the entrance into "definite communion." With clarity and resolution, Birkin recognizes "this was the way, the remaining way" (254), his only hope in avoiding the "universal dissolution" toward which the other routes were charted.

        Certainly, Birkin’s glimpse of these routes of "history destiny" through his mythic identification with the African statuette is a compelling materialization of Berdyaev’s vision of both myth and historical destiny. Furthermore, it is clear that Birkin absolutely believes his recognition of the destiny of human history is the recognition of something real in the structure of the world in which he lives. His belief in this ultimate order and his inescapable implication in this order is obvious in his intense resolve to pursue the route of "Paradisal entry" with abandon throughout the remainder of the novel.

        Not only does Birkin’s epiphany reflect the function of myth and the existence of inherent order in the world that is suggested by Berdyaev, it is also a central turning point in Lawrence’s novel as a whole. In fact, (as discussed in class) its chapter Moony is the literal midpoint of Women in Love. In addition, due to the ensuing transformations in the relationships of Birkin and Ursula, and Gerald and Gudrun, Birkin’s epiphany also represents a thematic threshold of Lawrence’s novel as well. Both in the intensity of the scene as it stands alone, and in its consequence for the novel as a whole, Lawrence injects this scene with incredible significance.

        Due this pervasive significance, it is tempting to see this scene as a refined distillation of Lawrence’s own views concerning the power and function of myth and the reality of meaning and structure inherent in the world. However, the overwhelming forces of "anarchy and futility" elsewhere in the novel casts severe doubt as to the validity of such an assumption. Though it is through myth that Birkin recognizes an ultimate order which drives his action for the remainder of the novel, the prevailing anarchy and purposelessness surrounding Birkin’s lone recognition wraps Lawrence’s true attitude toward myth and meaning in tangled ambiguity.

        Especially in the futility of Gerald’s vicious fight against death, Lawrence actually seems to dispel any hope of order and meaning in the human experience. Gerald’s determination to triumph over death truly becomes the propulsion of his life. As Lawrence describes, "Come what might, he (Gerald) would not bow down or submit or acknowledge a master" in death (322). Yet through this "ghastly wrestling for death in his own soul," Gerald’s life slips deeper into meaninglessness and violent mechanization. Somehow aware of his inevitable "collapse inwards upon the great dark void that circled his soul," Gerald turns to a relationship with Gudrun for "reinforcement." Inevitably, despite the temporary salvation he achieves through Gudrun, Gerald’s staunch resistance against death collapses in futility. His death is imminent and by the final pages of the novel, Gerald is "dead like clay, like bluish, corruptible ice" (480).

        In his description of Gerald’s dead body, Lawrence seems to make the meaninglessness of his humanity almost palpable. On Gerald’s face is a "last terrible look of cold, mute Matter" (480). By diminishing all of Gerald’s personhood to an "inert mass" of mere "matter," Lawrence seems to imply that inevitably, this entire human experience is nothing more than the meaningless animation of "cold, mute, material." In such a material universe, void of inherent meaning, even the most compelling myth would be nothing more than a desperate "conception" of order and value in vain defiance of sovereign meaninglessness.

        Assuming for a moment that this material, meaningless reality of the universe is Lawrence’s underlying belief, Birkin’s mythic realization is radically transformed. Rather than an invaluable vision of universal truth and meaning, Birkin’s vision becomes the embodiment of a desperate and fabricated "conception" of order and meaning. Furthermore, his frantic commitment to his way of "Paradisal entry" and the objective "historical destiny" exposes him as an absurd and naïve character, deluded by his own "conceptions" of meaning in a meaningless world of cold "mute" matter.

        This rendering of ultimate meaninglessness and futility as the basic truth of Women in Love is certainly one way to view Gerald’s violent death. However, I argue Gerald’s death actually accomplishes the opposite. In its literal fulfillment of the predictions of Birkin’s epiphany, Gerald’s death is the ultimate affirmation of a pervasive order and profound meaning underlying everything in Lawrence’s novel.

        Returning to Birkin’s moment of epiphany, the full meaning of Gerald’s death amidst in that "hollow basin of snow" at the close of the novel is made clear (474). Gerald’s fate is sealed, as it was long before Birkin’s epiphany in the inevitability of his own route of "historical destiny." More literally than Birkin possibly could have imagined, Gerald was indeed "fated to pass away in this…one process of frost-knowledge" and suffer "death by perfect cold" (254). Truly, Gerald’s final death is the perfect materialization of Birkin’s mythic glimpse of Gerald’s fate. In this way, the realness of Birkin’s powerful epiphany in all its implications could not be more secure.

        In the resonance of the structure of his death with Birkin’s recognition of the structure of Gerald’s peculiar "historical destiny," Gerald literally becomes an "omen" of far more that "the universal dissolution into the whiteness and snow." In fact, he becomes an "omen" revealing the real order and structure propelling Lawrence’s entire novel, which is manifested in rampant "universal dissolution." This underlying structure and order of Lawrence’s work is actually the inescapable "long process" of "cold dissolution" which Gerald was a part, thrusting the entire novel to its culminating event, "death by perfect cold."

        Furthermore, in the way Gerald’s death is a vehicle for the recognition of this order and meaning stirring far below the apparent anarchy of Women in Love, Gerald himself becomes Lawrence’s ultimate mythic force. In this way, Gerald’s mythic power is the undeniable affirmation that for Lawrence, myth and meaning are powerful realities throughout his work.

        In conclusion, Lawrence’s affirmation of the power of myth as it transcends the world of literature is seen in its fullness through his subtle, yet telltale shift in narrative voice in the midst of Birkin’s mythic recognition. "There is a long way we can travel, after the death-break," speaks the narrative voice of Lawrence himself, "after that point where the soul in intense suffering breaks, breaks away from its organic hold like a leaf that falls."

        With this startling shift from an omniscient narrator to an invocation of the collective pronoun "we," I argue that Lawrence is inviting all of humanity to recognize the revealing significance behind this explanation of our collective human history. Lawrence himself takes on Birkin’s mythic epiphany, and extends the implications of its insight into our "fall from the connection of life and hope" far beyond the pages of his novel. In this way, Lawrence extends to all of humanity this hidden meaning and order behind the resulting "futility" of the modern age.

        In this way, Lawrence’s final use of myth is the mythic significance of his novel as a whole. Invoking T.S. Eliot's famous words, Lawrence "manipulates" a "continuous parallel" between his own novel and the world of modernity in which he lived, thereby "revealing" a "shape and significance" to the "immense panorama of futility and anarchy" that is at one time his powerful novel and troubled, searching epoch of modernity as well.