Look! We Have Come Through! by D.H. Lawrence [PDF]

Information: Look! We Have Come Through!

• Author: D.H. Lawrence
• Publication Date: 1917
• Main Characters:
  • The Lover (Lawrence): The central poetic voice, a man navigating intense passion, jealousy, and the struggle to surrender to love without losing himself.
  • The Beloved (Frieda): The woman at the heart of the poems, portrayed as both liberating force and source of anguish, whose independence challenges the speaker.
  • Desire and Conflict: A recurring tension between erotic longing and the fear of being consumed by another person, driving the emotional arc of the collection.
  • Nature and Landscape: The natural world serves as a constant backdrop and mirror for emotional states, from the Bavarian Alps to the Italian coast.
  • Rebirth and Resolution: The final movement of the collection, where the speaker arrives at a hard-won peace and acceptance of love's demands.
• Brief Summary: Look! We Have Come Through! is a sequence of poems by D.H. Lawrence that chronicles his passionate and often painful relationship with Frieda Weekley. The collection moves through stages of conflict, jealousy, desire, separation, and eventual reconciliation. Lawrence arranged the poems as an autobiographical arc, creating something close to a verse novel about two lovers working through crisis toward renewal. The writing is direct and emotionally charged, drawing heavily from real events in Lawrence's life between 1912 and 1917. It stands as one of the key poetry collections of the early modernist period.
• Thematic Analysis: The dominant themes are erotic love, emotional conflict, and spiritual rebirth through relationship. Lawrence explores jealousy, possessiveness, and the struggle for individual identity within a passionate union. The collection also touches on themes of exile, nature as a mirror for inner states, and the transformative power of surrender to genuine feeling.
• Historical Context: Written between 1912 and 1917, the poems emerged during one of the most dramatic periods of Lawrence's life: his elopement with Frieda Weekley across Europe, their years of wandering during World War I, and their eventual marriage in 1914. The collection was published by Chatto & Windus in December 1917, at a time when Lawrence was increasingly marginalized by British literary society for his controversial views and the suppression of The Rainbow two years earlier.