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Introduction
D. H. Lawrence was born in Eastwood, Nottinghamshire on the 11th of September 1885. He was the fourth child born to Arthur and Lydia Lawrence. In March 1912, Lawrence met his lifelong partner Frieda Weekley. Although he is best known for his novels, most notably the highly controversial Lady Chatterley’s Lover, Lawrence wrote over 800 poems during his career. A prolific writer, he also wrote several short stories, plays, essays, and pieces of literary criticism. Lawrenece died of tuberculosis on the 2nd of March 1930, aged 44, in Vence, France.

"The Mosquito" was published in 1923 as part of a collection of Poetry called Birds, Beasts and Flowers. The poems of Birds, Beasts and Flowers were begun in Tuscany, in 1920, and finished in Taos, New Mexico in 1923 when Lawrence was 38.During these years, Lawrence travelled in Italy where most of the poems were written, Ceylon, Australia and New Mexico. Providing inspiration for his poetry, he saw these less developed countries as an antidote to life in advanced, ‘mechanized’ Western society. The unfamiliar vistas and perspectives gave him new insights and perceptions of animals and plants. Natural imagery was often a dominant theme in his poetry. In this collection of poetry, Lawrence took a specific creature as subject, exploring its emotional, spiritual and ethical significance for him as well as its appearance and biology.

Synopsis
D. H. Lawrence likely wrote "The Mosquito" during his travels in Malta in 1920. The early drafts of the poem show that he originally named it “Siracusa”, perhaps after the Grand Hotel in Syracuse in which he stayed. In his memoirs, he stated it was “a rather dreary hotel – and many bloodstains of squashed mosquitos on the bedroom walls”. The poem is a conversation between a man and a mosquito. It takes the form of a one-sided conversation with the mosquito’s actions acting as a response that Lawrence interprets and repeatedly queries. Although Lawrence in his sheer size has the advantage in the encounter with the mosquito, the poem evaluates the “tricks” the mosquito uses to evade and torment man.

Lawrence’s ambivalence towards the mosquito is illustrated through his language. He refers to it in stanza one as “Monsieur” indicating respect, and then in stanza 9 shows the hatred he feels and calls it/him a “sneaky sorcerer”. It is evident that although Lawrence does not condone the creature’s trickery, he cannot but commend its cunning ingenuity. The struggle of the poem can be summarised in these words – “Am I not mosquito enough to out-mosquito you?” Some lines touch on the mosquito’s believed awareness of the competition between man and mosquito, Lawrence writing that it is “eying me sideways, and cunningly conscious that I am aware” and how the mosquito evades him “having ready my thoughts against you.” He even seems to confer smugness on the mosquito as “you turn your head towards your tail, and smile”. Lawrence in his anger, after having his blood sucked, attempts to swat the mosquito and is evaded. He resorts to thinking like the insect in order to defeat it. In the final stanza, Lawrence gains victory over the “Winged Victor”. He writes: “Queer, what a big stain my sucked blood makes Beside the infinitesimal faint smear of you!”

Lawrence once and for all determines that no matter how much “filthy magic” the mosquito expends, he is ultimately the more powerful party. His blood in the mosquito is much more than the mosquito could be – “Queer, what a dim dark smudge you have disappeared into!”

The Mosquito
When did you start your tricks Monsieur?

What do you stand on such high legs for? Why this length of shredded shank You exaltation?

Is it so that you shall lift your centre of gravity upwards And weigh no more than air as you alight upon me, Stand upon me weightless, you phantom?

I heard a woman call you the Winged Victory In sluggish Venice. You turn your head towards your tail, and smile.

How can you put so much devilry Into that translucent phantom shred Of a frail corpus?

Queer, with your thin wings and your streaming legs How you sail like a heron, or a dull clot of air, A nothingness.

Yet what an aura surrounds you; Your evil little aura, prowling, and casting a numbness on my mind.

That is your trick, your bit of filthy magic: Invisibility, and the anæsthetic power To deaden my attention in your direction.

But I know your game now, streaky sorcerer.

Queer, how you stalk and prowl the air In circles and evasions, enveloping me, Ghoul on wings Winged Victory.

Settle, and stand on long thin shanks Eyeing me sideways, and cunningly conscious that I am aware, You speck.

I hate the way you lurch off sideways into air Having read my thoughts against you.

Come then, let us play at unawares, And see who wins in this sly game of bluff. Man or mosquito.

You don't know that I exist, and I don't know that you exist. Now then!

It is your trump It is your hateful little trump You pointed fiend, Which shakes my sudden blood to hatred of you: It is your small, high, hateful bugle in my ear.

Why do you do it? Surely it is bad policy.

They say you can't help it.

If that is so, then I believe a little in Providence protecting the innocent. But it sounds so amazingly like a slogan A yell of triumph as you snatch my scalp.

Blood, red blood Super-magical Forbidden liquor.

I behold you stand For a second enspasmed in oblivion, Obscenely ecstasied Sucking live blood My blood.

Such silence, such suspended transport, Such gorging, Such obscenity of trespass.

You stagger As well as you may. Only your accursed hairy frailty Your own imponderable weightlessness Saves you, wafts you away on the very draught my anger makes in its snatching.

Away with a pæan of derision You winged blood-drop. Can I not overtake you? Are you one too many for me Winged Victory? Am I not mosquito enough to out-mosquito you?

Queer, what a big stain my sucked blood makes Beside the infinitesimal faint smear of you! Queer, what a dim dark smudge you have disappeared into!

Critical Resources

 * http://www2.le.ac.uk/offices/english-association/publications/bookmarks/41.pdf
 * Brault-Dreux, Elise, 'Responding to non-human otherness: poems by D. H. Lawrence and Katherine Mansfield', D. H. Lawrence Review (37:2) p.22-43.
 * Adelman, Gary, 'D. H. Lawrence, working poets, and political correctness', Southern Review (38:2) Spring 2002, p.334-357.