Boundlessness beyond boundlessness: The sea, drink, and form in Malcolm Lowry's fiction

Malcolm Lowry's work is concerned with placing the self in the great order of the universe: a project of utopian quietism, which is only seemingly bel ied by the formal extravagance and thematic excess of Under the Volcano. Ea ch of his major works deals with the road to wisdom, beginning with the ack nowledgement of the sea that bears the young hero of Ultramarine, and finis hing with the lyrical evocation of life's journey in 'The Forest Path to th e Spring.' Lowry's difficulties with form relate to his struggle for the gr eat universal theme: his attempt to get it all in. Concentrating on the met aphors of the sea and drink, this article sees his art as a remarkable, unc ompromising expression of the absolute.