D. H. Lawrence

David Herbert Lawrence (11 September, 1885 – 2 March, 1930) was one of the most important, prolific and controversial English writers of the 20th century, whose output spans novels, short stories, poems, plays, essays, travel books, paintings, translations, literary criticism and personal letters. These works, taken together, represent an extended reflection upon the dehumanising effects of modernity and industrialisation. In them Lawrence confronts issues relating to emotional health and vitality, spontaneity, sexuality, and instinctive behaviour, making him iconic in an age influenced by Freud and Nietzsche.

Works

Realism was the main feature of Lawrence's writings and his unflinching depictions of the gritty struggles of everyday life give many of his novels a melancholy tone. His poems help to balance this with many powerful and evocative descriptions of nature, although moments of beauty are present in his books.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Among his many works, most famous are his novels Sons and Lovers (1913), The Rainbow (1915), Women in Love (1920), and Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928). These all take place in and around Eastwood, Lawrence's birthplace, which was a grim industrial mining town. Lawrence would return here in his literature despite leaving it in real life, giving it an importance similar to that held by Wessex for Thomas Hardy, whom Lawrence admired.

Related Topics:
Sons and Lovers - 1913 - The Rainbow - 1915 - Women in Love - 1920 - Lady Chatterley's Lover - 1928 - Eastwood - Wessex - Thomas Hardy

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Kangaroo, Aaron's Rod and The Plumed Serpent are usually considered together as his "leadership novels". They contain some of the ideas that contributed to his plan for Rananim (meaning 'celebrations' and taken from a Hebrew folk song), the community of like-minded writers and artists that he hoped to establish in New Mexico. Little came of his effort, however.

Related Topics:
The Plumed Serpent - Hebrew

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Part of the realist nature of his writing meant that he could not obscure the subjects of sex and love in his books and his descriptions of sex were shockingly frank for the period. The Rainbow was banned for containing a lesbian relationship and one publisher called Sons and Lovers "the dirtiest book he had ever read."

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

The publication of Lady Chatterley's Lover caused a scandal due to its explicit sex scenes and perhaps particularly because the lover was working-class, and an obscenity trial followed in Britain. The British publisher, Penguin Books, won the court case that ensued. He also produced a series of explicit expressionistic paintings later in life some of which were almost destroyed due to their depiction of pubic hair.

Related Topics:
Lady Chatterley's Lover - Scandal - Obscenity - Penguin Books - Expressionistic

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

What is often forgotten amongst the claims of Lawrence as a pornographer is the fact that he was extremely religious. He was tired of the stifling Christianity of Europe and wished to rejuvenate it with earlier, tribal religions. This search for a primeval religious consciousness was part of the reason for his 'savage pilgrimage'. He was also inspired by contemporary 'process philosophy': for example works by Nietzsche, Henri Bergson and others, as well as by the works of Freud, most notably in Sons and Lovers which was also his most autobiographical work. He wished to free himself from the sexual restrictions of the past so that he could examine their place in religion but he would have been perhaps horrified if he realised his role in the "sexual revolution" of the 1960s.

Related Topics:
Pornographer - Christianity - Europe - Process philosophy - Nietzsche - Henri Bergson - Freud - Autobiographical - Sexual revolution - 1960s

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Poetry

Although best known for his novels, Lawrence wrote almost eight hundred poems, most of them relatively short. His first poems were written in 1904 at the age of nineteen and two of his poems, Dreams Old and Dreams Nascent, were among his earliest published works in The English Review. His early works clearly place him in the school of Georgian poets; a group not only named after the present monarch but also to the romantic poets of the previous Georgian period whose work they were trying to emulate. What typified the entire movement, and Lawrence's poems of the time, were well-worn poetic tropes and deliberately archaic language. Many of these poems display what John Ruskin called the "pathetic fallacy", the tendency to ascribe human emotions to animals and even inanimate objects.

Related Topics:
1904 - Georgian poets - Romantic poet - Georgian period - Trope - John Ruskin - Pathetic fallacy

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

:It was the flank of my wife

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

:I touched with my hand, I clutched with my hand,

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

:rising, new-awakened from the tomb!

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

:It was the flank of my wife

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

:whom I married years ago

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

:at whose side I have lain for over a thousand nights

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

:and all that previous while, she was I, she was I;

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

:I touched her, it was I who touched and I who was touched.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

::—excerpt New Heaven and Earth

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Just as the first world war dramatically changed the work of many of the poets who saw service in the trenches, Lawrence's own work saw a dramatic change, during his miserable war years in Cornwall. He had the works of Walt Whitman to thank for showing him the possibilities of free verse. He set forth his manifesto for much of his later verse in the introduction to New Poems. "We can get rid of the stereotyped movements and the old hackneyed associations of sound or sense. We can break down those artificial conduits and canals through which we do so love to force our utterance. We can break the stiff neck of habit...But we cannot positively prescribe any motion, any rhythm." Many of his later works took the idea of free verse to the extremes of lacking all rhyme and metre so that they are little different from short ideas or memos, which could well have been written in prose.

Related Topics:
First world war - Cornwall - Walt Whitman - Free verse - Metre - Prose

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Lawrence rewrote many of his novels several times to perfect them and similarly he returned to some of his early poems when they were collected in 1928. This was in part to fictionalise them, but also to remove some of the artifice of his first works. As he put in himself: "A young man is afraid of his demon and puts his hand over the demon's mouth sometimes and speaks for him." His best known poems are probably those dealing with nature such as those in Birds Beasts and Flowers and Tortoises. Snake, one of his most frequently anthologised, displays some of his most frequent concerns; those of man's modern distance from nature and subtle hints at religious themes.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

:In the deep, strange-scented shade of the great dark carob tree

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

:I came down the steps with my pitcher

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

:And must wait, must stand and wait, for there he was at the trough before me.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

::—excerpt Snake

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Look! We have come through! is his other work from the period of the end of the war and it reveals another important element common to much of his writings; his inclination to lay himself bare in his writings. Although Lawrence could be regarded as a writer of love poems, his usually deals in the less romantic aspects of love such as sexual frustration or the sex act itself. Ezra Pound in his Literary Essays complained of Lawrence's interest in his own 'disagreeable sensations' but praised him for his 'low-life narrative'. This is a reference to Lawrence's dialect poems akin to the Scots poems of Robert Burns, in which he reproduced the language and concerns of the people of Nottinghamshire from his youth.

Related Topics:
Sexual frustration - Ezra Pound - Dialect - Scots - Robert Burns - Nottinghamshire

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

:Tha thought tha wanted ter be rid o' me.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

::'Appen tha did, an' a'.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

:Tha thought tha wanted ter marry an' se

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

:If ter couldna be master an' th' woman's boss,

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

:Tha'd need a woman diferent from me,

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

:An' tha knowed it; ay, yet tha comes across

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

::Ter say goodbye! an' a'.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

::—excerpt The Drained Cup

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Pound was the chief proponent of modernist poetry and although Lawrence's works after his Georgian period are clearly in the Modernist tradition, they were often very different to many other modernist writers. Modernist works were often austere works in which every word was carefully worked on and hard-fought for. Lawrence felt all poems had to be personal sentiments and that spontaneity was vital for any work. He called one collection of poems Pansies partly for the simple ephemeral nature of the verse but also a pun on the French word panser, to dress or bandage a wound. He wounds still needed soothing for the reception he regularly received in England with The Noble Englishman and Don't Look at Me being removed from the official edition of Pansies on the grounds of obscenity. Even though he lived most of the last ten years of his life abroad, his thought were often still on England. His last work Nettles published in 1930 just eleven days after his death were a series of bitter, 'nettling' but often amusing attacks on the moral climate of England.

Related Topics:
Modernist poetry - Modernist - 1930

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

:O the stale old dogs who pretend to guard

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

:the morals of the masses,

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

:how smelly they make the great back-yard

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

:wetting after everyone that passes.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

::—excerpt The Young and Their Moral Guardians

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Two notebooks of Lawrence's unprinted verse were posthumously published as Last Poems and More Pansies.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~