d h lawrence

THE STATE OF LETTERS 469

D. H. LAWRENCE'SDISCOVERY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE

A. BANERJEE

Lawrence believed that the distinctive quality of American literature wasnot appreciated by the older English and European civilizations becausetheir readers were unable to respond to the native genius of the Americanwriter. According to him it expressed a new experience in an "alien" accent,an accent which belonged to "the American continent and to nowhere else."He discovered in American literature what even the Americans themselveshad missed—the "classic" quality which he thought had fled from his ownliterature. He told Amy Lowell, "your classic American literature, I find tomy surprise, is older than our English. The tree did not become new, whichwas transplanted. It only ran more swiftly into age, impersonal, non-humanalmost. But how good these books are!"

Lawrence decided to write on this subject during the First World Warto provide a means of escape to America. He published eight articles onAmerican writers in Ford Madox Ford's English Review in 1917-18. Hefailed to sell them to American periodicals, and he did not succeed in com-ing to America when the war ended. And when he eventually arrived in theU.S. in September 1922 he decided to rewrite them. As he had previouslytold his agent, J. B. Pinker, "I can't write for America here in England. Imust transfer myself." After "transferring" himself, he told his new Ameri-can agent, Thomas Seltzer, that he was "doing Studies again—Americanisingthem: much shorter." He fully revised the eight essays which he had beenworking on and off for four years, wrote four new ones, and presented themin book form. Studies in Classic American Literature was published in NewYork in 1923 and in London the next year.

Lawrence's personal observations on life in America gave him a new andmore authentic perspective on the American people and their literature. Hehad always believed that the positive vision of the writers had come to themfrom their native American ancestors. In the opening chapter, "The Spirit ofPlace," he explains that the content and the manner of a writer's work canbe directly related to the spirit of the place of his native birth and abode:"Every continent has its ovra great spirit of place. Every people is polarizedin some particular locality, which is home, the homeland. Different placeson the face of the earth have different vital effluence, different vibration, dif-ferent chemical exhalation, different polarity with different stars: call it whatyou like. But the spirit of place is a great reality." Lawrence believed that thespirit of the land instilled in the American writer a sense of "the unfulfilled.

©2011 by A. Banerjee

470 THE STATE OF LETTERS

unrealized purpose," and be set out to seek it. The "invisible winds" aroundbim inspired him to look into bis innermost self, "tbe deepest whole self ofman," aud to "realize" this pui-pose. He could do so only in America wherehe would enjoy the "liberty to do wbat bis deepest self like[d]."

Lawrence did not believe tbat the liberty tbat tbe Pilgrim fathers soughtwas religious or political. Tbey simply wanted the freedom to get away fromtheir European selves and to divest themselves of tbeir European ances-try, ideas, and ideals. They created their own American democracy throughwhich tbey undermined the ideals and politics of the older continent, andtheir writers like Hawthorne, Melville, and Whitman created their own dis-tinctly American literature. Tbey saw life from a new perspective, one dif-ferent from the European viewpoint, and this new vision turned out to beof older vintage; it was elemental and viewed tbe human being as a natu-ral spontaneous creature who was uninhibited by religious or rational con-straints. Lawrence himself bad been nurturing sucb a vision, which mayat least partly explain bis fascination witb American literature; the studiescontained his "whole Weltanschauung," he said. He felt tbat tbe Americanwriters refiected tbe same vision tbat he himself bad been espousing, tbecelebration of tbe older, natural, and spontaneous life—something similarto wbat Montaigne had reported about the newly discovered life in Brazil,which was marked by "original simplicity" and wbere the people were "gov-erned by natural laws and were very little corrupted by our laws." In tbissense Lawrence the man and tbe writer is at the center of his evaluation ofAmerican literature.

He begins discussing nineteenth-century American writers by claimingthat tbey took up "life wbere the Red Indian, the Aztecs, the Mayas andtbe Incas had left off" They "touched and touched again, uncannily, uncon-sciously, blindfolded as it were" the spirit of tbe "dusky continent of theRed Man." Lawrence's central thesis is that their writings embodied tlie"aboriginal" Indian vision which combined the passional with the mentalin a single "whole." Though tbe writers imbibed such a view of life, tbeywere hindered from expressing it in their writings because of their mentalobeisance to tbeir European ancestors; tbeir Puritan background fmstratedtbeir attempts to subscribe openly to the philosophy of the natives. Fortu-nately they could adopt the artistic strategy of indirect expression, wbicbwas, in Lawrence's words, "a sort of subterfuge." The artist says one thingwhile be actually means something different: "The curious thing about artspeech is tbat it prevaricates so terribly, I mean it tells sucb lies. I supposebecause we always all tbe time tell ourselves lies. And out of a pattern of liesart weaves the trutb." Tbe American writer adopted this artistic method,and tbe danger was tbat tbe reader could easily miss the artist's real mean-ing. Therefore Lawrence's task in these studies is to save "the Americantale from tbe American artist, " to demonstrate the writer's "unconscious


genius." He thought that by doing so he was being "a midwife to the unbornhomunculus."

Lawrence's book does not purport to be academic criticism, nor is it writ-ten in a hterary style. It is a deeply subjective work and is largely confinedto novelists. But it was hailed as a pioneering book when it was first pub-lished. On its publication H. J. Seligman called it "the foundation for a newAmerican critical literature," and Stuart Pratt Sherman, the editor of thefirst Cambridge History of American Literature (1917-21), frankly acknowl-edged Lawrence's role in the recognition of American literature by headinghis review "America is Discovered." In 1943 Edmund Wilson would includethe whole of Lawrence's Studies in The Shock of Recognition in which Wil-son aims to chronicle "the progress of literature in the United States." Hepraises Lawrence's Studies as "one of the few first-rate books that have everbeen written on tlie subject." American hterar)' critics, especially in the1950s and 60s, regarded Lawrence's book as a seminal work from whichmany of them derived their own ideas. For example Leslie Fiedler declaresthat among all the critics who had written about "American books" Law-rence came "closest to the tmth." As late as 1971 Quentin Anderson claimedthat "the serious study of American literature began in D. H. Lawrence'sStudies in Classic American Literature. "

Lawrence's discussion of Hawthorne's "duplicitous art" in The Scar-let Letter, for example, has become the standard critical approach to thenovel. Lawrence demonstrates that despite Hawthorne's Puritan exteriorthe writer in him struggled to express his deeper vision. He did this princi-pally through Hester Prynne. Commenting on Hawthorne's description ofHester's "rich voluptuous oriental characteristic—a taste for the gorgeouslybeautiful," Lawrence says that "the aboriginal American principle [is] work-ing in her, the Aztec principle." She is "the Mother of Maculate Concep-tion," a worshipper of "Astarte, the Magna Mater, the mother of physicalfecundity." She falls in love with the saindy preacher Arthur Dimmesdale,but she soon discovers that he is driven to hide his sensual self under theguise of spirituality. So "the woman in Hester Prynne recoils, [and] turnsin rich lurid revenge" to destroy the "spiritual fornicator and liar" in herlover. Lawrence believes that this vision of Hester and what she symbolizedgrew out of Hawthorne's own personal torments: "Openly he stands for theupper, spiritual, reasoned being. Secretly he lusts in the sensual imagination,in bruising the heel of this spiritual self and laming it for ever." In Law-rence's opinion this is almost the exact paradigm of the novel too in whichHawthorne's "art-speech" betrays his true self beneath his pious homage toPuritanism. The reader therefore has to recognize and unravel "the duplic-ity" in Hawthorne's art. Few of his contemporary critics were equal to thistask, divided as they were about the moral content of the novel. Evert A.Duyckinck declared that the "spirit of his old Puritan ancestors, to whom


be refers in his preface, lives in Nathaniel Hawthorne." On tbe other handOrestes Augustus Brownson was outraged to discover that Hawthorne hadwritten a "deeply interesting and highly pleasing" tale about an adulteressbut failed to make ber "suffering excite the horror of bis readers."

For Lawrence, James Fenimore Cooper, though he "loved the toma-hawking continent of America," started with "gentlemanly" enthusiasm forEuropean sophistication. But Cooper soon tumed to the deeper call withinhim. It was only tbrough bis imagination that he could enter tbis world andrender it superbly in his later writings, especially the Leatherstocking Tales.These bad traditionally been seen as rollicking tales of adventure, but Law-rence regards them as serious novels in which Cooper successfully createsthe myth in which the white man Natty Bumppo establishes the ideal linkwitb tbe native red man Chingachgook. Tbey together establisb a "com-munion between tbe soul of the white man and the soul of the Indian."Cooper could reach this optimistic vision of the future of America only afterhe was able to transcend imaginatively the false world of the Effinghams ofbis "White Novels." He presents tbis vision backward in his Leatherstock-ing Tales, from The Pioneers (1823) to The Deerslayer (1841). The earliernovels depict Natty Bumppo and Chingachgook coming to Cooperstownonly to decline and die there; the succeeding novels take them to their earlylives, culminating in their youth. According to Lawrence, Cooper createsthe mythical world of their youth in The Deerslayer. "The world—the pris-tine world of Glimmerglass—is, perhaps, lovelier than any place created inlanguage: lovelier than Hardy or Turgenev, lovelier than the lands in ancientpoetry or in Irish verse. And the spell must lie in the luminous futuritywhich glimmers as a plasm in all the landscape." Cooper tlius transcendsthe materialistic world around him and projects a vision of "luminous futu-rity." Even T. S. Eliot, no admirer of Lawrence, was moved to exclaim (inhis To Criticize the Critic) that Lawrence's was "probably tbe most brilliantof critical essays on [Cooper]."

Lawrence was also among the first to recognize Melville's genius. Heuntangles Melville's "art-speech" and shows that Melville was drav̂ Ti to thephysical side of man which his "white psyche" had suppressed. After havingbeen disillusioned witb humanity, he goes to the South Seas; in Nukuheva(Typee) he is delighted to discover that the aboriginal tribes there lead anatural, spontaneous, and sensual life, untainted by Western civilization.There, in the Pacific Ocean, wbich is "aeons older than the Atlantic or theIndian Oceans," Melville encounters life from "unknown ages back" wheretbe native people still continue to live, dreamlike, the natural uncomplicatedlife ofthe "Stone Age," unaware that the Western world has far "advanced."Initially he is horrified to find that he has landed among uncultivated sav-ages, but be discovers tlaat the people there are gentle and hospitable. Hequickly overcomes his initial reservations about tbeir lack of "morality," their"wild methods of warfare," and even their cannibalism—the last ¡Decause


he realizes that it is no different from Christian transnbstantiation: in bothcases the eating of bodies is jnstified as a part of their respective "sacredceremonies [which were] awe-inspiring." Soon he comes to enjoy his newworld, and it is "Paradise" to him. According to Lawrence, Melville "insistson it. Paradise. He conld even go stark naked, as before tbe Apple episode.And his Fayaway, a laughing little Eve, naked with him, and hankering afterno apple of knowledge, so long as he wonld just love her when he felt like it.Plenty to eat, needing no clothes to wear, snnny, happy people, sweet waterto swim in: everything a man can want."

He soon loses his enthnsiasm. However mnch he hates the civihzed com-mnnity, his mind belongs to it; his white psyche resists this new life and heyields to the call of "Home and Mother." Having retumed to America, Mel-ville, now a "civilized" man, moves away from the begnihng sensnality of thesavages and directs his energies to finding perfect love in his native home.Bnt he cannot be satisfied with the Western way of hfe. In his next book,Omoo, he depicts life in Tahiti, where he leads a reckless Epicnrean life forsome time before he is pnlled back to his home again.

Melville gets married, bnt, after a brief period of bhss, his hfe is nothingbnt "fifty years of disillnsion." In Lawrence's reading, Melville's personalityis split. He can neither stay on in tlie vibrant sensnal tropical islands, norcan he get nsed to the mundane life of mind and materialism of an ordinaryAmerican at home. He has an inner nnderstanding of what is missing in thewhite man's conception of the ideal man-woman relationship. As a whiteman he had "looked for a perfect marriage" where he conld achieve "thelovey-doveyness of perfect mntual nnderstanding" and "the perfect fulfil-ment of love." Bnt his experiences in those exotic islands had nnconscionslychanged him. He had gathered "the savage mysteries" and had become"prond and savage" in his soul. He became keenly aware that a "prond andsavage-sonled man doesn't really want any perfect lovey-dovey fnlfilment inlove." The ideal was that "two people can jnst be together fairly often, sothat the presence of each other is a sort of balance to the other. . . . Theremnst be tme separateness as well." Bnt these remained abstract ideals forhim. He was haunted by the discrepancy between the ideal and the actnal inhis own hfe. This led to his being disillusioned and "crazed."

Yet Melville maintained artistic sanity in his writings and continned toproject imaginatively his deeper feelings abont the possibilities of life whichlay beyond his own reach. He symbolized bis vision in Moby-Dick, wbichLawrence describes as "a great book, a very great book, the greatest book ofthe sea ever written." In it Melville depicts, with frightening concentration,the collapse of the white psyche dnring its attempt to destroy hnman sensn-ality, as symbolized by the giant whale. Lawrence describes the whaling shipPequod as "the ship of the white American sonl [i.e., mental conscionsness],"and the whale Moby-Dick as "the deepest blood-being [sensnal self] of thewhite race." The monomaniac. Captain Ahab, the white man, has enlisted


the help of an intemational crew of the white, black, and brown races withthe single purpose of subduing the sensual beast. In this Lawrence finds thesymbol of man's fear of his sensual self. This leads to "the maniacal fanati-cism of [the] white mental consciousness" that tries to destroy the "hot-blooded sea-bom Moby-Dick." The beast becomes the object of' his fanaticpursuit, but he and his crewmen are all "doomed, doomed."

Lawrence beheved that Whitman also based his vision of the future onthe elemental principles of life. He was "the first white aboriginal," who wasaware of his complete undivided self, which repudiated the conventionalmorality that separated mind from body. His morality was aimed at chang-ing the blood rather than the mind. In this he differed from Hawthome andothers whose mental allegiance to the "old morality" crippled their sensualselves. Whitman tried to strike a balance between Ijody and soul, and Law-rence described this process in his characteristic forthright manner:

Whitman was the first to break the mental allegiance. He wasthe first to smash the old moral conception that the soul of manis something "superior" and "above" the flesh. Even Emersonstill maintained this tiresome "superiority" of the soul. EvenMelville could not get over it. Whitman was the first heroic seerto seize the soul by the scmff of her neck and plant her downamong the potsherds.

"There!" he said to the soul. "Stay there! Stay there. Stay inthe flesh. Stay in the limbs and lips and in the befly. Stay in thebreast and womb. Stay there, O soul, where you belong."

This being Whitman's faith, Lawrence says, "the whole soul speaks at once"in his poetry. Lawrence believed that "Whitman's essential message was theOpen Road. The leaving of the soul free unto herself, the leaving of hisfate to her and to the loom of the open road. Which is the bravest doctrineman has ever proposed to himself" Carefully avoiding the risk of personiJdisintegration, he sets out on the open road where the soul can live "herlife along [its] incarnate mystery." But he felt that, like Cooper in his earlyyears. Whitman was beguiled by his country's democratic and ethical ideals.Lawrence chastised Whitman for not "keeping to his open road," for talk-ing of merging and charity. This was "Whitman's mistake," because merginginvolved the obliteration of his own "integral single self," leading to disinte-gration and death.

As a writer Lawrence was greatly impressed by Whitman's poetry. Hegenerously acknowledged that "Whitman, the great poet, has meant somuch to me. Whitman, the one man breaking a way aliead. Whitman, theone pioneer. And only Whitman. No English pioneers, no French." Whatdrew him to Whitman was his "aboriginal" vision. Other writers and criticsof his time thought otherwise. The Saturday Review, for instance, warned its


audience tbat if "tbe Leaves of Grass should come into anybody's possession,our advice is to tbrow tbem instantly behind the fire." But before long morethoughtful critics began to see positive things in Whitman's "primitivism."

D. H. Lawrence most forcefully argued tbat not only Whitman but severalother major American writers of tbe nineteenth century derived tbeir inspi-ration from native sources by responding to tbe "ultimate savage" withinthem. Henry Seidel Canby was perhaps the first American critic to point outthis enduring element as early as 1936, and be praised Lawrence for bis pro-phetic insight: "Tbere was mucb laughter when years ago D. H. Lawrencein bis 'Studies in Classic American Literature' described an Old IndianDevil wbo was always plaguing tbe great Americans witb sudden fiushes ofpaganism, great resurgence of sex, and obstinate adjustments between theirEuropean souls and their unfenced continent. It is not so funny now, forsome devil, Indian, Marxian or psycho-analytic, has surely been torturingtbe best American writers of our era. Tbey squirm, tbey lasb, they spit outfilth and imprecations, tbey wbine, they defy. Tbey are not at ease in thisZion of our ancestors."

Canby is principally speaking of Thomas Wolfe (1900-38), but somesubsequent American writers, such as John Berryman, Robert Lowell, andAllen Ginsberg, have shown clear symptoms of such haunting obsessions.Perhaps Lawrence was also bebind tbe dichotomy between tbe "Palefaceand Redskin" in American literature tbat Philip Rahv saw in 1939.

PERSON OF THE DRAMASTANLEY KAUFFMANN AS THEATER CRITIC

BERT CARDULLO

Altbougb best known today for bis film criticism, Stanley Kauffmann (bom1916) was also a drama critic for a time, for tbe New York Times and theSaturday Revieiv, among otlier publications; and some remarks on tbis roleof his—among bis others as a playwright, novelist, trade-house editor, bookreviewer, and professor—are in order. But, before discussing Kauffmann'swork as a drama critic, I want to point out the difference between criticismand reviewing when the theater is concerned. Such a differentiation is snob-bish, indecorous, perhaps even quixotic. But it seems to me tbat we arenever going to get out of the miasma of deceit, self-pity, and wishful think-ing that emanates from tbe theater in tbis country, as it does from no othermedium, unless we begin to accept the distinctions that operate in actuality

©2011 by Bert Cardullo

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