Sungazing (With Reference to the Case of Juliet, the Lawrentian Sun-Woman)

Sungazing (SA/2022)

 

"And as she lay, she looked up through her fingers at the central sun

whose outer edges streamed brilliance." 

 

I. 

 

Juliet, the protagonist at the centre of D. H. Lawrence's solar-erotic tale entitled 'Sun', is an embryonic Lady Chatterley; rich, bored, and sexually frustrated. However, instead of taking a conventional lover, she establishes a perverse relationship with the sun, that strangest of strange attractors. 

 

One morning, as Juliet lay masturbating in her bed and gazing intently as the sun "lifted himself molten and sparkling, naked over the sea's rim" [1], she realised that her body belonged to the star around which the earth and all the other planets revolve and that her relationship with the sun mattered far more to her than being a wife and mother [2].

 

Of course, such a relationship - as a form of edgeplay [3] - is dangerous as well as pleasurable. For whilst the sun may kiss us into life, it cares nothing for the personal, the egoic, or the human. In fact, as Juliet discovers, it incinerates these things and if the sun helps her overcome her depression, so also does it burn out her pale-faced American idealism and threaten her status as a modern independent woman.

 

 

II. 

 

Of course, Juliet is not the first person to gaze lovingly at the sun and lie naked before him.

 

Indeed, some proponents of New Age philosophies - apparently drawing upon ancient esoteric teachings - explicitly advocate staring at the rising or setting sun for unusually prolonged periods, in order to gain physical and spiritual well-being. 

 

The fact that looking directly at the sun, even for a short time, can cause solar retinopathy and lead to permanent damage or blindness, is not something that seems to cause adherents of sungazing any real concern. They don’t deny such risks, but they do play them down and many assert that, if done with due diligence, sun-gazing can actually improve eyesight [4]. 

 

Indeed, some sun-gazers claim that not only does the practice make you feel happier and healthier, but it can directly increase your energy levels and thus radically reduce the need for food: that one can, as it were, meet one's nutritional requirements directly from sunlight, just like a plant. 

 

Again, the fact that people don't possess chlorophyll and so cannot photosynthesise is discreetly overlooked and, as with other forms of inedia, there is no credible scientific evidence to support this amusingly bonkers claim [5].

 

 

Notes

 

[1] D. H. Lawrence, 'Sun', in The Woman Who Rode Away and Other Stories, ed. Dieter Mehl and Christa Jansohn, (Cambridge University Press, 1995), p. 20. 

 

[2] Cf. Lawrence's poem 'Sun-women' where he writes of women who belong neither to men nor their children - nor even to themselves - but to the sun. The Poems, Vol. I, ed. Christopher Pollnitz, (Cambridge University Press, 2013), p. 456. 

      Admittedly, Lawrence doesn't  explicitly say tha Juliet is masturbating in bed before the sun. However, the following lines undeniably suggest a state of heightened sexual arousal:

      

"It was as if she had never seen the sun rise before. She had never seen the naked sun stand up pure upon the sea-line, shaking the night off himself, like wetness. And he was full and naked. And she wanted to come to him. 

      So the desire sprang secretly in her, to be naked to the sun. She chesished her desire like a secret. She wanted to come together with the sun." 

 

[3] Edgeplay is a term derived from the kinky world of BDSM and refers to any form of sexual activity that involves the risk of physical harm to participants. Sun-fucking, at the very least, might result in a bad case of sunburn (which in turn could lead to skin cancer) and sungazing very obviously risks blindness, although, for Juliet, her (temporary) sun-blindness is like a richness to her.   

 

[4] I’m thinking here of the so-called Bates Method, a form of alternative eye-care developed by William Bates (1860-1931), who counted the visually-impaired Aldous Huxley amongst his famous followers.

[5] As the editors of the page devoted to sungazing on RationalWiki point out, the best that the sun can do when it comes to providing nourishment is stimulate production of vitamin D. However, as this happens in the skin - the sun's ultraviolet rays interacting with a protein known as 7-DHC - you still don't need to purposely stare at the sun.  

 

 

This post is a revised extract from an essay entitled 'Sun-Fucked: On the Question of Solar Sexuality and Speculative Realism in D. H. Lawrence' (2012), which was published as 'Sun-Struck' on James Walker's Digital Pilgrimage blog in January 2019: click here. 

Readers can find another extract from the above essay posted on Torpedo the Ark by clicking here. 

D. H. Lawrence and the Ache for Being

DHL Ultimate Hunger Support 

(SA/2022)

 

 

D. H. Lawrence is particularly scornful of Walt Whitman's claim to be he who aches with amorous love for everyone and everything. Better, he says, to have an actual belly-ache, which is at least localised and easily relieved via a visit to the lavatory [1].   

 

So imagine my suprise when I recently came across a verse in which Lawrence writes of an ache for being, which he describes as the ultimate hunger [2]. Written several years prior to the essay on Whitman, one might have thought Lawrence would have remembered this line about ontological craving and perhaps cut poor old Whitman a bit of slack.

 

For whilst there is certainly something ridiculous in the thought of the good gray poet having blue balls (epididymal hypertension) as the result of his amorous idealism, so too is there something equally ridiculous in Lawrence's feeling starved of being and longing to eat his full, as it were, in the fourth dimension, going beyond the bounds of daily existence and surpassing himself [3].  

 

Better he hungered for a hot dog or hamburger, which is at least something specific and which you can get your teeth into ...

 

 

Notes

 

[1] See D. H. Lawrence, 'Whitman', Studies in Classic American Literature (Final Version, 1923), ed. Ezra Greenspan, Lindeth Vasey and John Worthen, (Cambridge University Press, 2003), pp. 148-61. I discuss this essay in a post published on 27 March 2019: click here.

      See also Lawrence's essay 'The Novel', in Study of Thomas Hardy and Other Essays, ed. Bruce Steele, (Cambridge University Press, 1985), pp. 177-190, where he writes: 

 

"If, in Plato's Dialogues, somebody had suddenly stood on his head and given smooth Plato a kick in the wind, and set the whole school in an uproar, then Plato would have been put into a much truer relation to the universe. Or if, in the midst of the Timaeus, Plato had only paused to say: 'And now, my dear Cleon - (or whoever it was) - I have a belly-ache, and must retreat to the privy: this too is part of the Eternal Idea of man,' then we would never need have fallen so low as Freud." [181]

     

[2] See D. H. Lawrence, 'Manifesto', in The Poems, Vol. I, ed. Christopher Pollnitz, (Cambridge University Press, 2013), p. 218.

 

[3] Aware that readers might have some trouble understanding what he means by this, Lawrence attempts to explain: 

      

"It is the major part of being, this having surpassed oneself,

this having touched the edge of the beyond, and perished, yet not perished."

 

After that, says Lawrence, we become unique and move in even greater freedom than the angels; "conditioned only by our own pure single being" and looking neither to the past nor future, but living in the nowness of the moment. See 'Manifesto', in The Poems, sections VI-VII, pp. 218-220.

 

 

For a related post to this one - on the verb to be - click here.   

Reflections on the Verb to Be

To stamp Becoming with the character of Being - 

that is the supreme will to power ... Nietzsche

 

 

I've seen it said that fascism begins with the verb to be. And, in fact, I may even have used the phrase myself in order to conclude a past post with a polemical punch line [1]. Whether it's true or not is, of course, debatable.  

 

However, it's certainly the case that false (and often pernicious) beliefs derive from mistaken values that are rooted in language rather than any underlying reality; something that Nietzsche demonstrates in his writings on metaphor and grammar (the latter defined as the presence of God within language) [2].   

 

Thus it is that I'm extremely wary of anyone who in wishing to declare their existence or express their identity asserts: I am (X,Y, or Z) in an ontologically sincere manner (i.e., unaware of the game they're playing). 

 

And I really loathe that Broadway musical number composed by Jerry Herman and famously recorded by Gloria Gaynor - I Am What I Am [3] - and which has since become a global gay anthem, regrettably reinforcing (the paradox and irony of) queer essentialism and the even more regrettable consequences that follow from the belief that sexual identities are innate and come with certain immutable characteristics or necessary attributes.

 

I can't help thinking that such idealism gives rise to all kinds of reductive, reified, discriminatory, and extremist ideologies - which returns us to where we began: fascism begins with the verb to be. Which is unfortunate, particularly if D. H. Lawrence is right and Hamlet's question is still the one that preoccupies us and the ache for being remains the ultimate hunger [4].  

 

Still, as every good ascetic will tell you, there's no need to heed every ache and pain and surrender to every yearning; I seem to recall that Aleister Crowley once adopted the admirable practice of cutting his arm with a razor every time he said 'I' and took false pride in this word [5]. 

 

 

Notes 

 

[1] Actually, it was the recently published post of 1 August 2022 - 'Dead Dreams Fly Flags' - click here. 

 

[2] See Twilight of the Idols, where Nietzsche writes: "I am afraid we are not rid of God because we still have faith in grammar." Walter Kaufmann's translation of this text can be found in The Portable Nietzsche, ed. Walter Kaufmann, (Penguin, 1982), p. 483. 

 

[3] 'I Am What I Am' was a song featured in Jerry Herman's Broadway musical La Cage aux Folles (1983). It was recorded by disco queen Gloria Gaynor and released as single in the same year, quickly becoming one of her biggest hits. The song also appears on the 1984 album I Am Gloria Gaynor (Silver Blue Records). Click here to watch Ms Gaynor perform a live version of the song at an awards ceremony in Germany in December 1984.

 

[4] See D. H. Lawrence, 'Manifesto', in The Poems, Vol. I, ed. Christopher Pollnitz, (Cambridge University Press, 2013), p. 218. 

[5] In 1920, Crowley and followers moved to Sicily and founded a community that would operate on the principles set out in The Book of the Law. The Abbey of Thelema, as it was known, was basically a restored farmhouse, not far from the beach and next to the ruins of an ancient Roman temple. Here, daily rituals were performed and all social conventions abandoned. Any one who used the word 'I' was obliged, like the Great Beast himself, to self-administer a cut on their forearm with a razor blade. It's possible that this practice was inspired by Crowley's reading of Nietzsche and that his hope was that Thelemites might resurrect the greater intelligence of the body, which does not speak its selfhood, but, rather, physically enacts or performs it. 

      See 'Of the Despisers of the Body', in Part One of Thus Spoke Zarathustra.  

We Old Ones, We Are Still Here!

Meine Mutter celebrating her 96th birthday  

 

The old ones say to themselves: We are not going to make way, we are not going to die,

we are going to stay on and on and on and on and make the young look after us 

till they are old. - DHL [1]

 

 

I. 

 

This Sunday, my mother will reach 96 years of age. 

 

Some people say this is a real achievement, though I'm not sure about that; surely the achievement is dying an authentic death - something that requires courage and skill - not simply celebrating birthday after birthday and endlessly adding candles to a cake ...? 

Having said that, surviving to a very old age and becoming a monster of stamina in the process does seem to suggest a powerful expression of will. 

 

For even today, when - thanks to improved living standards and advancements in health care - life expectancy has significantly increased since the year my mother was born (1926), not many women in the UK will make it past 95 [2].

 

II.

 

Back in July 1926, D. H. Lawrence travelled north from Italy to Germany with his wife Frieda, in order to celebrate his mother-in-law's 75th birthday. In a letter to Edward McDonald, an American professor who was preparing a bibilography of his writings, Lawrence is scathing about the old who cling on to life and refuse to die: 

 

"'Wir alten, wir sind noch hier!' she says. And here they mean to stay, having, through long and uninterrupted experience, become adepts at hanging on to their own lives, and letting anybody else who is fool enough cast bread upon the waters. Baden-Baden is a sort of Holbein Totentanz: old people tottering their cautious dance of triumph: 'wir sind noch hier: hupf! hupf! hupf!" [3] 

 

 

III. 

 

Three years later, in July 1929, and Lawrence is again in Baden-Baden for the Baroness's birthday, despite his previous determination not to go. As John Worthen notes, this was a bad move [4]. For whereas his previous visits had mostly been happy ones, and he had always been rather fond of his Schweigermutter, now he found her unbearable. 

In a letter to his sister Ada, Lawrence writes:

 

"[...] Frieda's mother really rather awful now. She's 78, and suddenly is in an awful state, thinking her time to die may be coming on. So she fights in the ugliest fashion, greedy and horrible, to get everything that will keep her alive [...] nothing exists but just for the purpose of giving her a horrible strength to hang on a few more years." [5]

 

Later, in the same letter, he complains how his mother-in-law will not be left alone, even for a short period: 

 

"No, she must have Frieda or me there. It's the most ghastly state of almost insane selfishness I ever saw - and all comes of her hideous terror of having to die. At the age of seventy-eight! May god preserve me from ever sinking so low." [6]

 

 

IV.

 

Now, to be fair to my mother, she doesn't gulp down the air in greedy gulps like the Baroness - doesn't actively fight to stay alive. She just sits quietly in her chair all day, like a black hole at the centre of the universe [7]. 

 

But I understand - and share - Lawrence's sense of horror and humiliation.    

 

 

Notes

 

[1] D. H. Lawrence, 'The grudge of the old', in The Poems, Vol. I, ed. Christopher Pollnitz, (Cambridge University Press, 2013), p. 436.

 

[2] Readers interested in the national statistics estimating the number of people (mostly women) in the UK population aged 90 and over, between the years 2002 and 2020, can click here. 

[3] D. H. Lawrence, letter to Edward McDonald (16 July 1926), in The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, Vol. V, ed. James T. Boulton and Lindeth Vasey, (Cambridge University Press, 1989), pp. 495-496. Lines quoted are on p. 496.   

 

[4] John Worthen, D. H. Lawrence: The Life of an Outsider, (Allen Lane / Penguin Books, 2005), p. 400.

 

[5] D. H. Lawrence, letter to Ada Clarke (2 August 1929), in The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, Vol. VII, ed. Keith Sagar and James T. Boulton, (Cambridge University Press, 1993), pp. 397-398. 

[6] Ibid., p. 398. 

[7] See my poem 'Black Holes' in The Circle of Fragments and Other Verses, (Blind Cupid Press, 2010) - or click here to read it on Torpedo the Ark. 

On Masculinity, Matriarchy, and the Mark Steyn Show

Mark Steyn presenting the Mark Steyn Show 

GB News (30 June 2022)

 

 

I. 

 

The other evening, on the always excellent Mark Steyn Show (Mon-Thurs at 8pm on GB News), the eponymous host was decrying the state of contemporary manhood in conversation with the lovely Leilani Dowding [1]. 

 

What ever happened to men? he asked. Have they all been killed off by Wuflu ginger growlers? 

 

Steyn quoted statistics showing that women now dominate - in terms of numbers at least - university places and many professions, whilst men retreat to sad, pitiful so-called man caves in the basement, to watch sports, drink beer, and masturbate to online pornography.   

 

What's needed, Steyn suggested, is a little more confidence in the face of risk amongst modern men; a definition of manliness proposed by the American political philosopher Harvey Mansfield, rooted in the Greek notion of thumos [θυμός], which I have written about here and here.  

Rather like Jordan Peterson, Steyn seems to long for men who still bristle at those things which they find strange, threatening, or inimical (i.e. Other); men with vigour and vim, who are still in touch with their primitive instincts; the kind of men, perhaps, whom Madeline Kahn wishes for in the film At Long Last Love, (1975) [2].     

Of course, as any sociologist or reader of cultural studies will tell you, this concern about a supposed crisis of masculinity, is nothing new. During the late-Victorian period, for example, masculinity was increasingly problematized and strange new models of manhood were springing up as traditional forms of male identity became untenable; their power and authority severely eroded and compromised by modernity itself. 

 

Fear surrounding queerness and monstrosity was widespread and conservative thinkers, including Friedrich Nietzsche, Max Nordau, and, later, Oswald Spengler, promoted ideas of social and cultural degeneration tied to questions of race, gender and sexuality. 

 

We also see this obsession with decadence in the art and literature of the period; in works such as Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891), for example. Homosexuals, drug addicts, vampires ... they all presented a threat to traditional manhood. As did emancipated women, or feminists.        

 

 

II.

 

Perhaps not surprisingly, we also find D. H. Lawrence expressing concern about the state of modern manhood in his work (in fact, this is one of the major themes of both his fictional and non-fictional writings). 

 

In the 1928 article entitled 'Matriarchy', for example, Lawrence argues that - whether they know it or not - "the men of today are a little afraid of the women of today; and especially the younger men" [3]. Fast forward almost a hundred years, and I think we can say they are now more than a little afraid - and this fear, sadly, gives rise to resentment and misogyny, poisoning their own masculinity. 

 

Just as Steyn points to the fact that there are now more female graduates than male, Lawrence writes:

 

"They [modern men] not only see themselves in the minority, overwhelmed by numbers, but they feel themselves swamped by the strange unloosed energy of the silk-legged hordes. Women, women, everywhere, and all of them on the war-path! The poor young male keeps up a jaunty front, but his masculine soul quakes. [...] They [modern women] settle like silky locusts on all the jobs, they occupy the offices and the playing fields like immensely active ants, they buzz round the coloured lights of pleasure in amazing bare-armed swarms, and the rather dazed male is, naturally, a bit scared." [4]   

 

Obviously, this is intended to be humorous, but underneath one senses Lawrence is expressing a real concern and a real dislike of female emancipation. However, he seems to accept the fact that this has happened; that Woman has emerged "and you can't put her back again" [5]. Nor has she any wish to return to the home and to her previous roles of wife and mother. 

 

Thus, whether modern men like it or not, we are in, says Lawrence, for some form of matriarchal society. But then Lawrence asks himself if that would really be so terrible; for if you examine those societies where women run things and do most of the work, the men seem to have gained a certain carefree form of freedom (which Lawrence likes to term insouciance).

So, let the women have the jobs and own the property; let them govern the country and have full rights over the children. The men can then devote themselves to collective activity of their own, be it art, war, or philosophy. Real men, says Lawrence, should not care about earning a wage, pushing a pram round the park, or polishing their possessions.  

 

Perhaps matriarchy isn't so bad after all. It might allow a man to find himself once more and "satisfy his deeper social instincts" [6]. For when a man no longer feels king of his own castle, then he looks for something beyond the domestic space and, indeed, beyond Woman. 

 

However, we might keep in mind that this can result in all kinds of curious formations; from all-male clubs and secret societies, to criminal gangs and even fascism. All of these homosocial phenomena are, in part at least, a reaction to female emancipation and the increased visibility of women in the public sphere.

 

 

Notes

[1] I'm referring to the show broadcast on 30 June, 2022, which can be watched in full on YouTube by clicking here. 

[2] At Long Last Love is a musical comedy directed by Peter Bogdanovich (1975). Madeline Kahn plays Kitty O'Kelly and performs a Cole Porter song from 1929 called 'Find Me a Primitive Man': click here. Mark Steyn plays a clip from this song on the June 30 show I'm discussing. 

[3] D. H. Lawrence, 'Matriarchy', in Late Essays and Articles, ed. James T. Boulton, (Cambridge University Press, 2004), p. 103. 

[4] Ibid.

[5] Ibid., p. 104.

[6] Ibid., p. 106.

At the Well with Martin Heidegger, D. H. Lawrence and Onyofi the Chimp

Photo: Digne Meller-Marcovicz

 

Water is H₂O; hydrogen two parts, oxygen one,

but there is also a third thing, that makes it water. 

And nobody knows what that is. [1] 

 

 

I.

 

There's a famous photo that circulates within philosophical circles of Heidegger carrying a bucket of water drawn from the star-topped well outside of his small, three-room cabin in the Black Forest Mountains of southern Germany. 

 

Heidegger loved this location and he worked on some of his key texts whilst staying at die Hutte. It was, for him, an authentic dwelling place with which he claimed an intellectual and emotional intimacy [2].

 

It's a nice photo. And it suggests that, for Heidegger, a well is more than simply a hole in the ground that allows you to access water; there's something magical about a well and - along with natural springs - they have an important place within the cultural and religious imagination.   

 

So, the question is: Does water drawn by hand from a well possess qualities that water from a tap does not? 

 

D. H. Lawrence certainly thought so. He regarded indoor plumbing as something which fatally intervened between himself and the naked forces of life: "Every time we turn on a tap to have water [...] we deny ourselves and annul our being." [3] 

For Lawrence, when we draw water directly from its underground source, or kindle a fire with some sticks and dry grass, we partake of the Mysteries. Like Heidegger, he believed that we lose far more with all our labour-saving appliances than we gain [4].

 

It sounds, of course, like nonsense to those whose thinking about the natural elements is (knowingly or unknowingly) shaped by scientific understanding; to those for whom water, for example, is merely H₂O. 

 

But it's surely worth remembering just how miraculous clean, fresh water is and it surely wouldn't hurt if we explored the ontological status of water and started to think it as a thing, rather than simply as a resource (or standing reserve) to be exploited and consumed [5]. 

 

 

II. 

 

Here's another question: Can non-human creatures - such as apes - also partake of the mysteries of the sacred well?

 

Lawrence would probably be okay with this idea, but Heidegger might start mumbling about the animal being poor in world and lacking hands, etc. 

 

However, rather amazingly, researchers have just discovered that Ugandan rainforest chimpanzees are digging wells of their very own in order to access and/or filter drinking water and that the practice is spreading. This behaviour is relatively rare in the animal kingdom and it's the first time it's been observed in rainforest chimps. 

 

It's believed that an immigrant female chimpanzee, called Onyofi, introduced the new skill into the community, after she arrived in 2015. Her well-digging activity immediately attracted attention and soon other young chimps and adult females were copying her (not so the adult males, although they happily drink the fresh water once all the hard work's been done) [6].     

 

 

Notes

 

[1] D. H. Lawrence, 'The third thing', in The Poems, Vol. I, ed. Christopher Pollnitz, (Cambridge University Press, 2013), p. 447. 

 

[2] See Adam Sharr, Heidegger's Hut, (The MIT Press, 2006).  

[3] D. H. Lawrence, 'Dana's Two Years Before the Mast', in Studies in Classic American Literature, ed. Ezra Greenspan, Lindeth Vasey and John Worthen, (Cambridge University Press, 2003), p. 117. 

[4] This does not mean that we must do away with all technology and indoor plumbing. As Heidegger writes: 

      "We can use technical devices, and yet with proper use also keep ourselves so free of them, that we may let go of them any time. We can use technical devices as they ought to be used, and also let them alone as something which does not affect our inner and real core. We can affirm the unavoidable use of technical devices and, also deny them the right to dominate us, and so to warp, confuse, and lay waste our nature." 

      See Martin Heidegger, Discourse on Thinking, trans. John M. Anderson and E. Hans Freund, (Harper Torchbooks,1966), p. 54.

 

[5] This idea is developed at length by Kalpita Bhar Paul in his essay 'A Heideggerian Perspective on Thinking about Water: Revisiting the Transition from Hydrology to Hydrosocial Nexus', Environmental Philosophy (2019). This work is available to read online (or to download as a free pdf) on academia.edu: click here.

[6] See Hella Péter, Klaus Zuberbühler, and Catherine Hobaiter, 'Well-digging in a community of forest-living wild East African chimpanzees', in Primates (2022). It can be accessed on SpringerLink by clicking here. Or, for a digested read, see Olivia Miller's article 'Rainforest chimpanzees dig wells for cleaner water' (28 June 2022) on the University of Kent website: click here.  

 

 

Summer Solstice with D. H. Lawrence (1910 - 1928)

Max Pechstein: Summer in Nidden (1919-20)

 

 

D. H. Lawrence liked to think about human life in relation to the wheeling of the year, i.e., the coming and going of the seasons and the movement of the sun through solstice and equinox. So it seems fitting that we might examine what he was up to and what he had to say on the longest day of the year as he experienced it during his (relatively short) lifetime ... 

 

 

21 June 1910 

 

In a letter to the somewhat troubled 27-year-old schoolteacher Helen Corke to whom he was attracted at the time, Lawrence voices his impatience and irritation with their (sexless) relationship: "I would yield to you if you could lead me deeper into the tanglewood of life" [1], he says. 

 

But she can't. Or won't. And so Lawrence feels peeved and unable to express his passion, which, like anger, comes with bright eyes like an angel from God carrying a fiery sword: "I ask you for nothing unnatural or forced. But a little thunder may bring rain, and sweet days, out of a sultry torpor." [2]

 

Indeed. But Helen just wasn't that kind of girl.   

 

 

21 June 1913

 

In a letter to his literary editor, Edward Garnett, written from the latter's own home in Kent (The Cearne), Lawrence expresses his joy at the reviews and letters of congratulations he has received for his newly published third novel, Sons and Lovers. He is excited too that Ezra Pound has asked him for some short stories.

It's nice to find Lawrence upbeat for once, although, of course, he's never quite happy: "I love the Cearne and the warm people, but the English dimness in the air gives me the blues." [3]

 

Sometimes, you really do want to tell him to shut up and go net some more raspberries. 

 

 

21 June 1920  

 

Writing from Taormina, Sicily, to Marie Hubrecht - a Dutch painter whose drawing of DHL can be found in the National Portrait Gallery - Lawrence speaks of several mutual acquaintances and, of course, the weather: 

 

"We have had beautiful days here. Once it rained quite heavily, and made the almond trees and vines bright green. Generally it is sunny, with a cool wind." [4] 

He also mentions the condition of the local fruit: "The grapes are growing big. The first figs are ripe, and abundance of apricots and cherries and yellow peaches." [5] Luckily for a man always watching the pennies, all these items were (comparitively) cheap to buy.

 

It seems that Miss Hubrecht is planning a trip to Norway. Not somewhere Lawrence ever visited, as far as I remember, but, as readers of Women in Love will know, he subscribes to the idea that there are two modes of aesthetic abstraction and disintegration: the African, which is all about the burning heat of the sun and mindless sensuality; and the Arctic, which is all about the annihilating mystery of snow and ice and destructive intellectualism.  

 

Usually, Lawrence writes in favour of dark-skinned, brown-eyed peoples (whom, at times, he comes close to fetishising). But, in his letter to Miss Hubrecht, he confesses a desire to go to the far north and meet the natives:

 

"Blond, blond people, with the fair hair coming keen from the tanned skin, like ice splinters, and the physique sudden and sharp like foam, and eyes blue like water, and like sky, they have a great fascination for me." [6] 

 

Not that he would wish to know them intimately; "frail streaming contact is what I like best: not to know people closely" [7]. The priest of love is, it seems, a voyeur of life, admiring from a distance. Thus, as he also admits in this letter, he loves to watch the Sicilian peasant girls come-and-go "with great bundles of bright corn on their heads" [8].

 

 

21 June 1922

 

Whilst in Australia, Lawrence wrote several letters on what was the shortest day Down Under. 

 

In one, to his American publisher Thomas Seltzer, he announces his plan to sail in several weeks time from Sydney to San Francisco, where he is hoping to arrive without any fuss: "I don't want any strangers to know, or any foolish reporters." [9]

 

And in another, sent to his literary agent Robert Mountsier, he confesses that whilst he doesn't wish to stay in Australia, he's not entirely comfortable with the idea of going to America: "For some reason the U.S.A. is the only country in the world that I shrink from and feel shy of: Lord knows why." [10]

 

Actually, I think Lawrence was perfectly aware of what caused his sense of anxiety about going to the States - for who understood the spirit of America better than he? In the first version of his opening essay to Studies in Classic American Literature, he wrote:

 

"There is an unthinkable gulf between us and America, and across the space we see, not our own folk signalling to us, but strangers, incomprehensible beings, simulacra perhaps of ourselves, but other, creatures of an other-world." [11]

 

 

21 June 1924

 

Writing to one of his (many) homosexual friends, Willard Johnson - often known by the nickname 'Spud', but addressed here with affection as Dear Spoodle - Lawrence complains about the "complicated triangly business of inviting and not inviting" [12] friends to his ranch in Taos, New Mexico: "I'm tired of all that old stuff. I really am. This sort of personal wingle-wangle has been worked to death." [13] 

However, having said that, he does also say: "if you come to the ranch and would like to stay a while and we feel it would be nice - why, let it be so. But let's let things evolve naturally of themselves, without plans or schemes [...]" [14]. 

 

Which I suppose is the Lawrentian way of saying feel free to visit anytime - mi casa, su casa.

 

 

21 June 1927

 

Back in Italy, Lawrence writes a letter to his old friend Gertie Cooper. He sympathises with the fact that she's unwell - "sad to know you are still in bed" [15] - and mentions how hot it is in Florence: "I've never know the sun so strong, for the time of the year." [16] 

 

Considering the date - and considering his obsession with the sun and acknowledging the great phases of the cosmic year - it's surprising that this is the one and only mention of the sun that Lawrence makes in his solstice letters.  

He also reports that Maria Huxley was stung on the arm by a large jelly fish and how much he enjoys watching the peasants cutting the wheat: "It's a fine crop this year, tall and handsome, and a lovely purply-brown colour." [17]

But, ultimately, Lawrence wouldn't swap his own life for the life of a peasant working happily in the wheat fields and sleeping all afternoon:

"Sometimes I think it would be good to be healthy and limited like the peasants. But then it seems to me they have so little in their lives, one had better put up with one's own bad health, and have one's own experiences. At least they are more vivid than anything these peasants will know." [18]

 

 

21 June 1928 

 

And so, finally, we come to a couple of summer solstice letters written in 1928 [19] ... Lawrence is in Switzerland. Frieda has gone to Germany for a week. 

 

To Pino Orioli, the Italian bookseller who privately published Lady Chatterley's Lover on his behalf, Lawrence sings the praises of the Brewsters, who are looking after him in Frieda's absence; concedes that it is better to be warm and comfortable rather than cold and uncomfortable; and asks for the latest news about his scandalous new novel: "I'm so anxious to know what milady is doing [...]" [20]

 

To Harry Crosby, the poet, publisher and solar lunatic, Lawrence complains about being in "a dull hotel with dull people in a dull country" [21], but again acknowledges that, thanks to a beautiful view, good mountain air, and the fact that he's still in possession of the gold coins given to him by Crosby, he's "pretty well content" [22].   

 

A phrase that gives lie to the claim that Lawrence was always a raging malcontent. 

 

In fact, during his final days drinking Ovaltine, writing The Escaped Cock, and preparing his little ship of death, I like to believe that Lawrence discovered a fighter's peace - like a cat asleep on a chair and at one with the world. He earned the right to that I think.     

 

Notes

 

[1-2] D. H. Lawrence, letter to Helen Corke (21 June 1910), in The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, Vol. I, ed. James T. Boulton, (Cambridge University Press, 1979), p. 164.  

 

[3] D. H. Lawrence, letter to Edward Garnett (21 June 1913), in The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, Vol. II, ed. George J. Zytaruk and James T. Boulton, (Cambridge University Press, 1981), p. 27. 

 

[4-8] D. H. Lawrence, letter to Marie Hubrecht (21 June 1920), in The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, Vol. III, ed. James T. Boulton and Andrew Robertson, (Cambridge University Press, 1984), pp. 553-54.  

 

[9] D. H. Lawrence, letter to Thomas Seltzer (21 June 1922), The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, Vol. IV, ed. Warren Roberts, James T. Boulton and Elizabeth Mansfield, (Cambridge University Press, 1987), p. 267.

[10] D. H. Lawrence, letter to Robert Mountsier (21 June 1922), The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, IV 268.

[11] D. H. Lawrence, 'The Spirit of Place', Studies in Classic American Literature, First Version, (1918-19), ed. Ezra Greenspan, Lindeth Vasey and John Worthen, (Cambridge University Press, 2003), p. 168.  

[12-14] D. H. Lawrence, letter to Willard Johnson [21 June 1924], The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, Vol. V, ed. James T. Boulton and Lindeth Vasey, (Cambridge University Press, 1989), p. 60. 

[15-18] D. H. Lawrence, letter to Gertrude Cooper (21 June 1927), The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, Vol. VI, ed. James T. Boulton and Margaret H. Boulton with Gerald M. Lacy, (Cambridge University Press, 1991), p. 87. 

[19] Note that Lawrence wrote to Frieda, Catherine Carswell, and Max Mohr on this date also.

[20] D. H. Lawrence, letter to Giuseppe Orioli [21 June 1928], The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, VI 428. 

[21-22] D. H. Lawrence, letter to Harry Crosby (21 June 1928), The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, VI 429. 

On the Necessity of Killing Carpet Moths

Trichophaga tapetzella [1]

 

 

I.

 

I have always liked moths. Indeed, I once wrote a post in praise of them: click here.

 

And even when they ate holes in my favourite Vivienne Westwood jumper, I didn't complain and figured it was not only in keeping with a punk aesthetic, but ethically the right thing to allow these little winged creatures the right to feast freely; they've got to live, after all.    

 

However, a £200 piece of knitwear is one thing and a £2000 pure new wool carpet is something else, and I fear that my fondness for moths and wanting to do the right thing by them won't stop me reaching for a spray gun should they start to munch away at my Axminster ... 

 

 

II.

 

Now never in my life have I sprayed a living thing: I never wanted to. I always felt insecticides very repugnant: sinister, mean. Other people could spray if they wanted to. Myself, individually, it was repugnant to even try. 

 

But something slowly hardens in a man's soul. And I know now, it has hardened in mine. One must be able to spray carpet moths if they threaten one's home. For wherever man establishes himself  upon the earth, he has to fight for his place, against other forms of life. [2]

 

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Once common, this species of moth is now quite rare in the UK. The larvae feed on naturally-occurring fibrous material such as hair, fur, or feathers and are typically found in birds' nests (or carpets). The picture is a modified version of a photo of an adult specimen located at the Mississippi Entomological Museum.

 

[2] I'm paraphrasing D. H. Lawrence writing in 'Reflections on the Death of a Porcupine', in Reflections on the Death of a Porcupine and Other Essays, ed. Michael Herbert, (Cambridge University Press, 1988), pp. 353-54.

 

On Chthonic Vitalism 2: In the Etruscan Tombs with Giorgio Agamben

 

Etruscan tombs (Tarquinia)

 

The aim of those who practice philosophy in the Etruscan manner is to learn how to die.

 

 

I. 

 

For D. H. Lawrence, the Etruscans conceived of everything in terms of life - even death [a].

 

But the Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben sees things the other way round; for him, the Etruscans conceived everything in terms of death - even life - and their civilisation was (whilst vital) fundamentally chthonic in character. 

 

This is evidenced by the fact that although the Etruscans chose to build their homes on sites which were ostensibly above ground, they chose to dwell in a more profound sense in the vertical depths: "Hence the Etruscan taste for caves and for recesses dug into the rock, and their preference for tall ravines, gorges, and the steep walls of peperino [...]" [b]

 

Those who visit the tombs, writes Agamben, "immediately perceive that the Etruscans inhabited Chthonia, and not Gaia" [109] and that they had their true being in the underworld - were epichthonioi as the Little Greek would say - and not on the surface of the Earth facing skywards. Agamben writes:

 

"The uniquely subterranean character of these Etruscan spaces can also be expressed, when comparing them to other areas of Italy, by saying that what we are seeing is not landscape as such. The affable, familiar landscape that we can serenely embrace with our gaze and which overruns the horizon belongs to Gaia. In chthonic verticality, however, the landscape vanishes; every horizon disappears and makes way for the nefarious, unseen face of nature." [110] 

 

 

II.

It's not that Lawrence is wrong exactly to stress, as he does, the vitalism of the Etruscans, it's just that he fails to emphasise the chthonic nature of this vitalism. Agamben is spot on to write of this fascinating people with iron in their soul: 

 

"They did not love death more than life, but life was for them inseparable from the depths of Chthonia; they could inhabit the valleys of Gaia and cultivate her countryside only if they did not forget their true, vertical dwelling." [110-111]

 

This is why the tombs hollowed out in the naked rock do more than merely house the dead and allow us to imagine how the Etruscans conceived of the afterlife; they also allow us to more profoundly understand "the movements, the gestures, and the desires of the living people who built them." [111] 

 

The reason that the Etruscans "built and protected the dwellings of their dead with such assiduous care" [110], was because of their "unshakable chthonic dedication (rather than, as one might assume, their chthonic dedication arising from their care for the dead)" [110].

 

They understood - in a way that most modern people do not - that life only exceeds mere existence and flowers into the fourth dimension when it "safeguards the memory of Chthonia" [111]. 

 

In other words, because we are mortal, then confronting our own finitude and learning how to live in the knowledge and the shadow of death is the most vital aspect of being human. As Heidegger says: Dasein is essentially a being-towards-death [Sein-zum-Tode] [c]. 

The Etruscans demonstrated "that there is an intense community and an uninterrupted continuity between the present and the past, and between the living and the dead" [111]. We forget or dismiss our relationship with the underworld, with the realm of matter, with death, at our peril (a point that the New York based German artist Heide Hatry makes repeatedly in her work). 

 

For ultimately, not only must Gaia and Chthonia be understood as inseparable, but the world of the living (the biosphere) "cannot exist without exchange and interaction with the chthonic thanatosphere" [111].

 

 

Notes

 

[a] See the first post in this series on chthonic vitalism - 'In the Tombs With D. H. Lawrence' - click here.

 

[b] Giorgio Agamben, 'Gaia and Chthonia', in Where Are We Now? trans. Valeria Dani, (ERIS, 2021), p. 110. Future page references will be given directly in the post.

 

[c] See Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, Division II, chapter 1.

 

On Chthonic Vitalism 1: In the Etruscan Tombs With D. H. Lawrence

 

Man lives naked and glowing on the surface of the Earth.

Then comes death and he departs into the Underworld.

 

 

I. 

 

D. H. Lawrence was instinctively attracted to the ancient Etruscans for several reasons, not least of all because nobody knows much about them, so he was free to speculate imaginatively and project his own ideas of phallic consciousness upon them. 

 

Indeed, it might be argued that his Sketches of Etruscan Places [a] tell us more about Lawrence and his (anti-Roman, anti-Fascist) political philosophy than about the Etruscans themselves. 

 

But that's okay: for one still discovers much of interest from this trip round the subterranean tombs with Mr Lawrence as our tour guide and, besides, who simply wants object lessons about vanished races?

 

 

II. 

 

And it is, dear reader, into the tombs we must descend. For the Etruscans built their cities of wood and these have "vanished as completely as flowers" [13]. Only the tombs, lying like bulbs underground, remain ...

 

However, fear not, for as subterranean cities of the dead go, the Etruscan one is really quite gay. As Lawrence reminds us, the idea of a gloomy underworld only begins with moral idealism; for nature-loving pagans the afterlife was pretty much more of the same: 

 

"It was neither an ecstasy of bliss, a heaven, nor a purgatory of torment. It was just a natural continuance of the fulness life." [19] 

 

Perhaps that explains why the Etruscan tombs feel so welcoming; the dead left a joyous feeling behind them, which, says Lawrence, is "warm to the heart, and kindly to the bowels" [16]. So there is no need to feel anxious or oppressed, dear reader, as we descend into the Etruscan underworld: 

 

"There is a simplicity, combined with a most peculiar, free-breasted naturalness and spontaneity in the shapes and movements of the underworld walls and spaces, that at once reassures the spirit." [19] 

 

II. 

 

The key thing, however, that we learn from Lawrence's musings on the Etruscans, is that they subscribed to what we might term a chthonic vitalism and extracted their own being out of the dark fissures of the earth that are now sealed to us moderns:

 

"It is as if the current of some strong different life swept through them, different from our shallow current today: as if they drew their vitality from different depths, that we are denied." [56] 

 

Lawrence insists that the Etruscans conceived everything - even death - in terms of life. But, I think it might also be argued that, in a sense, they viewed life (to paraphrase Nietzsche) as simply a rare and unusual way of being dead [b].

 

For it's certainly true, as Lawrence concedes, that the tombs reveal the vivid feeling of delight which the Etruscans experienced when contemplating that mysterious journey out of life and "into the dark of death" [58]; a journey Nietzsche describes as a festive return to the actual [c]. 

 

The Etruscans weren't particularly concerned with the human soul, but with the material forces and powers which produced the human soul "out of chaos, like a flower, only to disappear again into chaos, or the underworld" [122].    

   

And it's this which makes the Etruscans - to me as a thanatologist - of real interest; theirs, as the Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben says, was a chthonic civilisation par excellence ... [d]

 

Notes

 

[a] Originally published in 1932 as Etruscan Places, I'm relying here on the 1992 Cambridge edition ed. Simonetta de Filippis, entitled Sketches of Etruscan Places and Other Italian Essays. Page numbers given in the post refer to this edition.  

[b] See Nietzsche, The Gay Science, Book III, 109. 

 

[c] See Nietzsche, KSA 9:11 [70].

 

[d] See Agamben's text entitled 'Gaia and Chthonia' in Where Are We Now? trans. Valeria Dani, (ERIS, 2021), pp. 105-113. I discuss this work in the second post on the theme of chthonic vitalism: click here.

Lady Chatterley's Lover Visits Harold Hill

My local boozer, The Pompadours - 

and some Lawrence scholars find the Sun Inn, Eastwood, a bit rough ...

 

 

Harold Hill is a long way removed (in every sense) from the fictional mining village of Tevershall, which Lawrence imagines in his novel Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928). 

 

And of course, I'm no Oliver Mellors, the ex-soldier turned gamekeeper who strides through the pages of the above in his dark green trousers "with a red face and red moustache" [1], angry at the world. 

 

Having said that, sometimes when walking around the postwar housing estate on the far north-eastern fringes of Greater London that is Harold Hill [2], I'm tempted to tell the natives - whom my mother always disparagingly called Cockneys - something similar to what Mellors wishes to tell the working men and women of Tevershall:

 

"'I'd tell 'em: Look! look at yerselves! One shoulder higher than t'other, legs twisted, feet all lumps! What have yer done ter yerselves [...] Spoilt yerselves an' yer lives. [...] Take yer clothes off an' look at yerselves. Yer ought ter be alive an' beautiful, an' yer ugly an' half dead.'" [3] 

 

Of course, I'd not say this with a broad East Midland's accent. 

 

And I can't blame the degenerate condition of the locals on years of hard physical toil - on the contrary, it's the fact that many of them don't work (or exercise) that's the problem; that they prefer vegetating on the sofa watching Netflix, eating junk food delivered to their doors, driving even the shortest distance, rather than walk a few hundred yards.

 

To paraphrase Mellors: Their spunk's gone dead - e-scooters and mobile phones and cannabis suck the last bit out of them. Which is a shame, but there you go. 

 

I won't bore readers with statistics, but the stats for the London Borough of Havering when it comes to things like health don't make for happy reading. Obesity, for example, is the norm; if the 18th-century Essex grocer Edward Bright were alive today and decided to ply his trade at Hilldene shops, no one would blink an eye at his great girth. 

 

People down south often like to joke that it's grim up north, but, believe me, it's fucking grim on Harold Hill too [4].     

 

 

Notes

 

[1] D. H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterley's Lover, ed. Michael Squires, (Cambridge University Press, 1993), p. 46. For a full description and character analysis of Oliver Mellors, see my post of July 2020: click here. 

 

[2] Readers interested in knowing more about Harold Hill are reminded of the post published on 28 May 2016 entitled 'And No Birds Sing': click here. 

 

[3] D. H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterley's Lover, p. 219. 

 

[4] And if you don't believe me, see the report in the Romford Recorder which revealed that whilst Havering is home to some extremely affluent neighbourhoods, six roads in Harold Hill have been classed by the UK government as among the most deprived in all England: click here.  

 

   

Notes on Crosby and Crane: Pin-Up Boys of the Lost Generation

Harry Crosby (1898-1929) and Hart Crane (1899-1932)

 

La plus volontaire mort c'est la plus belle.

 

 

I. 

 

The initials HC mean different things to different people. 

 

For example, for poor souls suffering with an unremitting headache, they refer to Hemicrania continua, whilst for those to whom the health of horses is a concern, they refer to the connective tissue disorder hyperelastosis cutis.        

 

Then again, for students of organic chemistry - or those working in the oil and gas industry - HC is short for hydrocarbon, whilst for fans of the Tour de France, HC designates the most difficult type of mountain climb (one which is hors catégorie). 

 

For me, however, as an amateur literary critic, the initials HC bring to mind the two Jazz Age American poets Harry Crosby and Hart Crane ...

 

 

II.

 

Crosby and Crane sounds like a double act and, as a matter of fact, these two are often linked in the cultural imagination; not merely because they were both poets of debatable merit, but because each committed suicide at a young age (Crosby was 31 when he shot himself in the head in December 1929 and Crane was 32 when he literally jumped ship in April 1932).  

 

They met for the first time in Paris in January 1929. Harry and his wife, Caresse, had set up the Black Sun Press and were keen to publish new work by the most interesting authors of the day in de luxe editions. Crane was then working on the long poem by which he is best remembered, The Bridge, which he intended as a positive counterstatement to Eliot's Wasteland (1922).    

 

Crane gave Crosby the MS to read and the latter loved it, encouraging his new friend to complete the poem he had been obsessively reworking since 1923. For Crosby, Crane's poem was full of thunder and fire and swept away all the dust and artificiality of the times, reminding him of Blake and, one suspects, of what he aspired to in his own heliocentric verse. 

 

As one commentator notes: 

 

"Crosby's obvious excitement had its source not only in the poem itself but also in finding a work answering to his own theories of poetry and his own particular enthusiasms." [1]    

 

For example, both had a quasi-Futurist love of speed and modern technology, seeing in the machine a dynamic expression of man's essentially restless spirit and desire to self-overcome; both also valued open spaces in which to move; and both believed that poetry should not only look back to the past, but connect the present to the future and concern itself with the only themes that really matter: love, beauty, and death. 

 

At heart, then, both were Romantics in the era of Modernism; writers who sought spiritual illumination and a glimpse of some essential reality or lyrical absolute. It's no wonder then that despite his initial enthusiasm for the work of D. H. Lawrence, Crosby concludes that the latter is not his cup of tea:

"'I am a visionary I like to soar he is all engrossed in the body and in the complexities of psychology. [...] He admits of defeat. I do not. He is commonplace. I am not.'" [2]

 

This - and the fact that he can't really write for toffee - puts me off Crosby. I can't dislike him, but neither can I accept this son of one of the richest banking families in New England to be the real deal (despite the painted toe-nails and sun tattoo) [3].  

 

As for Crane, well, to be honest, I'm undecided, knowing as I do so little of the man, so little of his work. Many think him a genius and admire his highly stylised and difficult poetry - for its ambition if nothing else. And some scholars working within queer theory champion Crane as an exemplary outsider who struggled with his homosexuality (when not fucking sailors).    

 

  

III. 

 

In late November 1929, the Crosbys arrived in New York for what they planned to be a short visit. Hart Crane threw a party for them at his Brooklyn apartment on December 7th, where fun was had by all (including fellow poets E. E. Cummings and William Carlos Williams).

 

Three days later, however, Harry killed himself and his 21-year-old lover - Josephine Rotch, aka the Fire Princess - in an apparent suicide pact. It was Hart Crane who broke news of this tragic event to Crosby's wife and mother. 

 

Shortly after the funeral, Caresse returned to Paris and arranged for the Black Sun edition of The Bridge to be published in February 1930. Sadly, the reviews weren't great and Crane's sense of failure resulted in a creative slump. 

 

Although he desperately looked for "another great theme around which he might order his work" [4], he unfortunately never found such. Rather, having relocated to Mexico, Crane had simply discovered the intoxicating power of tequila.

 

Having attempted suicide on several occasions, Crane boarded a ship back to New York - the S. S. Orizaba - from where, on April 27, 1932, he jumped into the sea having shouted goodbye to a group of fellow passengers. He left no suicide note and his body was never recovered. 

 

Sy Kahn writes:

 

"Crane's death by water and Crosby's death by exploding bullet in his head, in retrospect, and with the testimony of their poems, seem inevitable acts of self-destruction. For both men death was not fearsome, but a portal through which they might find the tormenting, often elusive, absolutes they felt and sought." [5] 

 

He concludes:

 

"The parallels and similarities (even the accident of their initials) in the works and lives of these two poets express the literary vitality of the 1920s [...] In retrospect it seems almost ordained that these poets should have encountered each other before their deaths." [6]  

 

What a pity, then, that both of these young men had always been "too rich and spoilt" and left with no new pleasures to experience but suicide: "the last sort of cocktail excitement" [7].  

 

Notes

 

[1] Sy Kahn, 'Hart Crane and Harry Crosby: A Transit of Poets', in the Journal of Modern Literature Vol. 1, No. 1 (Indiana University Press, 1970), pp. 45-56. The line quoted is on p. 47. 

      This essay can be accessed on JSTOR by clicking here. 

 

[2] Harry Crosby writing in his diary, quoted by David Ellis in D. H. Lawrence: Dying Game 1922-1930 (Cambridge University Press, 1998), pp. 472-73.

 

[3] Without getting into issues of authenticity etc, let's just say that, for me, Crosby tries a bit too hard to be un poète maudit like his heroes Baudeaire, Rimbaud, Lautréamont, et al. Some people just are extreme and achieve a state of inspired madness without having to paint their nails. Ultimately, who gets closest to the sun - Van Gogh, or Harry Crosby ...?     

 

[4] Sy Kahn, 'Hart Crane and Harry Crosby: A Transit of Poets', Journal of Modern Literature Vol. 1, No. 1, p. 54. 

 

[5] Ibid., p. 55. 

[6] Ibid., p. 56. 

 

[7] These phrases were said by D. H. Lawrence with reference to the case of Harry Crosby; see his letter to Giuseppe Orioli [18 Dec 1929], in The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, Vol. VII, ed. Keith Sagar and James T. Boulton, (Cambridge University Press, 1993), pp. 600-601. 

      See also Lawrence's kind letter to Caresse Crosby (30 Jan 1930), Letters VII 634, in which he tells her: "Harry had a real poetic gift - if only he hadn't tried to disintegrate himself so! This disintegrating spirit, and the tangled sound of it, makes my soul weary to death." 

      He also advises that she not try to recover herself too soon; "it is much better to be a little blind and stunned for a time longer, and not make efforts to see or to feel. Work is the best, and a certain numbness, a merciful numbness. It was too dreadful a blow - and it was wrong."