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. 

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."

Of Garden Snails and Motor Cars

Garden Snail (SA/2022)

 

What chance have snails upon an asphalt road

When giant SUVs go roaring by? [1] 

 

 

I assume my neighbour loves his wife and children; but I know for a fact he loves his sleek and (to my eyes) sinister looking Sports Utility Vehicle parked proudly in front of his house on what was once a garden full of wild plants, before being concreted over. 

 

And I know this not only because I have seen the way he cares for the car, but heard the way he boasts of its special features, including optimal traction, enhanced connectvity, and a fuel-injected engine (terms which mean absolutely nothing to me). 

 

He's right, of course, when he says it's a marvel of automotive engineering, but I can't help thinking: So what? 

 

The design, development, and manufacturing of motor cars is not something that interests or excites my imagination - certainly not in the way that the snails creeping about in the dampness of my garden after the rain, fascinate and enchant. 

 

For if, as my neighbour insists, his SUV is a marvel of engineering and technology, then a snail is a wonder of evolution, first moving on to land about 350 million years ago. The former may be able to crush the latter under its alloy wheels, but when it comes to possessing special features, Cornu asperum [2] leaves even the most advanced automobile in the dust. 

 

 

Notes

 

[1] I'm paraphrasing Harry Crosby, who opens his poem 'The Golden Gourd' with the following lines: "What chance have snakes upon an asphalt road / When giant limousines go gliding by,". The poem can be found in Ladders to the Sun, (Soul Bay Press Ltd., 2013), p. 38. 

 

[2] The scientific name of the common garden snail is subject to intense debate amongst malacologists; although classified as Helix aspersa for over two centuries, the prevailing wisdom now places it in the genus Cornu. Whatever we call it, this terrestrial mollusc - originally native to the Mediterranean region - now dwells happily in several parts of the world. In fact, the only place you are unlikely to find one, is Antarctica.  

 

For an earlier post in which I reflect favourably on the snail, click here. 

 

 

Guards! D. H. Lawrence and the Potency of Men

Guards erect with breasts bright red 

and the skins of bears upon their head

All the nice girls love a sailor, so they say [1].

 

But for D. H. Lawrence, it's all the king's soldiers who catch his eye; especially those guards marching stiffly in red tunics and black busbies in whom phallic pride and sun glory is manifest in equal measure. 

 

This is made clear in the early poem 'Guards' [2], where he writes of smouldering soldiers with dark eyes and closed warm lips who advance upon him in a soft-impulsive but somewhat threatening manner, like a wave, before then turning, leaving him to admire their burning shoulders in retreat. 

 

The encounter is clearly, for Lawrence, one with homoerotic overtones. I don't agree with everything that Gregory Woods writes, but it's hard to argue with his claim that in the section of 'Guards' entitled 'Evolution of Soldiers', "their apparent evolution is similar to that of a penis, through tumescence and detumescence" [3]. 

 

Expanding on his theme, Woods continues:

 

"Perspective causes each man to seem to grow as he approaches with red tunic, black busby and 'dark threats'. He passes 'above us', in the classic position of sexual advantage. At 'ebb-time', when the group has just passed by, its phalluses remain erect for a glorious moment, before subsiding." [4]  

 

 

II. 

 

Almost twenty years later, and Lawrence is still thinking of the soldiers in Hyde Park he saw in the summer of 1909. 

 

In a letter sent to Harry Crosby in 1928, he encloses an extended version of 'Guards' - one with an unpublished third section which describes the soldiers as a "column of flesh erect and painted vermillion" and as "Sun-dipped men [...] all blood-potent", who have come together in their maleness [5].

                   

Again, you don't need to be an expert in queer studies to appreciate that this verse is invested with erotic desire for the male body: "And the male body is the symbol of its own sexual focus, the phallus." [6] 

 

Thus, whilst there is "no questioning the fact that his art is primarily hetero-erotic in intention" [7], Lawrence also loves daydreaming about the potency of men and phallic heroes dipped in scarlet.  

 

 

Notes

 

[1] "Ship Ahoy! (All the Nice Girls Love a Sailor)" is an English music hall song from 1908, written by Bennett Scott and A. J. Mills. The song was first performed by male impersonator Hetty King.  

 

[2] D. H. Lawrence, 'Guards!', in The Poems, Vol. I, ed. Christopher Pollnitz, (Cambridge University Press, 2013), pp. 34-35. 

      As Pollnitz notes: "DHL regularly visited Hyde Park, in central London. He planned to take Louie Burrows there in July 1909 as he had Jessie Chambers on an earlier visit [...]." See The Poems, Vol. II, ed. Christopher Pollnitz, (Cambridge University Press 2013), p. 843. Whether either young woman was particularly interested in seeing soldiers on parade, I don't know, but Lawrence adored the spectacle of erect young men in uniform marching past.   

 

[3] Gregory Woods, Articulate Male Flesh: Male Homo-eroticism and Modern Poetry, (Yale University Press, 1987), p. 130.  

 

[4] Ibid.  

[5] See Lawrence's letter to Harry Crosby [30 April - 1 May 1928], in The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, ed. James T. Boulton and Margaret H. Boulton, with Gerald M. Lacy, (Cambridge University Press, 1991), pp. 388-390. The third part of 'Guards' is entitled 'Potency of Men' and consists of five rhyming quatrains. It is reproduced in full on pp. 388-89 from Lawrence's MS.  

[6] Gregory Woods, Articulate Male Flesh, pp. 130-31. 

[7] Ibid., p. 137. 

 

 

To read a sister post to this one, on Lawrence's extended version of the poem 'Gipsy' contained in the Crosby letter, click here. 

Between Thy Moon-Lit, Milk-White Thighs

Diagrammatic, non-explicit, depiction of a man

performing cunnilingus on a woman

wikimedia.org

 

 

In the spring of 1928, D. H. Lawrence sent Harry Crosby the newly written out and revised MS for his short story 'Sun' [1], by way of thanking Crosby for the five gold coins that the latter had sent him. 

 

Lawrence also enclosed some poems, including an extended version of an early work entitled 'Gipsy' [2]. To the original two stanzas, Lawrence now added a couple more, which contained, he said, a bit of sun. 

 

The first of these reads:

 

Between thy moon-lit, milk-white thighs

      Is a moon-pool in thee.

And the sun in me is thirsty, it cries

      To drink thee, to win thee. [3]   

 

This is certainly an interesting quatrain; one which lends support to the controversial claim that although Lawrence thinks of the female sex organ as a ripe, bursting fruit just waiting to be eaten, the cunt was for him at its most succulent only when "overflowing with semen from the withdrawn phallus" [4].

 

Whether this implies that cunnilingus was, in Lawrence's erotic imagination, a disguised form of fellatio [5], is probably not something we can say for sure. 

 

But what we might note is that via the creampie-loving figure of Oliver Mellors, Lawrence forcefully expressed the view that there is only one place in which it is legitimate and desirable for the male to ejaculate - and that is deep inside the vagina [6]. 

 

Thus, when in the verse above the male speaker uses the term moon-pool, I think we all know that he refers to a deposit of semen and it is this which he wishes to felch from between the milk-white thighs of his beloved; i.e., the sun in him is greedy for the male seed of life, not the female sap that curdles milk and "smells strange on your fingers" [7].  

 

 

Notes

 

 [1] See the letter to Harry Crosby [29 April - 1 May 1928], in The Letters of D. H. Lawence Vol. VI, ed. James T. Boulton and Margaret H. Boulton, with Gerald M. Lacy, (Cambridge University Press, 1991), pp. 388-90. 

      This MS would provide the base text for the Black Sun edition of the tale published in October 1928.

 

[2] See D. H. Lawrence, 'Gipsy', in The Poems, Vol. I, ed. Christopher Pollnitz, (Cambridge University Press, 2013), pp. 14-15. And for an earlier version of this poem entitled 'Self-Contempt', see the letter to Louie Burrows (6 Dec 1910) in The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, Vol. I, ed. James T. Boulton, (Cambridge University Press, 1979), p. 196.   

[3] Letters VI. 389. The second added stanza reads: "I am black with the sun, and willing / To be dead / Can I but plunge in thee, swilling / Thy waves over my head."

[4] Gregory Woods, Articulate Flesh: Male Homo-eroticism and Modern Poetry, (Yale University Press, 1987), p. 131. 

      This is taken from a chapter on Lawrence - chapter four (pp. 125-139) - in which Woods argues (amongst other things) that Lawrence had a "deep and obvious fascination with male homosexuality" and that whilst his "main erotic preoccupation is with the possibility of love between a woman and a man", when this seems impossible or doomed to failure, "he turns to the homosexual alternative [...] as a less problematical version of the same thing". 

      Ultimately, says Woods, Lawrence is promoting a bisexual ideal and his erotic grail is the "passionate, physical union of two heterosexual men". 

      Lines quoted can be found on p. 125.   

 

[5] Woods writes: "Cunnilingus is Lawrence's oblique image of fellatio." Articulate Flesh, p. 131. 

      A little later (p. 132), Woods insists that Lawrence's heroes all long to drink from the cup of semen which is the post-coital (spunk-filled) vagina. The American biographer and critic Jeffry Meyers, who has written extensively on Lawrence and published a volume entitled Homosexuality and Literature, 1890-1930 (The Athlone Press, 1977), is not convinced, however, and says that statements such as this, made without supporting evidence, simply reveal the author's own obsessions. 

      Meyers's review of Articulate Flesh can be found in The Journal of English and Germanic Philology, Vol. 88, No. 1 (Jan 1989), pp. 126-129. This can conveniently be accessed on JSTOR via the following link: https://www.jstor.org/stable/27710124  

 

[6] See D. H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterley's Lover, ed Michael Squires, (Cambridge University Press, 1993), p. 203. 

      Speaking to Connie, Mellors angrily condemns those women who "'love everything, every kind of feeling and cuddling and going off, every kind except the natural one.'" Such women, he says, even when they do allow vaginal penetration, invariably insist their lovers withdraw prior to orgasm and come instead on some external body part. To be fair, the women are the ones running the risk of an unwanted preganancy - not something that Oliver Mellors allows himself to consider.      

 

[7] D. H. Lawrence, 'Fig', in The Poems, Vol. I, ed. Christopher Pollnitz, (Cambridge University Press, 2013), p. 233.

      Again, whether this means that Lawrence imagined cunnilingus as an oblique image of fellatio - or whether, rather, he had a neo-primitive belief that the ingestion of semen increased one's own potency thanks to the magical properties it possessed - is not something I know for certain (any Lawrence scholar reading this who may care to advise is welcome to do so). 

      Readers interested in knowing more about the swallowing of semen might find the post entitled 'Gokkun' (7 May 2016) of interest: click here. 

 

 

A note on further reading: 

 

Those interested in this topic might like to see the essay by Isabella Rooke-Ley entitled '"What is Cunt? she said": Obscenity, Concealment and Representations of the Vulva in D. H. Lawrence', in Polyphony, Volume 2, Issue 1 (University of Manchester, April 2020): click here.  

      Rooke-Ley argues that Lawrence's use of the word cunt in Lady C. is not what it seems, in that rather than being a direct (if vulgar) reference to female genitalia, it is in fact a concealment of the latter and linked to the text's figuring of the cunt and its pleasure as obscene and shameful.

      Turning her attention to the (infamous) poem 'Fig', Rooke-Ley attempts to demonstrate how there is also a link made in Lawrence's work between concealment, obscenity, vulval pleasure, and putrefaction.

      Finally, readers may also wish to see my post 'The Obscene Beyond: It is So Lovely Within the Crack' (1 July 2021): click here.

 

 

For a sister post to this one, on Lawrence's extended version of the poem 'Guards' contained in the Crosby letter, click here.                 

 

 

May Day with D. H. Lawrence (1921 - 1929)

Claude Flight and Edith Lawrence Maypole Dance (1936)
goldmarkart.com 

 

 

1 May 1921 

 

Lawrence is back in Germany - staying at a country inn just outside Baden. 

 

He informs his American literary agent Robert Mountsier that it's lovely, although in a lettter written two days earlier, also to Mountsier, he confesses he doesn't really like Germany - even though things are cheap (always an important consideration for Lawrence). 

 

He expands upon this in a letter written the following day - May 2nd - to Mary Cannan, the actress wife of the British writer Gilbert Cannan: 

 

"The country is beautiful, Baden a lovely little town, and there are some exquisite things in the shops. Everybody is very nice with us: and we live for about 5/- a day the pair of us. Food is very good: wonderful asparagus." [1] 

 

And yet: "Germany is rather depressed and empty feeling [...] The men are very silent and dim." [2] 

 

To be fair, they had just lost a war and Germany had not fully recovered from the shock caused by the overthrow of the old way of life and the ongoing economic misery caused by the Treaty of Versailles's demand for punitive war reparations. 

 

Soon, however, the Nazis would be along, promising to address these issues ...

 

 

1 May 1923 

 

Two years later, and Lawrence is in Chapala, Mexico - which he describes in a telegram to Frieda as paradise (whether this is meant ironically or not, I don't know). 

 

She duly arrives from Mexico City the following day by train and they move into a little house of their own (near but not overlooking Lake Chapala): "It is hot and sunny and nice: lots of room." [3] 

 

They even have bananas growing in their garden - so much more exotic than the apples growing in mine! 

 

 

1 May 1925 

 

Many of Lawrence's short letters written from Del Monte Ranch, New Mexico, are full of relatively dull domestic details and conventional remarks about the weather and his state of health. 

 

And this includes his May Day letter to the American modernist painter (and early exponent of Cubism) Andrew Dasburg: thanks for sending a new ribbon for the typewriter; we've got the workmen in laying pipes; the cold winds cause my chest to play up, etc. [4] 

 

There's really not much one can say about this. But it's reassuring to know that Lawrence wasn't raging or in genius mode all of the time. 

 

 

1 May 1926 

 

Although Lawrence mockingly portrayed Reggie Turner as little Algie Constable in Aaron's Rod (1922), I will forever hold him in high regard due to the fact that he was one of the few friends who remained loyal to Oscar Wilde when he was imprisoned and supported him after his release.

 

On May Day, 1926, Lawrence wrote to Reggie from the pensione where he was staying, in Florence, hoping to clear up a misunderstanding. Apparently, they had agreed to meet at a popular bar, but, due to some confusion over the day, they managed to miss one another. 

 

Surprisingly, rather than be angry about this and blame Reggie, Lawrence sincerely regrets the lost evening and confesses that he was involved in a similar mix-up in Mexico City "with the one man I really liked in that damnable town: he said Thursday, and I heard Friday ... But anyhow I'm awfully sorry, and a thousand apologies" [5]. 

 

This is maybe explained by the fact that, as well as needing spectacles, Lawrence was a little deaf.

 

 

1 May 1928 

 

Harry Crosby, the young American playboy, poet, and publisher, epitomized the Lost Generation and would, in December 1929, commit suicide, aged 30, having first shot his young mistress, Josephine Rotch, through the head as part of an apparent death pact.

 

Twenty months earlier, however, in the spring of 1928, Lawrence had offered to write an introduction to a collection of poetry by Crosby and he sent this off to him at the beginning of May [6]. 

 

In a letter of April 29, Lawrence writes: "I have done the introduction to Chariot of the Sun [...] You can cut this introduction, and do what you like with it, for your book. If there is any part you don't like, omit it." [7] 

 

That's very generous of Lawrence; as was his proposal to promote Crosby's book by trying to get the introduction published separately; "a magazine article would be a bit of an advertisement for you" [8].

 

Just before Lawrence had the chance to post this letter, however, he received some further poems from Crosby in the mail. Unfortunately, he didn't think much of them - and in a PS written on May 1st, he advised Crosby not to add them to Chariot of the Sun:

 

"They don't belong; they are another thing. Put them in another book. Leave Chariot as it is. I send my foreword [...] It's good - but it won't fit if you introduce these new, long, unwieldly, not very sensitive poems. Do print Chariot as it stands. The new ones aren't so good." [9] 

 

 

1 May 1929

 

This would be Lawrence's final May Day; he was to die the following year on March 2nd. 

 

And he spent it in Spain (Palma de Mallorca): "Brilliant sunny May Day here, but wind cool - everything sparkling." [10]

 

In fact, he liked Mallorca so much he thought about staying the whole month and then do a little tour around Spain: Burgos, Granada, Cordoba, Seville, Madrid ..."I don't expect to like it immensely [...] Yet it interests me." [11]  

 

In fact, Lawrence had already decided the Spanish were rancid and lifeless: 

 

"The people seem to me rather dead, and they are ugly, and they have these non-existent bodies that English people often have [...] Dead-bodied people with rather ugly faces and a certain staleness. [...] The Spaniards, I believe, have refused life so long that life now refuses them [...]" [12]

 

Despite this, Lawrence lingered on in Palma until June 18th, when he finally sailed for Marseille (and from there headed by train to Italy).    

 

 

Notes

 

[1] D. H. Lawrence, The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, Vol. III, ed. James T. Boulton and Andrew Robertson, (Cambridge University Press, 1984), p. 710. 

      The May Day letter to Robert Mountsier is also on p. 710. 

 

[2] Letters, III. 711. 

 

[3] D. H. Lawrence, writing in a letter to Thomas Seltzer (2 May 1923), The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, Vol. IV, ed. Warren Roberts, James T. Boulton and Elizabeth Mansfield, (Cambridge University Press, 1987), p. 436. 

      The short May Day telegram to Frieda is on p. 435 of this volume. 

 

[4] See the letter to Andrew Dasburg (1 May 1925), in The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, Vol. V, ed. James T. Boulton and Lindeth Vasey, (Cambridge University Press, 1989), p. 248. 

 

[5] Letters, V. 445-46. 

 

[6] This introduction by Lawrence - entitled 'Chaos in Poetry' - can be found in Introductions and Reviews, ed. N. H. Reeve and John Worthen, (Cambridge University Press, 2005), pp. 107-116. It is one of my favourite pieces of writing by Lawrence and, I think, one of the most important. It was first published in Echanges, in December 1929.  

 

[7-8] D. H. Lawrence, The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, Vol. VI, ed. James T. Boulton and Margaret H. Boulton, with Gerald M. Lacy, (Cabridge University Press, 1991), p. 389.

[9] Letters VI. 390. 

[10] D. H. Lawrence, letter to Nancy Pearn (1 May 1929), in The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, Vol. VII, ed. Keith Sagar and James T. Boulton, (Cabridge University Press, 1993), p. 269.

 

[11] Letter to Maria and Aldous Huxley [9 May 1929], Letters, VII. 276. 

[12] Letters, VII 275-76. 

      Lawrence is still denigrating the Spanish - whom he compares disavourably to both the Italians and the French - in another letter to Aldous Huxley written on the 17th of May [VII. 283]. Just for the record: I love Spain and I love the Spanish.

 

 

To read the first part of this post - May Day with D. H. Lawrence (1911 - 1917) - click here.