On the Ball with D. H. Lawrence

D. H. Lawrence: Spring (c. January 1929)

watercolour (30 x 22.5 cm)

 

 

I. 

 

John Worthen's short piece in the latest Journal of D. H. Lawrence Studies [1] concerning Lawrence's time as a pupil-teacher in Eastwood, is interesting for the revelation that the latter liked nothing better than to arrange an informal kickabout in the school playground during the lunch break, using bricks - and perhaps even jumpers - for goal posts. 

 

Although it seems Lawrence did not himself participate as a player, he was happy to act as a referee and so clearly understood the rules of the beautiful game - just like any other working-class lad at the time - even if there is no evidence (so far) to suggest he supported a local team [2].

 

Knowing this allows us to look at the above painting - Spring (1929) - with fresh eyes; perhaps Lawrence was not merely painting some local youths in the lovely French seaside resort of Bandol celebrating the scoring of a goal during a soccer match, but also fondly recalling the passion with which his own pupils at the Albert Street School would play the game ...

 

 

II.  

 

Funny enough, this picture by Lawrence is one that Keith Sagar seems to particularly loathe:

 

"Spring is supposed to be a painting of some boys in Bandol playing football, but by removing the blue shirts they wore in the first version of the painting, leaving them wearing nothing but boots, and by having all but one of them engage in activities which, whether homoerotic or not, have certainly nothing to do with the ball, he produces a ludicrous painting." [3]

 

The problem, however, is that whilst Sagar was a great Lawrence scholar, he was not, alas, a very good art critic and he misses the opportunity to recognise Lawrence's importance as a painter [4]. There is, I would suggest, a very special violence - and, indeed, a very special beauty - that emerges from his canvases as part of an art of sensation.

 

Lawrence does not wish to reduce his figures to the level of optical cliché; he is not trying to capture a likeness! Nor is he simply revealing and celebrating the flesh, he is rather pushing it in the direction of deformation and disfiguration (anatomical fidelity is no more an issue for Lawrence than it was for Cézanne).  

And so, returning to Spring ... 

 

Expecting and wanting to see an actual game of football, Sagar is irritated by the fact that Lawrence provides sensation rather than spectacle and that he is as uninterested in the score-line, the colour of the kits, or the intricacies of the offside rule, as the boys who play for the joy felt by healthy young bodies exerting themselves, the love of team mates, the ecstasy of celebration, etc. 

 

Spring demonstrates Lawrence's appreciation of the fact that football - and, indeed, sport in general - expresses and liberates certain vital forces and flows.   

 

 

Notes

 

[1] See John Worthen, 'D. H. Lawrence as Games Organiser and Football Referee', Journal of D. H. Lawrence Studies, Volume 6, Number 3, ed. Susan Reid  (D. H. Lawrence Society, 2023), pp. 11-16.    

[2] Lawrence might have supported Notts County; the oldest professional football club in the world, formed in 1862; or Nottingham Forest, formed three years later; or Derby County, formed in 1884, and one of the twelve founding members of the Football League in 1888.

 

[3] Keith Sagar, Introduction to D. H. Lawrence's Paintings, (Chaucer Press, 2003), p. 68.

[4] What I mean by this is that Sagar thinks it sufficient to carefully establish the connections between Lawrence's life, writing, and painting, thereby framing the pictures in a bio-literary context. But in simply substituting snippets of biographical detail, personal anecdote, and literary criticism for a genuine analysis of Lawrence's paintings - i.e., one that is written in the terms appropriate to a discussion of a practice primarily concerned with colour and line - Sagar produces a somewhat pointless commentary which not only betrays his own ignorance of the plastic arts, but also his ultimate lack of confidence in Lawrence’s ability to draw.

On the Flintiness of Language in D. H. Lawrence's The Daughter-in-Law

Ellie Nunn as Minnie Gascoyne in D. H. Lawrence's 

The Daughter-in-Law (Arcola Theatre, 2018)  

 Photo by Idil Sukan

 

 

Read almost any review or commentary on D. H. Lawrence's The Daughter-in-Law (1913) and you'll be struck by the repetition of the following claims: 

 

(i) the play is a much neglected and underrated tour de force of English theatre ... 

 

(ii) Lawrence is superior to Chekhov as a dramatist and storyteller ... 

 

(iii) the language used has not only great lyrical beauty, but also an elemental potency best described as flinty ...

 

The first of these points can be swiftly dealt with. For whilst it's true that Lawrence never saw this work performed in his own lifetime and that the text of The Daughter-in-Law wasn't even published until 1965, ever since Peter Gill's celebrated production at the Royal Court Theatre two years later, it has been staged - and positively received - on numerous occasions. 

 

Most recently, for example, a 2018 production at the Arcola Theatre in London, directed by Jack Gamble, was described by Michael Billington writing in The Guardian as "arguably the best account of working-class life in British drama" [1]. 

 

It has also been adapted for radio and filmed for television and its reputation has, as Lawrence biographer John Worthen correctly says, gone from strength to strength. So it’s really something of a myth or popular misconception that The Daughter-in-Law remains neglected and underrated: we've all seen it and we all agree; it's a masterpiece of twentieth-century English drama. But it's certainly not unsung. 

 

As for the subsequent claim that Lawrence is a superior playwright to Chekov and that The Daughter-in-Law pulls feathers from The Seagull (1895) and flattens The Cherry Orchard (1903), well, that's a matter of opinion. Lawrence himself was rather fond of the Russian author and found in his work something new and important. Personally, however, I think Chekov even more boring than Ibsen and find almost anything preferable to his sub-textual theatre of mood. 

 

As for the third point; the flintiness of Lawrence's dialogue, we might ask what it even means to describe language in this manner ...

 

Flint is a hard, sedimentary, cryptocrystalline form of the mineral quartz and is categorized as a variety of chert. It is chiefly found in rock such as chalk and limestone and is usually dark grey or black in colour, often having a smooth, rather waxy surface. 

 

But when critics like Charles Spencer, writing in The Telegraph, refer to the "marvellously flinty vernacular" used in The Daughter-in-Law [2], they don't mean that Luther and Minnie sound as if they belonged like Fred and Wilma to the Stone Age (although, the Midland’s mining community they inhabited is, to us, over a hundred years on, almost as alien and far-off as that of Bedrock). 

 

Rather, they mean that their speech has a down-to-earth solidity and directness. 

 

Further, I think they also wish to imply that the words have an elemental potency and/or some kind of primordial authenticity. This is particularly true of the almost incomprehensible words and phrases spoken in dialect which, if Lawrence is to be believed, directly articulate the body and its strange forces and flows; not so much as signifying units of meaning, but as units of sound. 

 

Thus it is that, in The Daughter-in-Law - as in the novel Son and Lovers (1913) to which it is closely related - Lawrence skilfully combines elements of naturalism, kitchen sink realism, and his own often transgressive philosophy. Like Nietzsche, he attempts to write in blood and doesn't want to be simply read, so much as passionately experienced. 

 

For whilst Lawrence often regarded the emotions as counterfeit, he always believed in and attempted to solicit the genuine feelings of those who bothered to engage with his work. And, like Heidegger, Lawrence seemed to think it was his duty to safeguard the power of the most elementary words. For, just like our favourite Nazi, Lawrence was prone to a form of linguistic mysticism in which certain words and phonemes have greater essential value than others. 

 

Such a belief is deeply rooted in the Judeo-Christian tradition, which posits that the earliest form of language was that spoken by Adam in the Garden of Eden. Whether this language was also used by God to address Adam and is therefore divine in origin, or whether it was invented by Adam in order to name all things, including Eve, is open to debate. Either way, this notion of a forgotten, sacred language has fascinated many occultists, poets, and philosophers, including Lawrence and Heidegger, both of whom seemed to suffer from a kind of nostalgia for a time when we didn't speak words, but, on the contrary, they spoke us. 

 

Rightly or wrongly, Lawrence seemed to imagine that via a use of dialect, regional slang, and archaic terms he might somehow tap into this language of Paradise, thereby expressing mankind's deepest feelings and highest hopes. It's not without reason that the Cambridge edition of his plays contains a fifteen page glossary of such terms. 

 

Amusingly - and controversially - by the time he came to write his final novel, Lady Chatterley’s Lover, (1926), Lawrence had added several expletives to his elementary vocabulary in order to startle us out of what he calls our mob-selves. 

 

Now, if I'm honest, there was a time when, like many Lawrentians, I happily bought into this idea of a flinty, obscene ur-language of the feelings inscribed in our hearts via which we might speak the truth and not merely pass the word along. Keith Sagar, for example, never abandoned his faith in words such as sluthering and slikey to be sufficiently powerful to not only charge Lawrence's dialogue with magical force, but also re-vitalise audience members. 

 

Now, however, I have certain doubts and reservations about this - although, fortunately, these doubts and reservations needn't get in the way of one's enjoyment of The Daughter-in-Law as a rip-roaring piece of theatre [3].

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Michael Billington, 'The Daughter-in-Law review - is this the best British working-class drama?', The Guardian (29 May 2018): click here to read online. 

 

[2] Charles Spencer, writing in a piece for The Telegraph in September 2006, after watching a performance of The Daughter-in-Law (dir. Kirstie Davis) at the Watford Palace Theatre. Spencer went on to argue that Lawrence was, in fact, a far finer playwright than novelist (or, at any rate, that his plays have lasted rather better than his novels). 

 

[3] This post is an edited version of a review of the opening night performance of The Daughter-in-Law, directed by Kirstie Davis, at the GBS Theatre, Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, London, on 5 Feb, 2014, and featuring five final year students: Eliza Butterworth as Mrs. Gascoigne; Tom Varey as Joe; Anna Krippa as Mrs. Purdy; Lianne Harvey as Minnie; and Joe Blakemore as Luther - all of whom were excellent.

      Indeed, for such young actors, they seemed more than capable of rising to the challenge of the often complex and intense nature of the play's sexual politics and class concerns and even managed to make what are not particularly likeable characters seem sympathetic. That's the magic, I suppose, of having youth, beauty, and talent on your side.

      Finally, mention should also be made of Isobel Power Smith for her set and costume design; Peter Small (lighting design); Harry Butcher (sound); and dialect coach Helen Ashton - although I couldn't really tell (and didn't really care) how authentic the East Midland's accents were on the night.       

Phallic Pictures 1: Boccaccio Story by D. H. Lawrence

D. H. Lawrence: Boccaccio Story (1926)

Oil on canvas (72 x 118.5 cm)

Boccaccio Story (1926) is one of Lawrence's most charming and amusing canvases. It depicts a scene from Boccaccio's tale of a horny Italian peasant named Masetto, who feigns mutism in order to obtain a gardener's job at a local convent so that he might be afforded the opportunity to fuck the young women therein.  

In the painting, Lawrence shows Masetto asleep - or possibly pretending to be asleep - under a large almond tree on a hot afternoon with his clothes in a state of dramatic disarray, exposing his lower body to the view of some passing nuns who, it might be noted, stare intently at his genitalia, rather than averting their eyes in embarrassment as one might have expected.

For Lawrence, it was great fun discovering that he could paint his ideas and feelings and not just articulate them in his poetry and prose. Keith Sagar insists that the picture is not designed to shock and that it's a perfectly wholesome portrayal of the sexual impulse. But this is rather disingenuous.

For Sagar knows perfectly well that Lawrence's paintings from this period are part and parcel of his provocative project of phallic tenderness, via which, like Nietzsche, he hoped to trigger a revaluation of all values, enabling man to storm the angel-guarded gates and return victorious to Eden.   

In a letter to his American friend Earl Brewster - which Sagar himself refers us to when discussing the late paintings - Lawrence confides:

"I put a phallus ... in each one of my pictures somewhere. And I paint no picture that won't shock people's castrated social spirituality. I do this out of positive belief that the phallus is a great sacred image: it represents a deep, deep life which has been denied in us, and is still denied."

So, Lawrence knew very well what he was about and it's puzzling that Sagar should wish to play down the scandalous aspect of Lawrence's paintings. Puzzling also that Lawrence should react with such (seemingly genuine) distress when Boccaccio Story, along with a dozen other works, was seized by the police after being exhibited at the Warren Gallery in London in the summer of 1929.     

Boccaccio Story may very well be a painting of real beauty and great vitality, as one critic (Gwen John) wrote at the time. But so too is it quite obviously obscene in its subject matter of sexual exhibitionism and the carnal desire of nuns; what would be the point of it - and of Boccaccio's tale - were it otherwise? 


See: 

Giovanni Boccaccio, The Decameron, trans. G. H. McWilliam, (Penguin Books, 2003). Note that the story of Masetto and the nuns is the first tale told on the third day. 

D. H. Lawrence, D. H. Lawrence's Paintings, with an Introduction by Keith Sagar, (Chaucer Press, 2003). The letter by Lawrence to Earl Brewster is quoted by Sagar on p. 43 of this work. It can be found in full in The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, vol. V, ed. James T. Boulton and Lindeth Vasey, (Cambridge University Press, 1989), where it is numbered 3967.

Note that Boccaccio Story is part of the D. H. Lawrence Collection at the Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas at Austin (Accession Number 65.242). 

Those interested in reading a related post on Orlan's The Origin of War, should click here.

All Hail the New Flesh! (On D. H. Lawrence's Impure Pictures)

D. H. Lawrence: The Rape of the Sabine Women (1928)

D. H. Lawrence's great faith is in the flesh, to which he makes an insistent appeal throughout his writings. 

His paintings too, as critic Keith Sagar rightly points out, were a bold - not entirely successful - attempt to capture something of the meaty reality of the body and to make manifest the invisible flows that model and shape the flesh, sometimes cruelly, via a non-representational depiction of their effects. 

But Sagar is mistaken to think of this, as he does, in terms of an art of human anatomy. For in attempting to paint the fleshiness of the body and its forces, Lawrence does everything he can do to paint out those personal and ideal (all too human) aspects which overcode the corpo/real and establish the familiar hierarchical structures of the organism.

Lawrence does not wish to reduce his figures to the level of optical cliché; he is not trying to capture a likeness! Rather, he's attempting to express an objective (albeit intuitional) perception of substance. His painting is therefore, if nothing else, consciously post-Impressionist; a refusal, as he puts it, to be transmuted into the purity of light and colour.   

On occasion, it might be said (somewhat generously) that Lawrence almost pulls off what it is he believes only Cézanne amongst the moderns has achieved and what he terms appleyness - that is to say, the partial revealing of the thingliness of the thing, be it a piece of fruit, a wooden table, or the body of a naked woman.

However, at other times his less-than-subtle attempt to rub our faces in the obscene beauty of the flesh via a continuous parade of ample breasts, round buttocks, and giant limbs simply becomes tiring. Only one of his paintings is called Close-Up, but many of them lack what is usually considered appropriate perspective and their shocking character lies precisely in this as much as the actual content (as Lawrence was well aware).

His Rape of the Sabine Women, for example, ironically fails for much the same reason that he suggests Van Gogh's landscapes fail; too wilful and too much of a surging assault upon our sensibilities. Of course there's a certain comic aspect to this particular picture (made clear by the alternative title suggested by Lawrence: A Study in Arses), but this unfortunately fails to compensate for its somewhat repulsive subjectivity. 

This is not to say that painting shouldn't be joyous and even a little vulgar. Nor is it to argue that there is no place for ugliness and obscenity in art. Indeed, as Deleuze points out, it is never enough simply to reveal the flesh, one must ultimately push it in the direction of deformation and disfiguration, producing monsters and abstraction - and monsters of abstraction - in the process.

Something Fishy

Lawrence wrote a very lovely poem about fish to whom so little matters as they live their wave-thrilled but essentially loveless lives in oneness with the water, beyond knowledge, beyond touch, beyond humanity. For fish move in other circles to our own and we are but many-fingered horrors of daylight in their strangely staring eyes.

Brilliantly coloured tropical fish, taken from amongst the coral reefs, are particularly fragile and ill-suited to aquarium life; drifting joylessly in a few cubic centimetres of water around toy divers and other plastic ornaments.

Over twenty million of these little splinters of sheer loveliness are captured annually to supply a multi-million dollar pet trade. Collectors stun the fish by dousing coral beds with cyanide, thereby making it easier to grab hold of them. Many die in the process and up to 40% who survive being captured fail to make it to their final destination. The poison, of course, also damages and eventually kills the coral.

Now, you might imagine that someone who passionately loved the poetry of D. H. Lawrence and raged against anthropocentrism and the crime against nature, would have abhorred the exotic fish trade. What a shock to discover, therefore, that recently deceased critic and scholar Keith Sagar once edited The World Encyclopaedia of Tropical Fish and had a collection of his very own!

Was he never tempted, like Lawrence, to ask his heart, who are these? and to admit that we can never know and thus never really own fish; even if we might catch them, kill them, or keep 'em in tanks - sulphurous sun-beasts of the upper-world that we are!