Aleister Crowley and D. H. Lawrence: The Great Beast Versus The Priest of Love

Messrs. Crowley (1875 - 1947) and Lawrence (1885 - 1930)  

I. 

 

The great English occultist Aleister Crowley and the great English novelist D. H. Lawrence never actually met in person. 

 

And that's probably just as well; for whilst they both had scandalous reputations [1], it's almost impossible to imagine they would have become pals.

 

Despite never crossing paths, however, Crowley and Lawrence were certainly aware of one another and had several friends and acquaintances in common [2]. 

 

What's more, not only did Crowley and Lawrence move in similar bohemian circles, but they also lived in some of the same places, including Cornwall [3] and Sicily [4], for example.    

 

 

II.  
 

I'm not a Crowley expert, but my understanding is that, essentially, he viewed Lawrence's work as naive and unrefined. 

 

Thus, whilst he approved of Lawrence's pagan sensuality, for example, at the same time he felt it overly romantic; capable of arousing adolescent passions, but not of satisfying the more mature tastes of the sophisticated libertine. 

 

Further - and this is rather surprising, coming as it does  from a practitioner of sex magick - Crowley thought Lawrence exaggerated the importance of sexual relationships (in much the same way as Jung criticised Freud) and that this ultimately has fatal consequences [5].      

 

 

III.

 

What then did Lawrence think of Crowley? 

 

To answer this we must turn to his letters, although even here the references to Crowley are few and far between and Lawrence's interest in pagan occultism and the magical arts was inspired more by the writings of Madame Blavatsky, James Frazer, and J. M. Pryce [6] than by The Great Beast, even whilst conceding that the latter was one of those esoteric wonder-freaks whom people think it marvellous to name-drop [7]. 

 

In July 1910, Lawrence read a volume of selected poems by Crowley entitled Ambergris (1910), borrowed from Grace Crawford, an acquaintance of his whom he had met through Ezra Pound. But he soon returned the book, simply stating that he "didn't like it" [8], having anticipated his own likely response in an earlier letter to Miss Crawford, writing that if Ambergris "smells like Crowley [...] Civet cats and sperm whales" then it will be "pretty bad" [9]. 

 

Fast forward a few years, and Lawrence again mentions Crowley in his correspondence ...

Writing to his Australian friend, the writer and publisher, P. R. Stephensen, in September 1929, Lawrence expresses his concern that the Mandrake Press - which Stephensen had co-founded with Edward Goldston earlier that year - was too heavily committed to publishing Crowley's work, saying that, in his view, the latter's time "was rather over" [10] (the implication being that the day belonged more to him and Stephensen should therefore concentrate on publishing more of his work).   

 

 

IV.

 

Ultimately, we can say that Lawrence had an ambivalent relationship to occultism and to the individuals who studied or practiced the magical arts.    

 

Thus, on the one hand, he would mock those such as Meredith Starr and his wife [11] as herb-eating occultists who "descend naked into mine-shafts, and there meditate for hours and hours, upon their own transcendent infinitude" [12]. 

 

But, on the other hand, Lawrence was excited by Starr's knowledge of the subject and the latter's fine collection of rare books "opened up ideas and images" [13] that Lawrence was able to incorporate into his own philosophy. 

 

In a letter to the American author Waldo Frank, Lawrence attempts to clarify his position:

 

"I am not a theosophist, though the esoteric doctrines are marvellously illuminating, historically. I hate the esoteric forms. Magic has also interested me a good deal. But it is all part of the past, and part of the past self in us: and it no good going back, even to the wonderful things. They are ultimately vieux jeu." [14]

 

In the same letter, Lawrence adds: 

 

"There should be again a body of esoteric doctrine, defended from the herd [...] a body of pure thought, kept sacred and clean" and argues that a new earth and heaven will only come about through "the sanctity of a mystery, the mystery of the initiation into pure being" [15]. 

 

This is surely a view that Crowley would endorse (and a sentiment he would share) and I think Ronald Hutton is right to suggest the Priest of Love and The Great Beast have more in common than either cared to admit [16]. 

 

Finally, we might mention a letter to the artist Mark Gertler, written in the spring of 1918, in which Lawrence again opens up about his continuing interest in all things esoteric, whilst taking the opportunity to have a pop at a friend-turned-enemy with whom he had even once planned to collaborate on a lecture series:

 

"I have been reading another book on occultism. Do you know anybody who cares for this - magic, astrology, anything of that sort. It is very interesting, and important - though antipathetic to me. Certainly magic is a reality - not by any means the nonsense Bertie Russell says it is." [17] 

 

 

Crowley self-portrait (1918) / Lawrence self-portrait (1929)

 

 

 

Notes

 

[1] In 1923, the British weekly magazine John Bull branded Crowley the wickedest man in the world. Five years later, it characterised the author of Lady Chatterley's Lover as a diseased sex maniac who prostituted art to pornography.   

 

[2] Both Crowley and Lawrence were friends with the composer Philip Heseltine (aka Peter Warlock), for example; as they were with Cecil Gray, another composer and music critic with a strong interest in occultism. 

     

[3] Lawrence and his wife Frieda lived in the small village of Zennor, in Cornwall, from March 1916 until October 1917, when they were evicted from the county by the authorities. Cornwall, of course, had longstanding connections to witchcraft and attracted a number of individuals keen to explore what we now term alternative lifestyles.   

      Aleister Crowley visited Zennor on many occasions, both before and after the Lawrences lived there, and he is believed to have had connections with Carne Cottage, where Katherine (Ka) Cox - Rupert Brooke's lover and Virginia Woolf's bestie - died in mysterious circumstances, in May 1938.

 

[4] Lawrence and his wife Frieda lived at the villa Fontana Vecchia, in the hilltop town of Taormina, on the east coast of Sicily, from March 1920 to February 1922. 

      Crowley, meanwhile, and some of his followers - including his Scarlet Woman Leah Hirsig - were setting up house during this period 130 miles down the road at the so-called Abbey of Thelema, in the small fishing town of Cefalù (from where they were eventually evicted by Mussolini, in April 1923).   

 

[5] Crowley's critical dismissal of Lawrence is not uncommon for its time, but it is unfair. For whilst agreeing with Freud that an element of sex enters into all human activity, Lawrence nevertheless insists that this is only half the picture and that it is mistaken, therefore, to say that all is sex: "All is not sex. And a sexual motive is not to be attributed to all human activities." 

      For Lawrence, as for Crowley, there is something else "of even higher importance and greater dynamic power" than sex, and that is the religious or creative motive: "This is the prime motivity. And the motivitity of sex is subsidiary to this: often directly antagonistic." 

      See Fantasia of the Unconscious, ed. Bruce Steele (Cambridge University Press, 2004), pp. 66-67.

 

[6] Lawrence gleaned a lot of his ideas from Blavatsky's Secret Doctrine (1888), Frazer's Golden Bough (1890), and Pryse's Apocalypse Unsealed (1910), and was more influenced by the mystical and sexual radicalism of Edward Carpenter (Civilisation: Its Cause and Cure, 1889), than by Crowley's philosophy.  

 

[7] See the letter to his friend Ernest Collins (22 March 1914) in The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, Vol. II, ed.George J. Zytaruk and James T. Boulton (Cambridge University Press, 1981), p. 157. 

      Thanking Collins for sending him a newly published book of his drawings, Lawrence writes: "You are a queer man. I think if you persist you will one day have a real boom. Because people will think you are an esoteric wonder-freak, and it will be a kind of aesthetic qualification to know you, as it was to know Bearsley, and is rather now, to know Alastair." 

      Despite the misspelling, the latter is understood to have been a reference to Aleister Crowley.     

 

[8] See the letter from Lawrence to Grace Crawford (24 July 1910) in The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, Vol. I, ed. James T. Boulton (Cambridge University Press, 1979), p. 171.  

 

[9] D. H. Lawrence, letter to Grace Crawford (9 July 1910), in The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, Vol. I, p. 169.   

 

[10] D. H. Lawrence, letter to P. R. Stephensen (5 Sept 1929), in The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, Vol. VII, ed. Keith Sagar and James T. Boulton (Cambridge University Press, 1993), p. 469.

      The Mandrake Press were contracted to publish five titles by Crowley, including a book of short stories (The Strategem and Other Stories, 1929), a novel (Moonchild, 1929) and an autobiography (The Spirit of Solitude, subsequently retitled The Confessions of Aleister Crowley, of which the first two volumes were published in Nov-Dec. 1929). 

      Mandrake had also published The Paintings of D. H. Lawrence in the summer of 1929, so Lawrence had a vested interest in seeing this small press succeed. Unfortunately, however, the company soon ran into financial problems and a consortium led by Aleister Crowley took over. But this consortium was unable to turn things round and the company was dissolved in December 1930. It seems that even having the world's most powerful worker of magick on board can't stave off bankruptcy or keep tax officials and debt collectors from the door.

      See also Lawrence's letters written in November 1929 to his literary agent Laurence Pollinger, in the first of which he complains about Stephensen's lack of business sense and the fact that he has "spent far too much of Goldston's money" (VII 564) by printing 3000 copies of Crowley's novel and only sold 200 copies. 

      And in the second of which Lawrence can't resist passing on the latest literary gossip and having another dig at Crowley: 

      "I hear that Stephensen wants to float off the Mandrake into a limited company, as they have £6000-worth of stock to sell. Well it's none of it me. But it seems as if there was quite a definite breach between Stephensen and Goldston, so perhaps the Mandrake is already a withered root. Too bad!  but no wonder, with half a ton of Crowley on top of it." (VII 573) 

[11] As Jane Costin reminds us: "Meredith Starr and his wife Lady Mary Stamford [...] moved to Zennor after their marriage in 1917 and lived just a short walk away from Lawrence. Starr came from a wealthy family and, in the early twentieth century, wrote for Crowley’s publication The Equinox and also for The Occult Review which published articles and correspondence by many leading occultists". Starr regarded Crowley as the 'only real modern genius' and 'by far the greatest living artist in England'. 

      See Costin's excellent essay 'Lawrence and the "homeless soul"', in Études Lawrenciennes 56 (2024), which covers in detail much of the ground we have briefly touched upon in this post. Click here to read online.  

 

[12] D. H. Lawrence, writing to Lady Cynthia Asquith (3 Sept 1917) in The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, Vol. III, ed. James T. Boulton and Andrew Robertson (Cambridge University Press, 1984), p. 158.

 

[13] Mark Kinkead-Weekes, D. H. Lawrence: Triumph to Exile 1912 - 1922, Vol. II of the Cambridge Biography (CUP, 1996), p. 386.  

 

[14] D. H. Lawrence, letter to Waldo Frank (27 July 1917), in The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, Vol. III, p. 143.  

 

[15] Ibid. 

          

[16] Ronald Hutton is an English historian specialising in early British folklore, pre-Christian religion, and modern paganism. A professor at the University of Bristol, Hutton has written over a dozen books, including The Triumph of the Moon: a History of Modern Pagan Witchcraft, (Oxford University Press, 1999). A second, extensively revised edition of this work was published in 2019. 

      According to Hutton, Lawrence and Crowley shared the same desire for a religious revolution and a revaluation of all values (even if they wouldn't have agreed on what form this should take or how to proceed).           

 

[17] D. H. Lawrence, letter to Mark Gertler [28 April 1918], in The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, Vol. III, p. 239.

      Re the Lawrence-Russell relationship and the planned lecture series in London, see chapter five of Mark Kinkead-Weekes, D. H. Lawrence: Triumph to Exile 1912 - 1922. See also the astonishing series of letters that Lawrence wrote to Russell between February 1915 and March 1916 in The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, Vol. II op. cit.    

 

 

This post is for Christina Harrington of Treadwell's (London). 

 

For a sister post to this one on The Battle of Blythe Road: The Great Beast Vs. W. B. Yeats (23 June 2025): click here.   

 

 

Reflections on a Pair of Brass Candlesticks

 The Darkest Place is Under the Candlestick ... 

(SA/2025)

 

 'I hate any thought of possessions sticking on to me like barnacles, 

at once I feel destructive.' - D. H. Lawrence [1] 

  

 

I. 

 

Apparently, brass candlesticks of the kind my mother kept on the mantlepiece from the early 1970s until the day she died in 2023 have seen a resurgence in popularity of late. People seem to think that they add a touch of warmth and maybe a hint of sophistication to a room. 

 

Of course, the British have loved their brass candlesticks since the 18th century when new casting techniques allowed them to be mass produced and to supersede and replace those made from wood or other materials, such as pewter. 

 

Brass - a metal alloy composed of copper and zinc - was seen as both practical and aesthetically pleasing due to its bright golden appearance and various styles and designs of candlestick emerged at this time; some with round, some with square, and some (like my mother's) with octagonal bases.      

 

Again, as with many of the objects I have inherited, I don't quite have the heart to throw them away or donate them to a charity shop (my sister, of course, would have sold them at a car boot sale at the earliest opportunity and been happy if she'd got a couple of quid for the pair).      

 

 

II.

 

Funnily enough, I find support for my decision to keep my mother's brass candlesticks in the following tale concerning D. H. Lawrence ... 

 

At the end of December 1915, he and his wife Frieda moved to Zennor, in Cornwall, staying initially in rooms at the local pub, The Tinners' Arms, before renting a cottage of their own, in which they lived for nearly two years. 

 

Clearly, unlike many of the other places he and Frieda lived at, Lawrence regarded Tregerthen Cottage as a genuine home; somewhere he could put down roots and it was his hope that the tiny village of Zennor, about 5 miles from St. Ives, might become the centre of a small community (Rananim) composed of friends and like-minded individuals, such as the literary couple John Middleton Murry and Katherine Mansfield.      

 

As one commentator notes: 

 

"Once he moved in to his small cottage [...] Lawrence's letters describe his engagement in sustained bouts of home making [...] he painted the walls pale pink and the ceiling white. From second hand wood his landlord gave him, Lawrence made book shelves that he painted royal blue [...] and also a dresser 'with cupboard below, and shelves for plates above' (2L 591)." [2]   

  

What Lawrence desperately wanted to finish furnishing his cottage with, however - as revealed in a letter to the artist Mark Gertler - were the brass candlesticks that had once belonged to his mother: 

 

"I only miss my pair of brass candlesticks. [...] I do hope they are not lost, because they are the only thing that I have kept from my own home, and I am really attached to them." [3]  

 

For Lawrence - as, I suppose, for me - his mother's candlesticks are more than just physical relics; they possess an almost magical allure and are invested with all kinds of memories; capable thus of evoking powerful thoughts and feelings.

 

Lawrence's anxious questioning of his friends on the whereabouts of his candlesticks indicates just how important they were to him and makes us wonder how sincere he was being in the epigraph that appears at the top of this post ...

 

Notes

 

[1] D. H. Lawrence, letter to Lady Ottoline Morrel [15? April 1915], in The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, Vol. II., ed. George J. Zytaruk and James T. Boulton (Cambridge University Press, 1981), p. 318. 

 

[2] Jane Costin, 'Lawrence and the "homeless soul"', in Études Lawrenciennes 56 (2024): click here to read online. 

      Note that (2L 591) refers to The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, Vol. II., p. 591. Lawrence was writing to Lady Ottoline Morrell (7 April 1916). 

 

[3] D. H. Lawrence in a letter to Mark Gertler (22 March 1916), in The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, Vol. II., p. 584. 

      See also the letter written a few days later to S. S. Koteliansky (28 March 1916), in which Lawrence is still banging on about his pair of brass candlesticks and their whereabouts (II. 589). I don't know if he ever retrieved them, but I hope so. 

 

 

Readers who liked this post might also like: 'Objects Make Happy' (4 May 2024) - click here - and 'Be a Little Deaf and Blind ... How Cynical Pragmatism Secures Wedded Bliss' (23 Feb 2025) - click here. Both these posts feature objects that had belonged to my mother. 

 

Mark Gertler: Merry-Go-Round(el)

Mark Gertler: Merry-Go-Round (1916) [1]

Keith Bowler: Spitalfields roundel in memory of Mark Gertler (1995)

 

 

I. 

 

If you ever take a walk around Spitalfields in London's East End, you might notice a fancy series of cast iron roundels [2] designed by the local artist Keith Bowler [3] and embedded at various sites, commemorating the long history and many different peoples who have called the district home. 

 

At the corner of Brushfield Street and Commercial Street, for example, one finds a roundel decorated with apples and pears; a nod both to the Cockney character of Spitalfields and to the old fruit and veg market.

 

On Brick Lane, meanwhile, there's a roundel decorated with buttons and four pairs of scissors in honour of all those - be they French Huguenots, Irish Catholics, East European Jews, or Muslims from Bangladesh - who have traded in textiles and worked in the rag trade.  

 

Whilst, on Hanbury Street, you'll come across a roundel celebrating the matchgirls who worked in appalling conditions for outrageously low wages at the Bryant & May match factory in nearby Bow [4].

 

Fascinating as these roundels are, the one that really interests me, however, is located outside the house at 32, Elder Street, celebrating the life and work of Mark Gertler who lived at this address ...

 

 

II. 

 

Mark Gertler was a British artist, of Polish Jewish heritage, born in Spitalfields, in December 1891. 

 

He is perhaps best remembered today for a 1916 painting entitled Merry-Go-Round  [5], about which his friend D. H. Lawrence - who had just received a photograph of the work - was to say this:

 

"My dear Gertler,

      Your terrible and dreadful picture has just come. This is the first picture you have ever painted: it is the best modern picture I have seen: I think it is great, and true. But it is horrible and terrifying. I'm not sure I wouldn't be too frightened to come and look at the original. 

      If they tell you it is obscene, they will say truly. I belive there was something in Pompeian art, of this terrible and soul-tearing obscenity. But then, since obscenity is the truth of our passion today, it is the only stuff of art - or almost the only stuff. I won't say what I, as a man of words and ideas, read in the picture. But I do think that in this combination of blaze and violent mechanical rotation and complex involution, and ghastly, utterly mindless human intensity of sensational extremity, you have made a real and ultimate revelation." [6]    

 

Lawrence continued:

 

"I realise how superficial your human relationships must be, what a violent maelström of destruction and horror your inner soul must be. It is true, the outer life means nothing to you, really. You are all absorbed in the violent and lurid processes of inner decomposition: the same thing that makes leaves go scarlet and copper-green at this time of year." [7] 

 

And added as a PS:

 

"I am amazed how the picture exceeds anything I had expected. Tell me what people say - Epstein, for instance.

      Get somebody to suggest that the picture be bought by the nation - it ought to be - I'd buy it if I had any money." [8] 

 

It took some time, but, eventually, Gertler's Merry-Go-Round  - a detail from which can be seen on Keith Bowler's roundel - was purchased for the nation; the Tate Gallery acquiring it in 1984. 

 

And now anyone can buy a fine print of this work to hang on their wall from the Tate Shop, kidding themselves that it's simply an anti-War image, rather than a work which discloses their own coordination - and their own complicity with this coordination - within a great and perfect machine; i.e., "the first and finest state of chaos" [9].   

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Gertler's painting was acquired by the Tate in 1984. Visit their website for more information: click here.

 

[2] Also known as coal hole covers, roundels are sturdy metal plates typically found on pavements in older urban areas. Originally, as the name suggests, they provided access to underground coal cellars, but they are now purely decorative and serve as historical reminders of the past. 

 

[3] For more information on Keith Bowler and the Roundels of Spitalfields click here.  

 

[4] Such low wages and such poor conditions in fact, that the matchgirls working at the Bryant & May famously went on strike in 1888 and formed the Union of Women Matchmakers. The largest union of women and girls in the country, it inspired many other industrial workers across the country to organise and stand up for their rights. For a post on this topic, click here.

 

[5] In some ways, it's a shame that Gertler has become so associated with this one picture - brilliant as it is - for it means the wider body of his work is often entirely overlooked. For the record, I think Gertler produced many fine canvases and was an interesting figure, right up until he committed suicide in his Highgate studio in 1939. I particularly like the fact that he entered a competition run by Cadbury's for a series of chocolate box designs and that his still life design of a fruit bowl was among the winning entries. 

 

[6] D. H. Lawrence, letter to Mark Gertler (9 October 1916), in The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, Vol. II, ed. George J. Zytaruk and James T. Boulton, (Cambridge University Press, 1981), p. 660.

 

[7] Ibid. 

      It was by developing such a line of thought - one which unfortunately veers into metaphysical antisemitism ("It would take a Jew to paint this picture.") - that Lawrence (in part) created the character of Loerke, the Jewish artist who features in Women in Love (1920); although, in a letter dated 5 December 1916, Lawrence attempts to reassure Gertler that Loerke is not in fact based on him. See The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, Vol. III, ed. James T. Boulton and Andrew Robertson, (Cambridge University Press, 1984), p. 46.  

 

[8] Ibid., p. 661. 

 

[9] D. H. Lawrence, Women in Love, ed. David Farmer, Lindeth Vasey and John Worthen, (Cambridge University Press, 1987), p. 231.   

 

1885 (The D. H. Lawrence Birthday Post 2019)

DHL: Born 11/09/1885

As many readers will know, D. H. Lawrence was born on this day in 1885. 

To mark the occasion, I thought it might be interesting to examine a few of the other events that unfolded during this year, so as to have a better understanding of the world into which baby Bert was born, giving special emphasis to those things that Lawrence would himself later comment upon ...

20 January

On this date, an American, LaMarcus Adna Thompson, patents his design for an amusement ride known as a roller coaster which had opened at Coney Island a year earlier. I don't know if Lawrence and Frieda ever went on one, but I very much doubt it. We know, for example, what Lawrence thought of even an innocent merry-go-round and its "violent mechanical rotation", as depicted by the artist Mark Gertler. [1]

In brief, Lawrence didn't approve of sensational fun in which the body is worked by a machine.  

26 January

The year opens with British imperial forces fighting Islamic insurgents in foreign fields: the Sudanese campaign famously costing General Gordon his life after the siege - and subsequent fall - of Khartoum. In a letter to Dorothy Yorke, written in August 1928, Lawrence fantasises about yet another exotic adventure: "Let's go to Egypt [...] and go up the Nile and look at the desert and perhaps get shot in Khartoum like General Gordon". [2]


23 February

Convicted murderer John Babbacombe Lee was due to be hanged at Exeter Prison. However, after three failed attempts due to a faulty trapdoor stubbornly refusing to open, the medical officer in attendance declined to play any further part in the proceedings and the execution was called off. Lee's sentence was later commuted to life imprisonment.

Again, whilst I cannot say for sure what Lawrence's view of this would have been, he was a proponent of capital punishment, writing in an essay: "I know we must look after the quality of life, not the quantity. Hopeless life should be put to sleep, the idiots and the hopeless sick and the true criminal." [3] 

14 March

Gilbert and Sullivan's popular comic opera The Mikado opens at the Savoy Theatre, London, where it ran for over 670 performances. Lawrence makes a reference to one of the songs, 'Tit Willow', which describes the suicide of a rejected lover, in his first novel, The White Peacock (1911). [4]

17 June

The Statue of Liberty arrives in New York Harbour; a gift of friendship from the people of France and a sign of welcome to visitors to the United States. Lawrence first encountered this colossal neoclassical sculpture in person in July 1923. But, in an epilogue to Fantasia of the Unconscious written in 1921, he has already described Lady Liberty as brawny and suggested that the torch she holds aloft with which to enlighten the world, resembles a giant carrot:

"How many nice little asses and poets trot over the Atlantic and catch sight of Liberty holding up this carrot of desire at arms length, and fairly hear her say, as one does to one's pug dog, with a lump of sugar: 'Beg! Beg!' - and then 'Jump! Jump then!' And each little ass and poodle begins to beg and to jump, and there's a rare game round about Liberty, yap, yap, yapperty-yap!" [5]


15 September

Four days after Lawrence was born, the world-famous elephant Jumbo was killed by a freight train, in Ontario, Canada, as he crossed railroad tracks on the way to his box car.

Born in 1860, Jumbo was a large African bush elephant who was transferred to London Zoo from the Jardin des Plantes (Paris), in 1865. Despite huge public protest, he was eventually sold to P. T. Barnum, who took him to the US for exhibition at Madison Square Garden (NYC), in March 1882.

Lawrence would later write several poems about elephants - perhaps most famously 'Elephant' and 'The elephant is slow to mate', though mention should also be made of the series of Pansies that begins with 'Elephants in the circus' and ends with 'Two performing elephants'.

Although they don't mention Jumbo, they could easily have been written about him or any other elephant with "aeons of weariness round their eyes" and obliged to sit up "and show vast bellies to the children" who watch in half-frightened silence: "The looming of the hoary, far-gone ages / is too much for them." [6]

30 October

Seven weeks after Lawrence entered the world, American poet and Mr. Modernism himself, Ezra Pound, was born. During his early years in London, working as a teacher and attempting to forge a literary career, Lawrence met Pound on several occasions and formed a favourable impression:

"He is jolly nice: took me to supper at Pagnani's, and afterwards we went down to his room at Kensington. He lives in an attic, like a traditional poet - but the attic is a comfortable well furnished one. [...] He is rather remarkable - a good bit of a genius, and with not the least self-consciousness." [7]
     
And, for his part, Pound was supportive of Lawrence as a poet and full of praise for the latter's first book of verse, Love Poems and Others (1913). But, of course, the two men were as different as chalk and cheese, both in character and as artists, and initial friendship soon led to mutual disenchantment and hostility (Pound eventually describing Lawrence as detestable). 

The problem, as Helen Sword notes, is that whilst, formally, as a poet, Lawrence was very much a modernist and "an iconoclastic practitioner of Pound's famous dictum, 'Make it new'", he was, at the same time, "a modernist poet who cultivated [...] a distinctly anti-modernist stance". Unfortunately for Lawrence, his "oracular tone, visionary pretensions, lyrical cadences, overt sentimentality, highly personal subject matter, and lack of irony [...] earned him the antipathy of many members of his modernist cohort". [8]

And, indeed, it continues to lose him many readers today ...

Notes

[1] D. H. Lawrence, The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, Vol. II, ed. George J. Zytaruk and James T. Boulton, (Cambridge University Press, 1981), letter 1291, p. 660.

[2] D. H. Lawrence, The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, Vol. VI, ed. James T. Boulton and Margaret H. Boulton with Gerald Lacy, (Cambridge University Press, 1991), letter 4603, p. 513.  

[3] D. H. Lawrence, 'Return to Bestwood', Late Essays and Articles, ed. James T. Boulton, (Cambridge University Press, 2004), p. 24. 

[4] D. H. Lawrence, The White Peacock, ed. Andrew Robertson, (Cambridge University Press, 1983), p. 15. 

[5] D. H. Lawrence, 'Epilogue', Fantasia of the Unconscious, ed. Bruce Steele, (Cambridge University Press, 2004), pp. 201-204. Lines quoted are on p. 203.

[6] D. H. Lawrence, 'Elephants in the circus' and 'Two performing elephants', The Poems, Vol. I, ed. Christopher Pollnitz, (Cambridge University Press, 2013), pp. 369 and 370. The other two poems mentioned - 'Elephant' and 'The elephant is slow to mate' - can be found in the above on pp. 338-343 and 403-04 respectively.

[7] D. H. Lawrence, The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, Vol. I, ed. James T. Boulton, (Cambridge University Press, 1979), letter 132, pp. 144-45. This letter was written to Louie Burrows on 20 November, 1909. Comparing himself to Pound, Lawrence also wrote in this letter: "He is 24, like me, but his god is beauty, mine, life."  

[8] Helen Sword, 'Lawrence's Poetry', The Cambridge Companion to D. H. Lawrence, ed. Anne Fernihough, (Cambridge University Press, 2001), pp. 119-135. Lines quoted are on p. 120. See also Michael Bell's essay in the above work, 'Lawrence and Modernism' (pp. 179-196), in which he argues that Lawrence's complex and critically important relation to modernist writers "is most clearly illustrated by the case of his coeval Ezra Pound" [179].