Henry Rayner: Portrait of D. H. Lawrence (1929)
D. H. Lawrence was acutely concerned with the (moral) question of the novel: its conventional limitations and its future possibilities. No surprise, therefore, that he wrote several short essays on the subject ...
I. The Future of the Novel
Is the novel still in its infancy as an art form - or is it on its death-bed?
It was a question in 1923 and it's still a question now, almost 100 years later; albeit no longer a question that many people care about (which perhaps says more about us rather than the contemporary novel).
The answer, for Lawrence, is that the "pale-faced, high-browed, earnest novel which you have to take seriously" [151] is senile precocious. That is to say, it's childishly self-absorbed: I am this, I am that, I am the other.
One assumes that Lawrence is not referring to his own works here, though heaven knows his novels can be so sincere and intense at times, that one might fairly describe them as earnest and overwrought. Lawrence, though, is taking a pop at the novels by writers such as James Joyce and Marcel Proust; authors who "tear themselves to pieces, strip their smallest emotions to the finest threads" [152].
He doesn't think much of the smirking popular novel either; just as self-conscious and also written by those who think it funny to drag their adolescence into middle age and even old age.
The novel, declares Lawrence, has got to grow up: by which he means stop with the played out emotional and self-analytical stunts and find the "underlying impulse that will provide the motive-power for a new state of things" [154].
Interestingly, this requires that fiction and philosophy come together again: reuniting into a new form of myth and a new way of understanding. The novel has got a future, concludes Lawrence, providing it has the courage to "tackle new propositions without using abstractions [and ...] present us with new, really new feelings [...] which will get us out of the old emotional rut [155].
The novel, declares Lawrence, has got to grow up: by which he means stop with the played out emotional and self-analytical stunts and find the "underlying impulse that will provide the motive-power for a new state of things" [154].
Interestingly, this requires that fiction and philosophy come together again: reuniting into a new form of myth and a new way of understanding. The novel has got a future, concludes Lawrence, providing it has the courage to "tackle new propositions without using abstractions [and ...] present us with new, really new feelings [...] which will get us out of the old emotional rut [155].
II. Morality and the Novel
What is the business of art?
"The business of art is to reveal the relation between man and his circumambient universe, at the living moment." [171]
That's a succinct and interesting definition: one that might be said to anticipate actor-network theory, even whilst remaining anthropocentric in that it posits man as the centre of a universe about whom all things revolve.
And morality?
"Morality is that delicate, forever trembling and changing balance between me and my circumambient universe, which precedes and accompanies a true relatedness." [172]
That's another concise definition: one that allows us to understand why it is Lawrence values the novel above all else. For whilst works of philosophy, religion, or science are all of them busy trying to nail things down with laws and fixed ideals in order to establish stability, the novel insists on difference and becoming.
Lawrence writes:
"The novel is the highest complex of subtle interrelatedness that man has discovered. Everything is true in its own time, place, circumstance, and untrue outside of its own place, time, circumstance. If you try to nail anything down, in the novel, either it kills the novel, or the novel gets up and walks away with the nail." [172]
And immorality?
Immorality is the attempt by an author, for example, to impose themselves upon a text and tip the balance one way or the other, thus bringing to an end the tembling instability upon which everything in the social and natural world - including the world of fiction - depends. They might not even intend to do this; often the immorality of the novel is due to the novelist's unconscious bias or predilection.
For an artist to remain moral, he or she must affirm a general economy of the whole in which all things, all ideas, and all feelings are admitted and none are thought to be supreme or exclusively worth living for:
"Because no emotion is supreme, or exclusively worth living for. All emotions go to the achieving of a living relationship between a human being and the other human being or creature or thing he becomes purely related to.
All emotions, including love and hate, and rage and tenderness, go to the adjusting of the oscillating, unestablished balance between two [actants ...] If the novelist puts his thumb in the pan, for love, for tenderness, sweetness, peace, then he commits an immoral act: he prevents the possibility of a pure relationship [...] and he makes inevitable the horrible reaction, when he lets his thumb go, towards hate and brutality, cruelty and destruction." [173]
This helps explain why Lawrence often brands seemingly pure and innocent works false and obscene and why he famously advises readers to always, always trust the tale, not the teller.
If the novel reveals or helps establish vivid relationships that gleam with a fourth dimensional quality, then it is a moral work, no matter how the relationships may be judged from the perspective of conventional morality. And if these relationships also happen to be new and displace old connections, then even better - no matter how much pain they cause, or what offence they may give:
"Obviously, to read a really new novel will always hurt, to some extent. There will always be resistance. The same with new pictures, new music" [175] - but who wants art that only makes comfortable and complacent?
And immorality?
Immorality is the attempt by an author, for example, to impose themselves upon a text and tip the balance one way or the other, thus bringing to an end the tembling instability upon which everything in the social and natural world - including the world of fiction - depends. They might not even intend to do this; often the immorality of the novel is due to the novelist's unconscious bias or predilection.
For an artist to remain moral, he or she must affirm a general economy of the whole in which all things, all ideas, and all feelings are admitted and none are thought to be supreme or exclusively worth living for:
"Because no emotion is supreme, or exclusively worth living for. All emotions go to the achieving of a living relationship between a human being and the other human being or creature or thing he becomes purely related to.
All emotions, including love and hate, and rage and tenderness, go to the adjusting of the oscillating, unestablished balance between two [actants ...] If the novelist puts his thumb in the pan, for love, for tenderness, sweetness, peace, then he commits an immoral act: he prevents the possibility of a pure relationship [...] and he makes inevitable the horrible reaction, when he lets his thumb go, towards hate and brutality, cruelty and destruction." [173]
This helps explain why Lawrence often brands seemingly pure and innocent works false and obscene and why he famously advises readers to always, always trust the tale, not the teller.
If the novel reveals or helps establish vivid relationships that gleam with a fourth dimensional quality, then it is a moral work, no matter how the relationships may be judged from the perspective of conventional morality. And if these relationships also happen to be new and displace old connections, then even better - no matter how much pain they cause, or what offence they may give:
"Obviously, to read a really new novel will always hurt, to some extent. There will always be resistance. The same with new pictures, new music" [175] - but who wants art that only makes comfortable and complacent?
Notes
D. H. Lawrence, 'The Future of the Novel' and 'Morality and the Novel', in Study of Thomas Hardy and Other Essays, ed. Bruce Steele, (Cambridge University Press, 1985), pp. 149-155 and 169-176.
See also the first version of 'Morality and the Novel' which is published as an appendix in the above, pp. 239-245. It ends with the following two lines that essentially summarise Lawrence's thinking on the novel: "The novel is the one perfect medium for revealing to us the changing glimmer of our living relationships. The novel can help us live as no other utterance can help us. It can also pervert us as no other can." [245] I have to admit - as a perverse materialist - the latter notion intrigues and I wish Lawrence had said more about it.
Readers interested in part two of this post on Lawrence's essays 'Why the Novel Matters' and 'The Novel and the Feelings', should click here.
See also the first version of 'Morality and the Novel' which is published as an appendix in the above, pp. 239-245. It ends with the following two lines that essentially summarise Lawrence's thinking on the novel: "The novel is the one perfect medium for revealing to us the changing glimmer of our living relationships. The novel can help us live as no other utterance can help us. It can also pervert us as no other can." [245] I have to admit - as a perverse materialist - the latter notion intrigues and I wish Lawrence had said more about it.
Readers interested in part two of this post on Lawrence's essays 'Why the Novel Matters' and 'The Novel and the Feelings', should click here.
