Showing posts with label the bad side of books. Show all posts
Showing posts with label the bad side of books. Show all posts

12 Aug 2020

D. H. Lawrence and the Ideal Side of Books

What do I care for first or last editions?


Some writers think that publication is the be-all and end-all. Others, like D. H. Lawrence, claim not to care about publication and having a readership: 
 
"To me, no book has a date, no book has a binding. [...] One writes [...] to some mysterious presence in the air. If that presence were not there, and one thought of even a single solitary actual reader, the paper would remain forever white." [75-76]

Later, in the same introductory essay he adds:

"One submits to the process of publication as to a necessary evil: as souls are said to submit to the necessary evil of being born into the flesh." [78]

For Lawrence, what really counts is the creative process; a writer struggling with their own δαίμων in order to bring something into being that is beautiful - but passing - like a flower. The finished product, i.e., the published book, that people place upon their shelves and assemble into libraries, is, in a sense, just a husk.  

And perhaps the greatest novels and poems are ones that remain unwritten; "voices in the air, that do not disturb the haze of autumn, and visions that don't blot out the sunflowers" [75]


Notes

D. H. Lawrence, 'The Bad Side of Books', Introductions and Reviews, ed. John Worthen, (Cambridge University Press, 2005), pp. 73-78. Page numbers given in the text refer to this edition.