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THE TALENTED WRITER, GEOFF DYER has edited and introduced a well designed anthology of selected essays by D.H. Lawrence. He remains an excellent choice to assemble the volume, for among his previous books is Outof Sheer Rage, a hilarious and incisive travel-saga that follows his obsessional

'''THE TALENTED WRITER, GEOFF DYER''' has edited and introduced a well designed anthology of selected essays by D.H. Lawrence. He remains an excellent choice to assemble the volume, for among his previous books is Outof Sheer Rage, a hilarious and incisive travel-saga that follows his obsessional

trek through several countries to ponder the life and art of D.H. Lawrence.

It reads as both a scenic excursion and a neurotic record of sustained searching and sleuthing about his complex subject. Dyer’s selection of thirty-six essays of varying length and subject matter spans Lawrence’s career from 1912 to 1930,ranging from “Christs in the Tirol” to the “Introduction to the Grand

Inquisitor,” published in the year of his death.

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The essay is especially memorable for its understated depiction of the depressing reactions of Lawrence’s parents to the publication in 1911 of his first

book, The White Peacock: “I put it into my mother’s hands when she was

Line 27:

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shrewd eyes, as if I were a swindler. ‘Fifty pounds! An ‘tha’s never done a

dog’s hard work in thy life’”(208). {{sfn|Lawrence|1911|p=208}}

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::</blockquote>''If I think of my childhood, it’s always as if there was a lustrous sort of inner darkness, like the gloss of coal, which we moved and had our own real being. My father loved the pit. He was hurt badly more than once, but he never would stay away. He loved the contact, the intimacy, as men in war loved the intense male comradeness of the dark days. (455)''</blockquote>

::</blockquote>''If I think of my childhood, it’s always as if there was a lustrous sort of inner darkness, like the gloss of coal, which we moved and had our own real being. My father loved the pit. He was hurt badly more than once, but he never would stay away. He loved the contact, the intimacy, as men in war loved the intense male comradeness of the dark days. (455) {{sfn|Lawrence|1929|p=455}}''</blockquote>

Thus amid this livid darkness—acutely real and symbolic at the same time—

Lawrence finally recognizes that he shares with his father comparable patterns of love and hurt: it is their unspoken form of secret sharer.

A major reason for the success of this eclectic volume resides in Dyer’s decision to forgo the customary organization of an anthology by thematic categories. The essays are arranged in a straight-line chronological order, so

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with his snide comments is the last person to provide persuasive evaluation

of Lawrence’s work, and especially of Women in Love.

Many of the essays recapitulate, in different ways and with varying urgency, Lawrence’s visionary perception of life. Dyer pertinently quotes a

Line 69:

Line 76:

family, friends, acquaintances and countries, his edgy evaluations of works by Tolstoy, Hemingway,Verga, Hardy, Flaubert and Joyce, as well as his lyrical ruminations on flowers, trees, animals, landscapes, and even inanimate

objects.

Lawrence’s essential cosmology insists that the world is “open” to be engaged by one’s unfettered instincts and unrepressed emotions, and that such

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startles me into changes and defies my inertia, and is herself staggered in

her inertia by my change, that I can continue to love her. If she stayed put, I

might as well love a pepper-pot” (357).

might as well love a pepper-pot” (357). {{sfn|Lawrence|1925|p=357}}

To avoid “change” for Lawrence is to risk sentimentality, a pernicious

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Line 103:

it with an unembroidered economy of style that even sounds like Papa: “It

is really honest. And it explains a great deal of sentimentality. When a thing

has gone to hell inside of you, your sentimentalism tries to pretend it hasn’t. But Mr. Hemingway is through with sentimentalism. ‘It isn’t fun anymore. I guess I’ll beat it.’ And he beats it, to somewhere else” (“Review of ~~InOur~~ Time by Ernest Hemingway,”1927,303).

has gone to hell inside of you, your sentimentalism tries to pretend it hasn’t. But Mr. Hemingway is through with sentimentalism. ‘It isn’t fun anymore. I guess I’ll beat it.’ And he beats it, to somewhere else” (“Review of In Our Time by Ernest Hemingway,”1927,303). {{sfn|Hemingway|1927|p=303}}

Within this context of sentimentalism and its inherent opposition to

growth, one could maintain, concerning Lawrence’s much admired memoir of Maurice Magnus (included in this collection), that Magnus’s death is intrinsically connected to an indefatigueable and obstinate reluctance to adjust the habits of his life to the ~~new“realities”~~ that tragically pursue him. In

growth, one could maintain, concerning Lawrence’s much admired memoir of Maurice Magnus (included in this collection), that Magnus’s death is intrinsically connected to an indefatigueable and obstinate reluctance to adjust the habits of his life to the new “realities” that tragically pursue him. In

Lawrence’s incisive understanding of the intricacies of personality, Magnus

is content to keep playing the same hustle and scam as food for his relentless yet vulnerable ego. Like all sentimentalists, he is the last to know when

the game is over: “But there you are—there was his power to arouse affection and a certain tenderness in the hearts of others, for himself.And on this

the game is over: “But there you are—there was his power to arouse affection and a certain tenderness in the hearts of others, for himself. And on this

he traded. One sees the trick working all the way through the Legion book”

(“Memoir of Maurice Magnus,”1921–22,355).

(“Memoir of Maurice Magnus,”1921–22,355). {{sfn|Lawrence|1921-22|p=355}}

The essays demonstrate Lawrence’s insistence on the value of instinctual

primacy and its ultimate connection to what he variously calls “the fourthdimension,” involving a transcendent perception of “tremulations on the ether” (“Why the Novel Matters,”254). In a critical section of that essay, he privileges the genre of the novel for its intrinsic ability to embody such relevant synthesis of immanence and transcendence, and thus the novel for him is “the one bright book of life,” for only “the novel as a tremulation can make the whole man alive tremble” (255). Lawrence’s commitment to his visionary emphasis on the “gleam” in life extends even to inanimate objects. The following passage remains too easy to caricature, but it represents Lawrence’s unqualified adherence to the perceptions of instinct and the messages of tremulation:

primacy and its ultimate connection to what he variously calls “the fourthdimension,” involving a transcendent perception of “tremulations on the ether” (“Why the Novel Matters,”254). In a critical section of that essay, he privileges the genre of the novel for its intrinsic ability to embody such relevant synthesis of immanence and transcendence, and thus the novel for him is “the one bright book of life,” for only “the novel as a tremulation can make the whole man alive tremble” (255). {{sfn|Lawrence|p=25{{sfn|Lennon|2018|p=25}}5}} Lawrence’s commitment to his visionary emphasis on the “gleam” in life extends even to inanimate objects. The following passage remains too easy to caricature, but it represents Lawrence’s unqualified adherence to the perceptions of instinct and the messages of tremulation:

::</blockquote>''We have to choose between the quick and the dead. The quick is God-flame, in everything. And the dead is dead. In this room where I write, there is a little table that is dead; it doesn’t even weakly exist. And there is a ridiculous little iron stove which for some unknown reason is quick. And there is an iron wardrobe trunk, which for some still more mysterious reason is quick. And there are several books, whose mere corpus is dead, utterly dead and non-existent. And there is a sleeping cat, very quick. And a glass lamp, alas, is dead. (“The Novel,”1925,141)'' </blockquote>

It is a short distance from the God-flame of immanence radiating from inanimate objects to Lawrence’s instinctual imperative. The following words are from “The Novel and the Feelings” (1925), and again they conspicuously prefigure Mailer’s own existential perspectives: “We’ve managed to keep clear of the darkest Africa inside us, for a long time. . . . But there it is, a strange dark

continent that we do not explore, because we do not even allow that it exists. . . .Yet unless we proceed to connect ourselves up with our own primeval

sources, we shall degenerate” (262,263,264 respectively).

Lawrence’s notoriously pungent reviews of other writers—included

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tremulations from the ether that—as The Rainbow so powerfully dramatizes—must energize and humble those who engage this “unknown.” In that

same essay, Lawrence clarifies this arena of the transcendent: “a great background, vital and vivid, which matters more than the people who move

upon it ... the vast unexplored morality of life itself, what we call the immorality of nature, surrounding us in its eternal incomprehensibility” (15).

upon it ... the vast unexplored morality of life itself, what we call the immorality of nature, surrounding us in its eternal incomprehensibility” (15). {{sfn|Lawrence|1914|p=15}}

Lawrence similarly admires Whitman’s poetry in “Poetry of the Present”

(1919) for its “sheer appreciation of the instant moment, life surging itself

into utterance at its very well-head” (80). In Giovanni Verga’s fiction about

into utterance at its very well-head” (80). {{sfn|Lawrence|1919|p=80}} In Giovanni Verga’s fiction about

Sicily, he finds comparable reasons for praise: “you can’t read Mastro-don

Gesualdo without feeling the marvelous glow and glamour of Sicily and the

Line 127:

Line 141:

(“Introduction to Mastro-don Gesualdo by Giovanni Verga,”1927,339).

Lawrence excoriates several much-admired writers for what he regards as intrinsic failures of characterization, texture, and power, inadequacies that he discusses, of course, in the context of his own stipulations about fiction. While recognized as a brilliant and unorthodox literary critic, Lawrence at times overstates his personal biases in ways that too cavalierly diminish the works under consideration. Although he praises the complex artistry of Thomas Mann, he criticizes Death In Venice because the work has “none of the rhythm of a living thing” (“Review of Death In Venice by Thomas Mann 1913,14), and he faults Madame Bovary because he discerns a major problem with its “realistic method,” arguing in an Aristotelian manner that “individuals like Emma and Charles Bovary are too insignificant to carry the full weight of Gustave Flaubert’s profound sense of tragedy” (Gesualdo,332). In “The Future of the Novel” (1922-23) he gleefully attacks two modernist exponents of radical fictional techniques because he believes the works are boring and overrated. Here he uses an elongated trope of fabric and mummification to turn consensus notions of their talent and importance virtually inside-out. In effect, he “dresses” them to take them apart: “Through

thousands and thousands of pages Mr. Joyce and Miss Richardson tear themselves to pieces, strip their smallest emotions to the finest threads, till you feel you are sewed inside a wool mattress that is slowly shaken up, and you are turning to wool along with the rest of the wooliness” (179). In “The

Lawrence excoriates several much-admired writers for what he regards as intrinsic failures of characterization, texture, and power, inadequacies that he discusses, of course, in the context of his own stipulations about fiction. While recognized as a brilliant and unorthodox literary critic, Lawrence at times overstates his personal biases in ways that too cavalierly diminish the works under consideration. Although he praises the complex artistry of Thomas Mann, he criticizes Death In Venice because the work has “none of the rhythm of a living thing” (“Review of Death In Venice by Thomas Mann 1913,14), and he faults Madame Bovary because he discerns a major problem with its “realistic method,” arguing in an Aristotelian manner that “individuals like Emma and Charles Bovary are too insignificant to carry the full weight of Gustave Flaubert’s profound sense of tragedy” (Gesualdo,332). {{sfn|Lawrence|1913|p=332}} In “The Future of the Novel” (1922-23) he gleefully attacks two modernist exponents of radical fictional techniques because he believes the works are boring and overrated. Here he uses an elongated trope of fabric and mummification to turn consensus notions of their talent and importance virtually inside-out. In effect, he “dresses” them to take them apart: “Through

thousands and thousands of pages Mr. Joyce and Miss Richardson tear themselves to pieces, strip their smallest emotions to the finest threads, till you feel you are sewed inside a wool mattress that is slowly shaken up, and you are turning to wool along with the rest of the wooliness” (179). {{sfn|Lawrence|1922-23|p=179}} In “The

Novel” (1925) he maintains that War and Peace is marred by Tolstoy’s unpersuasive valorizing of “the fat fuzzy Pierre” (246), a character whom Lawrence regards as a “domestic sort of house-dog” (246). Such a caustic assessment is related to Lawrence’s belief that the portrait of Pierre denies the

fundamental necessity of any character in fiction: Tolstoy “wasn’t true to his own character” (246).What is such “truth” to Lawrence? He returns to a version of the tremulation metaphor and the doctrine of change: “Character is a curious thing. It is the flame of a man, which burns brighter or dimmer, bluer or redder, rising or sinking or flaring according to the draughts of circumstance and changing air of life, changing itself continually, yet remaining one single, separate flame, flickering in a strange world” (246).

fundamental necessity of any character in fiction: Tolstoy “wasn’t true to his own character” (246).What is such “truth” to Lawrence? He returns to a version of the tremulation metaphor and the doctrine of change: “Character is a curious thing. It is the flame of a man, which burns brighter or dimmer, bluer or redder, rising or sinking or flaring according to the draughts of circumstance and changing air of life, changing itself continually, yet remaining one single, separate flame, flickering in a strange world” (246). {{sfn|Lawrence|1925|p=246}}

Throughout the essays there are moments of luminous insight by

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wistful, rather nice and helplessly commonplace little fellows who should

be tucked away and left to sleep, like RipVan Winkle, till the rest of the storm

rolled by” (185). . In “Art and Morality” (1925) he warns of the developing alliance between technological advancements and the blandishments of the

rolled by” (185). {{sfn|Lawrence|1924|p=185}} . In “Art and Morality” (1925) he warns of the developing alliance between technological advancements and the blandishments of the

ego; he criticizes “civilized man” for his lack of a visual creative imagination,

as he increasingly displays “the slowly formed habit of seeing just as the photographic camera sees” (223). Indeed, Lawrence perhaps becomes the first and mournful predictor of the epidemic of the iPhone: “Man has learned to

see himself. So now, he is what he sees. He makes himself in his own image.... The identifying of ourselves with the visual image of ourselves has become an instinct, the habit is already old. The picture of me, the me that is

seen, is me” (225). The vitality and“quickness” of Lawrence’s prose—what he often connects

seen, is me” (225). {{sfn|Lawrence|1925|p=225}} The vitality and“quickness” of Lawrence’s prose—what he often connects

to the “livingness” of life—is especially evident in his evocation of the “spirit

of place.” While Dyer does not include the essay of that name from

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the personal and the scenic with the mythical nuances of literary history. I

urge you to read through the essays to find more of the same:

::</blockquote>'' In early April I went with my wife to Syracuse for a few days, with the purple anemones blowing in the Sicilian fields, and Adonis-blood red on the little ledges, and the corn rising strong and green in the magical, malarial places, and Etna flowing now to the northward, still with her crown of snow. The lovely, lovely journey from Catania to Syracuse in the spring, winding round the blueness of that sea, where the tall pink asphodel like a lily showing her silk. Lovely, lovely Sicily, the dawn-place, Europe’s dawn, with Odysseus pushing his ship out of the shadows into the blue. Whatever had died for me, Sicily had then not died: dawn-lovely Sicily, and the Ionian Sea. (117)''</blockquote>

{{DEFAULTSORT:Tremulation on The Ether: Versions Of Instincual Primacy In The Essays Of D.H. Lawrence, The}}

===Works Cited===

@@ Line 7: / Line 7: @@
-THE TALENTED WRITER, GEOFF DYER has edited and introduced a well designed anthology of selected essays by D.H. Lawrence. He remains an excellent choice to assemble the volume, for among his previous books is Outof Sheer Rage, a hilarious and incisive travel-saga that follows his obsessional
+'''THE TALENTED WRITER, GEOFF DYER''' has edited and introduced a well designed anthology of selected essays by D.H. Lawrence. He remains an excellent choice to assemble the volume, for among his previous books is Outof Sheer Rage, a hilarious and incisive travel-saga that follows his obsessional
 trek through several countries to ponder the life and art of D.H. Lawrence.
 It reads as both a scenic excursion and a neurotic record of sustained searching and sleuthing about his complex subject. Dyer’s selection of thirty-six essays of varying length and subject matter spans Lawrence’s career from 1912 to 1930,ranging from “Christs in the Tirol” to the “Introduction to the Grand
 Inquisitor,” published in the year of his death.
@@ Line 16: / Line 17: @@
 The essay is especially memorable for its understated depiction of the depressing reactions of Lawrence’s parents to the publication in 1911 of his first
 book, The White Peacock: “I put it into my mother’s hands when she was
@@ Line 27: / Line 29: @@
 shrewd eyes, as if I were a swindler. ‘Fifty pounds! An ‘tha’s never done a
 dog’s hard work in thy life’”(208). {{sfn|Lawrence|1911|p=208}}
@@ Line 40: / Line 43: @@
-::</blockquote>''If I think of my childhood, it’s always as if there was a lustrous sort of inner darkness, like the gloss of coal, which we moved and had our own real being. My father loved the pit. He was hurt badly more than once, but he never would stay away. He loved the contact, the intimacy, as men in war loved the intense male comradeness of the dark days. (455)''</blockquote>
+::</blockquote>''If I think of my childhood, it’s always as if there was a lustrous sort of inner darkness, like the gloss of coal, which we moved and had our own real being. My father loved the pit. He was hurt badly more than once, but he never would stay away. He loved the contact, the intimacy, as men in war loved the intense male comradeness of the dark days. (455) {{sfn|Lawrence|1929|p=455}}''</blockquote>
 Thus amid this livid darkness—acutely real and symbolic at the same time—
 Lawrence finally recognizes that he shares with his father comparable patterns of love and hurt: it is their unspoken form of secret sharer.
 A major reason for the success of this eclectic volume resides in Dyer’s decision to forgo the customary organization of an anthology by thematic categories. The essays are arranged in a straight-line chronological order, so
@@ Line 62: / Line 68: @@
 with his snide comments is the last person to provide persuasive evaluation
 of Lawrence’s work, and especially of Women in Love.
 Many of the essays recapitulate, in different ways and with varying urgency, Lawrence’s visionary perception of life. Dyer pertinently quotes a
@@ Line 69: / Line 76: @@
 family, friends, acquaintances and countries, his edgy evaluations of works by Tolstoy, Hemingway,Verga, Hardy, Flaubert and Joyce, as well as his lyrical ruminations on flowers, trees, animals, landscapes, and even inanimate
 objects.
 Lawrence’s essential cosmology insists that the world is “open” to be engaged by one’s unfettered instincts and unrepressed emotions, and that such
@@ Line 82: / Line 90: @@
 startles me into changes and defies my inertia, and is herself staggered in
 her inertia by my change, that I can continue to love her. If she stayed put, I
-might as well love a pepper-pot” (357).
+might as well love a pepper-pot” (357). {{sfn|Lawrence|1925|p=357}}
 To avoid “change” for Lawrence is to risk sentimentality, a pernicious
@@ Line 94: / Line 103: @@
 it with an unembroidered economy of style that even sounds like Papa: “It
 is really honest. And it explains a great deal of sentimentality. When a thing
-has gone to hell inside of you, your sentimentalism tries to pretend it hasn’t. But Mr. Hemingway is through with sentimentalism. ‘It isn’t fun anymore. I guess I’ll beat it.’ And he beats it, to somewhere else” (“Review of InOur Time by Ernest Hemingway,”1927,303).
+has gone to hell inside of you, your sentimentalism tries to pretend it hasn’t. But Mr. Hemingway is through with sentimentalism. ‘It isn’t fun anymore. I guess I’ll beat it.’ And he beats it, to somewhere else” (“Review of In Our Time by Ernest Hemingway,”1927,303). {{sfn|Hemingway|1927|p=303}}
 Within this context of sentimentalism and its inherent opposition to
-growth, one could maintain, concerning Lawrence’s much admired memoir of Maurice Magnus (included in this collection), that Magnus’s death is intrinsically connected to an indefatigueable and obstinate reluctance to adjust the habits of his life to the new“realities” that tragically pursue him. In
+growth, one could maintain, concerning Lawrence’s much admired memoir of Maurice Magnus (included in this collection), that Magnus’s death is intrinsically connected to an indefatigueable and obstinate reluctance to adjust the habits of his life to the new “realities” that tragically pursue him. In
 Lawrence’s incisive understanding of the intricacies of personality, Magnus
 is content to keep playing the same hustle and scam as food for his relentless yet vulnerable ego. Like all sentimentalists, he is the last to know when
-the game is over: “But there you are—there was his power to arouse affection and a certain tenderness in the hearts of others, for himself.And on this
+the game is over: “But there you are—there was his power to arouse affection and a certain tenderness in the hearts of others, for himself. And on this
 he traded. One sees the trick working all the way through the Legion book”
-(“Memoir of Maurice Magnus,”1921–22,355).
+(“Memoir of Maurice Magnus,”1921–22,355). {{sfn|Lawrence|1921-22|p=355}}
 The essays demonstrate Lawrence’s insistence on the value of instinctual
-primacy and its ultimate connection to what he variously calls “the fourthdimension,” involving a transcendent perception of “tremulations on the ether” (“Why the Novel Matters,”254). In a critical section of that essay, he privileges the genre of the novel for its intrinsic ability to embody such relevant synthesis of immanence and transcendence, and thus the novel for him is “the one bright book of life,” for only “the novel as a tremulation can make the whole man alive tremble” (255). Lawrence’s commitment to his visionary emphasis on the “gleam” in life extends even to inanimate objects. The following passage remains too easy to caricature, but it represents Lawrence’s unqualified adherence to the perceptions of instinct and the messages of tremulation:
+primacy and its ultimate connection to what he variously calls “the fourthdimension,” involving a transcendent perception of “tremulations on the ether” (“Why the Novel Matters,”254). In a critical section of that essay, he privileges the genre of the novel for its intrinsic ability to embody such relevant synthesis of immanence and transcendence, and thus the novel for him is “the one bright book of life,” for only “the novel as a tremulation can make the whole man alive tremble” (255). {{sfn|Lawrence|p=25{{sfn|Lennon|2018|p=25}}5}} Lawrence’s commitment to his visionary emphasis on the “gleam” in life extends even to inanimate objects. The following passage remains too easy to caricature, but it represents Lawrence’s unqualified adherence to the perceptions of instinct and the messages of tremulation:
 ::</blockquote>''We have to choose between the quick and the dead. The quick is God-flame, in everything. And the dead is dead. In this room where I write, there is a little table that is dead; it doesn’t even weakly exist. And there is a ridiculous little iron stove which for some unknown reason is quick. And there is an iron wardrobe trunk, which for some still more mysterious reason is quick. And there are several books, whose mere corpus is dead, utterly dead and non-existent. And there is a sleeping cat, very quick. And a glass lamp, alas, is dead. (“The Novel,”1925,141)'' </blockquote>
 It is a short distance from the God-flame of immanence radiating from inanimate objects to Lawrence’s instinctual imperative. The following words are from “The Novel and the Feelings” (1925), and again they conspicuously prefigure Mailer’s own existential perspectives: “We’ve managed to keep clear of the darkest Africa inside us, for a long time. . . . But there it is, a strange dark
 continent that we do not explore, because we do not even allow that it exists. . . .Yet unless we proceed to connect ourselves up with our own primeval
 sources, we shall degenerate” (262,263,264 respectively).
 Lawrence’s notoriously pungent reviews of other writers—included
@@ Line 118: / Line 132: @@
 tremulations from the ether that—as The Rainbow so powerfully dramatizes—must energize and humble those who engage this “unknown.” In that
 same essay, Lawrence clarifies this arena of the transcendent: “a great background, vital and vivid, which matters more than the people who move
-upon it ... the vast unexplored morality of life itself, what we call the immorality of nature, surrounding us in its eternal incomprehensibility” (15).
+upon it ... the vast unexplored morality of life itself, what we call the immorality of nature, surrounding us in its eternal incomprehensibility” (15). {{sfn|Lawrence|1914|p=15}}
 Lawrence similarly admires Whitman’s poetry in “Poetry of the Present”
 (1919) for its “sheer appreciation of the instant moment, life surging itself
-into utterance at its very well-head” (80). In Giovanni Verga’s fiction about
+into utterance at its very well-head” (80). {{sfn|Lawrence|1919|p=80}} In Giovanni Verga’s fiction about
 Sicily, he finds comparable reasons for praise: “you can’t read Mastro-don
 Gesualdo without feeling the marvelous glow and glamour of Sicily and the
@@ Line 127: / Line 141: @@
 (“Introduction to Mastro-don Gesualdo by Giovanni Verga,”1927,339).
-Lawrence excoriates several much-admired writers for what he regards as intrinsic failures of characterization, texture, and power, inadequacies that he discusses, of course, in the context of his own stipulations about fiction. While recognized as a brilliant and unorthodox literary critic, Lawrence at times overstates his personal biases in ways that too cavalierly diminish the works under consideration. Although he praises the complex artistry of Thomas Mann, he criticizes Death In Venice because the work has “none of the rhythm of a living thing” (“Review of Death In Venice by Thomas Mann 1913,14), and he faults Madame Bovary because he discerns a major problem with its “realistic method,” arguing in an Aristotelian manner that “individuals like Emma and Charles Bovary are too insignificant to carry the full weight of Gustave Flaubert’s profound sense of tragedy” (Gesualdo,332). In “The Future of the Novel” (1922-23) he gleefully attacks two modernist exponents of radical fictional techniques because he believes the works are boring and overrated. Here he uses an elongated trope of fabric and mummification to turn consensus notions of their talent and importance virtually inside-out. In effect, he “dresses” them to take them apart: “Through
-thousands and thousands of pages Mr. Joyce and Miss Richardson tear themselves to pieces, strip their smallest emotions to the finest threads, till you feel you are sewed inside a wool mattress that is slowly shaken up, and you are turning to wool along with the rest of the wooliness” (179). In “The
+Lawrence excoriates several much-admired writers for what he regards as intrinsic failures of characterization, texture, and power, inadequacies that he discusses, of course, in the context of his own stipulations about fiction. While recognized as a brilliant and unorthodox literary critic, Lawrence at times overstates his personal biases in ways that too cavalierly diminish the works under consideration. Although he praises the complex artistry of Thomas Mann, he criticizes Death In Venice because the work has “none of the rhythm of a living thing” (“Review of Death In Venice by Thomas Mann 1913,14), and he faults Madame Bovary because he discerns a major problem with its “realistic method,” arguing in an Aristotelian manner that “individuals like Emma and Charles Bovary are too insignificant to carry the full weight of Gustave Flaubert’s profound sense of tragedy” (Gesualdo,332). {{sfn|Lawrence|1913|p=332}} In “The Future of the Novel” (1922-23) he gleefully attacks two modernist exponents of radical fictional techniques because he believes the works are boring and overrated. Here he uses an elongated trope of fabric and mummification to turn consensus notions of their talent and importance virtually inside-out. In effect, he “dresses” them to take them apart: “Through
+thousands and thousands of pages Mr. Joyce and Miss Richardson tear themselves to pieces, strip their smallest emotions to the finest threads, till you feel you are sewed inside a wool mattress that is slowly shaken up, and you are turning to wool along with the rest of the wooliness” (179). {{sfn|Lawrence|1922-23|p=179}} In “The
 Novel” (1925) he maintains that War and Peace is marred by Tolstoy’s unpersuasive valorizing of “the fat fuzzy Pierre” (246), a character whom Lawrence regards as a “domestic sort of house-dog” (246). Such a caustic assessment is related to Lawrence’s belief that the portrait of Pierre denies the
-fundamental necessity of any character in fiction: Tolstoy “wasn’t true to his own character” (246).What is such “truth” to Lawrence? He returns to a version of the tremulation metaphor and the doctrine of change: “Character is a curious thing. It is the flame of a man, which burns brighter or dimmer, bluer or redder, rising or sinking or flaring according to the draughts of circumstance and changing air of life, changing itself continually, yet remaining one single, separate flame, flickering in a strange world” (246).
+fundamental necessity of any character in fiction: Tolstoy “wasn’t true to his own character” (246).What is such “truth” to Lawrence? He returns to a version of the tremulation metaphor and the doctrine of change: “Character is a curious thing. It is the flame of a man, which burns brighter or dimmer, bluer or redder, rising or sinking or flaring according to the draughts of circumstance and changing air of life, changing itself continually, yet remaining one single, separate flame, flickering in a strange world” (246). {{sfn|Lawrence|1925|p=246}}
 Throughout the essays there are moments of luminous insight by
@@ Line 145: / Line 161: @@
 wistful, rather nice and helplessly commonplace little fellows who should
 be tucked away and left to sleep, like RipVan Winkle, till the rest of the storm
-rolled by” (185). . In “Art and Morality” (1925) he warns of the developing alliance between technological advancements and the blandishments of the
+rolled by” (185). {{sfn|Lawrence|1924|p=185}} . In “Art and Morality” (1925) he warns of the developing alliance between technological advancements and the blandishments of the
 ego; he criticizes “civilized man” for his lack of a visual creative imagination,
 as he increasingly displays “the slowly formed habit of seeing just as the photographic camera sees” (223). Indeed, Lawrence perhaps becomes the first and mournful predictor of the epidemic of the iPhone: “Man has learned to
 see himself. So now, he is what he sees. He makes himself in his own image.... The identifying of ourselves with the visual image of ourselves has become an instinct, the habit is already old. The picture of me, the me that is
-seen, is me” (225). The vitality and“quickness” of Lawrence’s prose—what he often connects
+seen, is me” (225). {{sfn|Lawrence|1925|p=225}} The vitality and“quickness” of Lawrence’s prose—what he often connects
 to the “livingness” of life—is especially evident in his evocation of the “spirit
 of place.” While Dyer does not include the essay of that name from
@@ Line 156: / Line 172: @@
 the personal and the scenic with the mythical nuances of literary history. I
 urge you to read through the essays to find more of the same:
 ::</blockquote>'' In early April I went with my wife to Syracuse for a few days, with the purple anemones blowing in the Sicilian fields, and Adonis-blood red on the little ledges, and the corn rising strong and green in the magical, malarial places, and Etna flowing now to the northward, still with her crown of snow. The lovely, lovely journey from Catania to Syracuse in the spring, winding round the blueness of that sea, where the tall pink asphodel like a lily showing her silk. Lovely, lovely Sicily, the dawn-place, Europe’s dawn, with Odysseus pushing his ship out of the shadows into the blue. Whatever had died for me, Sicily had then not died: dawn-lovely Sicily, and the Ionian Sea. (117)''</blockquote>
+{{DEFAULTSORT:Tremulation on The Ether: Versions Of Instincual Primacy In The Essays Of D.H. Lawrence, The}}
 ===Works Cited===