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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 | 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). | ||
Throughout the essays there are moments of luminous insight by | |||
Lawrence that indicate his instinctual grasp of the present and his prescient | |||
sense of the future. In “A Letter from Germany” (1942) he virtually predicts | |||
the cataclysm that soon will engulf the world. Tremulations are in the air: | |||
“But at night you feel strange things stirring in the darkness,strange feelings | |||
stirring in the darkness, strange feelings stirring out of this still unconquered | |||
Black Forest... Out of this very air comes a sense of danger, a queer bristling | |||
feeling of uncanny danger. Something has happened. Something has happened which has not yet eventuated. . . . It is the father of the next phase of | |||
events” (191-192). In“Paris Letter” (1924) he acerbically anticipates a nation’s | |||
passivity and appeasement that will manifest itself in the coming war: “Men, | |||
particularly Frenchman, have collapsed into little,rather insignificant,rather | |||
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 | |||
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 | |||
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 | |||
Lawrence’s study of American literature, I close with a poetic example of | |||
such “spirit” from the “Magnus” essay. It is a poetic passage that integrates | |||
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: | |||
===Works Cited=== | ===Works Cited=== | ||