Abstract
The Legacy of D. H. Lawrence is a sequel and complement to D. H. Lawrence and Tradition, a collection of seven original essays that I edited for the Athlone Press and the University of Massachusetts Press in 1985. Lawrence and Tradition shows how Lawrence interprets, revalues, absorbs and transforms the work of Blake, Carlyle, Ruskin, George Eliot, Hardy, Whitman and Nietzsche. The contributors all assume that Lawrence’s use of the style, forms and ideas of his predecessors is positive, that his fiction, poetry and criticism derive their resonance, meaning and value—and much of their inspiration—from his vital connection to significant authors of the nineteenth century.
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Notes
K. L. Godwin, The Influence of Ezra Pound (London, 1966), p. 219.
Anthony Burgess, Flame into Being: The Life and Work of D. H. Lawrence (New York, 1985), p. 5.
W. H. Auden, The Orators (New York, 1967), pp. vii, 17, 63;
W. H. Auden, “D. H. Lawrence as a Critic,” The Griffin, 5 (September 1956), 4.
D. H. Lawrence, Letters: Volume II, 1913–1916, ed. George Zytaruk and James Boulton (Cambridge, England, 1981), p. 218.
Karl Shapiro, “Dylan Thomas,” In Defense of Ignorance (New York, 1955), p. 184. Dylan Thomas, Selected Letters, ed. Constantine FitzGibbon (London, 1966), p. 195, acknowledges his debt to the poems about animals and poems in The Plumed Serpent.
Keith Sagar, “Beyond D. H. Lawrence,” D. H. Lawrence: The Man Who Lived, ed. Robert Partlow, Jr. and Harry Moore (Carbondale, Illinois, 1980), pp. 264–265.
Letter from Seamus Heaney to Jeffrey Meyers, November 12, 1985. Lawrence’s “Poetry of the Present” (1919) appears in Complete Poems, ed. Vivian de Sola Pinto and Warren Roberts (New York, 1964), pp. 181–186.
D. H. Lawrence, Letters: Volume I, 1901–1913, ed. James Boulton (Cambridge, England, 1979), p. 544.
George Orwell, Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters, ed. Sonia Orwell and Ian Angus (New York, 1968), 1:507, 2:202.
See George Orwell, The Road to Wigan Pier (London, 1937), pp. 195, 198–200.
Alan Sillitoe, “D. H. Lawrence and His District,” D. H. Lawrence: Novelist, Poet, Prophet, ed. Stephen Spender (London, 1973), p. 46.
See also Alan Sillitoe, “Lawrence’s Republic,” Time and Tide, 42 (October 19, 1961), 1756, on Fantasia of the Unconscious.
D. H. Lawrence, Collected Letters, ed. Harry Moore (New York, 1962), p. 952.
Letter from David Storey to Jeffrey Meyers, March 3, 1985. See also David Storey, “Slabs of Slate,” New Statesman, 68 (October 30, 1964), 654–655, on Lawrence’s paintings.
The Letters of D. H. Lawrence and Amy Lowell, 1914–1925, ed. Claire Healey and Keith Cushman (Santa Barbara, 1985), p. 104.
Louis Martz, “A Greenhouse Eden,” Theodore Roethke: Essays on the Poetry, ed. Arnold Stein (Seattle, 1965), p. 25.
Neal Bowers, “Theodore Roethke Speaks,” New Letters, 49 (1982), 11–12.
Theodore Roethke, Selected Letters, ed. Ralph Mills, Jr. (Seattle, 1968), pp. 116, 104.
Theodore Roethke, “Some Remarks on Rhythm,” On the Poet and His Craft, ed. Ralph Mills, Jr. (Seattle, 1965), p. 83.
Galway Kinnell, Walking Down the Stairs (Ann Arbor, 1978), p. 54.
Quoted in Allen Ginsberg, Allen Verbatim, ed. Gordon Ball (New York, 1974), p. 150.
Quoted in Wyndham Lewis, Rude Assignment (London, 1950), p. 203. See Irving Howe, “In the Lawrencian Orbit,” Sherwood Anderson (New York, 1951), pp. 179–196.
Donald Spoto, The Kindness of Strangers (Boston, 1985), p. 74.
Ibid., p. 271. See also Norman Fedder, The Influence of D. H. Lawrence on Tennessee Williams (The Hague, 1966).
Letter from Norman Mailer to Jeffrey Meyers, February 6, 1985. Bernard Malamud has described his fictional use of Lawrence in Dubin’s Lives (1979): “Lawrence has had little influence on my work, except as Dubin relates to him at his time of life. Dubin ultimately wrote the biography, not I. Lawrence’s purpose in the book was to entice Dubin to participate in a fiction that related him sexually to Fanny Beck…. I used a handful of his books to help Dubin achieve a relationship with Fanny.” Letter from Bernard Malamud to Jeffrey Meyers, November 5, 1985. For Lawrence’s influence on other American writers, see: C. E. Baron, “Lawrence’s Influence on Eliot,” Cambridge Quarterly, 5 (1971), 235–248;
Robinson Jeffers, Selected Letters, 1897–1962, ed. Ann Ridgeway (Baltimore, 1968), pp. 208, 218, 230, 246;
Reloy Garcia, Steinbeck and D. H. Lawrence: Fictive Voices and the Ethical Imperative (Muncie, Indiana, 1962);
Ekbert Faas, “Charles Olson and D. H. Lawrence: Aesthetics of the ‘Primitive Abstract,’” Boundary, 2 (1973–74), 113–126;
and Virginia Carr, The Lonely Hunter: A Biography of Carson McCullers (Garden City, N. Y., 1975), pp. 33, 39. Lawrence’s influence on foreign writers has never been fully explored. But he clearly influenced the passionate, visceral, homoerotic, authoritarian and extremist elements in the novels of Yukio Mishima.
Joseph Sommers, After the Storm: Landmarks of the Modern Mexican Novel (Albuquerque, 1968), pp. 128–132, discusses the influence of The Plumed Serpent on Carlos Fuentes’ Where the Air Is Clear (1958).
And Bengt Altenberg, “A Checklist of D. H. Lawrence Scholarship in Scandinavia, 1934–1968,” D. H. Lawrence Review, 2 (1969), 275–277, states that Lawrence influenced the primitivist movement which “became a strong force in Swedish literature” in the 1930s.
See John Berryman, “Of Suicide,” Love & Fame, 2nd ed. (New York, 1972), p. 62: I still plan to go to Mexico this summer. The Olmec images! Chichén Itzá! D. H. Lawrence has a wild dream of it. Richard Eberhart’s “Throwing the Apple,” Collected Poems, 1930–1976 (New York, 1976), p. 202, is based on a painting by Lawrence.
William Boyd, A Good Man in Africa (New York, 1982), p. 142. Lawrence also appears in a number of other novels.
Kay Boyle’s “Rest Cure,” The Best Short Stories of 1931, ed. Edmund O’Brien (New York, 1931), pp. 47–54, describes the dying Lawrence.
Helen Corke’s Neutral Ground (London, 1933) portrays her friendship with Lawrence and the events that inspired The Trespasser.
Osbert Sitwell’s Miracle on Sinai (London, 1933) caricatures Lawrence as a bearded, working-class novelist who praises the dark gods but is always accompanied by a maiden aunt.
Keith Winter’s Impassioned Pygmies (New York, 1936) satirizes Lawrence and his circle.
Compton Mackenzie’s The South Wind of Love (London, 1937) and The West Wind of Love (New York, 1940) portray his friendship with Lawrence as well as Lawrence’s reaction to the war and attack on religion.
In Amanda Cross’s In the Last Analysis (New York, 1964), the murderer is exposed when he cannot identify a passage in The Rainbow.
In David Lodge’s The British Museum Is Falling Down (London, 1965), the frustrated comic hero never manages to read the huge pile of Lawrenciana that awaits him in the Reading Room.
And Neal Metcalf’s The Pure Gamble (Menlo Park, California, 1974) concerns a disciple of Lawrence who founds a commune like Rananim.
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© 1987 Jeffrey Meyers
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Meyers, J. (1987). Introduction. In: Meyers, J. (eds) The Legacy of D. H. Lawrence. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-08308-4_1
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