Phoenix : The Posthumous Papers of D. H. Lawrence (A Viking compass book)

Rating:
Summary: Whole, healthy, and vitally stimulating essays.
Review: Here is Lawrence in his full glory, from sensing exquisite subliminal messages found in nature ("understanding the gestures with which the flowers open," as Hesse has put it), to expousing and expounding sublimely ridiculous theories of education and behavior.

It is a Lawrence I love.

Is he being tongue in cheek, or does he really believe firmly in everything that passes from his pen to paper? It is up to the reader to ponder and decide.

You just have to dip you toe anywhere into this book of mostly unpublished essays and you will find a statement to draw you up short, questioning it, savoring it. My favorite essay in this collection is "On Being Religious." Being religious, you say. How can Lawrence know anything about that, earthy as his reputation is? But he does. And it is provocative. And it drives you to deeper thinking within yourself. Lawrence says no sooner do we place God in what we consider to be a proper setting for Him, than He moves. And we must follow, courageously, humbly, and enthusiastically if we are to split the rock of our humanness and get a glimpse of the divine.

For a striking political view consider this excerpt from the essay "Democracy." "...Not people melted into a oneness: that is not the new Democracy. But people released into their single starry identity, each one distinct and incommutable." This "living self" of Lawrence's is the opposite of Whitman's "En-Masse" or "One Identity," an ideal which Lawrence has no use for, since it subverts and dilutes the self, our most important possession. Lawrence has a love/hate relationship with Whitman, admiring his daring and adventurous spirit, but observing that Whitman has pitched his tent on the slope that leads to Death rather than Life.

It is impossible to try to review the contents of this fascinating book. In the first place the subjects of the essays range far and wide from nature to travel, from literature to education, from book reviews to art, from philosophy to personalia. In the second place Lawrence does not often stay on the subject he uses as a title. His is an almost free-association mode of writing, and for this reason people who like carefully-crafted paragraphs, leading to inescapably correct conclusions will probably not like these writings. They may contain as much error as they contain truth.

But this reader can forgive Lawrence, nay, even thank him for his excesses, because his heart and his mind are whole, and healthy, and vitally stimulating.