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Welcome to the October 2022 bulletin.
How on earth did D.H. Lawrence manage to write so much in his brief life? Novels, short stories, poems, literary criticism, travelogues, plays, psychoanalysis. And then there were the volumes of letters, the banned paintings, the translations, and moving house every couple of years.
Your editor can barely manage to get the bulletin out on time, let alone remember what bins need putting out on a Friday morning. But he has, at least, managed to get the third artefact uploaded to the D.H. Lawrence Memory Theatre and to complete the Locating Lawrence video on YouTube so you can see what Lawrence was up to 100 years ago to the month.
A big round of applause goes to everyone involved in the September festival. This was probably our most ambitious to date and to bring people together after the last couple of years of isolation was something to be proud of. So well done all involved. You know who you are. And if you missed some of it, fear not. See the 'On the Box' feature further down.
There are many ways to celebrate the life of a writer, our monthly talks being one such example. But if, like Lawrence, we all said 'bejahung' to life, our experiences of the world and people would be a lot more satisfying.
If you want anything included in the bulletin, lob it over to either
james.walker@ntu.ac.uk or brenda.sumner@gmail.com
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Home
Wednesday 12 October 2022
7pm
John Worthen
‘Life with Lawrence'
Online link to be sent out.
Saturday 29 October
10am-12pm
DH Lawrence Creative Writing Workshop.
Wollaton Library Bramcote Lane Nottingham NG8 2NA
Book tickets here
Away
Thursday 27th October
6.30-8.30pm
‘Lawrence and Pedagogy: Teaching Lawrence in Universities Today’
Five contributors from four different countries: Shirley Bricout will represent France, Marina Ragachevskaya will represent Belarus, Julianne Newmark with her colleague Audra Belmore will represent the United States, and Annalise Grice will represent the UK. Each of them (and Julianne and Audra presenting together) will speak for around 15 minutes, and then there will be a discussion.
The kind of questions that they will be addressing are:
- what are the challenges in teaching Lawrence to university students in their country today?
- is there any resistance from their institution, or students, to teaching Lawrence?
- on which texts do they tend to focus and why?
- what strategies do they use to teach these texts?
- what do they think are the benefits to students of studying Lawrence’s works?
The Zoom link, as ever, is https://northeastern.zoom.us/j/5966628985
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Bill Goldstein defines 1922 as a dividing line in literary history whereas Ezra Pound is even more precise, claiming the end of the ‘Christian Era’ ended on October 29, 1921, the night James Joyce finished Ulysses. The novel was published on Joyce’s 40th birthday, Feb 2, in Paris. Although Goldstein suggests we should use the term ‘publication’ lightly given it entailed two copies.
In this fascinating and well researched ‘biography,’ Goldstein intersects the intellectual and personal lives of Virginia Woolf, T.S. Eliot, D.H. Lawrence, and E. M Forster to show how each of them were suffering from despair, illness and uncertain creative futures at the beginning of the year but would go on to produce innovative works that would help shape literary modernism and ‘make personal and artistic sense of a dislocation in time and consciousness between the country England had been before the war and what it was now.’
Virginia Woolf turned 40 on January 25, 1922, and, aside from her acerbic reviews, was having difficulty writing. Influenza had left her bed ridden. From her bed she felt like ‘a watch without a tick’.
T.S. Eliot and his wife Vivien appear to have taken it in turns to be ill. Eliot had a nervous breakdown in 1921 and took three months off work while Vivien was accumulating a list of ailments that came at great financial cost. This created more anxiety for Eliot, all of which meant he had neither the time nor inclination to work on fragments of a poem that would eventually become The Waste Land.
E.M. Forster was on his way back from India and had still not made much progress with A Passage to India, the novel he had been loosely tinkering with for the past decade. He would finally complete it in 1924 and it would be his last. Siegfried Sassoon got his measure when he wrote, ‘I wish he would get really angry with the world. Or fall passionately in love with an idea.’
As we know, Lawrence had no problem getting angry and would soon be locking horns with Mabel Dodge Sterne in New Mexico…
To read a longer review of this book, please see here.
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On the Box: The Birthday Lecture 2022
For those of you who missed Annalise Grice's Birthday Lecture, fear not. It's been uploaded to our YouTube channel so that you can watch it again (along with our other uploads).
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JDHLS Studies
JDHLS 2022: From Sons and Lovers to Kangaroo
Sue Reid
If 1922 was modernism’s annus mirabilis what part did Lawrence play? His publications in that momentous year included his second collection of short stories England, My England, his second “psychology book” Fantasia of the Unconscious, and Aaron’s Rod, his perplexing, picaresque novel that takes its flute-playing protagonist from the post-war English Midlands to an Italy burgeoning with fascism; each is interesting, but none can rival The Waste Land or Ulysses.
Lawrence’s life took him in the opposite direction to Eliot and Joyce as he travelled beyond Europe for the first time and responded to the cultures of the places he visited from 1922 onwards: Australia, America and Mexico. Ten years earlier, leaving England for the first time had enabled Lawrence to complete his breakthrough novel Sons and Lovers, and 1922 proved to be another watershed year.
In 1922, Lawrence drafted his “Australian” novel, Kangaroo, published the following year. Readers are often troubled by its political themes and reportage style, broken up by a traumatic flashback to wartime Cornwall, but these features make Kangaroo one of his most modernist works, as David Game demonstrated in D. H. Lawrence’s Australia (2015). Game’s subsequent essay in JDHLS 2020 argued for the importance of Kangaroo as a form of “regional modernism” that shifts the metropolitan axis of modernism exemplified by Ulysses and The Waste Land: his essay is available for you to enjoy in the JDHLS archive https://dhlawrencesociety.files.wordpress.com/2020/05/jdhls-5.1-2018-game-1.pdf.
Two essays in the forthcoming number of JDHLS will celebrate the centenary of Lawrence’s visit to Australia: Barbara Kearns analyses the real-life influences on Lawrence’s fictional treatment of Australia (and disposes of some of the myths) and Christopher Pollnitz makes a far-reaching case for Lawrence’s influence on Australian artists (beyond the well-known Garry Shead). JDHLS 2022 will also include three essays on Sons and Lovers, a discussion of Lawrence’s gendered attitudes to nursing in his fiction and two highly topical readings of Lawrence’s perception of energy ‘crisis’ in his essays and in Women in Love.
JDHLS 2022 will be published in December and mailed to members of the UK Society, so to avoid disappointment please remember to renew your subscription! Meanwhile please enjoy delving into the JDHLS archives, for David Game’s excellent essay and many other gems: https://journalofdhlawrencestudies.com/
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Lawrence and Academia
D. H. Lawrence and Sexuality: Reassessing the Novels
Michael Squires, PhD
As a writer of fiction, D. H. Lawrence spent his career maneuvering between heterosexual and homosexual preferences. In order to make a living, he needed to use mainstream publishers. They encouraged his bold work but only if he censored it. What especially interested Lawrence were the differences between male and female orgasm—not just the mechanics but their meaning. Over his career (1910–1930) his views on orgasm evolved from simple release, to ambivalent forms of lust, to a challenging separation of responses: unfathomable silence for males and articulate expression for females. The sexes are privileged differently, and the categorical separation that Lawrence discovers is a revelation. This essay analyzes five of his most famous novels, from Sons and Lovers to Lady Chatterley’s Lover, and, based on revisions in his texts, reaches conclusions that differ from those most readers have held. In revising, Lawrence came to reshape his characters’ responses into complex, often-coded narratives.
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There’s lots of literary business to sort out in October with ownership rights over Sons and Lovers to deal with, an article written against the Bursum Land Bill, and he writes his first poems in America, including ‘Eagle in New Mexico,’ which will be added to Birds, Beasts and Flowers.
Although he has ‘a gay little adobe house on the edge of the desert, with the mountains sitting under the sun’ and rides every afternoon till sundown, life is far from perfect. There are no egg cups, something Mountsier is able to procure.
In America, ‘people charge at you like trucks coming down on you – no awareness’ and you have to ‘dodge aside in time’ and although this causes a yearning for the ‘mildness of Europe’ Lawrence can’t help but like the place too.
But he ‘won’t be bullied, even by kindness’ But it is Mabel Dodge Sterne's kindness that enables a possible escape in the form of a shabby cabin. It’s in a pretty-bad state but can be remedied with a bit of love and hard graft and possibly transformed into ‘a central farm.’ Could this finally be the start of Rananim?
Read the full article here.
Watch the YouTube video here.
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The D.H. Lawrence Memory Theatre
Some readers may be wondering why there is a giant phallus with wings in the bulletin. This is because the third artefact in the D.H. Lawrence Memory Theatre is 'phallic tenderness'. For this, Stephen Alexander has been commissioned to pen 12 mini essays about Lawrence's use of the phallus in his writing and life philosophy. For example, Lawrence placed a phallus in his pictures to ‘shock people’s castrated social spirituality’. He did this out of a ‘positive belief that the phallus is a great sacred image: it represents a deep, deep life which has been denied in us, and is still denied.’
If you would like to know how difficult it was to design the above image and the impact this artefact has had on your editor's Google search history, read this article.
If you would like to read Stephen's thoughtful, funny and provocative essays for the memory theatre, please visit the website here.
Remember, anybody can submit an artefact to the memory theatre. The purpose of this project is to explore Lawrence's life and work through key themes. Get in contact if you have an idea...
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Here are the TTA posts from August and September 2022
1. Reflections on the Verb to Be
http://torpedotheark.blogspot.com/2022/08/reflections-on-verb-to-be.html
Is Lawrence right to say that Hamlet's question - To be or not to be? - remains the one that still preoccupies us?
2. D. H. Lawrence and the Ache for Being
http://torpedotheark.blogspot.com/2022/08/d-h-lawrence-and-ache-for-being.html
Lawrence says that the ache for being is the ultimate hunger - is it?
3. Sungazing (With Reference to the Case of Juliet, the Lawrentian Sun-Woman)
http://torpedotheark.blogspot.com/2022/09/sungazing-with-reference-to-case-of.html
A revised extract from the 2012 essay Sun-Fucked: On the Question of Solar Sexuality and Speculative Realism in the Work of D. H. Lawrence, which was published as Sun-Struck on James Walker's Digital Pilgrimage blog in 2019.
4. God Save the King ...? The D. H. Lawrence Birthday Post (2022)
http://torpedotheark.blogspot.com/2022/09/god-save-king-d-h-lawrence-birthday.html
What does Lawrence think when it comes to the question of monarchy?
5. To Hold On or Let Go? (Reflections on a Garden Gnome)
http://torpedotheark.blogspot.com/2022/09/to-hold-on-or-let-go-reflections-on.html
Being able to hold on, hold tight, and hold still is important; but then, equally vital, is knowing how and when to let go. Interestingly, Lawrence discusses this question of holding on or letting go not only in terms of the individual, but at the level of the species.
6. Life in Vein (With Reference to D. H. Lawrence's Undying Man)
http://torpedotheark.blogspot.com/2022/09/life-in-vein-with-reference-to-d-h.html
From notes on vascular sugery, to thoughts on Lawrence's unfinished short story 'The Undying Man' (1927).
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Lawrence at Newstead Abbey
Kate Foster
One of the many highlights of this year’s excellent D.H. Lawrence festival was an afternoon at Newstead Abbey to see the recently acquired painting of Lawrence by Dutch artist Joep Nicolas. This, the last known portrait of Lawrence, by Aldous Huxley’s brother in law, was painted in 1929, when the Lawrences called on the Huxleys in Suresnes, France, while travelling from Spain to Germany. Nicolas happened to be staying at the time, and so, it is believed, the chance arose for Nicolas to paint Lawrence's portrait.
To celebrate Nottingham City Museums’ purchase of the painting (which the D.H. Lawrence society supported), Andrew Harrison gave a talk surveying a number of portraits of Lawrence produced during his lifetime, setting the new picture in perspective and addressing its biographical context. Terry Gifford then used Dorothy Brett’s painting ‘My Three Fates’ which shows Dorothy, Frieda and Mabel Dodge Luhan inside their home at Taos with Lawrence under a tree outside, as a starting point to discuss his environmentalism.
Andrew began by showing us the first known picture of Lawrence, a cartoon by his brother Ernest depicting him as Billy, after his nickname Billy Whiteknob. He then showed several other pictures including, a portrait in red chalk by Maria Hubrecht which clearly influenced Lawrence to do his own self portrait in red chalk; another chalk drawing by Edmond Xavier Kapp where Lawrence looks rather impish; the painting by Dorothy Brett where he wears his amazing Mexican hat; and the only other full length portrait known of, by Kai Gotzsche, showing Lawrence in his working clothes at Taos. We were encouraged to consider Lawrence’s gaze, his smile, his choice of clothing, his mood, his relationship with the artist, all contributing to the tone of the piece.
And so to Nicholas’s painting. In this, Lawrence is dressed formally, as in many of his publicity photographs, but he is so painfully thin that his suit seems over large. His hands are folded in a typical pose but here he seems to be clasping his wrists. Is he covering how thin they are, or perhaps he’s in pain and making a huge effort to stay in this position? He certainly looks distracted, his gaze lowered, but his eyes rather pale and distant, very different from the intense look we see in Diana Thomson’s sculpture outside in the gardens. His nose is red, maybe because, as Andrew pointed out, he was recovering from a bout of flu. It seems a very vulnerable, raw painting, which given its context, isn’t surprising. Is it a good likeness? Perhaps not, but I found it incredibly moving. And it’s certainly arresting; the tour guide told us everyone stops to look. You should too.
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D.H. Lawrence Dialect Alphabet
There's been a lot of scraightin' at the City Grind as Nottingham Forest have lost their last two home matches and your editor has gone home in a raight mardy.
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‘At a remarkable altitude’: D. H. Lawrence’s unfinished play is presented as part of centenary celebrations in honor of his arrival in Taos
Read more: http://ow.ly/UGJ050KM4iH
Review of Lara Feigal's Look! We Have Come Through in The Critic in September. 'A sharp and shrewd look at Lawrence: A dialectical mind, Lawrence is modern in his resistance to labels'
Read more: thecritic.co.uk/issues/august-september-2022/
Angus Reid's review in The Morning Star focuses on 'The ‘art’ of purging class from DH Lawrence studies' and 'believes this is an inevitable blind spot of bourgeois academia faced with a working-class author.'
Read more: morningstaronline.co.uk/article/c/art-purging-class-d-h-lawrence-studies
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Leave them Alone! Parenting advice from the childless D.H. Lawrence in this article by Lara Feigal at Aeon.
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Listen to 10 episodes of The Rainbow (Radio Times)
More info here
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Netflix are the latest company to remake Lady C. Joely Richardson, who played Lady C in a 1993 series, is now cast as Mrs. Bolton, the woman hired to look after Clifford. Sean Matthews shared the link with the comment, deary me!
Read more: deadline.com/2022/09/lady-chatterleys-lover
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In episode 61 of the Telos Press Podcast, David Pan talks with Sijia Yao about her article “Third Term Comparison,” from Telos 199 (Summer 2022). An excerpt of the article appears here. The website states 'In their conversation they discuss the difference between world literature and comparative literature, as well as the methodological advantages of comparison; the pervasiveness of biases in both Chinese and Western discourses about the other, and how these biases should be approached; the difference between a binary comparison and a third term comparison; how one can do a third term comparison; and how a third term comparison of D. H. Lawrence and Eileen Chang avoids the binary opposition between China and the West.'
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Lawrence and me: Naveed Rehan.
Naveed is a Lawrence scholar from Lahore who has kindly taken on the new role as newsletter editor. Here she explains more.
I would like to send a short message to introduce myself and ask for your contributions to the DHL Newsletter which will hopefully resume publication in autumn/winter 2022. I’m taking over as editor from Amy Wilcockson as of now, and I hope I can keep up her good work.
A little about me: my name is Naveed Rehan and I am from Lahore, Pakistan. I hold a Master’s degree in French from Lahore, and MA and PhD degrees in English from the USA. For both of my English degrees, I worked on Lawrence, and I am still interested in him. Unfortunately, I have never visited England, but I hope to do so in the near future. I'm a recent member of the DHL Society of Great Britain, but I have been a member of the DHL Society of North America for a long time. I also represent Pakistan on the DHLSNA's Co-ordinating Committee for International Lawrence Conferences. In July last year, I was the convener for “Universal Lawrence: A Creative Nonfiction Workshop,” and host for a special nonfiction writing session at the virtual symposium D. H. Lawrence, Distance and Proximity.
I’m thrilled to be compiling this important document, and I eagerly await your contributions at dhlsocietynewsletter@gmail.com I will soon contact authors who have already submitted entries to double-check if they still want them to be published.
For members in the UK, I hope you have a great time at the D. H. Lawrence Festival. I will join in virtually wherever possible.
P.S. My name is usually a source of some confusion as it is used for both men and women in Pakistan. I am therefore attaching a picture with this email :)
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From the Archives
Let us transport you back to 1985 and the Centenary Festival programme. 50p would provide access to a Victorian/Edwardian fair at Brinsley Colliery and the promise of hearing the 'ghost' of D.H. Lawrence...
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To be included in the newsletter contact james.walker@ntu.ac.uk or brenda.sumner@gmail.com
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