Henry Miller on D.H. Lawrence
D.H. Lawrence will outlive the British Empire.
As everyone knows, the body of Lawrence’s work forms a huge self-portrait. He looked into the mirror of the world and he saw reflected there the image of his own naked soul.
It was not until I had been saturated with his works, and the opinion of others about him, that I came to that intensely human, revelatory self-portrait which The Letters gives us. And after reading a hundred pages or so I come upon a photograph of Lawrence at the age of twenty-nine—the year 1914, the most crucial year of his life, and the most fateful year in our lives.
I look at the photograph for a long time. A very beautiful face, a very wonderful being shining out of those eyes. And almost immediately one is compelled to add—a somewhat feminine face, the face of a Christ, of all those androgynous types of Redeemers which Christ typified. And yet, not an effeminate being! Beauty, tenderness, sensitivity, faith.
The man of light who worshipped the darkness, who was attracted as few men have ever been by the power of chaos and mystery…
“I am rather great on faith just now,” he writes… “I do believe in it…One ought to have faith in what ultimately is, then one can bear at last the hosts of unpleasant things which one is en route…”
[Lawrence] wants to “belong,” and yet to have his say. He wants to be sincere, truthful, earnest, passionate, religious—and yet not to be hated or misunderstood. You will find this terribly painful period in the lives of all great souls, the period when, fully conscious of their aims, perhaps not certain yet of their power, but aware of their own deep integrity, they long to project an image of the world and make it effective. And it is just because, in this period of transition, they are so utterly sincere, so utterly all of a piece, so genuine, so burning with truth, that they believe in their power to regenerate, to recreate the world…
[Lawrence’s] unquenchable, burning spirit, his totality, his ubiquitousness, his aliveness.
Lawrence on his deathbed had more life than most men have in their moments of highest ecstasy, if ecstasy there be in the world anymore. “We ought to dance with rapture,” he said. “That we should be alive in the flesh, and part of the living, incarnate cosmos. I am part of the sun as my eye is part of me.”
At the core of him was this God-flame, this wheel of light flashing over the four quarters of the death, over the heavens, and the waters beneath the earth, this flaming wheel that rolled over Cezanne and Dostoevski and Whitman, that touched the Chaldeans and the Aztecs and the Etruscans, that threw an incandescent light on Plotinus and Nietzsche both, on Lorenzo the Magnificent and on Quetzalcoatl; a flam, scorching and devouring, that reaches to the mystery in all things…
It seems to me that in 20 years he showed enough activity to prove that he was alive. If, as he said, we were all born corpses, then it is true also that he was the most alive corpse we have ever seen. The only value of an artist is whether he reveals life, he said. He brought life and he revealed life. As they fed on him while he lived, sucked the life out of him, to use his own words, men will go on feeding on him for generations to come…
D.H. Lawrence will outlive the British Empire. He will outlive her as Caesar and Cicero have outlived Rome. An empire lives only as long as it has living geniuses to give it their flame—and the great British bull is doing its best to snuff out its own life! No, the British Empire is almost dead already. It is not immortal. But the men who gave it life are immortal. That is a matter of fact.
Lawrence the artist almost succeeded in becoming God. Lawrence the man gets plates smashed over his head by an irate spouse. Lawrence the artist, or the philosopher, can talk almost as well as Socrates; he can talk about going beyond woman, he can say magnificent things about man's earnest purpose, etc. But in private life his wife leads him around by the apron-string as his mother did before her. She can stand up to him with fire in her eyes and blaze at him…
No mortal woman will ever satisfy the demands of this demon. No mortal man either. That is why love, marriage, friendship, all prove to be insufficient, added tortures to his existence.
God be praised that life can still throw out now and then such an abnormal, diseased, sex-crucified, sex-sodden genius as Lawrence.
You can find this passage in Henry Miller’s The World of Lawrence: A Passionate Appreciation
Weird. I just finished reading Sons and Lovers this morning.
This is so interesting, I never would have read it had you not posted it. Thank you.