LAWRENCE REJUDGED

...His sense of the form of the novel was always linked with a "ground sense" of human life...

...these, while not great criticism, are sometimes very penetrating and acute...

...One can only accept his general observation concerning the Tales, that "they constitute a body of creative work of such an order as would of itself put Lawrence among the great writers—not merely among the memorable, but among the great...

...It is not for what he was not, and not for what Leavis says is wrong in Eliot's judgment of him, that we read his book...

...and here too many pages resume the quarrel...

...But when one considers how deeply personal, how almost violently deliberate, Lawrence's concern with these problems was, and further how vigorously he fought the battle of his Lady Chatter-ley's Lover, it does seem unfortunate that he should not have been represented by his pamphlet on that novel and its reception...

...The burden of fixed, all but immovable principles in the writing of fiction— from the time of Jane Austen to the time of Lawrence—proved intolerable, and Lawrence worked his way to new, genuine modes of organizing the perception of modern experience...

...Leavis admires Lawrence most for what Lawrence himself, in his criticism and his letters, felt was required in modern writing...

...Leavis is always "in charge" of his book, and in charge of Lawrence as well...

...F. R. Leavis spends far too much of his time castigating Eliot...

...and "Pornography and Obscenity" does serve well enough...

...Beal usefully organizes the criticism under the following headings: "Autobiographical," "Puritanism and the Arts," "Verse," "Contemporaries and the Importance of the Novel," and "Americans...

...From these manners come fresh insights, original and penetrating discussions of literature that were too often put into a hard mold of historical judgment too soon...

...while he possessed a systematic and a determined view or "philosophy," he was not always systematic in either stating or applying it...

...The Plumed Serpent fails because it is an easy evasion of the human complexity that Lawrence otherwise (and especially in The Rainbow and Women in Love) faced squarely: ". . . the deeper governing intention or impulse has clearly been [in The Plumed Serpent] to escape as much as possible from that inner drama of doubts and self-questionings and partial recoils which, the evidence of Aaron's Rod and Kangaroo so amply proves, would have made sustained imaginative conviction in such an enterprise as The Plumed Serpent impossible...

...One doesn't always wish to accept every detail of his judgments...

...they are not borrowed from or mere confirmations of the preferences of others...

...Reviewed by Frederick J. Hoffman IN A PERIOD especially rich in D. H. Lawrence criticism and scholarship, it is perhaps wise and fair that the two men most likely to speak for Lawrence's point of view have had the chance to do so: they are F. R. Leavis and Lawrence himself...

...In these divisions, one finds in whole or in part such valuable pieces as the "Study of Thomas Hardy," "Pornography and Obscenity," the introduction to his paintings, above all the several remarkable statements concerning the special state of the novel and its relationship to moral intention...

...Popular notions of the fiction have frequently obscured its underlying merit...

...The Phoenix volume is still a richer experience than the partial reprint of it and the Studies...

...If Lawrence's merit as a novelist was somewhat ignored or distorted, his status as a critic had somehow been all but entirely dismissed during his lifetime...

...This is all by way of saying, I suppose, that all of Phoenix and the Studies should have been reprinted...

...In addition to selections from the Studies in Classical American Literature, there are a few of his reviews of modern American works...

...and in any case one is glad to have these contemporary notices preserved...

...Only Studies in Classic American Literature (of which Anthony Beal in Selected Literary Criticism reprints two-thirds) had been published before his death...

...that while Lawrence repeats himself, he never says the same thing in quite the same way...

...His manner was often colloquial, disrespectful, explosively impolite, but earnestly (almost at times dogmatically) determined and sure...

...Leavis' choices are his own...

...the rest appeared in the posthumous Phoenix (1936...

...He had been carrying on a feud with Eliot for some years, in the pages of Scrutiny and elsewhere, concerning Lawrence's merit...

...Mawr...

...Moral intelligence in a novelist consists of a sensitivity to what James once called the virtue of "felt experience," as well as an independent literary spirit...

...But he is here, as elsewhere, consistent...

...In a way I suppose it may be said that Lawrence as critic is impossible to nail down...

...Rather, Leavis gives us the most thorough, exacting, and conscientious readings of Lawrence's fiction that we have so far been privileged to have...

...His volume reprints about half of Lawrence's criticism...

...Perhaps Beal assumed that almost any sequence of Lawrence statements on these matters would serve...

...and Beal's revival of them is to be commended...

...This is especially true of the chapters on The Rainbow and Women in Love...

...The point is made quite early in his book that Lawrence was not intellectually confused or poorly educated or merely ignorant...

...Nevertheless, when he is impressed by the scope of Lawrence's achievement, the critical result is most ingratiating and remarkably thorough and acute...

...and such men as T. S. Eliot, an important spokesman in poetry and criticism but probably the poorest judge of modern fiction we have, have set other barriers to the solution of questions of taste in judging Lawrence...

...There are other essays not in either...

...This is true of Lawrence's impressions of American literature, and Beal would have been wise to include all of the Studies instead of the eight he decided upon...

...Similarly, while the division called "Puritanism and the Arts" is wisely placed at the head of Lawrence's criticism (immediately following the autobiographical sketches), one wonders about the wisdom of his specific choices...

...the fantastic quarrels over Lawrence's loyalties and those he inspired in others obscured for many years the considerable merit of what he left us at his death...

...Both have long been out of print...

...Surely this volume of Selected Literary Criticis?n will inform many who have not known Lawrence to be a critic, as Leavis' book will convince others that he was a novelist of stature...

...His primary concern is to reveal Lawrence as a man of great moral intelligence, along lines that Leavis has for many years been defining...

...One of the merits lies in its "irreverence" for what Lawrence regarded as overrated forms of literary appraisal and execution...

...But it is good to have so much contained in a .single volume, and generally so wisely edited...

...He puts The Plumed Serpent much lower on the scale of Lawrence's achievements in the novel than many would...

...Each of the books reviewed here testifies to a breadth and depth of Lawrence's views that they are not always credited with having...

...He was an independent spirit at best...

...it is often true of his analysis of Lawrence's short fiction, though there is some question regarding the extraordinary place he gives such stories as The Captain's Doll and St...

...Much of the remainder is buried in the letters, though Beal uses a few of them to good advantage in the new volume...

...The major qualities of Lawrence's criticism are here revealed for us...