B 0 0 KS
435
characters are symbolic in the sense that Stephen Dedalus symbolizes
the Son or Leopold Bloom the Father. In fact the whole intention of
Lawrence's thought is to abolish both the Son and the Father by recon–
ciling them in what he calls the one true Absolute, the Holy Ghost. He
hates Hamlet for being "creeping" and "unclean"; he thinks that the
meek Jesus is a great imposture. He admires the "Father and the King" ;
he respects Pride and the aristocratic principle. But ultimately these
latter represent the ascendancy of the Ego and the Will and are as
morally dangerous as the image of the crucified Son. Away with Father
and Son, then: let us worship the Holy Ghost-which "we call Truth
or Justice or Right" or "mystic Reason." Lawrence, we see, is a genuine
child of Enlightenment. When he says, "My great religion is a belief in
the blood, the flesh, as being wiser than the intellect," we feel, not that
Lawrence is a deep and mysterious man, but that, as we often say of
the neoclassical writers, he is merely being guilty of a piece of inade–
quate psychology. It may be true that, as Lawrence says of himself, he
"saw a tragedy in every cow," but so did Swift, at least in every horse.
There is much monotony and much bad writing in Lawrence's works.
He benefits amazingly by such an intelligent and painstaking selectitm
as Mrs. Trilling's. The short stories-"Tickets, Please," "Two Blue Birds,"
"The Rocking-Horse Winner," "The Fox," and so on-are expertly con–
trived and solidly dramatized pieces, not at all sermons in sex or anything
of the sort. Of the novels Mrs. Trilling gives us parts of
The Rainbow
and
Women in Love.
And there are some of Lawrence's poems, some
travel pieces, letters, book reviews, and essays-"Pomography and
Obscenity," for example; a review
of
books by Dos Passos and Heming–
way, and the chapter on Poe from the brilliant
Studies in Classic Amer–
ican Literature.
Lawrence was a supple and various writer, a fact which
Mrs. Trilling's
Portable
wisely brings out.
Anyone who remembers Lawrence only as the Dionysus of the ad–
vanced ladies of New Mexico or as the prophet of apocalypse or of uplift
through improved copulation will
be
surprised to discover that he was
first of all a very capable artist and a man of sharp intelligence.
R. C.
