September 11, 2004
D.H. Lawrence
It was about 40 years ago that D.H.Lawrence was very popular amongst progressive lefties in the literary institution. He was celebrated for his exaltation of sexuality; for freeing up our sexual instincts from the bourgeois repressive moral codes and conservative sexual mores.
All this was very Nietzschean, in that the life force of sex should affirm rather than deny life. Lawrence was opposed to those who said no to life.
Lawrence spent some time in Australia.
Gary Shead, The Arrival,
Whilst here in Australia Lawrence wrote Kangaroo:
Garry Shead, Lawrence and Kangaroo, DH Lawrence Series 1993.
I wasn't that much taken with Lawrence. No modernist, but a fine writer. But Lawrence's celebration of sexuality was a celebration of male sexuality:
Garry Shead, The Viewer, DH Lawrence Series, 1992
Lawerence used to be a central figure in Fr. Leavis' The Great Tradition: a culmination of a literary tradition that embraced Jane Austen and Henry James and which 'felt life.'
Lawrence has fallen out of favour now.