D. H. LAWRENCE IN ITALY AND ENGLAND

Transcription

1 D. H. LAWRENCE IN ITALY AND ENGLAND

2 Mark Gertler: 'The Creation of Eve', 1914 (private collection).

3 D. H. La-wrence in Italy and England Edited by George Donaldson Lecturer in English University of Bristol and Mara Kalnins Fellow of Corpus Christi College and Staff Tutor in Literature University of Cambridge pal grave

4 * Selection and editorial matter George Donaldson and Mara Kalnins 1999 Text Macmillan Press Ltd 1999 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1999 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright licensing Agency, 90 Tottenham Court Road, london W1P OLP. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The authors have asserted their rights to be identified as the authors of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act Published by PALGRAVE Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS and 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y Companies and representatives throughout the world PALGRAVE is the new global academic imprint of St. Martin's Press LLC Scholarly and Reference Division and Palgrave Publishers Ltd (formerly Macmillan Press ltd). Outside North America ISBN ISBN (ebook) DOI / In North America ISBN This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data D. H. lawrence in Italy and England I edited by George Donaldson and Mara Kalnins p. em. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN lawrence, D. H. (David Herbert), Knowledge-ltaly. 2. lawrence, D. H. (David Herbert), Knowledge-England. 3. English literature-italian influences. 4. England-In literature. 5. Italy-In literature. I. Donaldson, George. II. Kalnins, Mara. PR6023.A93Z '.912~c CIP OS

5 Contents List of Contributors Editors' Preface Note on the Text and Acknowledgements vii viii ix 1 Lawrence and Cambridge 1 ]ames T. Boulton 2 Cambridge and Italy: Lawrence, Wittgenstein and Forms of Life 20 Michael Bell 3 Strangeness in D. H. Lawrence 38 Fiona Becket 4 Unestablished Balance in Women in Love 52 George Donaldson 5 Lawrence, Florence and Theft: Petites miseres of Biographical Enquiry 77 David Ellis 6 Play and Carnival in Sea and Sardinia 97 Mara Kalnins 7 Rage against the Murrys: 'Inexplicable' or 'Psychopathic'? 116 Mark Kinkead-Weekes 8 Lawrence and Modernism 135 Graham Martin 9 Trusting Lawrence the Artist in Italy: Etruscan Places - and Schubert 154 Howard Mills v

6 vi Contents 10 The Lost Girl: Reappraising the Post-War Lawrence on Women's Will and Ways of Knowing 176 M. Elizabeth Sargent 11 'Terrible and Dreadful': Lawrence, Gertler and the Visual Imagination 193 Stuart Sillars 12 Recovering The Lost Girl: Lost Heroines, Irrecoverable Texts, Irretrievable Landscapes 211 John Worthen Index 228

7 List of Contributors Fiona Becket Michael Bell James T. Boulton George Donaldson David Ellis Mara Kalnins Mark Kinkead-Weekes Graham Martin Howard Mills M. Elizabeth Sargent Stuart Sillars John Worthen Lecturer in Literature, Staffordshire University. Professor of English and Comparative Literary Studies, University of Warwick. Emeritus Professor at the University of Birmingham and General Editor of the Cambridge Edition of the Letters and Works of D. H. Lawrence. Lecturer in English, University of Bristol. Professor of English Literature at the University of Kent at Canterbury. Fellow of Corpus Christi College; Staff Tutor in Literature, University of Cambridge Board of Continuing Education. Emeritus Professor at the University of Kent at Canterbury. Formerly Professor of Literature at The Open University. Formerly Senior Lecturer in English Literature, University of Kent at Canterbury. Professor of English, Western Oregon University. Part-time Tutor for the University of Cambridge Board of Continuing Education. Professor of D. H. Lawrence Studies, University of Nottingham. vii

8 Editors' Preface Although Lawrence had first visited Italy in during his elopement with Frieda, and again in , it was not until the writing and revision of Twilight in Italy in 1915, while he was living in a kind of self-imposed exile in England, that the creative interchange between Italy and England in his thinking, which was to persist throughout his life and inform his writing, was firmly established. Feeling himself at once a foreigner in his travels around the globe (he was to visit Ceylon and the Far East, Australia and the Americas before returning to Europe) and an alien even in his own country, that interchange nevertheless led him imaginatively to recreate in his writings not only his encounters with other cultures but also the England he had left behind. It also led him repeatedly to return to the Mediterranean - 'the human norm' as he called it - as a place to live and write. The essays in this volume, which present Lawrence in the shadow of the Great War and its aftermath, begin with his visit to Cambridge in 1915, a visit which, along with the banning of The Rainbow at the end of that year, encapsulated both his sense of his Englishness and his estrangement from the country and countrymen of his birth; the last of Lawrence's works to be discussed in this collection is Etruscan Places, which was originally conceived in These two years, as one of our contributors has cogently put it, 'effectively bracket his mature career and represent twin poles of significance in his understanding of life.' Although Lawrence later believed that his travels enacted a kind of evasion of his intrinsic self in society, in community- 'what ails me is the frustration of my primeval societal being' - there is no doubt that travel also stimulated him to produce among the greatest works of his maturity. But I do think, still more now I am out here, that we make a mistake forsaking England and moving out into the periphery of life. After all, Taormina, Ceylon, Africa, America- as far as we go, they are only the negation of what we ourselves stand for and are: and we're rather like Jonahs running away from viii

9 Editors' Preface ix the place we belong... I really think that the most living clue of life is in us Englishmen in England, and the great mistake we make is in not uniting together in the strength of this real living clue - religious in the most vital sense - uniting together in England and so carrying the vital spark through. (Letters, iv. 219) Despite Lawrence's apparent qualification of the value of his travels here, it nevertheless remains the case that that 'living clue' and 'spark' of which he speaks were generated by the tension inherent in the artist's sense of belonging and of not-belonging. While this volume makes no claim to offer a comprehensively unified view of the signal importance of Italy and England in Lawrence's work and life, some of the essays in it are explicitly concerned to explore the relation between his sense of his Englishness and his experience of travel in Italy. Others range from those which take a predominantly biographical focus, to those which discuss the importance of Italy to Lawrence's vision, both in his travel writings - Twilight in Italy, Sea and Sardinia, Etruscan Places - and in his fictions, such as The Lost Girl and Aaron's Rod. Still others concern themselves more generally with the central characteristics of Lawrence's creation of fictional worlds in England - as in The Rainbow and Women in Love - or in Italy. The contents of this volume are based on papers originally given at the D. H. Lawrence lloth Anniversary International Research Symposium held in Cambridge in July 1995, with the addition of two articles contributed by the Editors. George Donaldson Mara Kalnins

10 Note on the Text Contributors to this volume have used the Cambridge Edition of the Letters and Works of D. H. Lawrence wherever available. References to Lawrence's letters appear in the text of each article by volume and page number only; those to the works cite both page and line numbers. Quotations from other editions of Lawrence, other authors and critical sources follow the normal conventions of notation. The place of publication is London unless otherwise stated. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The Editors would like to thank Mary Donaldson for her invaluable help and encouragement throughout. The Creation of Eve by Mark Gertler is reproduced by kind permission of its owner and Penguin Books Ltd., who retain copyright for the image. X