Geoff Dyer - Out of Sheer Rage - Wrestling With D.H. Lawrence

Should anyone flatter us by asking what we are looking for, what we are searching for, then we think immediately, almost instinctively, in vast terms — God, fulfilment, love — but our lives are actually made up of lots of tiny searches for things like a CD we are not sick of, an out-of-print edition of Phoenix , a picture of Lawrence that I saw when I was seventeen, another identical pair of suede shoes to the ones I am wearing now, even, I suppose, a cornetto integrale , ideally, a place where they serve perfect cornetti integrali each day without fail. Add them together and these little things make up an epic quest, more than enough for one lifetime.

Thinking specifically of the search for CDs, let’s assume that after deciding to give up, after sitting around listening to CDs and going out to buy a new CD, I found a CD I liked the idea of listening to. Then I would race back home where I would listen contentedly or disappointedly to the CD for some unspecified period of time, either playing it over and over because I liked it (or certain tracks at any rate) or skimming through it quickly and realising it was a mistake. Still, at some point, whether it was a good buy or not, I would not simply grow tired of listening to this new CD but would actually become heartily sick of the idea of listening to CDs and would think to myself that sitting around listening to CDs is a much more enjoyable activity, a much more enjoyable inactivity, if it is a relief from something else — anything else. And so, after squandering a day working through this demoralising routine that I have worked through innumerable days before, I would resign myself, would in fact abandon myself to not giving up, to picking up my pen and trying once again, if for no other reason than to render listening to my CDs a little less dispiriting, to make some progress with my study of D. H. Lawrence.

And there you have it. One way or another we all have to write our studies of D. H. Lawrence. Even if they will never be published, even if we will never complete them, even if all we are left with after years and years of effort is an unfinished, unfinishable record of how we failed to live up to our own earlier ambitions, still we all have to try to make some progress with our books about D. H. Lawrence. The world over, from Taos to Taormina, from the places we have visited to countries we will never set foot in, the best we can do is to try to make some progress with our studies of D. H. Lawrence.

Abbreviations of Principal Editions Used

Letters Vols. 1–7 refers to the Cambridge University Press edition of Lawrence’s letters, respectively:

Volume 1: September 1901 — May 1913, edited by James T. Boulton, 1979.

Volume 2: June 1913 — October 1916, edited by George J. Zytaruk and James T. Boulton, 1981.

Volume 3: October 1916 — June 1921, edited by James T. Boulton and Andrew Robertson, 1984.

Volume 4: June 1921 — March 1924, edited by Warren Roberts, James T. Boulton and Elizabeth Mansfield, 1987.

Volume 5: March 1924 — March 1927, edited by James T. Boulton and Lindeth Vasey, 1989.

Volume 6: March 1927 — November 1928, edited by James T. Boulton, Margaret H. Boulton and Gerald M. Lacy, 1991.

Volume 7: November 1928 — February 1930, edited by Keith Sagar and James T. Boulton, 1993.

Thomas Hardy: Study of Thomas Hardy and Other Essays , edited by Bruce Steele, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1985.

Poems: The Complete Poems , edited by Vivian De Sola Pinto and F. Warren Roberts, Penguin, Harmondsworth, 1977.

Phoenix: The Posthumous Papers, 1936, edited by Edward D. McDonald, Penguin, Harmondsworth, 1978.

Phoenix II: Uncollected, Unpublished, and Other Prose Works, edited by Warren Roberts and Harry T. Moore, Penguin, Harmondsworth, 1978.

Place of publication for the following is London unless otherwise stated:

p. 12 ‘ Where does one. .’ etc: respectively, Letters Vol. 6 p. 617; Vol. 7 p. 80; Vol. 7 p. 105.

p. 19 ‘I don’t care. .’: Letters Vol. 6 p. 609.

p. 19 ‘I don’t like. .’: ibid p. 617.

p. 21 ‘Already I am. .’: Selected Letters , Quartet, 1988 p. 98.

p. 21 ‘I have often. .’: ibid p. 74.

p. 23 ‘Life is more. .’: this starts out as a quotation from ‘Reflections on the Death of a Porcupine’, Phoenix II p. 468.

p. 29 ‘the Italians are. .’: Letters Vol. 3 p. 534.

p. 34 ‘the intoxication of. .’: The Gay Science , Vintage, New York, 1974 p. 32.

p. 34 ‘existence was one. .’: Introduction to The Letters of D. H. Lawrence , Heinemann, 1932 p. xxx.

p. 34 ‘the long convalescence. .’: Selected Letters p. 187.

p. 35 ‘Michelet wrote nothing. .’: Michelet , Hill & Wang, New York, 1987 p. 87.

p. 35 Brodsky: ‘To Please a Shadow’, in Less Than One , Penguin, Harmondsworth, 1987 p. 373.

p. 36 ‘I hate photographs. .’: Letters Vol. 7 p. 189.

p. 38 ‘I’ve been seedy. .’: Letters Vol. 2 p. 224.

p. 38 ‘I send a. .’: Letters Vol. 5 p. 327.

p. 38 ‘clean-shaven, bright young. .’: Letters Vol. 7 p. 620.

p. 38 Yourcenar: Memoirs of Hadrian , Penguin, Harmondsworth, 1959 p. 16.

p. 39 ‘I had to. .’: Letters Vol. 7 p. 646.

p. 39 ‘Jo Davidson came. .’: Letters Vol. 7 p. 653.

p. 39 ‘What do I. .’: Phoenix p. 232.

p. 79 ‘an accident in. .’: ‘Nottingham and the Mining Countryside’, Phoenix p. 133.

p. 79 ‘the condemning of. .’: ibid p. 138.

p. 80 ‘but a blind. .’: ibid .

pp. 81 ‘If you’re in. .’: Letters Vol. 5 p. 592.

p. 83 ‘Pull down my. .’: Phoenix p. 140.

p. 84 ‘he also needs. .’: Selected Essays and Notebooks , Penguin, Harmondsworth, 1979 p. 282.

p. 84 ‘the human soul. .’: Phoenix p. 138.

p. 86 ‘Whatever I forget. .’: Letters Vol. 6 p. 618.

p. 86 ‘I am not. .’: ibid p. 535.

p. 86 ‘walking through the. .’: op cit p. 148.

p. 87 ‘the great free. .’: ibid p. 70.

p. 90 ‘I feel I. .’: Letters Vol. 6 p. 182.

p. 90 ‘will to write. .’: Letters Vol. 5 p. 621.

p. 90 ‘that one thing. .’: Rainer Maria Rilke, Selected Letters p. 143.

p. 91 ‘Either happiness or. .’: ibid p. 10.

p. 91 ‘ Du mußt dein . .’: from ‘Archaic Torso of Apollo’, The Selected Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke , edited and translated by Stephen Mitchell, Vintage International, New York, 1989 p. 6.

p. 91 ‘i.e. find a different. .’: Selected Letters , edited by Anthony Thwaite, Faber, 1992 p. 315.

p. 92 ‘ancient enmity between. .’: Selected Poetry , p. 87.

p. 92 ‘For one human. .’: ibid p. 306.

p. 92 ‘Fidelity to oneself. .’: Letters Vol. 4 p. 308.

p. 92 ‘I don’t sacrifice. .’: Letters Vol. 5 p. 75.

p. 92 ‘not the work. .’: Thomas Hardy p. 12.

pp. 92 ‘I don’t think. .’: Letters Vol. 3 p. 215.

p. 96 ‘in the moment. .’: Walter Benjamin, ‘A Small History of Photography’ in One Way Street , Verso, 1979 p. 245.

p. 97 ‘the tree’s life. .’: ‘Pan in America’, Phoenix p. 25.

p. 97 ‘Thank God I. .’: Letters Vol. 4 p. 307.

p. 97 ‘It is hard. .’: Selected Letters p. 157.