The Man Who Died
The Deed of Life : The Novels and Tales of D. H. Lawrence. By Julian Moynahan. (Princeton and O.U.P., 30s.) WHEN I read in Professor Moynahan's introduc- tion that he takes Lawrence to have been 'a. pro- fessional novelist but no more than an amateur prophet and mortal man,' 1 remembered Law- rence's poem, 'What is he?'
—I said he made chairs, but I did not say he was a carpenter.
All right then, he's just an amateur. —Perhaps! Would you say a thrush was a professional flautist or just an amateur? I'd say it was just a bird.
—And I say he is just a man.
Was this going to be another attempt to ampu- tate the 'professional novelist' from the man and put him in a literary museum? I need not have worried. All through the book Lawrence is treated not only as a literary craftsman, but also as a man who tried to prophesy and chose to do it principally through the novel. The first ninety pages of the book, which culminate in a beautifully perceptive and masterly. analysis of Women in Love, are very good. It would be difficult to imagine a more comprehensive and at the same time compact and lucid account of Lawrence's development up to the end of that novel, when Birkin and Ursula set off on what Professor Moynahan • ominously calls 'their journey into nowhere.'
The second and longer half of the book is not quite so satisfactory, though it still has interest- ing and valuable observations on almost every page. The thesis is developed that after Women in Love Lawrence wrote three deplorable novels ('the so-called leadership group of novels') only to decide finally that 'leadership' was a dead duck; but fortunately he also discovered and proclaimed salvation through 'the deed of life.' It is a fairly familiar, but not a profound, inter- pretation of Lawrence. It involves an excessive devaluation—though Professor Moynahan does it brilliantly—of Aaron's Rod and Kangaroo. It also involves an overvaluation of Lady Chatter,. ley's Lover, though once again it is brilliantly done; but the conclusion is no more than the soothingly tidy one that in this novel, with its 'restrained optimism,' Lawrence brings the reader into touch with a vision and a mystery 'which, as one suspected from the beginning, was only of life itself.'
That Professor Moynahan himself finds this conclusion a little too tidy appears from his later comment on 'The Man Who Loved Islands':, that this story may suggest 'that Lavirence's prophetic vision of doom for modern man was more powerful than his vision of hope.' He goes on, however: 'Really, it does not matter. As the artist who could create a tale like "The Man Who Loved Islands," he transcends the limitations of the prophet and works a permanent change in the thought and feeling of his reader.' Maybe; but it certainly mattered to Lawrence whether his vision of doom or his vision of hope was the more powerful. He died thirty-three years ago and a good many people by now have had the chance to read him and to experience that permanent change in thought and feeling. One wonders if the results would impress Lawrence sufficiently to swing the balance in favour of
hope. . .
The truth is that the two halves of this book do not quite hang together. The first part de- scribes the emergence of an extraordinary original genius and potential prophet; the second part gives a ruthless but much too summary account of his failure to create an adequate con- ception of 'leadership,' and awards him a con- solation prize in the form of the 'deed of life' and the 'free choice of life.' But Lady Chatter- ley's Lover, in which the optimism is nothing if not 'restrained,' is a sadder book than The Lost Girl, the earlier novel with which Professor Moynahan fruitfully compares it, and there is little sign of a feeling of consolation in any of Lawrence's later writings. Professor Moynahan appropriately compares him to Dostoievsky, though Rousseau or Nietzsche would be equally apt. He is a stormy, complex and tragic figure —and a recalcitrant subject for a tidy portrait.
RICHARD REES
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