The famous British writer D.H. Lawrence is famous for his novels "Madame Chatterley's Lover" and "Sons and Lovers", but he is also quite accomplished in poetry, criticism and painting. Lawrence's essays are passionate and personal, with a clear attitude and a strong speculative color. Among them, "Studies in American Classic Literature" is praised as "one of the rare masterpieces in modern literary criticism". So, as a creator who has earned a reputation for fiction writing, how does Lawrence view the importance of fiction?
The following is an excerpt from "Lawrence Reading Essay", the subtitle is added by the editor, not the original text. It has been authorized by the publishing house to publish.
Lawrence Reading Essays, by D.H. Lawrence, translated by Chen Qingxun, January 2022 edition of the Commercial Press.
Anything that is alive with me is me
We have all sorts of weird ideas about ourselves. We think of ourselves as either a body with a spirit, a body with a soul, or a body with a mind. Mens Sana in Corpore Sano. (Latin: Healthy thoughts are within a healthy body. Quoted from the satirical poem of the ancient Roman poet Giuvenal. When the years have drunk the wine, we throw away the bottle, which of course is our body.
David Herbert Lawrence (1885–1930) was a 20th-century British novelist, critic, poet, and painter.
This is a comical superstition. If my hand can write these words so wisely, why should I think that it is nothing compared to the mind that directs it? Is there really a huge difference between my hand and my mind or thoughts? My hand is alive, it flashes its own life. It is exposed to everything strange in the world around it, knows many things, and understands many things.
As I wrote these words by hand, it slid happily, jumping out of strokes and drawings like grasshoppers, and it felt that the book was very cold, and if I wrote too long, it would give birth to some small troubles. It has some little thoughts of its own, just as my mind, my mind, or my soul is me, it is indeed me. Since my hand is indeed alive, that it is a living me, then why should I think that there is a me who is more worthy of me than my hand?
Of course, in my opinion, my pen is lifeless. My pen is a living me. I'm alive until the tip of my finger.
Stills from the movie Madame Chatterley's Lover (2015).
Anything that is alive with me is me. Any capillary on my hand, any little spot, any hair, any wrinkle, is alive. Anything that belongs to the living me is me. My fingernails are ten small arms between me and the inanimate universe, and they can cross the mysterious rubicon river between the living me and my pen and something like that, which in my mind is inanimate.
So, since my hand is alive, a living me, how can it be said that it is just a bottle of wine, a pot, a tin pot, a clay bowl, or something like that? Indeed, if I cut my hand through a hole, it would bleed like a can of cherries. But the cut skin, the bloodied blood vessels, and the bones that could not be seen were all alive like flowing blood. So tin cans and tile bowls and other things are all nonsense.
If you become a novelist, you will understand the truth of my words. And if you're a priest, a philosopher, a scientist, or an idiot, it's probably something you can't figure out. If you are a priest, you are talking about a soul in heaven. If you are a novelist, you know that paradise is in the palm of your hand, in the tip of your nose, because they are all alive; since they are alive and alive, they must be much more real than the paradise you speak of. Paradise is a matter of the afterlife, but at least as far as I am concerned, I am not very interested in the things of the afterlife.
I consider myself better than the saints, the scientists, the philosophers, and the poets
If you are a philosopher, you are talking about the infinite and the all-knowing pure spirit. But if you open a novel casually, you will immediately understand that the infinity you are talking about is nothing more than the handle of the pot of my body that I have just said; as for cognition, I put my finger into the fire, and the fire will burn it to the point of pain, and this feeling is too strong and profound, and the feeling of nirvana can only be imagined. Yes, my body, I understand it vividly, I understand it deeply enough. As for the sum of all knowledge, there is not much more accumulated than what my body knows. Dear reader, you should know a lot of things in your body.
These damn philosophers, they talk about it as if they had been transformed into steam, as if they had become steam more important than when they were in their shirts. It's all nonsense. Everyone's life ends at the tip of his own finger, and the philosopher is no exception. That was the end of his living man. As for the words, thoughts, sighs, and longings that emerge from him, they are nothing more than innumerable vibrations in the aether, and there is no life at all. But if these vibrations were transmitted to another person, he might absorb them into his own life, so that his life might take on a new look, like a discolored lizard crawling from a yellow stone to a green leaf.
That being said, it still does not change the fact that the so-called spirit, revelation, and homage of the philosophers and sages are lifeless, like wireless telegraphs, but mere vibrations in the ether. All these spiritual things are just vibrations in the ether. If you, the living person, are rejuvenated by this vibration in the ether, it is because you are a living person, because you are doing everything in your power to get nourishment and motivation. But to say that the revelation or spirit transmitted to you is more important than your energetic body is nonsense. You might as well say that the potatoes on the table are more important.
Nothing is important other than life. In my personal opinion, I can never see life anywhere except among living things, and the life in capital letters is possessed only by the living. Even cabbage in the rain has life. All things that have life are magical, and all things that are dead are appendages of living things. A live dog is stronger than a dead lion. But a live lion is stronger than a live dog. C'est la vie (French: this is life)!
It seems impossible for a saint, philosopher, or scientist to uphold even such a simple truth. In a sense, they are all betrayers. The desire of the saints is to dedicate themselves as spiritual food to all beings. St. Francis of Assisi turned his body into an angel cake so that everyone could eat it. But angel cake is not as good as a living person after all. Poor St. Francis probably apologized to his body at the time of his death: "Forgive me, my body, I have really treated you badly over the years!" "The body is not a holy bread, it cannot be given to others.
The philosopher is a different story, because he can think, so he concludes that only thought is important. It's like a rabbit, because it can pull out some small dung balls, so it concludes that everything except the small dung balls is insignificant. As for the scientist, as long as I am alive, he is of absolute no use to me. In the eyes of scientists, I am dead. He put a small piece of the dead me under the microscope and said that was me. He broke me apart, first saying that this piece was mine, and then that piece was mine. According to scientists, my heart, my liver, my stomach have always been me in the scientific sense; in this way, I am either a brain, or a nerve, or a kidney, or something new in the science of body tissue.
Here I want to categorically deny that I am the soul, the body, the mind, the mind, the nervous system, the kidneys, or any other part of my body. The whole is larger than the part. Therefore, as a living person, I am greater than my soul, spirit, body, mind, consciousness, and anything that is only a part of me. I am a human being, and I am alive. I am a living person, and whenever possible, I am determined to continue to be a living person until the last moment of my life.
For this reason, I became a novelist. As a novelist, I consider myself better than saints, scientists, philosophers, and poets. As far as the different aspects of man are concerned, they are all masters, but they can never grasp the whole picture of the living.
A novel is a book that fully reflects life
A novel is a book that fully reflects life. Books are not life. They are nothing more than vibrations coming from the aether. But the novel, as a vibration, can make the whole living person tremble. This vibration is unmatched by the vibrations of poetry, philosophy, science, or any other book.
Fiction is the book of life. In this sense, the Bible is a great and chaotic novel. You might say that it's written about God. But it does write about living people. Adam, Eve, Sarai, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Samuel, David, Bathsheba, Ruth, Esther, Solomon, Job, Isaiah, Jesus, Mark, Judas, Paul, Peter, these people from beginning to end, are not living and what are they? It is indeed the living, not the bits and pieces of the living. Even the Lord was a living man, and he threw stones at Moses' head in the bush of thorns in the air of flames.
I sincerely hope that people will begin to grasp what I mean and why fiction as a vibration in the ether is so important. Plato resonates with the perfect side of my ideals. But it's only a small part of me that resonates. In the peculiar structure of the living, there is only a small part of perfection. The Sermon on the Mount resonates with my selfless spirit. But resonates only a small part of me. The Ten Commandments tremble in my evil nature and warn me that if I do not look at myself, I will become a thief and murderer. But even my evil nature is only a small part of me.
I would gladly let all these little parts of me tremble with life and the wisdom of life. But my greatest wish is that the whole child will tremble whole.
Stills from the movie Son and Lover (1960).
Of course, this trembling can only happen in the heart of me, a living creature.
But this kind of flutter, though possible by transmission, can only become a reality if the whole novel is transmitted to me. The Bible—it must be the complete Bible—and the works of Homer and Shakespeare, all of the best of the ancient novels. They all affect all people with everything they cover. In other words, they affect the whole living person in its wholeness, the whole of man and not any part of it. They are making the whole tree vibrate with new life, not just pushing it to grow in a certain direction.
I don't want to grow in a certain direction anymore. And I'm going to do everything I can to stop others from doing one-way development. One way forward, you will walk into a dead end. Now we are stuck in a dead end.
I don't believe in the dazzled apocalypse, nor do I believe in the supreme Word. Phrases like "paraquat, flowers, the way of the Lord never change" are the kind of myths we use to numb ourselves. In fact, it is precisely because the grass will dry up, so the spring rain will grow greener and greener. The flowers are thankful, so there are new buds blooming. But the way of the Lord is actually spit out of man's mouth, but it is only a vibration in the ether, so it becomes more and more stale, more and more annoying, until one day we turn a deaf ear to it, it ceases to exist, and it withers more completely than the grass. Like an eagle, it is the hundred grass that does not spring, not the "Tao".
Don't seek anything absolute. Let the ugly and domineering absolutely and forever be damned. There is nothing absolutely good, nothing is absolutely right. Everything flows and changes, and even change is not absolute. The whole is peculiarly combined by seemingly contradictory, contradictory parts.
I, the living man, am a strange combination of contradictory parts. The blame is that the "yes" I said today is different from the "yes" I said yesterday. My tears today have nothing to do with the tears I had a year ago. If the person I love hasn't changed at all, if it doesn't change at all, then I won't love her anymore. It is only because the speed of her change impresses me, forces me to change, urges me to forge ahead, and my change shakes her inertia, that I can continue to love her. If she's always standing still, I love pepper bottles too.
Change is change, and I still maintain a certain integrity. But if I stretch out a finger to maintain this integrity, bad luck will come. If I claim to be that and I am stubborn, then I will become a stupid thing as rigid as a telephone pole. I will never understand where my integrity, my personality, my nature lies. I would never have figured it out. There is no benefit in talking about my ego. It just means that I have designed an idea for myself, that I am trying to mold myself according to a certain pattern. That's not okay. Tailor-made is possible, but it is not possible to cut enough. Yes, you can wear an ideal tights. But even the style of the tights changes.
What we need in the midst of chaos is some kind of guidance
Let's learn from fiction. If you look at the characters in the novel, they live life in addition to life. If they continue to do good according to the pattern, or do evil according to the pattern, or even if they are capricious according to the pattern, they will be finished, and the novel will die. The character in the novel must live, or he is nothing.
We are the same, we must live well to live, otherwise we are nothing.
Of course, what we call life, like what we call existence, is difficult to describe. People form different concepts in their minds according to their own views on life, and then tailor their lives according to a pattern. Sometimes they go into the desert in search of God, sometimes they go into the desert in search of money, sometimes in search of wine, women and songs, sometimes in search of water, for political reform, for votes. You have no way of knowing what you're looking for next, from killing your neighbors with terrible bombs and gas, to funding a nursery and preaching fraternity, to sabotaging other people's marriages.
What we need in the midst of chaos is some kind of guidance, and it is useless to make up some "you can't" to do it.
So what to do? Sincerely go to the novel to find the answer. In fiction you will understand how to be a living person and how to be a walking dead. You can love a woman like a living person, or you can have sex with a woman like the walking dead. You may eat like a living person, or you may chew like a dead body. You may shoot at the enemy like a living person. But if you become a fish in life, you may throw bombs at people who are not related to you, as if to you they were just objects that are neither dead nor alive. If these objects happen to be alive, it is called a crime.
To be alive, to be a living person, to be a complete living person, this is the key. Novels, especially the best in fiction, can help you. It can help you not to be the walking dead. Today, whether wandering on the street or pacing in the house, whether it is a man or a woman, most of them have been cut off. It's like a piano, half the keys don't make a sound.
But in the novel, you can unmistakably see that when men die, women also wither. If you want to, you can develop an instinct to survive without having to concoct a theory of right and wrong, good and evil.
There is right and wrong in life, good and evil, and there will always be. But what is in one occasion becomes right and wrong on another occasion. In the novel you will see that one person becomes a zombie because of his so-called goodness, and another dies because of his so-called evil. Yes and no is an instinct, but it is an instinct of the whole consciousness of a person whose physical, intellectual, and spiritual aspects combine. It is only in the novel that the potential of all aspects is fully realized, at least possible. In this way, we will realize that the reason for living is life itself, not stealing peace. It is precisely because everything is manifested that a unique but all-encompassing thing is born: a man who is perfect, a woman who is perfect, a man who is full of life, a woman who is full of life, a woman who is full of vitality.
The original author 丨 [English] D.H. Lawrence
Excerpt 丨An also
Editor 丨 Zhang Jin
Introduction Proofreading 丨 Li Ming