Friday, October 5, 2012

D.H. Lawrence: A Journey



D.H. LAWRENCE: A JOURNEY

Blog item for ‘Serendipitous Moments’ by Ruth Rikowski


In this piece, Ruth Rikowski briefly describes her ‘D.H. Lawrence Summer Journey’. It was actually a journey that we both went on, as she read various f bits out to me, as she was reading this summer 2012.

D. H. Lawrence: an incredible writer; a writer that profoundly changed both of our lives.

Ruth’s initial intention was to find out more about the so-called Nietzschean effect in Lawrence’s work; how much of it was real and how much imagined and/or exaggerated?

Together we concluded that it was more a Nietzschean way of life that Lawrence embraced; the ‘going for life’ mentality. It was this, rather than adhering to any particular philosophical positions of Nietzsche’s, such as the ‘Will to Power’, which Lawrence actually disagreed with.

And it was Frieda Lawrence, his wife, who loved Nietzche and read lots of him, who really drove all this forward – she wanted to nurture a male genius and to live life more fully.

Lawrence himself preferred reading and writing literature.

G. H. Neville, Lawrence’s closest childhood friend said in his book ‘A Memoir of D. H. Lawrence: the Betrayal’ (Cambridge University Press, 1981):

“We bemoan, I bemoan, Lawrence as a lost leader of men. I believe that, could his undoubted gifts have been applied in other directions, he would have become the leader of a new world movement. I know that he could have become such a leader, but I sometimes feel that, even now, he has completed his real work, and that, ultimately, when a right conception of our Lawrence has spread throughout the world, that dreamed-of leadership will yet be his.” (Neville, 1981, p. 142)

Do read the piece, and let us aim to live life more fully – even in the limiting and limited form of life that is capitalist society.


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‘Human Herbs’ – a new remix and new video by Cold Hands & Quarter Moon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Au-vyMtfDAs

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski
The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk
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