What proves so deliciously satisfying, when reading anything by DH Lawrence, is his unwavering conviction. In fact, reading his letters, we are so struck by his surety, his almost messianic self-belief, that we begin to wonder where all such conviction has gone (presumably, after Fascism, we became somewhat allergic to anyone who claimed to have all the answers. Fair enough). Still, it makes for electrifying reading. Lawrence has no doubts about his position in the world, nor about his role as Artist, destined to introduce us to our essential, “primordial” selves.
The letters are introduced by Aldous Huxley, whose tone betrays a personal relationship with the author that, undoubtedly, swayed his ability to treat Lawrence at all critically. It reads more like a eulogy, and a mystical one at that:
“Lawrence’s special and characteristic gift was an extraordinary sensitiveness to what Wordsworth called ‘unknown modes of being’… Lawrence could never forget, as most of us almost continuously forget, the dark presence of the otherness that lies beyond the boundaries of man’s conscious mind.”
Yet, as startling and, at times, comically earnest, this mode of expression may seem to our post-postmodern eyes, used to noncommittal understatements, there is something mesmerising about such stark and unfaltering belief. Lawrence, by his own estimation, comes from a time that was teetering on the edge of history, in the process of collapse. A time when conviction like his still bespoke Utopian ideals, rather than death camps or purges, or the terrifying buffoonery of reality TV presidents.
The world we read through Lawrence’s letters is one in which hope has not yet been commodified, and where writing something universally true, and universally uplifting, still feels possible. We find here Lawrence’s daily life, walking and making marmalade, his glorious descriptions of nature, his political and artistic rants, his belief in stringent individualism, as well as his unflinching and constant hope of finding a time and a place (somewhere across the sea and perpetually in the near future), that could be truly new, and could be truly better.
