Volume 3, Number 7 · November 19, 1964
A Genius, But…
By Christopher Ricks
Frieda Lawrence: The Memoirs and Correspondence
edited by E.W. Tedlock Jr.
Knopf, 479 pp., $7.50
The Paintings of D. H. Lawrence
edited by Mervyn Levy, with essays by Harry T. Moore, by Jack Lindsay, by Herbert Read
Viking, 104, (16 plates in color, 31 monochromes) pp., $12.50
The Complete Poems of D. H. Lawrence
edited by Vivian de Sola Pinto, edited by F. Warren Roberts
Viking, (2 vols.) 576 & 516 pp., $15.00
Frieda Lawrence to Mabel Luhan. I April 1930: 'Lawrence is dead for a month, but he doesn't seem dead, not a bit. They are arguing and quarreling about him just as ever.' All the arguing and quarreling is summed up in the cumbrous but memorable title of Richard Aldington's life of Lawrence: Portrait of a Genius, But…Lawrence would have been as lacerated by the praise as by the withholding. 'They never called Lawrence a professional writer—always a genius. That made him angry. 'That's my label—a genius—and with that I am dismissed.' ' To dismiss him seems now unthinkable, but there is still the question of the size of that But…By the end of her life. Frieda was understandably weary of all the arguments and counter-arguments, but how can anybody possibly hold his tongue about Lawrence? If a man has nothing new to say about Dickens or Conrad, then he can with equanimity merely listen to what everybody else is saying. But none of us can be expected to sit silent in front of Lawrence's woundingly personal accusations. Not to reply to his cry of J'accuse would be to admit our guilt. The crucial question—one that is of course secondary to our duty to read and to admire—is whether or not we are nearly as guilty as Lawrence insisted.
Review, 3077 words
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