Lawrence's Language of Heaven and Earth

ELT 36:4 1993 eliminate the typological patterning of the book. A conclusion focusing on The Man Who Died reaffirms the centrality of resurrection to Lawrence's works, a preoccupation which, Hyde claims, explains his attraction to biblical typology, which is "above all a drama of resurrection ." Here, particularly in her reading of The Ladybird," she suggests the inextricability of Lawrence's celebrated "dark gods" from "the light," the anti-type, the risen Christ, a figure treated with a complexity transcending irony and parody, a complexity that Hyde's well-written study has amply illustrated. Diane S. Bonds Emory University Lawrence's Language of Heaven and Earth Michael Black. D. H. Lawrence: The Early Philosophical Works. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992. ix + 476 pp. $49.95 LET IT BE SAID first of all that this is a very large book. In Cambridge University Press's handsome blue-and-white dust jacket with one of the usual Lawrence pictures on the front, its 440 pages with a further 20 pages of footnotes and appendix weigh impressively on one's desk. The volume wears an air of confidence appropriate to its price of $50. The dust jacket would have us know, moreover, that this work is not an isolated occurrence, nor even simply a second book on Lawrence by the writer of an interesting work on the early fiction. This is the "second volume of Michael Black's commentary on Lawrence's prose works." Fortunately, the volume's content is less pompous than this announcement might lead one to expect. Black is in fact a gifted writer with a style pleasantly colloquial and unassuming. It is an admirable instrument for the difficult task he sets himself, which involves the elucidation of a great deal of the most exasperating prose ever penned by a major author. Lawrence wrote five "early philosophical works": the brief "Foreword" to Sons and Lovers, Study of Thomas Hardy, Twilight in Italy, The Crown," and The Reality of Peace." But a simple list of the works can give no idea of the difficulty of explaining them. The following passage is an example of what Black calls Lawrence's "more easy conversational-figurative mode": So there is the Father—which should be called Mother—then the Son, who is the Utterer, and then the Word. And the Word is that of the Father which, through the Son, is tossed away. It is that part of the flesh in the Son which 532 BOOK REVIEWS is capable of spreading out thin and fine, losing its concentration and completeness, ceasing to be a begetter, and becoming only a vision, a flutter of petals, God rippling through the Son till He breaks into a laugh, called a blossom, that shines and is gone. This vision itself, the flutter of petals, the rose, the Father through the Son wasting himself in a moment of consciousness , consciousness of his own infinitude and gloriousness, a Rose, a Clapping of the Hands, a Spark of Joy thrown off from the Fire to die ruddy mid darkness, a Snip of Flame, the Holy Ghost, the Revelation. And so, the eternal Trinity. The passage is typical. Its beauty cannot be denied, the terms are familiar, and the symbols are resonant within our literary tradition, yet in what sense do we understand? And how could we explain or interpret it to each other or to our students? Interpretation is further complicated by the existence of various versions in manuscript and in publication, the discrepancies between which are sometimes the result of many intervening years' experience—and by the fact that Lawrence did not always intend to publish even the final version we possess. The method Black adopts is a fruitful one, despite inherent limitations . Black's "enterprise" is "learning, and helping others to learn, Lawrence's language." Such an enterprise implies total receptivity on the part of the learner; a resisting language learner would be an absurdity. Thus we find very few occasions when Black offers an unfavorable critique of Lawrence's ideas or expression. Even Lawrence's more egregiously sexist metaphysics provokes only the occasional expression of unease. Yet, however important such a critique might be, it is...