A Symons Biography: Careless Authoritativeness

43 is necessary. Like Blake and Nietzsche, Goodheart concludes, Lawrence is an artist "beyond good and evil," whose blend of brilliant, intuitive vision and irritating, cross-patch utopianism compels both "our admiration and our mistrust." In thus focusing upon the problem of relating Lawrence to the central stream of our fiction, Goodheart makes at least this reader aware of how much needs to be done to show the nature of the achievement of Lawrence's fiction. We have all, I think, had enough about Lawrence's homemade philosophy and its shortcomings, and more than enough about his obsession with sex and his propensity for Fascism. Lawrence is simultaneously one of the most original and one of the most obfuscating creators of important fiction in the twentieth century. The nature of this achievement, with its blend of universal insight and private eccentricity, still calls for critical exploration. Purdue University Raney Stanford 2. A Symons Biography: Careless Authoritativeness Roger, Lhombreaud. ARTHUR SYMONS: A CRITICAL BIOGRAPHY. Lond: Unicorn P, 1963. 42/—. Roger Lhombreaud1S recent biography of Arthur Symons is certainly, as the dust jacket describes it, "essential reading for all interested in the [Nineties], in English literary criticism or the late Victorian and Edwardian literary scene," Other figures of the period—Wilde, David««n, Dowson, Le Galllenne, George Egerton—have all been subjects of biographies in recent years, but Symons, perhaps the most significant and influential figure of that decade, had to wait until now for his. Fortunately, the delay has been worthwhile, for during the twelve years which Professor Lhombreaud spent gathering material for his book, he managed to amass a considerable body of information, most of it previously unpublished, and has molded it into an account which effectively charts Symons' career from his early, nonconformist, provincial home in the West country, through his decadent and symbolist phases, to his mental breakdown in 1908, and finally through his years of decline until his death in 1345. Lhombreaud Is a tactful and discriminating chronicler, and he treats his subject with sympathy, but not, mercifully, with that sentimentality which has marred a number of the biographies of the fin-de-siècle period. One is impressed by the diligence with which the writer has gone about his business, and although it does not always make for fluency, one is grateful for Lhombreaud's preference for direct quotation rather than paraphrase. Yet, in spite of the obvious value of this book, it leaves the reader somewhat dissatisfied, for in his evident determination not to omit any of the relevant facts, however minor, Lhombreaud succeeds in giving us, admittedly, a threedimensional portrait, but also one in which the salient features tend to be clouded rather than heightened by detail. Thus, after reading his book we feel no more enlightened, for example, about Symons' all-important relationship with Yeats than we were before, even though Lhombreaud furnishes us with additional information. He tells us, it is true, that Symons' "association with Martyn and Yeats [during the summer of 1896] most certainly had an influence on him" (p. 132), and he also mentions that from this time he became "extraordinarily superstitious" (p. 133), but Symons' increased interest in matters mystical is not related with 44 sufficient clarity to his change in aesthetic attitude, which took place at approximately the same time, and to which Lhombreaud quite rightly draws attention, some twenty pages earlier (p. 114). The result is that this crucial episode in Symons' aesthetic development is obscured rather than clarified, lost amid a welter of detail: speculations as to how Symons reacted to the death of his mother; quotations from his poetry; passages describing his travels through Ireland, Italy, France and Russia; and other matters of passing interest. To some extent such obfuscation is inevitable in a biography which makes substantial claims to being a full and complete account, and it is perhaps uncharitable to criticize Lhembreaud for something which is almost impossible to avoid. What is more disturbing, however, is the writer's incredible carelessness in matters of detail. He states quite categorically, for example, that BARBARA ROSCOLA'S CHILD remains unpublished (p. 205), yet in THE LITTLE REVIEW IV (1917-18), 23-36, there is...