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/lit/ - Literature

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21354399 No.21354399 [Reply] [Original]

The soul of an englishman laid bare

>> No.21354417

>>21354399
who?

>> No.21354424

When did everyone start writing criticism in this snarky faggy tone?

>> No.21354431

>>21354417
seconded

>> No.21354434

>>21354424
Since you posted.

>> No.21354451

>>21354434
cringe oneliner

>> No.21354463

>>21354417
>>21354431
D. H. Lawrence. It's from Studies in Classic American Literature

http://xroads.virginia.edu/~Hyper/LAWRENCE/dhlch11.htm

>> No.21354467

OI M8 'VE U GOT LOICENSE TO THINK BOUT LOIFE?

>> No.21354475

>>21354399
Now I know why we kicked those fuckers out. Nothing pisses me off more than intellectual arrogance

>> No.21354745

>>21354475
You a New-Englander?

>> No.21354766

>>21354463
This is why you laugh at theory

>> No.21354783

>>21354745
I'm descended from the First Families of Virginia and must say I agree with Mr Lawrence's appraisal of the New England psyche, but for somewhat different reasons. Don't care for the English much either, to be honest.

>> No.21355000

>>21354463
>Lawrence
I should have guessed, lol. Still, I happen to agree with him, mostly, on this issue. Yet it should be said, there's nothing special about Lawrence bearing his soul. He knows no other way to be.

>> No.21355006

>>21354783
>capitalizes First Families
Lol, what pretension!

>> No.21355027

>>21354424
If you read the whole essay you'll see that OP has not given a fair impression. DHL actually likes Moby Dick a lot.

>> No.21355236

>>21355006
Cope, you god damned yankee.

>> No.21355257

The DH Lawrence book this comes from is some of the best example of literary criticism there is.

Whatever you're trying to get at, OP, have a go at putting it in similarly emphatic and explicit terms as Lawrence on Whitman:
>This awful Whitman. This post mortem poet. This poet with the private soul leaking out of him all the time. All his privacy leaking out in a sort of dribble, oozing into the universe.

>Walt becomes in his own person the whole world, the whole universe, the whole eternity of time. As far as his rather sketchy knowledge of history will carry him, that is. Because to be a thing he had to know it. In order to assume the identity of a thing, he had to know that thing. He was not able to assume one identity with Charlie Chaplin, for example, because Walt didn't know Charlie. What a pity! He'd have done poems, pæans and what not. Chants, Songs of Cinematernity.

>"Oh, Charlie, my Charlie, another film is done——"

>As soon as Walt knew a thing, he assumed a One Identity with it. If he knew that an Esquimo sat in a kayak, immediately there was Walt being little and yellow and greasy, sitting in a kayak.

>Now will you tell me exactly what a kayak is?

>Who is he that demands petty definition? Let him behold me sitting in a kayak.

>I behold no such thing. I behold a rather fat old man full of a rather senile, self-conscious sensuosity.

>DEMOCRACY. EN MASSE. ONE IDENTITY.

>The universe, in short, adds up to ONE.

>ONE.

>1.

>Which is Walt.

>His poems. Democracy, En Masse, One Identity, they are long sums in addition and multiplication, of which the answer is invariably MYSELF.

>He reaches the state of ALLNESS.

>And what then? It's all empty. Just an empty Allness. An addled egg.

>Walt wasn't an Esquimo. A little, yellow, sly, cunning, greasy little Esquimo. And when Walt blandly assumed Allness, including Esquimoness, unto himself, he was just sucking the wind out of a blown egg-shell, no more. Esquimos are not minor little Walts. They are something that I am not, I know that. Outside the egg of my Allness chuckles the greasy little Esquimo. Outside the egg of Whitman's Allness too.

>But Walt wouldn't have it. He was everything and everything was in him. He drove an automobile with a very fierce headlight, along the track of a fixed idea, through the darkness of this world. And he saw Everything that way. Just as a motorist does in the night.

>I, who happen to be asleep under the bushes in the dark, hoping a snake won't crawl into my neck; I, seeing Walt go by in his great fierce poetic machine, think to myself: What a funny world that fellow sees!

>ONE DIRECTION! toots Walt in the car, whizzing along it.

>Whereas there are myriads of ways in the dark, not to mention trackless wildernesses. As anyone will know who cares to come off the road, even the Open Road.

>> No.21355265

>>21354766
By 'theory' do you just mean any attempt to think about and respond to the things you've read? What do you think produced Moby Dick?

>> No.21355295

>>21354399
>Life is so many things...It's not my affair to sum it up
LITERALLY, as in literally and unironically, the literal straight point Melville wanted to get across. What a dork, he even agrees with him.

>> No.21355311

>>21355295
There's a huge difference between being immersed in life in a way that the question of 'what does it all mean' doesn't arise and adopting the crows-nest position of trying to decipher those cosmic meanings, even if the conclusion of the latter is 'it's all a manifold mystery'.

>> No.21355329

>>21355311
Elaborate

>> No.21355337

>>21355329
One gives you The Rainbow one gives you Moby Dick.

>> No.21355339

>>21354399
Based. Fuck romanticism, etc

>> No.21355343

>>21355337
>crows-nest position of trying to decipher those cosmic meanings, even if the conclusion of the latter is 'it's all a manifold mystery'.
This is what you then got from Moby Dick and or Melville?

>> No.21355354

>>21355257
Studies in Classic American Literature?

>> No.21355369

>>21355354
>>21355257
>Movements in European History was a school textbook, originally published by Oxford University Press, by the English author D. H. Lawrence. Lawrence was facing destitution at the time and he wrote it as a potboiler. The first edition was published under the pseudonym "Lawrence H. Davison" because his fictional works, such as The Rainbow (1915), had been prosecuted for alleged eroticism.
Holy shit that's funny

>> No.21355446

>>21355236
>brags about being le pure Virginian stock
>looks down on yankees
You're a real piece of work, and an embarrassing one.

>> No.21355458

>>21355257
>This awful Whitman. This post mortem poet. This poet with the private soul leaking out of him all the time. All his privacy leaking out in a sort of dribble, oozing into the universe.
HOLY SMOKES! Could Lawrence have possibly said ANYTHING more pretentiously hypocritical!? He is literally the English Whitman in his nakedness, and far less likeable as a person.

>> No.21355496

>>21355311
I know the former is the better way to be but I can't help but be the latter.

>> No.21356010

>>21355458
he was a based bum bandit and I won't hear a word said against him

>> No.21356020

>>21354783
>one angloid criticises one amerilard
>the entire adipose collective comes out of the woodwork to seethe about them darn tootin brits
quelle surprise

>> No.21356031

>>21354399
>But the main character is Black. That's why the Maori sex is so hot.

>> No.21356591

>>21354424
Probably after the war. Got everyone on edge. I myself prefer the polite condescension and humour of the like of Chesterton.

>> No.21356735

>>21354399
DH Lawrence was a fucking homo and it really shows if that's what he has to say about Melville

>> No.21356869

>>21356010
You already have, lad, and it's "debased," when we're speaking of rumtumblers.

>> No.21356893

>>21354399
based and anglo pilled.

>> No.21356959

>>21356893
Lawrence just wants to keep all the hot Maori boys for himself.

>> No.21357028

I both love and hate Studies in Classic American Literature. Lawrence has a truly original voice as a literary critic, similar to Pound (though with more intensity), and he provided me with a fresh perspective and new insight on things, but he's sometimes so obscure and his conclusions are often quite bizarre to me, even if they are always intriguing. The OP passage is also quite misleading because his criticism of Moby Dick was glowing (at least, as much as could ever be expected from Lawrence).

>> No.21357380

>>21354399
who?

>> No.21357406
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21357406

>>21356020
C'est tellement fatiguant.

>> No.21357506

>>21354424
>When did everyone start writing criticism in this snarky faggy tone?

When millennials came of age.

>> No.21358188

>>21354766
Is your retarded ass confusing literary criticism with literary theory? lmao

>> No.21358445

>>21356959
who wouldnt?