D. H. Lawrence
British novelist essayist, and poet
WORDS ABOUT WORDS
When I read Shakespeare I am struck with wonder
That such trivial people should muse and thunder
In such lovely language.
—D. H. Lawrence, British novelist essayist, and poet, When I Read Shakespeare, 1929
Posted on April 3, 1998 at 8:12 AM
WORDS ABOUT WORDS
Literary criticism can be no more than a reasoned account of the feeling produced upon the critic by the book he is criticizing. Criticism can never be a science: it is, in the first place, much too personal, and in the second, it is concerned with values that science ignores. The touchstone is emotion, not reason. We judge a work of art by its effect on our sincere and vital emotion, and nothing else. All the critical twiddle-twaddle about style and form, all this pseudoscientific classifying and analysing of books in an imitation-botanical fashion, is mere impertinence and mostly dull jargon.
—D. H. Lawrence, Phoenix: The Posthumous Papers of D. H. Lawrence, 1936
Posted on July 26, 2002 at 6:07 PM
WORDS ABOUT WORDS
Myth is an attempt to narrate a whole human experience, of which the purpose is too deep, going too deep in the blood and soul, for mental explanation or description.
—D. H. Lawrence, Phoenix: The Posthumous Papers of D. H. Lawrence
Posted on March 21, 2003 at 5:43 PM
WORDS ABOUT WORDS
I can't bear art that you can walk round and admire. A book should be either a bandit or a rebel or a man in the crowd.
—D. H. Lawrence, The Letters of D. H. Lawrence
Posted on July 19, 2001 at 7:15 AM
WORDS ABOUT WORDS
One sheds one's sicknesses in books—repeats and presents again one's emotions, to be master of them.
—D. H. Lawrence, The Letters of D. H. Lawrence
Posted on September 10, 2001 at 1:15 PM
WORDS ABOUT WORDS
Brute force crushes many plants. Yet the plants rise again. The Pyramids will not last a moment compared with the daisy. And before Buddha or Jesus spoke the nightingale sang, and long after the words of Jesus and Buddha are gone into oblivion the nightingale still will sing. Because it is neither preaching nor commanding nor urging. It is just singing. And in the beginning was not a Word, but a chirrup.
—D. H. Lawrence, Etruscan Places
Posted on November 20, 2001 at 4:47 PM
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