The World of D. H. Lawrence

In his D. H. Lawrence: The Failure and the Triumph of Art (Northwestern University Press, $4.75), Eliseo Vivas accepts a man-sized challenge. His problem is to explain how a shoddy thinker and third-rate prophet can be at the same time a major artist. The explanation, which grapples closely with the mystery of what happens in the creative mind to transform raw experience into the true substance of art, is as satisfactory as word limitations allow. But Mr. Vivas’ success raises another problem: he makes Lawrence seem much more interesting in his failures than in his esthetic triumphs.

Does this suggest that “perfection” achieved at the cost of self-imposed limitations is scarcely worth the price of the accepted discipline? As one who has always been more interested in ideas about life than in ideas about art, this reviewer is probably in a poor strategic position to answer his own question. The study of esthetics, to me, has always seemed something less than a full-time occupation for a lively mind.

JC

About the Author

John Chamberlain

John Chamberlain (1903–1995) was an American writer.

In his D. H. Lawrence: The Failure and the Triumph of Art (Northwestern University Press, $4.75), Eliseo Vivas accepts a man-sized challenge. His problem is to explain how a shoddy thinker and third-rate prophet can be at the same time a major artist. The explanation, which grapples closely with the mystery of what happens in the creative mind to transform raw experience into the true substance of art, is as satisfactory as word limitations allow. But Mr. Vivas’ success raises another problem: he makes Lawrence seem much more interesting in his failures than in his esthetic triumphs.

Does this suggest that “perfection” achieved at the cost of self-imposed limitations is scarcely worth the price of the accepted discipline? As one who has always been more interested in ideas about life than in ideas about art, this reviewer is probably in a poor strategic position to answer his own question. The study of esthetics, to me, has always seemed something less than a full-time occupation for a lively mind.