Lawrence's Essays

[Zakk Wylde]

Hi there! I know this is a part of lawrence's work that not many people are familiar with, but if anyone has managed to skim over these essays, especially Studies in Classic American Literature, Psychoanalysis and the Unconscious and Fantasia of the Unconscious, or A Propos of Lady Chatterley's Lover which is actually a pamphlet, please give me some of your commentaries about different chapters. I have to write an enormous essay aboput alwrence's essays and i'll need all the help i can get. Thanks

[Virgil]

Well, yes, I've skimmed them but who remembers. Plus I'm not about to do your essay for you. If you have a specific question after you have read them, post it and I may be able to answer it.

[Zakk Wylde]

Okay, so I have to tell you right up front that I'm not a natural English speaker and I've read these works in English so I might not have taken the exact meaning in some chpaters.
For instance in Selected Essays with and introduction by Richard Aldington, Lawrence points out the obsession of the old generation for the spirit of oneness which he condemns, firmly suggesting that the new generation should follow another path, that of the adventure. This sense of wholeness he so fears is seen as a mechanical world in a universe alive and kicking. This idea is also stated in Identity when talking about Walt Whitman. He objects to this constant serch fot perfection, because man is a dual being and perfection does not exist. Now returning to whitman, lawrence gives him a whole chapter in Studies in classic american literature that i didn't quite understand. He has great respect for whitman praising his litereary skill and talent but i also got a distinct feeling of hatred towards him because whitman always puts himself in the center of the universe. So i didn't understand much in this chapter about whitman, what is lawrence really trying to say.
In phoenix, he talks about a certain sickness that makes artists the geniuses that they are. What i understood is that without a great drama, an enormous frustration in life or a mutter-complex we'd have very few artists. In the chapter about edgar allan poe also form studies in classic american literature he says that the american writer is a scientist driven by the same need for oneness, which generates this so called "sickness". I think that poe is not driven by the same urge for a oneness with the world but by a different kind of union, inspired by a deep but strange and obscene love.
Also i didn't understand the begining of studies in classic american literature, is he praising or is he mocking, his message is too subtele to really make out