Help me figure out this quote by DH Lawrence!

[mtpspur]

Well I started a story on the net about a church minister who hates his flock and his daughter's interest in a oyung man---The Prussian Officer or something like that. My main interest so far has been the complete lack of Chrisitan behavior on the cleryman's part--this was being while at work--sorry don;t have the title down better. Not rwally sure I'll finish it. Lawrence can write but so fare he hasn;t gripped me. And thank you Quark for your comment on Lewis to me. I have really only read Babbitt which I started--failed to 'get' it then tried again deliberately reading it with a satiric frame of reference and it WORKED.

[Virgil]

I understand , and of course I've no problem with you thinking that, which I know is your sincere interpretation of my expressed disaffection with the work of DHL.

But do you also maintain that I said he was hidebound by religious dogma? That's what's irking me, because I said he wasn't hidebound by religious dogma.

Ok, let's make peace.

What exactly do you mean by hideboud, constrained? He was constrained by social convention. He ran off with someone's wife. I don't recall he having any argument or rebellion against any particular preacher or church. He had philosophic disagreements with Christianity. He was searching for a particular religion that would resonate with him, and he searched through most of his life. He went from his protestant roots to sympathy with Catholicism (though he never became a Catholic) to a paganism. He created his own religion in his novel The Plumed Serpent. I don't recall biographically he personally having a dispute with the church he grew up with. His mother was religious and he felt a certain guilt leaving her religion, but once she passed on he had no problem moving on and even when she was alive I don't recall he being a regular church goer. Janine knows his early biography better than I. Perhaps she knows the extent of his religious practice.

[prendrelemick]

Virgil: when an Englishman uses the phrase, "he wasn't exactly hidebound" It means he definetely wasn't, infact it is emphasising how much he wasn't, its how we speak over here, its that famous British ironic understatement . So you see, you are both in complete agreement on that point.

[MarkBastable]

Ok, let's make peace.

What exactly do you mean by hideboud, constrained? He was constrained by social convention. He ran off with someone's wife. I don't recall he having any argument or rebellion against any particular preacher or church. He had philosophic disagreements with Christianity. He was searching for a particular religion that would resonate with him, and he searched through most of his life. He went from his protestant roots to sympathy with Catholicism (though he never became a Catholic) to a paganism. He created his own religion in his novel The Plumed Serpent. I don't recall biographically he personally having a dispute with the church he grew up with. His mother was religious and he felt a certain guilt leaving her religion, but once she passed on he had no problem moving on and even when she was alive I don't recall he being a regular church goer. Janine knows his early biography better than I. Perhaps she knows the extent of his religious practice.

So - we agree then. He wasn't hidebound by religious dogma. Or, as I put it understatedly, he wasn't particularly hidebound by it. That's what I said and that's what you said, and now we've both said it five times. Neither of us at any point has said that he was hidebound by religious dogma. Not you. Not me. Is that your understanding? If so, we're good.

I do hope so.

[Virgil]

Virgil: when an Englishman uses the phrase, "he wasn't exactly hidebound" It means he definetely wasn't, infact it is emphasising how much he wasn't, its how we speak over here, its that famous British ironic understatement . So you see, you are both in complete agreement on that point.

So - we agree then. He wasn't hidebound by religious dogma. Or, as I put it understatedly, he wasn't particularly hidebound by it. That's what I said and that's what you said, and now we've both said it five times. Neither of us at any point has said that he was hidebound by religious dogma. Not you. Not me. Is that your understanding? If so, we're good.

I do hope so.

Ok, yes. I guess I'm just not that familiar with the term "hidebound" as Prend points it out.

[Quark]

Well I started a story on the net about a church minister who hates his flock and his daughter's interest in a oyung man---The Prussian Officer or something like that. My main interest so far has been the complete lack of Chrisitan behavior on the cleryman's part--this was being while at work--sorry don;t have the title down better. Not rwally sure I'll finish it. Lawrence can write but so fare he hasn;t gripped me.

I've never read that one, actually. When you're done with it, I'd be curious to know what you make of it.

[Janine]

I've never read that one, actually. When you're done with it, I'd be curious to know what you make of it.

The Prussian Officer is a great shorts story; it was one of the first ones we disgused in length in the D.H.Lawrence Short Story thread. I would recommend it but there are many more I like even better...Witch a la Mode is a good one.
I think the whole religious dogma question is too complicated to disguss lightly. If you know Lawrence well (and I don't profess to myself but only scratched the surface - I did however read many autobiographies and letter), then you know he thought of himself as a sort of Priest of love and he wasn't what I would call totally alien with church teachings or beliefs. If anything he felt the stories were more allegorical than actual. He still maintained an emotional tie to his religious belief but in a totally unconstructed and new form. He looked for this all his life; I don't believe he ever truly established it. His visits to the Etruscan tombs were one of his last studies of a very religious culture who believed in an afterlife. So, to me it is neigther here nor there that Lawrence was religious minded or not.

I only asked you MarkB about how many of the books/works you had actually read, to see if you got a good cross-section of what Lawrence is all about. Why did you read so many if you found the author so distasteful? I am just curious and that is more a direct personal question than one to start a contraversy. Many people read Lawrence and totally miss his points or misunderstand the author.

A general question I might ask most of you is: Why must Lawrence write humorously? I am just curious again concerning the humor issue. Not all authors write with humor or even with witty lines or phrases or satire. I can name a zillion who also write tragically or with no humor.

[MarkBastable]

I only asked you MarkB about how many of the books/works you had actually read, to see if you got a good cross-section of what Lawrence is all about. Why did you read so many if you found the author so distasteful?

The first time, I read so many because The Rainbow was part of my course work, and at the school I went to, you were required to read more than just the book on the syllabus. So I read all the Midlands books, a couple of other novels and a whole raft of poetry. (I also read all Shakespeare's comedies and tragedies, and all Hardy's Wessex novels in support of studying Midsummer Night's Dream and Tess of the D'Urbervilles. They didn't pussyfoot around at my school.) When I was older - in my thirties, I guess - I took another shot at Lawrence, just to see whether the years might have changed my appreciation of his work.

I am just curious and that is more a direct personal question than one to start a contraversy. Many people read Lawrence and totally miss his points or misunderstand the author.

And, honestly, many people read Lawrence and don't miss his points and don't misunderstand, but simply don't rate him as a writer. That is a tenable position.

A general question I might ask most of you is: Why must Lawrence write humorously? I am just curious again concerning the humor issue. Not all authors write with humor or even with witty lines or phrases or satire. I can name a zillion who also write tragically or with no humor.

Actually, my problem isn't that his authorial voice is devoid of wit. It's that no one he writes - none of his major characters - show any sense of humour.

I mean, in the real world, some people are very serious. Lots of people take themselves completely seriously. But no one in Lawrence's universe shows any sign of humour, any tendency to self-mockery, any spark of interpreting the world as absurd. It's a perspective that's missing from the experience of all DHL's characters.

And, for me, the absence of that perspective undermines the credibility of Lawrence's take on how human beings work. Because that colour is missing from his palette, I can't accept the shades in which he paints the world and the people in it.

So I'm not blithely saying that DHL is no good. I've thought about this, and - yeah - in the end that's an objective analysis of a subjective view, so you can say it's all down to personal taste. But I can justify my position, I think.

On the other hand, perhaps I shouldn't have expressed it in a DHL thread. That might have been a bit provocative. Apologies.

[baconmfr]

The hyena is an easy one, when you think of one of his most important influences: Friedrich Nietzsche. Hyena could be thought of as a priest or any moralist who tries to intrude on your personal freedom. The wolf is more difficult and I can see only four possible explanations . Looking at the whole letter he could be referring to what Morrissey called the 'black dog of depression' as Lawrence suffered frequently from depression. The second could be lawyers as, in the letter Lawrence talks about Frieda's impending divorce case. The third could be the state, given that at the time he was persecuted by the British state. The most probable explanation is that he is referring to 'money', alluding to the expression 'money keeps the wolf from the door'.