In 1914 Lawrence married Frieda von Richthofen, the two travelled extensively through several countries in the last two decades of his life. Lawrence's fourth novel, THE RAINBOW completed in 1915, was about two sisters growing up in the north of England. The character of Ursula Brangwem was partly based on Lawrence's teacher associate in Nottingham, Loui Burrows. She was Lawrence's first love. The novel was banned for its alleged obscenity - it used swearwords and talked openly about sex. Over 1000 copies of the novel were burned under the magistrate's order. The banning of this publication created many other difficulties for him in getting anything published. Also, his paintings were confiscated from an art gallery because of this ban.
In 1920 Lawrence started to write THE LOST GIRL in Italy. He had settle with Frieda in Gargano. In those days, the pair were so poor that they could not afford even a newspaper. The novel dealt with one of Lawrence's favourite subjects - a girl marries a man of a much lower social status, against the advice of friends, and finds reward in his superior warmth and understanding. He dropped the novel for some years and rewrote the story in an old Sicilian farm-house near Taormina in 1920.
Lawrence's best known work is LADY CHATTERLY'S LOVER, first published privately in Florins in 1928, tells of the love affair between a wealthy, married woman, and a man who works on her husband's estate. The book was banned for some time in both the UK and US, and was deemed pornographic. In the UK it was published in unexpurgated form in 1960 after an obscenity trial. One of Lawrence's other novels from the 1920s include WOMEN IN LOVE, a sequel to RAINBOW. The characters are most likely based on Lawrence and his wife, and John Middleton Murray and his wife Katherine Mansfield. The friends shared a house in England in 1914-15.
AARON'S ROAD, appearing in 1922, showed the influence of Nietzsche, and in KANGAROO, which was completed in 1923, Lawrence expressed his own idea of a 'superman'. THE PLUMED SERPENT, which was completed in 1926, was a vivid suggestion of Mexico and its ancient Aztec religion. THE MAN WHO DIED, which appeared in 1929, was an audacious version of the story of Christ's resurrection. Instead to have Christ to go to heaven, Lawrence has him mate with the priestess of Isis. Lawrence's non-fiction works include MOVEMENTS IN EUROPEAN HISTORY, PSYCHOANALYSIS AND THE UNCONSCIOUS, STUDIES IN CLASSIC AMERICAN LITERATURE and APOCALPSE.
During the First World War Lawrence and his wife were unable to obtain passports and were the targets of constant harassment from the authorities. They were accused of spying for the Germans and officially excluded from Cornwall in 1917. The Lawrence’s were not permitted to emigrate until 1919, when their years of travelling began.
In the 1920s Aldous Huxley travelled with Lawrence in Italy and France. Between 1922 and 1926 he and Frieda left Italy to live sporadically in Ceylon, Australia, New Mexico and Mexico. These years and different living scenarios provided settings for several of Lawrence's novels and stories. In 1924 the New York socialite Mabel Dodge Luhan gave to Lawrence and Frieda the Kiowa Ranch in Taos, in return, receiving the original manuscript of SONS AND LOVERS. After severe illness in Mexico, it was discovered that he was suffering from life-threatening tuberculosis. From 1925 the Lawrence’s confined their travels to Europe.
D.H. Lawrence commonly wrote of sexuality and mankind's natural tendencies, mostly in an explicit manner, and because of this, many of his pieces of work were banned from being published.
PIANO
Softly, in the dusk, a woman is singing to me;
Taking me back down the vista of years, till I see
A child sitting under the piano, in the boom of the tingling strings
And pressing the small, poised feet of a mother who smiles as she sings.
In spite of myself, the insidious mastery of song
Betrays me back, till the heart of me weeps to belong
To the old Sunday evenings at home, with winter outside
And hymns in the cosy parlour, the tinkling piano our guide.
So now it is vain for the singer to burst into clamour
With the great black piano appassionato. The glamour
Of childish days is upon me, my manhood is cast
Down in the flood of remembrance, I weep like a child for the past.
The speaker in PIANO by D. H. Lawrence is proud to be a full-grown man, yet he enjoys remembering his happy childhood; his reflective attitude causes him to feel as if he has lost his manhood by feeling longing for his childhood. Through effective imagery, Lawrence is able to help the reader understand the speaker’s reflective attitude. The pronunciation and tone used in this poem reveal the speaker’s struggle as his feelings blend between his desire to be a man and his desire to return to his childhood. The structure of the poem keeps the reader in tune with the flow of the poem.
The image descriptions in this poem help to describe a picture in the reader’s mind so the reader can empathise with the speaker during his trip back to his childhood. In the first verse, first line, the first image is of a woman. The third line describes the image of a “child sitting under the piano . . . pressing the small, poised feet of a mother who smiles.” In the fourth line the reader learns that this woman is the speaker’s mother. This description gives the reader an image, of a parlour room, and a young child enjoying the music played by his mother. The love of the mother shines through her smile as she responds to the child’s gentle touch. Later, in the second verse, the contrasting image of a cold, snowy winter night and the cosy room causes the “hymns” to seem especially warm. This describes the traditional image of a family sitting around a warm fire; talking, laughing, singing together and just enjoying each other’s company. The piano in the first and second verse is described as “tingling strings” and “tinkling piano”. These light sounds of the piano help describe the warm picturesque atmosphere during his childhood. These memories are what cause the grown man to be longing for his past.
The structure of the poem shows the speaker’s mixed feelings in the poem. The poem begins with the line, “softly in the dusk” to open the poem with a soft, airy image. “Vista of years,” are words used to show his longing as takes a walk down memory lane, back to his childhood. In the second verse, he is a little more negative about his memories. The song he is listening to takes him back to memories of his past, it is told that the song “betrays me back.” The speaker believes that these memories should not be felt as they are, with such emotion as they cause him to “weep” when he reluctantly returns to his past. The last line of the poem is also negative as it describes the speakers’ emotion as he goes “down the flood of remembrance.” He again flows “down the flood,” reluctantly into the past. The tone is mostly the same, supporting the image that the speaker remembers a happy past, but is reluctant to live through the memories. He is happy to remember his past, but he feels his “manhood is cast down” by doing so.
Commonly, D.H. Lawrence wrote of sexuality and mankind's natural tendencies, his work is directly connected to society and the way we live, ordinary human behaviour. PIANO is about a man with the longing for his childhood, but the reluctance to go there at the same time because he believes his reflective attitude causes him to feel as if he has lost his manhood. This poem fits with the general characteristics of D.H. Lawrence, in that he writes about memories and the man feeling emotions, and because of this feels he has lost his manhood. In society, it is not considered conventional for men to feel deep emotion, it would conflict with their so called manhood. This poem however, is only about memories and the speaker’s emotions, there are no other references to general society, such as sexuality or relationships, which is also commonly written about by D.H. Lawrence.
D.H. Lawrence is one of the greatest figures in 20th-century English literature and because of this his work is still taught, used and studied in education today and holds an important place today society. His principles of sexual freedom began are still part of the connection between literature and society today. D.H. Lawrence’s contributions to Western Anglo-Saxon cultural heritage brought women’s sexuality to the forefront of liberation in the early 1900’s, which at the time, was a very controversial issue and as such created a new horizon of open sexuality of women in a mans world. D.H. Lawrence is one of the greatest literary figures in 20th-century English literature and will there is no doubt that he will still be used in 50 years as writer who liberated sexual openness.
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
- DH Lawrence biography - contents - MSS - University of Nottingham
http://mss.library.nottingham.ac.uk/dhlbiog-contents.html
- DH Lawrence Collection at Bartleby.com
www.bartleby.com/people/LawrencDH.html
http://web.ukonline.co.uk/rananim/lawrence/
www.cswnet.com/~erin/lawrence.htm
www.ymaverick.com/vance/lawrence/top.html
www.kirjasto.sci.fi/dhlawren.htm
- DH Lawrence - Biography and Works
www.online-literature.com/dh_lawrence/
- Lawrence, DH The Columbia Encyclopaedia, Sixth Edition. 2001
- Lawrence, DH Microsoft Encarta Encyclopaedia, 2002
- DH Lawrence Homepage and Biography on Bibliomania.com
www.bibliomania.com/0/0/32
- DH Lawrence - His life and death
www.lawrenceseastwood.co.uk/
www.geneseo.edu/~dhlr/