Lawrence on Art (English-Chinese Bilingual Reader)

Author: (British) D.H. Lawrence
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2006-04-01
Features: D.H. Lawrence was a British novelist, poet, playwright, and painter. In 1928, he privately published his last controversial novel, Lady Chatterley's Lover, but it was not until the early 1960s that bans on the book were lifted in countries like the United States and the United Kingdom. On March 2, 1930, Lawrence died of tuberculosis in Vence, near Nice, France, and his ashes were buried on a farm in New Mexico, USA. Lawrence was a unique and controversial figure in 20th-century British literary history. He believed that the novel was the highest form of human expression of thoughts and emotions and held that "the mission of art lies in revealing the relationship between man and the surrounding world." He dared to break with traditional methods, exposing the primitive power within human nature through his distinctive style and calling for the reconstruction of modern society from the ashes of bourgeois civilization. This book reflects his unconventional artistic views. Lawrence revered life, love, happiness, and freedom, and his literary theories were eloquent, unrestrained, and incisive. His writings brim with the untamed life force of a "romanticist." He did not regard "literary criticism" as "science" but focused on the values that "science" often overlooks: no matter how scientific claims to be superior, human "inner emotions" always have their own "secret places" and their own "worlds." The soul of literature seems to forever stand in opposition to "science." He preferred wildflowers and trees to the hustle and bustle of the city, believing that the "intellectual and rational" society had greatly sacrificed humanity's "emotions and blood."