STUDIES IN CLASSIC AMERICAN LITERATURE BY D.H. Lawrence
In this work, first published in 1923, Lawrence comments on the following American writers: Ben Franklin, Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur, James Fenimore Cooper, Edgar Allan Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Richard Henry Dana, Herman Melville and Walt Whitman.
And he pontificates from front to back. Probably the most famous sentence in the book: “The essential American soul is hard, isolate, stoic and a killer.” Thus the book is more about Lawrence than it is about the writers or works he discusses though his observations are often interesting and inciteful.
Lawrence has a premise which I dare to summarize as follows: a human being is an isolated individual traveling along an open road and while he may and should be in sympathy with other individuals, he should not have sympathy for them. An individual cannot become the other or merge with the other. “Each soul should be alone,” he tells us. Moreover, while physical and emotional love may draw two humans together, if they get too close one or both will be destroyed. He often sees the person and the artist as two separate beings. He reads and comments on the above writers through the prism of this premise and often concludes that while as humans the writers failed, as artists they succeeded.
Franklin. After having great fun mocking Ben Franklin’s list of virtues, Lawrence produces his own list. With some exceptions, I prefer Ben’s.
Crèvecoeur. I was not familiar with St. John de Crèvecoeur who lived from 1735 until 1813. French by birth, for some time he lived on the American frontier and he wrote a series of essays entitled Letters from an American Farmer. The most interesting observation I received from Crèvecoeur, as quoted by Lawrence, concerned white children who had been kidnapped by native Americans. When these children were later rescued they unfailingly did not wish to return to their original families but sought the protection of their captors.
Cooper. Lawrence writes: “Fenimore Cooper has probably done more than any writer to present the Red Man to the white man.” As I did as a young man, Lawrence admires the Leatherstocking novels greatly, especially the hunter, hero Natty Bumppo. “But Natty is a saint with a gun and the Indians are gentlemen through and through, though they may take the occasional scalp.”
Poe. I was not looking forward to the chapter on Edgar Allan Poe but I found it interesting and perceptive. According to Lawrence, it was Poe’s unending desire for union that explains the stories and causes all the horror. “It is easy to see why each man kills the thing he loves. To know a thing is to kill it…the desirous consciousness, the SPIRIT, is a vampire.”
Hawthorne. There are two chapters on Hawthorne. In the first he writes: “And if a woman doesn’t believe in a man, she believes, essentially in nothing. She becomes, willy-nilly, a devil.” But then in the second we get, “Sin is a queer thing. It isn’t the breaking of divine commandments. It is the breaking of one’s own integrity.”
Dana. Lawrence admires Two Years Before the Mast as I did when I read it many years ago. He includes several paragraphs from the book and I had the opportunity to be moved by them once again. “Dana never forgets, never ceases to watch.” “Dana’s small book is a very great book.” I would add that he was also a concise and eloquent writer.
Melville. There are also two chapters on Melville. “The greatest seer and poet of the sea for me is Melville.” “He was a modern Viking. There is something curious about real blue-eyed people. They are never quite human in the good classic sense…”
Whitman. I gained nothing of interest from the chapter on Whitman.
For all its quirks, I found this book well worth reading. You must wade through paragraphs of blather but what appears between the blather is fascinating. The chapters on Two Years Before the Mast and Moby Dick alone make the book worth the effort.
