Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism | Lawrence, D. H. - Richard Aldington (essay date 1926)

Richard Aldington (essay date 1926)

SOURCE: "D. H. Lawrence as Poet," in The Saturday Review of Literature, New York, Vol. 11, No. 40, May 1, 1926, pp. 749-50.

[In the following overview of Lawrence 's poetry, including Birds, Beasts, and Flowers, Aldington attempts to cast aside the poet's ideology and sexual subject matter in order to isolate the poetry he writes, which Aldington believes to be representative of its author's genius.]

If a difficult problem were being set for what Mr. Bennett calls the "young aspirant" in criticism, there could scarcely be found a better topic than Mr. D. H. Lawrence. He is not the sort of man who becomes master of Balliol or an Oracle to thoughtful, cautious rentiers. His personality is abrupt, independent, and unreliable. His writings are full of faults and also of possible qualities. You can dislike him irrelevantly, because you have the Anglo-Saxon complex about sexual matters or...

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