D. H. Lawrence
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David Herbert Lawrence (September 11, 1885 – March 2, 1930) was an English novelist, poet, playwright, essayist, literary critic and painter. His collected works, among other things, represent an extended reflection upon the dehumanising effects of modernity and industrialisation. In them, some of the issues Lawrence explores are emotional health, vitality, spontaneity and instinct.
Theosophy provided Lawrence with an alternative to two influences in European Western culture that he saw to be equally inimical and destructive: orthodox Christianity and scientific materialism.
In a letter for American novelist Waldo David Frank on July 27, 1917, he wrote:
What are you,spiritually? -- Theosophist? I am not a theosophist, though the esoteric doctrines are marvellously illuminating, historically. I hate the esoteric forms. Magic has also interested me a good deal. But it is all part of the past, and part of a past self in us: and it is no good going back, even to wonderful things.[1]
In a letter to Dr. David Eder written on August 24, 1917, he says:
Have you read Blavatsky's Secret Doctrine? In many ways a bore, and not quite real. Yet one can glean a marvellous lot from it, enlarge the understanding immensely. Do you know the physical --physiological-- interpretations of the esoteric doctrine? - the chakras and dualism in experience? The devils won't tell one anything, fully.[2]
Then again, on November 13, 1918, he wrote to Nancy Henry:
Try and get hold of Mme. Blavatsky's books - they are big and expensive - the friends I used to borrow them from are out of England now. But get from some library or other Isis Unveiled, and better still the 2 vol. work whose name I forget. Rider, the publisher of the Occult Review -try that- publishes all these books.[3]
Notes
- ↑ D. H. Lawrence, The Letters of D. H. Lawrence: October 1916-June 1921, vol. III part 1, (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 143.
- ↑ D. H. Lawrence, The Letters of D. H. Lawrence: October 1916-June 1921, vol. III part 1, (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 150.
- ↑ D. H. Lawrence, The Letters of D. H. Lawrence: October 1916-June 1921, vol. III part 1, (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 298.