we were a passionate couple

[This was Lawrence's first book, a first edition with 1910 date on the copyright page. It was quickly changed to 1911. Apparently only a handful of copies in the first issue state are known to exist.

The United States' first appearance was significant since it contained sexually explicit passages considered too suggestive for the time and were taken out and/or revised for the first British edition, which didn't appear until later.

The original had pages 227 and 230 revised for the British issue, including
p. 230 originally as: "God! – we were a passionate couple – and she would have me in her bedroom while she drew Greek statues of me…"; and was changed to: "Lord! – we were an infatuated couple – and she would choose to view me in an aesthetic light…."] 1

from
THE WHITE PEACOCK

We got married. She gave me a living she had in her parsonage, and we went to live at her Hall. She wouldn't let me out of her sight. God! -- we were a passionate couple -- and she would have me in her bedroom while she drew Greek statues of me -- her Croton, her Hercules! I never saw her drawings. She had her own way too much -- I let her do as she liked with me.

Then gradually she got tired -- it took her three years to have a real bellyful of me. I had a physique then -- for that matter I have now."

He held out his arm to me, and bade me try his muscle. I was startled. The hard flesh almost filled his sleeve.

"Ah," he continued, "You don't know what it is to have the pride of a body like mine. But she wouldn't have children -- no, she wouldn't -- said she daren't. That was the root of the difference at first But she cooled down, and if you don't know the pride of my body you'd never know my humiliation. I tried to remonstrate -- and she looked simply astounded at my cheek. I never got over that amazement.

She began to get souly. A poet got hold of her, and she began to affect Burne-Jones -- or Waterhouse -- it was Waterhouse -- she was a lot like one of his women -- Lady of Shalott, I believe. At any rate, she got souly, and I was her animal -- son animal-son boeuf. I put up with that for above a year. Then I got some servants' clothes and went.

I was seen in France -- then in Australia -- though I never left England. I was supposed to have died in the bush. She married a young fellow. Then I was proved to have died, and I read a little obituarynotice on myself in a woman's paper she subscribed to. She wrote it herself -- as a warning to other young ladies of position not to be seduced by plausible "Poor Young Men."

Now she's dead. They've got the paper -- her paper -- in the kitchen down there, and it's full of photographs, even an old photo of me --" an unfortunate misalliance." I feel, somehow, as if I were at an end too. I thought I'd grown a solid, middle-aged- man, and here I feel sore as I did at twenty-six, and I talk as I used to.

One thing -- I have got some children, and they're of a breed as you'd not meet anywhere. I was a good animal before everything, and I've got some children."

He sat looking up where the big moon swam through the black branches of the yew.

"So she's dead -- your poor peacock!" I murmured.

He got up, looking always at the sky, and stretched himself again. He was an impressive figure massed in blackness against the moonlight, with his arms outspread.

"I suppose," he said, "it wasn't all her fault."
"A white peacock, we will say," I suggested.

D. H. Lawrence

green green green

GREEN

The sky was apple-green,
The sky was

green wine held up in the sun,
The moon was a golden petal between.

She opened her eyes, and green
They shone, clear like flowers undone,
For the first time, now for the first time seen.

d h lawrence

(d h lawrence was also considered
an imagist poet.)

japonisme: so many faces

i would really love to try to describe all the different kind of things that get labeled with that term, by someone or other. i would like to illustrate each with an example, but this sounds too ambitious for one sitting, so i'll just get started and add things as i go along.

• at a most basic level what i have learned are the keystones that marked japonisme were these: blocks of flat color, blocks of intricate pattern (cloth, wallpaper), asymmetrical layout, an unusual framing, and a stronger than previously seen in the countries where it occurred: an emphasis on nature and daily, domestic life. these were the features in the japanese prints that most notably were adapted by the new art, l'art nouveau.

• another whole side of that happened at that moment, with regard to the art world only, to start with, was the philosophy that accompanied the new imports. for the first time, a concept of the present moment as having value in and of itself, of the deep importance of the simple play of light across the arm of the woman at the table across the way, or off the water, the simple sound of a bird in a tree, the serious wonder of a mother bathing a child: these things unheard-of in western art were now embraced. impressionism was born.

yes, there were other factors: a reaction to the industrial revolution, the arrival of the affordable train trip "out to nature" (which was, of course, ironically, part of that very revolution), new scientific discoveries into how humans see, even the invention of the portable painting kit, but the very number one thing without which the movement never would have started: that someone should say, in a place where westerners would hear it, essentially, "be here now."


(the two images here are jane avril by toulouse-lautrec, and the hermit thrush by thomas dewing. can you hear it singing?)