On 18/12/05 12:09 AM, "Lawrence Upton" <[log in to unmask]>
wrote:
> I recommend the penguin book on the trial for the texts of the evidence of
> what many saw as Lawrence's attempts with that book. One doesn't have to agree
> with his programme.
>
> I find Yeats daft as a brush and his pov repellent often but my collected
> yeats is falling apart from use. Lady C is not my first choice of Lawrence,
> nearer my last
>
> I wonder how much things have changed in terms of prejudices... That's not
> quite what I mean, and what I write straight off is what I am going to post,
> there are different prejudices now; but not I think greater intelligence; and
> the drive towards mindless censorship is still with us
I think the disappointing thing about Lawrence, re Joyce, was his attack -
with Rebecca West - on Ulysses as an "obscene" book. It seems hard to
defend, given his own experiences with censorship; and it's hard not to
think it's because the sexuality expressed in Ulysses is so much more
honest, and for my money more erotic, than the romanticised
sexuality/violence Lawrence attempted to delineate.
But good point on Yeats. Do you know David Lloyd's wonderful essay on him in
Anomalous States? - "The difficulty is that we must acknowledge, when all
quibble and interpretation is 'done and said', the avowed authoritarianism,
if not downright fascist sympathies, of his states politics, while at the
same time acknowledging the power of his writing to return and haunt....
Yeats' authoritarian political predilections are as insistent as they are
consistent with his aesthetic, but that argument is of little avail when it
comes to the attempt to comprehend the obsessive, haunting quality of his
poetry..."
Best
A
Alison Croggon
Blog: http://theatrenotes.blogspot.com
Editor, Masthead: http://masthead.net.au
Home page: http://alisoncroggon.com
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