Look! We Have Come Through!

D. H. Lawrence

Edité par New York: B. W. Huebsch, 1918

A propos de cet article

Poems not to be read singly but as unfolding one from the other in organic development, the whole revealing the intrinsic experience of a man during the crisis of manhood, when he marries and comes into himself, or, the sixth lustre of a man s life, but which Conrad Aiken criticises as the poet-novelist all too often forgetting that the passage from the novel to the poem is among other things a passage from the cumulative to the selective. Sensations and impressions may be hewed and hauled in prose; but in poetry it is rather the sort of mood which, like a bird, flies out of the tree as soon as the axe rings against it, that one must look for. Mr Lawrence has, of this sort, his birds, but he appears to pay little heed to them; he goes on chopping. (The Dial, 9 August 1919.) Which you d say is the Imagist objective straight failed, though we know D. H. Lawrence (poet) des Imagistes. But there are two set of poems in this book. The first are those written in-situ, each underscored with their place of composition, and for the most part being written while travelling with Frieda Weekley (neé von Richthofen, now Lawrence), mother already to three children, with whom Lawrence had eloped. They are written as the two (then one) walked across the Alps from Germany to Italy following Lawrence s arrest and subsequent release under suspicion of espionage. The second set of poems, interspersed, expand on the first or fantasise small fictions of ladies and knaves, and are much worse, revealing Lawrence s poor grasp of verse form (such as Aiken describes: irrelevant, painful, banal appendages only there to satisfy some weak cheap metre or rhyme). It s these poems which seem to have directed the form of the book, probably being written symbiotically with it. The first set of poems, however, if extracted, are good: they contain the flight of birds, and still they make the (very beautiful) novel of the marriage and self-becoming. If they alone were printed (save the last few), this volume would be well read. First American edition, one of 500 copies (half of the set of 1000 sheets produced by Chatto & Windus, of which 500 constituted the first 1917 English edition). Contemporary ink ownership inscription to ffep of Katherine McClintock Ellis dated April 1919 and annotated later in pencil, Pre-College Division Julliard ; Ellis (1896-1982) was the director of the pre-college program at the Julliard School of Music in New York. Bookseller s label, The Wayfarers Book Shop, to fpd. With two pencil scores by the title of 6 poems, and two further scores highlighting verse. Boards aged and a little grubbied, small breaks top and tail of spine, occasional foxing with an outburst on spread 80. Paper label on spine faded and lightly cracked. Detailed but not indexed under Roberts A10a.

N° de réf. du vendeur ABE-1769264282202

Détails bibliographiques

• Titre: Look! We Have Come Through!
• Éditeur: New York: B. W. Huebsch
• Date de parution: 1918
• Reliure: Hardcover
• Édition: 1st Edition
• État de l'article: Very Good