“D.H. Lawrence will outlive the British Empire. He will outlive her as Caesar and Cicero have outlived Rome. An empire lives only as long as it has living geniuses to give it their flame…”
— Henry Miller
As everyone knows, the body of Lawrence’s work forms a huge self-portrait. He looked into the mirror of the world and he saw reflected there the image of his own naked soul.
It was not until I had been saturated with his works, and the opinion of others about him, that I came to that intensely human, revelatory self-portrait which The Letters gives us. And after reading a hundred pages or so I come upon a photograph of Lawrence at the age of twenty-nine—the year 1914, the most crucial year of his life, and the most fateful year in our lives.
I look at the photograph for a long time. A very beautiful face, a very wonderful being shining out of those eyes. And almost immediately one is compelled to add—a somewhat feminine face, the face of a Christ, of all those androgynous types of Redeemers which Christ typified. And yet, not an effeminate being! Beauty, tenderness, sensitivity, faith.
The man of light who worshipped the darkness, who was attracted as few men have ever been by the power of chaos and mystery…