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LAWRENCE DAVID HERBERT (1790-1869)
Lettre autographe signée adressée à Percival
Reginald STEPHENSEN
Rottach-am-Tegernsee (Haute-Bavière), 5 septembre 1929,
2 pages in-4 à l’encre en anglais. (Traces de pliure,
déchirure sans affectation au texte et rousseurs).
3 000 / 4 000 €
D. H. Lawrence, célèbre auteur de
L’amant de Lady Chatterley
,
écrit une lettre à Percival Reginald Stephensen de Mandrake Press
dans laquelle il critique les socialistes et surtout les reproductions
photographiques de ces peintures.
« I’m glad you got a kick out of Eastwood & the miners & all. They
were alive when I was a lad, so they can’t be so very dead. And if
they produced me, they must be a bit like me, somewhere. But as for
coming out a socialist—the very nastiest attacks on me in the papers
come from the Socialists & the Clyneside ‘workers’ sort of people.
The miseries of Eastwood aren’t really socialists, any more that I am,
really—& they never will be. The socialist always kills the man, in a man.
It did Willie Hopkin a lot of harm. Look at Bernard Shaw! What I care
about, in a man, is the man, not the socialist. And that very capacity
for joy, for real fun, that I care about. Becoming self-conscious kills
joy & fun only because we don’t become genuinely aware of our-
selves, right through. We stop short, & substitute a narcissus image,
& that is the real death of all joy. The bane of socialists is that they
are half self-conscious, & for the other half substitute a narcissus
image of their own perfect rightness etc, which is hell.—And that’s
the trouble with Willie Hopkin—he never got down to the bed-rock
of himself, as a man, so has footed all his life with a narcissus image
of himself, & each of his two wives has been the better man of the
marriage. Poor Sallie—she was the better man, indeed! And he says
of her now ‘she had a mournful outlook on life.’ “I should be glad if
I could have those two copies of the Paintings Book in Florence. I
asked Enid Hilton to take three over to Paris, & send them from there.
But I may be too late—she may have gone. I suppose it wouldn’t be
safe to post them to Oriole? If not, I must find somebody else to
take them. I had a letter asking if the Introduction to These Paintings
could be used in America, in a magazine. Have you any objection ?
It seems to me there can be nothing against it. Another letter asking
if it could be done over there in a limited edition—Any objection to
that ? It seems to me American editions don’t really affect the English
one. And several times I have been asked for photographs of the
pictures—odd ones. Have you got photographs of them all ? I think I
ought to be able to arrange an American limited edition with or without
a few photographs, if the English edition is all sold. It would rouse
American interest. There can be no question of replica. I suppose
never again will the whole colour book appear, like yours. “Frieda
had a bone-setter who set her foot in one minute, after we’ve spent
pounds on specialists, & now she walks all right. I’ve got a doctor in
Munich who declares I ought to be well in a few weeks—with diet. So
there you are. I want to write you one day about your Mandrake list.
I’m a bit sorry you’ve got Allister Crowley at such heavy tonnage. I
feel his day is rather over. You need to be selective, not in too big a
hurry with the Mandrake books, to build the thing up. You’ve a good
thing there, but I’m afraid you’ll overload it ».
Stephensen, d’origine australienne, a collaboré avec Jack Lindsay
au Fanfrolico Press, avant de le quitter pour fonder Mandrake Press
dont le premier livre reproduit les œuvres peintes de Lawrence. Dans
cette lettre, Lawrence critique la couleur des reproductions.