Apocalypse [antikvár]

INTRODUCTION by Melvyn BraggThis is the last book Lawrence wrote. It is significant and touching that he should take on such a daunting subject which mysteriously penetrates so much of life and civilisation when his own life was rapidly ebbing away and his anger at our civilisation was spurring him to furious prose. There will be those who think that it is undermined by being no more than the anguished cry of a failing man, railing against the dying of the light. In my opinion that would be ungenerous towards Lawrence's seriousness and his largeness of spirit - his zealous spending of himself to bring the world back to its senses. Apocalypse is a magnificent last testament - flawed, somewhat repetitive but soaring to paragraphs of wonderful poetry - in which he calls on us to recognise what we have lost, to rediscover that 'For man, the vast marvel is to be alive. For man, as for flower and beast and bird, the supreme triumph is to be most vividly, most perfectly alive.'D. H. Lawrence finished Apocalypse in January 1930 and died two months later. It was first published in Florence in June 1931, an American edition followed in November, the first English edition in May 1932. There were very few reviews in England and they were mostly poor, the exception being I. M. Parsons in the Spectator who said that the book was 'one of the most vital that Lawrence wrote: a magnificent last attempt to explain himself to the world'. It met a better reception in America, particularly from E. S. Bates in the Saturday Review of Literature who drew attention to Lawrence's' revelation of what Christianity actually is in practice - a hatred of excellence, an enthronement of mediocrity'. The most comprehensive appreciation came from Richard Aldington, whose letter to Frieda Lawrence has