D.H. Lawrence, German Expressionism, and Weberian Formal Rationality

Abstract

Literary historians still find it difficult to "place" David Herbert Lawrence. Does he actually belong to that revolutionary movement in literature which is given the name "literary modernism" or "high modernism"? In Germany, the accusation of "fascism" ', usually based on a reading of The Plumed Serpent, is still a stock response to the challenge of Lawrence. Not happy with such a reductionist approach, I propose to place Lawrence in the context of German expressionism to explain crucial thematic and, to a lesser degree, formal innovations in his work. The Rainbow and Women in Love are shaped by the typically expressionist tension between form and life. Their chief protagonists, Ursula and Birkin, voicing the author's radical critique of modern civilization, attempt to break through the forms of civilization, an attempt which implies a characteristic apocalyptic dialectic between destruction and renovation. In both expressionism and Lawrence, sexual love is the chief agent of "Aufbruch" ("new departure"). In describing the nature of modernity, Lawrence is evidently influenced by Max Weber's concept of "formal rationality" ("formale Rationalität"), which he learned from Edgar Jaffe.