First I must admit that I've never read any of Lawrence's novels and not that much of his poetry; he is one that I am familiar with at all simply because several of the poems have regularly appeared in the anthologies I taught from. This one I fell in love with the first time I read it, and it's only gotten lovelier to me over time. I always used it to show my students the beauty of sound: the way he uses the soft sounds (all those s sounds!) for most of it, but then the almost-harsh sounds of "burst into clamour / With the great black piano appassionato" . . . then falling back into the m's and s's and r's in the final line . . . Simply amazing. And the imagery -- as you say, the detail of the speaker sitting under the piano, pressing his hands on his mother's feet as she uses the pedals, is perfect, along with the sound of the strings and her smile as she sings. But what draws me most into the poem is the insistent drawing of the speaker into the past, against his will, to a time he clearly loved and yet, somehow, even weeping for it, does not want to be taken there. "In spite of myself" -- why does he want to stay in the present, why is he inevitably drawn into the past, why does he weep for what he has lost, and how much of it has he lost? We have none of his answers here, but only our own journey into the past and the questions posed to us . . .
Great point about the sounds in the poem, Beth. Notice, too, under the piano, "in the boom of the tingling strings," he's gesturing all the way back to the womb. I like the wordplay in the poem a lot: the two senses of "cast down" I mentioned, but also the two senses of "in spite of myself" — meaning "despite his own wishes" and "in spitefulness toward himself."
She posits that Lawrence was not writing pornography, but trying to recapture the primordial attraction of man and woman for each other, the "glamour" of that relationship.
I remember reading Lady Chatterley's Lover when I was in my early teens. My mother saw what I was reading and was appalled. "But Mom, it's Literature!", I said. She let me be...
But I admit that the romantic image from the novel that never went away was Mellors plaiting little flowers into the hair of his beloved. I'm not talking about the hair on her head... A practice that somehow never caught on.
First I must admit that I've never read any of Lawrence's novels and not that much of his poetry; he is one that I am familiar with at all simply because several of the poems have regularly appeared in the anthologies I taught from. This one I fell in love with the first time I read it, and it's only gotten lovelier to me over time. I always used it to show my students the beauty of sound: the way he uses the soft sounds (all those s sounds!) for most of it, but then the almost-harsh sounds of "burst into clamour / With the great black piano appassionato" . . . then falling back into the m's and s's and r's in the final line . . . Simply amazing. And the imagery -- as you say, the detail of the speaker sitting under the piano, pressing his hands on his mother's feet as she uses the pedals, is perfect, along with the sound of the strings and her smile as she sings. But what draws me most into the poem is the insistent drawing of the speaker into the past, against his will, to a time he clearly loved and yet, somehow, even weeping for it, does not want to be taken there. "In spite of myself" -- why does he want to stay in the present, why is he inevitably drawn into the past, why does he weep for what he has lost, and how much of it has he lost? We have none of his answers here, but only our own journey into the past and the questions posed to us . . .
Great point about the sounds in the poem, Beth. Notice, too, under the piano, "in the boom of the tingling strings," he's gesturing all the way back to the womb. I like the wordplay in the poem a lot: the two senses of "cast down" I mentioned, but also the two senses of "in spite of myself" — meaning "despite his own wishes" and "in spitefulness toward himself."
Oh, I'd never thought of "in spite of himself" as "in spitefulness" -- yes, and how fascinating. Yet another level of thought and questioning . . .
Along with Patricia Snow you may rehabilitate Lawrence yet:
https://www.firstthings.com/article/2024/01/self-abuse
She posits that Lawrence was not writing pornography, but trying to recapture the primordial attraction of man and woman for each other, the "glamour" of that relationship.
I remember reading Lady Chatterley's Lover when I was in my early teens. My mother saw what I was reading and was appalled. "But Mom, it's Literature!", I said. She let me be...
But I admit that the romantic image from the novel that never went away was Mellors plaiting little flowers into the hair of his beloved. I'm not talking about the hair on her head... A practice that somehow never caught on.