St Maur and The Man who Died Author:D. H. Lawrence St. Mawr, I suppose, would commonly be described as a long short-story - a nouvelle, rather than a novel. Actually, that description, with its limiting effect, has a marked infelicity. It certainly doesn't suggest the nature or weight of the astonishing work of genius that Lawrence's "dramatic poem" is. St Mawr seems to me to p... more »resent a creative and technical originality not less remarkable than that of The Waste Land, and to be, more unquestionably than that poem, completely achieved, a full and self-sufficient creation. It can hardly strike the admirer as anything but major." F.R. Leavis
The Man Who Died
Lawrence liked the four gospels except for the last episodes. The Ascension, however corporeal, seemed untrue to man's experience. By remaking the story of Jesus, as he had remade the story of dying and returning Quetzalcoatl, Lawrence meant to improve Christianity - to make a "real living religion" out of it. With the aid of Frazer's Osiris, the Man who Died became Lawrence's final symbol of life, but what may prove more important, he is the central figure of a great design. - William York Tindall« less