The Effect of Mrs. Rudolf Dircks' Translation of Schopenhauer's "The Metaphysics of Love" on D. H. Lawrence's Early Fiction

Abstract

A friend commented on D. H. during 1906, his first year at Nottingham University College, Bert began to change and I asked him if College was doing it, or was it Schopenhauer? 'Life,' he said, 'and it gives me dyspepsia.' ' This study is concerned with Schopenhauer's contribution to Lawrence's spiritual dyspepsia, since a confirmation of Lawrence's maturing views on religion, sex, and literary subjectivity was made by The Metaphysics of Love, a copy of which annotated in 1908 for Jessie Chambers. That copy is not presently available for study and the citations here are taken from Emile Delavenay's 1936 article, Sur un Exemplaire de Annote par D. H. Lawrence (Revue Anglo-Americaine, February 1936, pp. 234-8), more recently reprinted in Nehls I, 66-70. Recent opinion sees Schopenhauer's work as a considerable influence on in his early years, agreeing with Jessie Chambers' biographical assessment: Schopenhauer seemed to fit in with his [Lawrence's] mood. He thought he found there an explanation of his own divided attitude and he remained under the influence of this line of reasoning for some time.2 However, the crux of this paper has not heretofore been discussed: that this version of The Metaphysics of Love