Reconsidering D.H. Lawrence

At suggestion of friend WS have re-read D.H. Lawrence's story The Prussian Officer; had last read Lawrence 40+ years ago, and who wouldn't say the same. Lawrence was an enshrined member of the "canon" back when I was in college and grad school, considered avant-garde and groundbreaking, ranked among the greatest modern British novelists alongside Woolf and Forster. Probably no author's reputation has slipped further over the past two generations of readers: where as one time Lawrence was considered progressive (at least regarding social mores, not politics) and even feminist, today his views seem quaint, odd, and reactionary. Who could stand reading Women in Love or The Rainbow today? Even WS, once a Lawrence acolyte or fan at least, tried The Rainbow and could barely, or maybe couldn't, make it through (over The Rainbow?). Yet maybe it's time to reconsider Lawrence a little bit - he may be one of those authors, James is another, appreciated in later years for a different aspect of his work. If The Prussian Officer is a fair example, I think maybe we can appreciate Lawrence today best for his short stories: if the novels seem daunting and tendentious, the stories - at least this one - are compact and dramatic. No doubt, elements of his stories do seem very dated as well: there is so much fustian (is that the right word?) description of landscape in Prussian, far more than in contemporary style or taste. Yet for all the dressing-up, it's a minimalist story at heart: only two characters, barely a line of dialogue, and it centers, in Aristotelian fashion, on a single action and a single day: in short, the sadistic officer severely beats his orderly, the orderly suffers from the injuries during a long and painful march the next morning; the orderly, no longer able to endure his suffering and fear, kills the officer with his bare hands and then runs from his brigade, and dies of thirst and exposure. The bodies are laid out side by side. Presumably, other soldiers see the orderly's wounds (deep bruises from being kicked in the ass) and piece the story together. This is simply a great psychological story, which has us deeply involved in the orderly's consciousness throughout - we suffer with him, as in few other stories. It's also a story about class oppression and about cruelty and sadism. One aspect probably not much talked about a century, or even 40 years, ago is the homoerotic element: the officer's attack on the orderly fulfills some kind of sexual drive (he is unhappy with women, and he is enraged that his orderly is writing a love poem to his "gal"); the beating, and it's aftermath, with of silent guilty and refusal to make eye contact, is much like a rape and post-rape trauma. An extremely powerful and disturbing story.