所有這些美國化和機械化都是為了推翻過去。而現在看看美國，它被自己編織的鐵絲網纏住，被自己的機器掌控。
——D·H·勞倫斯
What Lawrence saw in his eccentric, passionate reading of that literature was division, polarization and contradiction. Not so much among factions, parties, regions or races — ordinary politics doesn’t really enter his field of vision — as within individual hearts and the collective soul. Every American is “a torn divided monster,” he writes at one point.
勞倫斯以他那古怪而充滿激情的方式解讀這些文學作品，從中看到的是分裂、兩極化和矛盾。這些分裂、兩極化和矛盾並非存在於派系、政黨、地區或種族之間——普通的政治議題並不在他的關注範圍之內——而是存在於個人的內心和集體的靈魂之中。他曾寫道，每個美國人都是「一個被撕裂的、分裂的怪物」。
It has been a hundred years since D.H. Lawrence published “Studies in Classic American Literature,” and in the annals of literary criticism the book may still claim the widest discrepancy between title and content.
Not with respect to subject matter: As advertised, this compact volume consists of essays on canonical American authors of the 18th and 19th centuries — a familiar gathering of dead white men. Some (Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Walt Whitman) are still household names more than a century later, while others (Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur, Richard Henry Dana Jr.) have faded into relative obscurity. By the 1950s, when American literature was fully established as a respectable field of academic study, Melville’s “Moby-Dick,” Hawthorne’s “The Scarlet Letter,” Whitman’s “Leaves of Grass” and Crèvecoeur’s “Letters From an American Farmer” had become staples of the college and grad school syllabus, which is where I and many others found them in the later decades of the 20th century. Thank goodness Lawrence got there first.
This is not going to be one of those laments about how nobody reads the great old books anymore. Not many people read them when they first appeared, either. My point is that nobody ever read them like Lawrence did — as madly, as wildly or as insightfully.
That’s what I mean about the gap between the book and its title. “Studies in Classic American Literature” is as dull a phrase as any committee of professors could devise. Just try to say those five words without yawning. But look inside and you will be jolted awake.
In在威爾弗雷德·M·麥克萊的《美國歷史學生指南》中，他列舉了26本書，並稱之為「美國經典」。其中大部分我都讀過（像是《美國的民主》、《聯邦黨人文集》、《白鯨》等等），但有四本我還是第一次接觸，包括D·H·勞倫斯的《美國經典文學研究》。
「這位英國色情作家對美國文學有什麼看法？」我心想。
幾十年來，我一直信奉「自然合一」的理論：扭曲的生活方式造就扭曲的思維。如果一個人的生活被激情所支配，那麼他的思維也會被激情所扭曲。例如，對於那些沉溺於性愛的人來說，性就是一切……或至少是女王（如果你是聖公會教徒，或許還能當上主教）。沉溺於性愛的人無法清楚地思考性，因為他們被性所支配。
所以我原本以為《查泰萊夫人的情人》的作者不會對美國發表太多看法，尤其考慮到他來自英國。
我錯了。他的書很有力量，充滿了睿智而新穎（而且幽默……錦上添花）的見解，比如這句：“試圖了解任何一個生命體，就如同試圖吸乾它的生命力……” ……
他也說過一些蠢話，但他對美國生活的諸多觀察，堪比托克維爾的《論美國的民主》、切斯特頓的《我在美國所見》以及桑塔亞納的《美國的性格與觀點》。
例如：
當美國決心摧毀國王、領主和主人，以及歐洲優越論的一切附屬品時，它卻將一根針釘入了自己的身體，如今它仍然被這根針釘住，痛苦地掙扎、嗡嗡作響、扭動著。這根針釘住的是民主平等。自由。
除非你拔出這根針，承認與生俱來的不平等，否則美國將永遠沒有真正的生命。與生俱來的優越，與生俱來的劣勢。在此之前，美國人就像各種各樣的螺旋槳一樣嗡嗡作響，被他們的自由和平等束縛著。 his Student’s Guide to U.S. History, Wilfred M. McClay assembled a list of 26 books and called them “An American Canon.” I was acquainted with most of them (Democracy in America, The Federalist, Moby Dick, etc.), but four were new to me, including D.H. Lawrence’s Studies in Classic American Literature.
“What,” I wondered, does that British pornographer have to say about American literature?”
For decades I’ve subscribed to the doctrine of connaturality: distorted living creates distorted thinking. If a person’s life is ruled by passion, his of her thinking will be distorted by passion. For the sexually illicit, for instance, sex is king . . . or at least a queen (and maybe bishop, if you’re Episcopalian). The sexually-illicit don’t think clearly about sex because they’re ruled by sex.
So I didn’t think the Chatterley dude would have a whole lot to say about the United States, especially since he was from Britain.
I was wrong. His book is strong, filled with wise and novel (and funny . . . bonus) observations, like this: “But to try to know any living being is to try to suck the life out of that being. . …
He says some stupid things, too, but he makes many observations about American life that rank with de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America, Chesterton’s What I Saw in America, and Santayana’s Character and Opinion in the United States.
Sample:
When America set out to destroy Kings and Lords and Masters, and the whole paraphernalia of European superiority, it pushed a pin right through its own body, and on that pin it still flaps and buzzes and twists in misery. The pin of democratic equality. Freedom.
There’ll never be any life in America till you pull the pin out and admit natural inequality. Natural superiority, natural inferiority. Till such time, Americans just buzz around like various sorts of propellers, pinned down by their freedom and equality.
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元大台灣中型100ETF，台股代號:0051， 2006年8月24日成立，同年八月31日掛牌。
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