Glad Ghosts

by D.H. Lawrence

"Glad ghosts" by D. H. Lawrence is a quirky and tasteful book that follows Lawrence's signature style. Though one of his lesser-known books, it's still a tale that captures the hearts and minds of everyone who reads it. Surprisingly, this was the author's first published work of fiction and was inspired by his trip to final Europe in the early 1900s.

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction

78 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1926

About the author

David Herbert Richards Lawrence was an English writer of the 20th century, whose prolific and diverse output included novels, short stories, poems, plays, essays, travel books, paintings, translations, literary criticism, and personal letters. His collected works represent an extended reflection upon the dehumanizing effects of modernity and industrialisation. In them, Lawrence confronts issues relating to emotional health and vitality, spontaneity, human sexuality and instinct.

Lawrence's opinions earned him many enemies and he endured official persecution, censorship, and misrepresentation of his creative work throughout the second half of his life, much of which he spent in a voluntary exile he called his "savage pilgrimage." At the time of his death, his public reputation was that of a pornographer who had wasted his considerable talents. E. M. Forster, in an obituary notice, challenged this widely held view, describing him as "the greatest imaginative novelist of our generation." Later, the influential Cambridge critic F. R. Leavis championed both his artistic integrity and his moral seriousness, placing much of Lawrence's fiction within the canonical "great tradition" of the English novel. He is now generally valued as a visionary thinker and a significant representative of modernism in English literature.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D.H._Law...

Reviews

[Jamie]

I attended the same university that D.H. Lawrence did (although obviously not at the same time) and lemme tell you that they are super proud of their famous alumni. They've named things after him and mention him repeatedly on their website and there are classes focused entirely on his books, and I honestly wouldn't be surprised if they had a sandwich named after him in one of the cafeterias. Somehow, though, I managed to spend two years there (as a post-grad English literature major, nonetheless) and came out on the other side still having never read a single thing that he's written. And so here I am at long last, having finally sought out something by the much-worshipped Mr. Lawrence, and … huh. That was weird. I guess I should have taken that D.H. Lawrence module after all because I'm not entirely sure that I get it.

As far as I can tell, this story is about a sexually-frustrated ghost who is unhappy that her husband has remarried even though she was the one who told him to. And there's a point where people are sort of swapping partners (not like that, get your mind out of the gutter) but then they switch back and I dunno even what was happening there. And, yeah, that's all I've got. It wasn't bad exactly but also I was just kind of “WTF?” at the end.

So, yeah, two stars for the writing and then an extra star because I think they might come and take away my university degree if I give this story a low rating?

[Dave Schaafsma]

I was looking for a DH Lawrence ghost story and this is my first one, maybe (some categorize "The Rocking Horse Winner" as one though it seems like it is more psychological than supernatural). Lawrence wrote it in 1925, a time in which many people seemed open to spiritualism, psychic phenomena, seances, mediums, and so on. It's quite strange, and I hear he struggled with it for many weeks, longer than he typically took with stories, and it's a longish story. more than seventy pages.

Lawrence was really interested in so many things, and psychology was among them--he rote a book on his own idiosyncratic take on Freudian psychoanalysis, exploring the centrality of the sex drive in human relations, obviously. "Glad Ghosts" is a story I don't fully understand, but I would say it is a ghost story, a sex story, and a grief story.

A man visits the house of a friend where a man has lost his wife. Grieving, but I would say unsuccessfully, in that he is unable to move on with his new wife. The ghost in the story--that no one questions is a ghost, as she makes things happen in the house--is the man's former wife, who holds him, seems to want to control him. She's a "glad ghost" she still has him!

“I daren’t offend Lucy’s spirit. If I do, I suffer tortures till I’ve made my peace again, till she folds me in her arms. Then I can live. But she won’t let me go near the present Mrs. Hale. I – I – I daren’t go near her.”

The lady of the house, Mrs. Lathkill, is the channeler, the medium, for Hale's dead wife, keeping him from truly connecting with his new wife. I like the story in part because I don't fully understand it, but in a second reading I think it is more a grief story than anything else, with passages like this to entrance and mystify:

"I must have gone far, far down the intricate galleries of sleep, to the very heart of the world. For I now know I passed on beyond the strata of images and words, beyond the iron veins of memory, and even the jewel of rest, to sink in the final dark like a fish, dumb, soundless, and imageless, yet alive and swimming. And at the very core of the deep night the ghost came to me, at the heart of the ocean of oblivion, which is also the heart of life. Beyond hearing, or even knowledge of contact, I met her and knew her. How I know it I don’t know. Yet I know it with eyeless, wingless knowledge."

[Laura]

Free download available at Project Gutenberg

I made the proofing of this book for Free Literature and Project Gutenberg will publish it,

[البهلول أحمد مصطفى]

رواية "أشباح سعيدة" للكاتب د. هـ. لورانس هي رواية قصيرة يُرجح أنها كُتبت في أوائل القرن العشرين. يمزج هذا العمل الأدبي بين مواضيع الحب والفقدان وتأثيرات الماضي على الحاضر، مستكشفًا تعقيدات العلاقات الإنسانية، لا سيما في ظل قيود الطبقة الاجتماعية والمآسي الشخصية. تتناول الرواية حياة شخصياتها وهم يكافحون من أجل هوياتهم وعلاقاتهم في عالم يتسم بالاغتراب الجسدي والعاطفي. تتكشف القصة من منظور مارك مورييه، الذي يسترجع ذكريات صداقته القديمة مع كارلوتا فيل، الفنانة المنحدرة من عائلة أرستقراطية ثرية. وبينما تتزوج كارلوتا من اللورد لاثكيل وتواجه تحديات حياتها الجديدة، بما في ذلك الخسائر المأساوية خلال الحرب العالمية الأولى وبعدها، يتعمق لورانس في الاضطرابات العاطفية التي تعصف بحياتهم. تستكشف الحبكة موضوع الذكريات المؤلمة، لا سيما من خلال شخصية الكولونيل هيل، الذي يبدو أن زوجته الراحلة، لوسي، لا تزال حاضرة في حياتهم، مؤثرةً على سلامتهم النفسية. تواجه الشخصيات صراعاتها الداخلية، كاشفةً عن رغباتها في التواصل وتداعيات الحب غير المُكتمل، مما يُفضي إلى لحظات إدراك عميق للحياة والموت وتداخل الأرواح. وتختتم الرواية القصيرة بنبرة أمل ممزوجة بالحزن والفرح، إذ تلد كارلوتا ابنًا، مُعلنةً بداية جديدة وسط أصداء الماضي.
https://www.mediafire.com/file/slfzyf...

[süveyda]

gotik sürükleyici bir eser bekliyordum ama aradığımı buladım. kısa öykü olmasına rağmen ilk yirmi sayfasını oldukça zor okudum..

[Ekin]

tasteful. just like ma man Lawrence.

[R]

Sevgisiz bir hayatın insanı ruhsal bir ölüme sürüklediğini anlatırken, gerçek aşkın hem bu dünyada hem de ölümden sonra ruhu özgürleştirebileceğini savunur. Kitap, karakterlerin duygusal uyanışlarını ve geçmişteki eksik bağlarını "hayaletler" metaforu üzerinden işleyen derin bir psikolojik öyküdür.

[Becci]

Predictable

[Ceren Tantaş]

It was a bit weird.

[Aj]

Fun in the parts where something was happening, but the pontificating about life and death dragged on.

[Egemen]

İnsanın kendi yaşamını ve genel olarak insanlığı sorgulatan bir yapıt olsa da metindeki hızlı geçişler ve anlatım beni yer yer zorladı.