Ludwig Lewisohn on “The Creative Eros”

In an analysis of the life and works of Ludwig Lewisohn1 it was pointed out how closely he was indebted for his productions to the well-springs of his inner and outer problems. His creative genius was considered to have had its source both in the frustration of his youthful ambition to find a career in the field of American letters, for which he blamed racial prejudice; and in the painful emotional experiences engendered by an incompatible mixed marriage. The opinion was further offered that in his belated and overdetermined flight back to the faith of his ancestors he was seeking maternal protection as a haven and solace from the hurts afflicted upon him. As he has written:

“Even Jews, who had wholly lost their traditions and their pride evidently still had that instinctive feeling for their parents as mothers and elders in Israel. … No human being ever got over the shock of birth, and all our seeking of human or physical shelter is an obscure urge back to the security of the womb.”

In almost all of his works one finds that the impelling force in his life is an overwhelming desire to return to the protection of his mother. As previously elaborated upon1, a day-dreaming childhood was nurtured and intensified by a mother who was baffled by the crudeness and violence of a husband who was unruly and delusional. His marriage to a woman considerably older than himself, who, as he says, became for a while “a vicarious refuge” in place of his mother, soon ended catastrophically. His soul-mate he then promptly found in a young woman, not the least of whose appeal for him consisted in her decidedly maternal nature, as he wished to believe.

By the same token, the œdipus complex of Lewisohn is no more vigorously and emphatically stated than in his latest novel, “The Golden Vase” . In this story, John Ridgevale, an American writer, has been married for thirty years to Katherine, who has borne him two children, and is a good wife as the world views it. But