SOURCE: “On Dostoievsky and Rozanov,” in Russian Literature and Modern English Fiction: A Collection of Critical Essays, edited by Donald Davie, The University of Chicago Press, 1965, pp. 99-103.

In the following review of Solitaria, originally published in 1936, Lawrence finds Rozanov's “Russianizing” tiresome, but admits the his work shows promise.

We are told on the wrapper of this book [Solitaria] that Prince Mirsky considered Rozanov “one of the greatest Russians of modern times. … Rozanov is the greatest revelation of the Russian mind yet to be shown to the West.”

We become diffident, confronted with these superlatives. And when we have read E. Gollerbach's long “Critico-Biographical Study,” forty-three pages, we are more suspicious still, in spite of the occasionally profound and striking quotations from Solitaria and from the same author's Fallen Leaves. But there we are; we've got another of these morbidly introspective Russians, morbidly wallowing in adoration of Jesus...