The Prussian Officer and Other Stories

The Prussian Officer was the first story by D. H. Lawrence I’ve read and ever since I became his fervent aficionado for never before I have met an author so masterfully navigating the dark currents of human psyche… Gradually the officer had become aware of his servant's young, vigorous, unconscious p......more

The Prussian Officer is perhaps the best-known of D.H. Lawrence's short stories, often included in anthologies, and cited as an example of queer (or crypto-queer) literature. The story is a brutal depiction of the horrible power of repression and denial, and portrays homoerotic attraction as a form......more

This is my first book by Lawrence, and I am greatly impressed. These short stories were published near the beginning of his writing career; yet they show a mature writer with a fully developed voice. Several qualities are immediately apparent. The first is Lawrence’s exquisite sensitivity to nature.......more

I do not know why the editor of the anthology where I found this story says that D. H. Lawrence "shows here a prophetic insight into the roots of the perverse cruelty that flourished later under the Nazis." There is a palpable sexual tension here, at the beginning, between the Prussian officer (a Ca......more

I find ‘The Prussian Officer’ as an example of the creativity and insightfulness of D. H. Lawrence. In this work he showed a great understanding of psychoanalysis and the role of the defensive mechanism of the self, particularly the role of repression. The disturbing homoerotic impulses the Prussian......more