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Twilight in Italy
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104 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 1916
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About the author
D.H. Lawrence
2,084 books4,176 followersDavid 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...
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...
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 45 reviews
August 28, 2021
Year of New Authors
D.H Lawrence journey's through Italy in an extremely unhelpful travel guide.
I was going to write the entirity of this review as a snarky 'I'd never finished a Lawrence book before. Now I have and I'm delighted to know I don't have to read D.H bloody Lawrence anymore'. I admitedly went into this with prejudice against the author after all my previous failed attempts at his other works and though I may have chosen unwisely from his bibliography, I swear I forced myself to find some good points, and my God did I struggle.
His depiction of Italians is borderline bestial, like some pith helmeted colonialist admiring the marvellous manners of the natives, viewing an old woman spinning as somehow symbolising the universe in her simplicitly (in a disjointed, bizarre quasi-religious rant that goes on for pages and pages, while she clearly wishes Lawrence would piss off and stop staring at her).
These odd indulges in religious fervor seem to strike like a brief fever, and at one point Lawrence literally switches from a long diatribe on the holy trinity to a discussion on citrus fruit prices, which was disconcerting to say the least.
He also has a habit of depicting most men like lumbering muscle with steaming overtones of sexual preadator, women as wholely seperate creatures, and both prefer emotion to thinking. I'm not entirely sure where Lawrence gets the confidence to psychoanalyse an entire nation's sexual and emotional habits, especially when his evidence seems to be the theatre and small snippets of culture. There may be some accuracy in his observations of Catholic life, but I hardly imagine the burbling git a trustworthy authority.
Lawrence also has the habit of repeating the same word over and over again, seemingly for no reason other than he lost his thesaurus back in Geneva. Most of his text seems unnecessary, either for aesthetics or information, the most egrecious example of pointless words to me being:
That painful prose 'choice' eases as the book goes on, thankfully, as does his ectasy sermons, but the Italy he creates doesn't really inspire or fascinate. Il Duro, a handsome man who claims he's 'seen too much' so now can't get married, and who Lawrence describes in the same way a primatologist would talk of the sad and almost human eyes of a gorilla, gets his own little section and Lawrence's borderline homoerotic admiration. The author repeatedly asks the poor sod the same question over and over in some search for an unstated meaning, all while recieving the same broken answer and meaningful stares, while I'm sitting there wondering if deleting a book from an e-reader will be as satisfying as frisbeeing a paperback from my window.
Lawrence gets some things right. I liked his description of a dance and the many odd crucifixes he discovers, including an eerie broken one which will likely stay in my head, but ultimately this feels like a very self-indulgent and solipstic pile of tosh.
My final take away is that Lawrence is less a philosopher and more that weird bloke on the bus soliloquising his gap year to you whether you like it or not, gargling the same sentences over and over, as he sups his Dad's Johnny Walker from an elaborately decorated canteen you know he bought in Minsk, because he gives you long, creepy speculations on the seller's psyche. Also he probably has an erection.
I remain not a fan.
D.H Lawrence journey's through Italy in an extremely unhelpful travel guide.
I was going to write the entirity of this review as a snarky 'I'd never finished a Lawrence book before. Now I have and I'm delighted to know I don't have to read D.H bloody Lawrence anymore'. I admitedly went into this with prejudice against the author after all my previous failed attempts at his other works and though I may have chosen unwisely from his bibliography, I swear I forced myself to find some good points, and my God did I struggle.
His depiction of Italians is borderline bestial, like some pith helmeted colonialist admiring the marvellous manners of the natives, viewing an old woman spinning as somehow symbolising the universe in her simplicitly (in a disjointed, bizarre quasi-religious rant that goes on for pages and pages, while she clearly wishes Lawrence would piss off and stop staring at her).
These odd indulges in religious fervor seem to strike like a brief fever, and at one point Lawrence literally switches from a long diatribe on the holy trinity to a discussion on citrus fruit prices, which was disconcerting to say the least.
He also has a habit of depicting most men like lumbering muscle with steaming overtones of sexual preadator, women as wholely seperate creatures, and both prefer emotion to thinking. I'm not entirely sure where Lawrence gets the confidence to psychoanalyse an entire nation's sexual and emotional habits, especially when his evidence seems to be the theatre and small snippets of culture. There may be some accuracy in his observations of Catholic life, but I hardly imagine the burbling git a trustworthy authority.
Lawrence also has the habit of repeating the same word over and over again, seemingly for no reason other than he lost his thesaurus back in Geneva. Most of his text seems unnecessary, either for aesthetics or information, the most egrecious example of pointless words to me being:
‘But Agamemnon, king and Lord, was not infallible. He was fallible’.Yes, thank you, Lawrence, as I must have an IQ on par with a ham sandwich I clearly needed that clarification.
That painful prose 'choice' eases as the book goes on, thankfully, as does his ectasy sermons, but the Italy he creates doesn't really inspire or fascinate. Il Duro, a handsome man who claims he's 'seen too much' so now can't get married, and who Lawrence describes in the same way a primatologist would talk of the sad and almost human eyes of a gorilla, gets his own little section and Lawrence's borderline homoerotic admiration. The author repeatedly asks the poor sod the same question over and over in some search for an unstated meaning, all while recieving the same broken answer and meaningful stares, while I'm sitting there wondering if deleting a book from an e-reader will be as satisfying as frisbeeing a paperback from my window.
Lawrence gets some things right. I liked his description of a dance and the many odd crucifixes he discovers, including an eerie broken one which will likely stay in my head, but ultimately this feels like a very self-indulgent and solipstic pile of tosh.
My final take away is that Lawrence is less a philosopher and more that weird bloke on the bus soliloquising his gap year to you whether you like it or not, gargling the same sentences over and over, as he sups his Dad's Johnny Walker from an elaborately decorated canteen you know he bought in Minsk, because he gives you long, creepy speculations on the seller's psyche. Also he probably has an erection.
I remain not a fan.
August 29, 2022
Herbie, as we were wont to call the Love and Lover-man, lived on Lago di Garda, where I babysat my two year old grandson at Riva del Garda while his Mom was off working for a London law firm most of the week. With classic errors in the Italian I had read for 34 years, I reassured him, “Non preoccuparti, tua Momma sta andando,” Don’t worry, your Mom is going away.
Herbie was further south, past the lemon groves; in his day prior to WWI, my Riva was on the Austrian border, and there was smuggling across the mountains. Lawrence was down in Gargnano with its two nearby monasteries, San Tommaso up on a hill above the town, the “Church of the Eagle,” and San Francesco right on the shore. Looking for the path up to the “plateau of heaven,” “I was quite baffled by the tortuous, tiny, deep passages of the village”(26). These passages led to old steps, used for centuries as occasional urinals. I first found these narrow paths in fortified hilltowns around Carrara like Nicola and Fontia. Wonderful to walk, the cart-wide steps with a rounded lip for mule-drawn carts. At Nicola I saw pieces of chicken thrown out of second-story windows down to the pavement for cats and maybe ravens.
DHL wrote this so young that his writing is better toward the end: "one could almost touch the stillness as one could touch the walls"(162), and "the strange, glassy translucency of the snow-lit air"(161).
Lawrence goes to the Theater at Salò on Garda. He sees D’Annunzio, Ibsen’s Spettri, which he considers depressingly phallic in the Scandinavian way, crossed with Italian phallicism (one thinks of the engraved phalluses at Pompei doorways), Good Luck. One night his padrone, the Di Paoli, invite him to Amleto, uno drama inglese. The evening honors the Actor-Director Enrico, sturdy short lead, on whom DHL is merciless. DHL arrives late, near the end of Act I: “Enrico looked a sad fool in his
melancholy black. The doublet…made him look stout and vulgar, the knee-breeches seemed to exaggerate the commonness of his thick, rather short, strutting legs”(73).
We may forget that for all his confrontation of bourgeois British manners, Herbie
was thoroughly British in his valuing of dress and appearance—the aristocratic leg, the tallish figure. He accuses the whole cast, essentially, of not being English. The King and Queen were “touching. The Queen, burly little peasant woman…The King, her noble consort…had new clothes. His body was real enough, but it had nothing to do with his clothes. They established a separate identity by themselves”(74).
But Lawrence is also very critical of Hamlet the character: “His nasty poking into his mother…his conceited perversion with Ophelia, make him always intolerable…repulsive, based on self-dislike.” Enrico played him as “the modern Italian, suspicious, isolated, self-nauseated, laboring in a sense of physical corruption.” A later Italian historian, Fabio Cusin, would agree on the suspicion, isolation and self-disgust, in his Antistoria d’Italia (1970).
DHL says To be, or not… “does not mean to live or not to live…[but the] supreme I, the King and Father. To be or not to be King, Father, in the Self supreme? And the decision is, not to be”(77). He runs on about the deepest impulse in man, the religious impulse, or the desire to be immortal. He argues for the ancients, the supreme I, the Ego ruled, but for Christians, supremacy involves renunciation, surrender to the Not-Self. The pagan Ego became the greatest sin: Pride, the way to total damnation.
A US citizen in 2018 cannot help but wonder how the “Christian Right (wing)” came to forget the worst Christian sin of Pride, the foolish pride of the US Trumpster president. And DHL has his own Brexit: "I was free in this heavy, ice-cold air, alone. London, far away below, beyond, England, Germany, France...this continent all beneath was unreal, false, non-existent in its activity...It was so big, yet it had no significance"(163). And a century later, DHL has our global encroachment and environmental extinctions right: "the hideous rawness of the world of men, the horrible, desolating harshness of the advance of the industrialized world upon the world of nature, that is so painful" (160).
Herbie was further south, past the lemon groves; in his day prior to WWI, my Riva was on the Austrian border, and there was smuggling across the mountains. Lawrence was down in Gargnano with its two nearby monasteries, San Tommaso up on a hill above the town, the “Church of the Eagle,” and San Francesco right on the shore. Looking for the path up to the “plateau of heaven,” “I was quite baffled by the tortuous, tiny, deep passages of the village”(26). These passages led to old steps, used for centuries as occasional urinals. I first found these narrow paths in fortified hilltowns around Carrara like Nicola and Fontia. Wonderful to walk, the cart-wide steps with a rounded lip for mule-drawn carts. At Nicola I saw pieces of chicken thrown out of second-story windows down to the pavement for cats and maybe ravens.
DHL wrote this so young that his writing is better toward the end: "one could almost touch the stillness as one could touch the walls"(162), and "the strange, glassy translucency of the snow-lit air"(161).
Lawrence goes to the Theater at Salò on Garda. He sees D’Annunzio, Ibsen’s Spettri, which he considers depressingly phallic in the Scandinavian way, crossed with Italian phallicism (one thinks of the engraved phalluses at Pompei doorways), Good Luck. One night his padrone, the Di Paoli, invite him to Amleto, uno drama inglese. The evening honors the Actor-Director Enrico, sturdy short lead, on whom DHL is merciless. DHL arrives late, near the end of Act I: “Enrico looked a sad fool in his
melancholy black. The doublet…made him look stout and vulgar, the knee-breeches seemed to exaggerate the commonness of his thick, rather short, strutting legs”(73).
We may forget that for all his confrontation of bourgeois British manners, Herbie
was thoroughly British in his valuing of dress and appearance—the aristocratic leg, the tallish figure. He accuses the whole cast, essentially, of not being English. The King and Queen were “touching. The Queen, burly little peasant woman…The King, her noble consort…had new clothes. His body was real enough, but it had nothing to do with his clothes. They established a separate identity by themselves”(74).
But Lawrence is also very critical of Hamlet the character: “His nasty poking into his mother…his conceited perversion with Ophelia, make him always intolerable…repulsive, based on self-dislike.” Enrico played him as “the modern Italian, suspicious, isolated, self-nauseated, laboring in a sense of physical corruption.” A later Italian historian, Fabio Cusin, would agree on the suspicion, isolation and self-disgust, in his Antistoria d’Italia (1970).
DHL says To be, or not… “does not mean to live or not to live…[but the] supreme I, the King and Father. To be or not to be King, Father, in the Self supreme? And the decision is, not to be”(77). He runs on about the deepest impulse in man, the religious impulse, or the desire to be immortal. He argues for the ancients, the supreme I, the Ego ruled, but for Christians, supremacy involves renunciation, surrender to the Not-Self. The pagan Ego became the greatest sin: Pride, the way to total damnation.
A US citizen in 2018 cannot help but wonder how the “Christian Right (wing)” came to forget the worst Christian sin of Pride, the foolish pride of the US Trumpster president. And DHL has his own Brexit: "I was free in this heavy, ice-cold air, alone. London, far away below, beyond, England, Germany, France...this continent all beneath was unreal, false, non-existent in its activity...It was so big, yet it had no significance"(163). And a century later, DHL has our global encroachment and environmental extinctions right: "the hideous rawness of the world of men, the horrible, desolating harshness of the advance of the industrialized world upon the world of nature, that is so painful" (160).
December 28, 2018
Apesar do título do livro ser "Crepúsculo em Itália", D. H. Lawrence não fala assim tanto acerca de Itália. Melhor ainda, fala, mas foca-se essencialmente nas impressões com que vai ficando durante a viagem que faz do Sul da Alemanha ao Norte de Itália.
O livro é composto por um conjunto de ensaios, escritos por volta da Primeira Guerra Mundial, possibilitando ao leitor captar um pouco do espírito da época. E, nesse sentido, senti algum tipo de preconceito inicial em relação ao modo como fala dos italianos por comparação aos alemães, por exemplo. Note-se que o autor é inglês.
Por outro lado, "Crepúsculo em Itália" foca-se mais na paisagem humana, digamos assim, do que propriamente na paisagem física. O que, no meu entender, se trata de um aspecto particularmente interessante porque nos permite apreender melhor e reconstruir a realidade destes países na época.
Gostei, embora admita que estivesse à espera de um pouco mais...
O livro é composto por um conjunto de ensaios, escritos por volta da Primeira Guerra Mundial, possibilitando ao leitor captar um pouco do espírito da época. E, nesse sentido, senti algum tipo de preconceito inicial em relação ao modo como fala dos italianos por comparação aos alemães, por exemplo. Note-se que o autor é inglês.
Por outro lado, "Crepúsculo em Itália" foca-se mais na paisagem humana, digamos assim, do que propriamente na paisagem física. O que, no meu entender, se trata de um aspecto particularmente interessante porque nos permite apreender melhor e reconstruir a realidade destes países na época.
Gostei, embora admita que estivesse à espera de um pouco mais...
November 14, 2025
Cennet kadar saf ve aşkın bakışlarla bana baktı. Hafiften etkilenmişti.
Bana bakmak için yaptığı dönüşte bir kartalın hafifliği vardı. Gözlerinde
uzaklardaki bir ışığın solgun parıltısı. Kulağına yabancı gelen italyancamdan
ötürüydü bu.
"Yün eğirmek için eski bir yöntem," diye yineledim.
"Evet eski bir yöntem." Bu sözcükleri söylemek onun için doğalmış gibi yineledi.
Ve ben onun için yeniden geçici bir olaya dönüştüm, bir adam, çevrenin bir parçası
oldum. İkimiz de konuşma yetisine sahiptik, hepsi bu kadardı.
Bana yine baktı, olağanüstü, değişmez, düşünceden uzak, görünür hale gelmiş cennete
benzeyen gözlerle, ya da saf, duru bir bilinçsizlikle açmış iki çiçeği andıran gözleriyle.
Ben onun için çevrenin bir parçasıydım. Hepsi bu. Dünyası saf ve mutlaktı, benlik bilincinden
yoksundu. Benliğinin farkında değildi; çünkü evrende kendi evreni dışında bir şeyin var
olduğundan haberi yoktu. Onun dünyasında bir yabancıydım, yabancı bir signore. Onunkinden
farklı bir dünyam olduğunu düşünemiyordu. Kafa yormuyordu böyle şeylere.
Bizde yıldızları böyle algılarız. Başka dünyalar olduğu söylenir bize. Ama yıldızlar
dünyamızın gece göğünde kümeler halinde ya da tek tek parlayan ışıklardır. Gece eve geldiğimde
yıldızlar vardır. Mikrokozmos olarak tek başıma var olmaktan vazgeçip, makrokozmosu, evreni
düşünmeye başladığımda, bu kez yıldızlar başka dünyalardır. Ve evren beni emip içine alır.
Ama evren ben değildir. O, ben olmayan , yani mikrokozmos olmayan bir şeydir.
Demek ki benim için bilinmez bile olsa, yine de var olan bir şey var. Ben sonluyum ve
kavrayışımın sınırları var. Evren, hem akıl yoluyla hem de ruhsal olarak, benim görebileceğimden
daha büyük. Yani ben olmayan bir şey var.
"Mars'ta yerleşilmiş," dersem, Mars'a yapılan gönderme bağlamında "yerleşilmiş" sözcüğü ile
ne demek istediğimi tam bilemem. Yalnızca o dünyanın benim dünyam olmadığını kastedebilirim.
Ben küçük evrenim, ama bir de ben olmayan büyük evren var.
İtalya'da Alacakaranlık ( Twilight in Italy )
D.H.Lawrence
Bana bakmak için yaptığı dönüşte bir kartalın hafifliği vardı. Gözlerinde
uzaklardaki bir ışığın solgun parıltısı. Kulağına yabancı gelen italyancamdan
ötürüydü bu.
"Yün eğirmek için eski bir yöntem," diye yineledim.
"Evet eski bir yöntem." Bu sözcükleri söylemek onun için doğalmış gibi yineledi.
Ve ben onun için yeniden geçici bir olaya dönüştüm, bir adam, çevrenin bir parçası
oldum. İkimiz de konuşma yetisine sahiptik, hepsi bu kadardı.
Bana yine baktı, olağanüstü, değişmez, düşünceden uzak, görünür hale gelmiş cennete
benzeyen gözlerle, ya da saf, duru bir bilinçsizlikle açmış iki çiçeği andıran gözleriyle.
Ben onun için çevrenin bir parçasıydım. Hepsi bu. Dünyası saf ve mutlaktı, benlik bilincinden
yoksundu. Benliğinin farkında değildi; çünkü evrende kendi evreni dışında bir şeyin var
olduğundan haberi yoktu. Onun dünyasında bir yabancıydım, yabancı bir signore. Onunkinden
farklı bir dünyam olduğunu düşünemiyordu. Kafa yormuyordu böyle şeylere.
Bizde yıldızları böyle algılarız. Başka dünyalar olduğu söylenir bize. Ama yıldızlar
dünyamızın gece göğünde kümeler halinde ya da tek tek parlayan ışıklardır. Gece eve geldiğimde
yıldızlar vardır. Mikrokozmos olarak tek başıma var olmaktan vazgeçip, makrokozmosu, evreni
düşünmeye başladığımda, bu kez yıldızlar başka dünyalardır. Ve evren beni emip içine alır.
Ama evren ben değildir. O, ben olmayan , yani mikrokozmos olmayan bir şeydir.
Demek ki benim için bilinmez bile olsa, yine de var olan bir şey var. Ben sonluyum ve
kavrayışımın sınırları var. Evren, hem akıl yoluyla hem de ruhsal olarak, benim görebileceğimden
daha büyük. Yani ben olmayan bir şey var.
"Mars'ta yerleşilmiş," dersem, Mars'a yapılan gönderme bağlamında "yerleşilmiş" sözcüğü ile
ne demek istediğimi tam bilemem. Yalnızca o dünyanın benim dünyam olmadığını kastedebilirim.
Ben küçük evrenim, ama bir de ben olmayan büyük evren var.
İtalya'da Alacakaranlık ( Twilight in Italy )
D.H.Lawrence
January 23, 2011
I've been reading this book on the Muni and the BART every morning, to and from work. San Francisco to Oakland, Oakland to San Francisco. Repeat, repeat. Almost done. It's a tiny book, a little slip of a thing. A magic elixir for the odd stain on the train seat. A soft and confiding voice in the din of transit warfare. Someone said somewhere in a disparaging review of this book that Lawrence certainly didn't need to leave home to write it. But of course he did. Leaving home is what he did. Repeat, repeat. Almost done. Year after year.
October 11, 2020
These 'essays' are probably better described as short travel stories - Lawrence's meditations as he traverses through Europe. Well-written and providing useful insights into the author's ever-contradictory ways of seeing the world, Twilight in Italy is a good read for anyone interested in the mechanics behind Lawrence's more famous works.
September 1, 2023
Inspiring.
I truly want to go and travel. Now let’s hope it does not remain with wanting only.
On the other side, it is quite depressing to read Lawrence’s remarks in a text published in 1916; over a century ago! Even then, already, he was aware of the rise of tourism, and the demise of authenticity it fostered. Already the effects of the mechanisation of human life were apparent, to him.
“But always there was the same purpose stinking in it all, the mechanizing, the perfect mechanizing of human life.”
That, and many other fragments of this text, perfectly puts to words my experience with the general way of the world. And then to think how much better it was, still, back then; to think how much worse it must be, now, then.
I truly want to go and travel. Now let’s hope it does not remain with wanting only.
On the other side, it is quite depressing to read Lawrence’s remarks in a text published in 1916; over a century ago! Even then, already, he was aware of the rise of tourism, and the demise of authenticity it fostered. Already the effects of the mechanisation of human life were apparent, to him.
“But always there was the same purpose stinking in it all, the mechanizing, the perfect mechanizing of human life.”
That, and many other fragments of this text, perfectly puts to words my experience with the general way of the world. And then to think how much better it was, still, back then; to think how much worse it must be, now, then.
January 9, 2020
It seems a great irony to me that I am now reading Lawrence's "travel" books simply because I have read all his major works and so this is all that is left. The main issue is the nomenclature, because "travel book" sounds as banal and insipid as it should hopefully ever be possible to be in the field of literature. But here is the plot twist, it's highly misleading.
So, what is it really? Well, it is pretty much an account of some times and experiences, but crucially as recounted by D.H. Lawrence! In case you had not guessed, this is the important ingredient that makes this travel book into something which transcends the tired expectations of this field of literary endeavour. To say it is breathtaking would be to trivialise it, because there are moments of such sublime beauty in here that it is impossible to fully grasp how he does it or even that it is really happening to you. You are immersed in a beautiful mind and see the world through the most refined and humane eyes. What an astonishing gift.
But yes, they are also human eyes as well as humane. Lawrence was not a Bodhisattva. Or if he was, he was an unusual form. His politics perhaps tended toward the conservative, his bitterness towards an England which ostracised him and didn't understand him comes through in places, and his confused sexuality sometimes muddles his narratives. That he sees the beauty in men is perhaps the key, while he sees the soft and inviting sexuality of woman, but he does not think that beautiful in the same way. He craves the oblivion of women only, but perhaps because he does not really understand them. What man does? But for Lawrence he cannot seem to let it be.
Another powerful strand of the magic of this work is his growing disenchantment with the increasingly industrial world. Lawrence saw this as it was happening. His sensitivity, erudition, what have you, was so innate that he seemed to sense the dying of the earth's soul even as it was first happening. And the physical journey he takes out of the peasant valleys of old Italy and into the increasingly industrialised border-towns of Switzerland, France and Germany, echoes the arc of industrialisation. We are left with a palpable sense of loss and yearning. It is truly powerful.
So, what is it really? Well, it is pretty much an account of some times and experiences, but crucially as recounted by D.H. Lawrence! In case you had not guessed, this is the important ingredient that makes this travel book into something which transcends the tired expectations of this field of literary endeavour. To say it is breathtaking would be to trivialise it, because there are moments of such sublime beauty in here that it is impossible to fully grasp how he does it or even that it is really happening to you. You are immersed in a beautiful mind and see the world through the most refined and humane eyes. What an astonishing gift.
But yes, they are also human eyes as well as humane. Lawrence was not a Bodhisattva. Or if he was, he was an unusual form. His politics perhaps tended toward the conservative, his bitterness towards an England which ostracised him and didn't understand him comes through in places, and his confused sexuality sometimes muddles his narratives. That he sees the beauty in men is perhaps the key, while he sees the soft and inviting sexuality of woman, but he does not think that beautiful in the same way. He craves the oblivion of women only, but perhaps because he does not really understand them. What man does? But for Lawrence he cannot seem to let it be.
Another powerful strand of the magic of this work is his growing disenchantment with the increasingly industrial world. Lawrence saw this as it was happening. His sensitivity, erudition, what have you, was so innate that he seemed to sense the dying of the earth's soul even as it was first happening. And the physical journey he takes out of the peasant valleys of old Italy and into the increasingly industrialised border-towns of Switzerland, France and Germany, echoes the arc of industrialisation. We are left with a palpable sense of loss and yearning. It is truly powerful.
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March 11, 2016Crossing the alps to Italia inspires Lawrence to tediously overthink anything Italiano and attach existential complexities to every Italian thing along the way. No dolce vita for D. H. Wah.
March 23, 2023
The First World War really was something wasn’t it. The confrontation of automated, industrial scale murder and the philosophical ideals of the Romantic school led to reflective works by certain authors that I, in my admittedly limited reading career, seem to find mostly unchallenged in their acuity and profundity. Riding the coattails of the Industrial Revolution, the First World War gave the grandest expression possible to the evils inherent in generalised mechanisation. And yet it wasn’t quite as technologically sophisticated as the warfare carried out in the Second World War, it occupies an awkward interim position which bore an unmistakably human element (I suppose of course that all wars inevitably do, and that this trend of sophistication has only gone on to exponentially increase over time, with that human element slowly but surely diminishing).
Now, to a reader who has just put down this short work and is quickly scanning the reviews on this site to get the general consensus on this book they may end up being slightly surprised by such an opening paragraph. Lawrence here has written a fairly nice little travelogue, at least one could certainly read it in that way. The mentions of the war are slim, there are soldiers on mountain ranges near Lugano performing military drills, and a few miles away from a particular inn Lawrence stays at the characteristic crack of gunfire and rumble of distant mortars and grenades ring out. But these things are brushed past, cursorily mentioned by him. And yet they preternaturally haunt the entire book, the rumination Lawrence haphazardly undertakes continuously bubbles over with a concerted fascination with death. His pen as he writes is sodden with the stuff of death, the Alps that engulf the landscapes he wanders through are death itself, with the sparse populations below them described as automaton-like outcasts obsessed by the melancholy Eternal, obsessed solely by it so that they can suppress the all-encroaching symbols of death which leer at them through their own cabin’s windows.
The war, and this war especially as a mechanised production of death, influences everything. The Weberian musings on disenchantment are rife, Lawrence managed to live long enough to not only read Nietzsche but to digest him, and assessed the various national characters along such lines. The cold hard rationalisation of the Northern population contrasted with the learnedness in the sensual and sensuous exhibited by the Southern peoples, the methods by which they both contend with the Phallus, the Godhead, with Death, with women and meaning, the ways in which the design of a crucifix betrays an entire network of meaning which shifts as Lawrence romps through country after country, the various crucifixes lining the endless series of roads giving off a character entirely different from the one preceding it. The need to unite the two Infinites, the Christian conception and the Pagan, under the Holy Spirit as a connective tissue of mystic reason: suffering their consummations, but standing beneath the absolute nature of their necessary union.
To become slightly less highbrow, cryptic and academic I must say that a great deal of this book consists of Lawrence simply comparing Italians to naive children. I’m not going to be a dullard and decry this as some great crime, but for a mind as great as Lawrence’s it seems like a bit of an unsophisticated position for him to take, it’s certainly beneath his calibre. But oh well! It’s occasionally funny. Of course Lawrence’s writing technique also shows its usual flaws once again, as his infamous method of not bothering to edit pieces but simply rewrite them in their entirety whenever he was dissatisfied with them leads to unintended repetition and occasional poor turns of phrase. However, the greatest part of this work is that it perfectly expounds the hints of a more developed philosophical position which can often be found by observant readers in his fictional work. It’s all here folks. Also there’s some pretty great analysis of Ibsen and Shakespeare in here.
Read it. It’s short. And it’s good.
Now, to a reader who has just put down this short work and is quickly scanning the reviews on this site to get the general consensus on this book they may end up being slightly surprised by such an opening paragraph. Lawrence here has written a fairly nice little travelogue, at least one could certainly read it in that way. The mentions of the war are slim, there are soldiers on mountain ranges near Lugano performing military drills, and a few miles away from a particular inn Lawrence stays at the characteristic crack of gunfire and rumble of distant mortars and grenades ring out. But these things are brushed past, cursorily mentioned by him. And yet they preternaturally haunt the entire book, the rumination Lawrence haphazardly undertakes continuously bubbles over with a concerted fascination with death. His pen as he writes is sodden with the stuff of death, the Alps that engulf the landscapes he wanders through are death itself, with the sparse populations below them described as automaton-like outcasts obsessed by the melancholy Eternal, obsessed solely by it so that they can suppress the all-encroaching symbols of death which leer at them through their own cabin’s windows.
The war, and this war especially as a mechanised production of death, influences everything. The Weberian musings on disenchantment are rife, Lawrence managed to live long enough to not only read Nietzsche but to digest him, and assessed the various national characters along such lines. The cold hard rationalisation of the Northern population contrasted with the learnedness in the sensual and sensuous exhibited by the Southern peoples, the methods by which they both contend with the Phallus, the Godhead, with Death, with women and meaning, the ways in which the design of a crucifix betrays an entire network of meaning which shifts as Lawrence romps through country after country, the various crucifixes lining the endless series of roads giving off a character entirely different from the one preceding it. The need to unite the two Infinites, the Christian conception and the Pagan, under the Holy Spirit as a connective tissue of mystic reason: suffering their consummations, but standing beneath the absolute nature of their necessary union.
To become slightly less highbrow, cryptic and academic I must say that a great deal of this book consists of Lawrence simply comparing Italians to naive children. I’m not going to be a dullard and decry this as some great crime, but for a mind as great as Lawrence’s it seems like a bit of an unsophisticated position for him to take, it’s certainly beneath his calibre. But oh well! It’s occasionally funny. Of course Lawrence’s writing technique also shows its usual flaws once again, as his infamous method of not bothering to edit pieces but simply rewrite them in their entirety whenever he was dissatisfied with them leads to unintended repetition and occasional poor turns of phrase. However, the greatest part of this work is that it perfectly expounds the hints of a more developed philosophical position which can often be found by observant readers in his fictional work. It’s all here folks. Also there’s some pretty great analysis of Ibsen and Shakespeare in here.
Read it. It’s short. And it’s good.
January 5, 2023
We travel down from Bavaria, through Austria and into Italy. Lawrence`s fascination with the locals and their religious fundament is pervasive. He examines the shrines together with their crucifixion effigies and how they change in character as his journey unfolds. He visits a church in Garda and writes about the nature of the religion he experiences there and how it differs from other Northern forms of Christianity. The writing here, on religion in particular is complex and I felt that it may be enjoyed by specialists in the subject or theologians. I got the sense that it was partly concerned with the split from Catholicism resulting from the Reformation and the associated North/South divide, the results of which can still be seen and felt today.
He visits a theatre where it seems the theatre company put on a production of Hamlet to honour their esteemed visitor. Lawrence expands at length on some of the main characters and their performance and how it is received by the locals. He digresses at length on Hamlet and Shakespeare.
It is Lawrence`s analysis of the people he meets and his descriptions of the places they inhabit which I enjoyed the most. This is in contrast to the fictional works of his which I have read, where the characters are his own invention, if based on real people. But the effect is the same. Whether real or fictional, there is the same fascination with the nature of the person.
In conclusion to his travels through Germany, Austria, Italy and Switzerland, Lawrence remarks on what he considers the regrettable but widespread march of society away from the traditional bucolic agricultural way of life where the peasant worked the land, toward a more industrial economy where the people are led into the factories and away from their fields. This is a recurring theme in Lawrence`s literature.
He visits a theatre where it seems the theatre company put on a production of Hamlet to honour their esteemed visitor. Lawrence expands at length on some of the main characters and their performance and how it is received by the locals. He digresses at length on Hamlet and Shakespeare.
It is Lawrence`s analysis of the people he meets and his descriptions of the places they inhabit which I enjoyed the most. This is in contrast to the fictional works of his which I have read, where the characters are his own invention, if based on real people. But the effect is the same. Whether real or fictional, there is the same fascination with the nature of the person.
In conclusion to his travels through Germany, Austria, Italy and Switzerland, Lawrence remarks on what he considers the regrettable but widespread march of society away from the traditional bucolic agricultural way of life where the peasant worked the land, toward a more industrial economy where the people are led into the factories and away from their fields. This is a recurring theme in Lawrence`s literature.
August 12, 2016
I always think DH uses 5 words when only 2 would suffice. Nice opinionated text though.
January 26, 2025
Lawrence never fails to entertain and madden: great for new acquaintance with stimulating philosophy and travel information.
June 6, 2021
More about the author than about Italy but still an interesting and often poetic glimpse of the region visited in the early 20th century.
November 28, 2018
This was my first venture into the essays of D H Lawrence; his first travel book set in northern Italy.
It follows his journey from Munich across the Alps to Riva del Garda and then on to the town of Gargnano on the southern western shore of Lake Garda where he stayed from the winter of 1912 to the spring of 1913.
Lawrence starts by writing about the crucifixes he finds on the mountain road, describing them as factory-made pieces of sentimentalism; monuments of physical death creating a darkness across the landscape with their shadows and mysteries; and beautiful elegies of self commiseration. These 'tainted and vulgar' effigies are made even more poignant by the vivid accounts of carvings of Christ 'hewn out of bare wood' which for Lawrence was 'significant of the true spirit, the desire to convey a religious truth, not a sensational experience.'
In the essays that follow, from time spent in the lakeside towns and villages, he describes the people he meets with much warmth and admiration; from the 'real Italian greatness' of local aristocrats, to the 'conscious ease' of ageing peasants who deny the advance of time, to the 'free-thinking, immoral and slightly cynical' attitudes of the young bloods at the theatre.
His descriptions of the landscape are exquisite throughout; taking in the powerful beauty of the mountains where 'the ice and the upper radiance of snow are brilliant with timeless immunity from the flux and the warmth of life', and looking down on the 'dim and milky lake' which looks like 'a moonstone in the dark hills' while above 'the sky gushes and glistens with light.'
Contrasts throughout the book between people and their environment are endearing such as the 'strange, clear beauty of form about the men of the Bavarian Highlands' with their 'blue eyes very keen, the pupil small, tightened, the iris keen, like sharp light shining on blue ice' and on collecting some little periwinkles he reflects that they were 'very blue, reminding [him] of the eyes of the old [spinner] woman.'
With further contrasts and reflections such as life and death, the mind and the senses, spiritual ecstasy and mechanical perfection, negative and positive, the old and the new, this is no ordinary travel book. It is more a work of philosophy with lively and charming insights into various aspects of Italian rural life.
A wonderful book and one I will be returning to many times for further discoveries and study, a favourite for all time.
It follows his journey from Munich across the Alps to Riva del Garda and then on to the town of Gargnano on the southern western shore of Lake Garda where he stayed from the winter of 1912 to the spring of 1913.
Lawrence starts by writing about the crucifixes he finds on the mountain road, describing them as factory-made pieces of sentimentalism; monuments of physical death creating a darkness across the landscape with their shadows and mysteries; and beautiful elegies of self commiseration. These 'tainted and vulgar' effigies are made even more poignant by the vivid accounts of carvings of Christ 'hewn out of bare wood' which for Lawrence was 'significant of the true spirit, the desire to convey a religious truth, not a sensational experience.'
In the essays that follow, from time spent in the lakeside towns and villages, he describes the people he meets with much warmth and admiration; from the 'real Italian greatness' of local aristocrats, to the 'conscious ease' of ageing peasants who deny the advance of time, to the 'free-thinking, immoral and slightly cynical' attitudes of the young bloods at the theatre.
His descriptions of the landscape are exquisite throughout; taking in the powerful beauty of the mountains where 'the ice and the upper radiance of snow are brilliant with timeless immunity from the flux and the warmth of life', and looking down on the 'dim and milky lake' which looks like 'a moonstone in the dark hills' while above 'the sky gushes and glistens with light.'
Contrasts throughout the book between people and their environment are endearing such as the 'strange, clear beauty of form about the men of the Bavarian Highlands' with their 'blue eyes very keen, the pupil small, tightened, the iris keen, like sharp light shining on blue ice' and on collecting some little periwinkles he reflects that they were 'very blue, reminding [him] of the eyes of the old [spinner] woman.'
With further contrasts and reflections such as life and death, the mind and the senses, spiritual ecstasy and mechanical perfection, negative and positive, the old and the new, this is no ordinary travel book. It is more a work of philosophy with lively and charming insights into various aspects of Italian rural life.
A wonderful book and one I will be returning to many times for further discoveries and study, a favourite for all time.
November 15, 2025
…or, what David Herbert did on his holidays, padded out with his A-level English and Theology essays, or possibly just accidentally slipped into what went to his publisher, given how a propos of not much at all his noddlings on Being and Not-being and Shakespeare appear to be.
I have quite some difficulty with this sort of book, being neither a narrative nor non-fiction with a coherent point to make. When done well, when done with poetry - Laurie Lee’s Spanish Trilogy, or Helen Macdonald’s H is for Hawk, for example - they justify themselves; this is poorly written (seriously, how many times does he call the Swiss average in how few ways?!), borderline drivel at worst, otherwise predominantly dull.
I have quite some difficulty with this sort of book, being neither a narrative nor non-fiction with a coherent point to make. When done well, when done with poetry - Laurie Lee’s Spanish Trilogy, or Helen Macdonald’s H is for Hawk, for example - they justify themselves; this is poorly written (seriously, how many times does he call the Swiss average in how few ways?!), borderline drivel at worst, otherwise predominantly dull.
October 9, 2020
Despite being coined as 'travel-writing' I'd argue it more appropriately a form introspective monologues and musings rather than particularly informative of European culture. Passages are heavily descriptive and thought provoking particularly 'The Theatre' was a great read - justapoxed to 'John' which felt unfortunately felt rushed/unfinished yet had the potential to be insightful. The saving grace for this collection of 'essays' is both Lawrence's detailed and selective descriptions as well as his stimulating philosophical tangents and meditations
November 23, 2023
Parts of the book are beautiful and insightful, but several passages contain such hostility towards women it is hard to read. I know it was written in another time, but it is still repulsive. His descriptions of Italians are imperialistic bullshit. He admits England isn’t all glory but still believe they are above the “primitive” Italians
October 8, 2025
I have many D H Lawrence books and, once, many years ago, I read them all. Now I have read 3 again and find them pleasant enough, but occasionally I find Lawrence’s focus on physicality a little hard to take. I enjoyed the short stories close to the end best. The walk from Switzerland into Northern Italy kept me interested as village after village presented their characters.
July 7, 2018
Picked this up as an ebook and have been reading it on and off on flights, a little bit at a time...there is heartbreaking beauty in the poetic language, and I loved this glimpse into a vanished Italy in all its ugliness and glory.
July 10, 2019
I had a very intimate connection with this book. Describes Italians how Italians never could. It also presages the rise of fascism in some ways.
February 14, 2020
A travel book with a difference, written by a man who is better known for novels. Interesting to think that it records a trip that he made across the alps into Italy, a place he clearly loved.
March 22, 2021
Is there any group of people the British didn't treat condescendingly? Geesh.
April 24, 2021
meditative
January 10, 2023
DNF, I wanted to like it but could not. Just can't get over the description of European people as something to be explored like some intricate flora and fauna from some far away land
March 21, 2024
A few good pieces of travel writing on the people and scenes encountered.
December 20, 2024
The best book I was forced to read in high school
September 6, 2017
I have enjoyed every book of Lawrence's, struggled with many, respected all, but I stand in awe of the beauty and majesty of this one. Lawrence clearly enjoyed writing it so much that I wondered that he was able to keep his feet upon the ground. When he walks in the warm sunshine and hears two friars speaking to one another, he manages with profound power to pull me from my doldrums and into his time to stand or walk with him. When he clambers among the rocks in search of flowers, I cannot say a word of reproach, because I know that there will be exquisite beauty revealed if only I am quiet for a moment more... and I am never disappointed.
Was this ever a travel book? Could it ever be? Were we meant to have an argument about things with Lawrence as if we were in high school? Or possibly we were meant to walk along and listen and watch and feel the majesty of his observations, sometimes blunt and harsh, other times exquisite and bordering on the ethereal, never leaving the human, even in the chasing down of all the interpretations of men-seeking God. When reading various passages, I would stop, put the book down and stare out the window for a while so that I might walk and listen with him just a while longer....and that was transcendent!
I suppose that years ago I wrestled like Jacob at Penuel and took offense at Lawrence, racing to judge him for this and that trifle. I learned that in doing so, I would miss the greater part of his magic with the images he would otherwise create....and Lawrence was never stingy with his portraits. I dare say he creates them with abandon and passion that is incapable of seeing things other than as a poet sees, incapable of following the path by which a poet is led. In that sense, it is pointless to argue that one does not agree or see eye to eye on particular points of view about things or people, that he is being cruel or unusually harsh in some place or other. One might as well argue about the ways in which colors are seen through a prism; when a master is putting the image back into a format, it is simply beneficial to listen to the beauty.
It has been months since I finished this book and I have thought about what to write about this book. On one hand, I was so elated by its beauty that I could hardly put it down. On the other, I was disappointed because I felt its tether straining to be released.
I began wondering why Lawrence wrote this book at all and I was forced to come to terms, as I always am with his literature, that he was making observations of a changing time and place against a larger backdrop of both immutability and worldly incomprehension. In may ways, Lawrence might have been writing about some new world government, a technocracy designed to make use of things and people without caring for them any longer. While I doubt that he could have foreseen our modern plight of soulless existence, flailing against unrighteousness without first seeking righteousness ourselves, Lawrence was no doubt aware of the way in which the world had a kind of planned obsolescence in mind for all individualism. The beauty of his writing, nevertheless, overcomes any possible critical argument I might have thrown at him at one time. Then again, perhaps understanding where the substance of beauty exists might be the key to great literature.
Was this ever a travel book? Could it ever be? Were we meant to have an argument about things with Lawrence as if we were in high school? Or possibly we were meant to walk along and listen and watch and feel the majesty of his observations, sometimes blunt and harsh, other times exquisite and bordering on the ethereal, never leaving the human, even in the chasing down of all the interpretations of men-seeking God. When reading various passages, I would stop, put the book down and stare out the window for a while so that I might walk and listen with him just a while longer....and that was transcendent!
I suppose that years ago I wrestled like Jacob at Penuel and took offense at Lawrence, racing to judge him for this and that trifle. I learned that in doing so, I would miss the greater part of his magic with the images he would otherwise create....and Lawrence was never stingy with his portraits. I dare say he creates them with abandon and passion that is incapable of seeing things other than as a poet sees, incapable of following the path by which a poet is led. In that sense, it is pointless to argue that one does not agree or see eye to eye on particular points of view about things or people, that he is being cruel or unusually harsh in some place or other. One might as well argue about the ways in which colors are seen through a prism; when a master is putting the image back into a format, it is simply beneficial to listen to the beauty.
It has been months since I finished this book and I have thought about what to write about this book. On one hand, I was so elated by its beauty that I could hardly put it down. On the other, I was disappointed because I felt its tether straining to be released.
I began wondering why Lawrence wrote this book at all and I was forced to come to terms, as I always am with his literature, that he was making observations of a changing time and place against a larger backdrop of both immutability and worldly incomprehension. In may ways, Lawrence might have been writing about some new world government, a technocracy designed to make use of things and people without caring for them any longer. While I doubt that he could have foreseen our modern plight of soulless existence, flailing against unrighteousness without first seeking righteousness ourselves, Lawrence was no doubt aware of the way in which the world had a kind of planned obsolescence in mind for all individualism. The beauty of his writing, nevertheless, overcomes any possible critical argument I might have thrown at him at one time. Then again, perhaps understanding where the substance of beauty exists might be the key to great literature.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
June 19, 2016
I began reading this book to accompany my recent travels. While Lawrence visited some of the same places I did, I didn't learn much about them. I was fairly certain I wouldn't, as it's not that kind of book - it's not a travel guide.. Things he sees, people he meets, places he's been trigger Lawrence's themes - the passionate south vs the cold north, dark vs light, the old (yes!) vs the new (yikes!), man vs woman...
I'll admit that I put the book down shortly after I began it, as I was not able or willing to deal with the tremendous detail given to roadside shrines (still don't love that part of it), but gradually his contemplations drew me in. Whether or not you're contemplating spending time on Lago di Garda, or trekking south from Zurich to Lugano, Lago Maggiore, Como, you might find this stimulating - after a brief struggle, I certainly did.
I'll admit that I put the book down shortly after I began it, as I was not able or willing to deal with the tremendous detail given to roadside shrines (still don't love that part of it), but gradually his contemplations drew me in. Whether or not you're contemplating spending time on Lago di Garda, or trekking south from Zurich to Lugano, Lago Maggiore, Como, you might find this stimulating - after a brief struggle, I certainly did.
February 5, 2013
A bit of a struggle at first to get past the trail of crosses portion at the beginning, however, past that, D.H. Lawrence was his normal insightful self. He brings Italy to life with details of a culture with some highlights still alive and well and others long gone, yet, not quite forgotten (even by those who may have never experienced it). His honesty and clarity, his ability to see right into the heart of those struggling to move into the world that was coming (like it or not) is sometimes painful to read. Lawrence awakens realizations in a reader so that the current era doesn't matter - we are always changing, evolving, and it is as beautiful as it is hard to leave 'the old way'.
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