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Sea and Sardinia
HardPress Classic Books Series
260 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 1921
188 people are currently reading
1543 people want to read
About the author
D.H. Lawrence
2,084 books4,177 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 109 reviews
May 12, 2018
After reading this well written, quotable, but uneventful travelogue by D.H. Lawrence, I find myself wondering why British people travel. Here is Lawrence, 60 years before Paul Theroux (who I thought held the tittle of "Crankiest Travel Writer"), setting out on a whirlwind tour of Sardinia, and complaining about it every step of the way.
With no explanation or preamble, D.H. Lawrence and his wife (The "Queen Bee", who he criticizes relentlessly)set off for this remote island IN WINTER apparently so he can bitch about the weather along with the poor food and service in the hotels they can afford to stay in. This is post WWI/pre-Mussolini Italy and the economy is not too hot. The Lawrences spend no more than 1 night in any city, so they never get to know any town. (One night they arrive in a rural town to find that all the men are dressed as women. It is cold, so they scurry back to their hotel, make tea, and look out from their window a while before eating a bad meal. Lawrence never explores why the people are cross dressing, but he does describe the meal in detail).
The writing at times is amazing and the book provides a peek at an area of the world at a moment in time that is long gone. For this reason it is worth reading. On the other hand, it is unclear why Lawrence ever left home.
With no explanation or preamble, D.H. Lawrence and his wife (The "Queen Bee", who he criticizes relentlessly)set off for this remote island IN WINTER apparently so he can bitch about the weather along with the poor food and service in the hotels they can afford to stay in. This is post WWI/pre-Mussolini Italy and the economy is not too hot. The Lawrences spend no more than 1 night in any city, so they never get to know any town. (One night they arrive in a rural town to find that all the men are dressed as women. It is cold, so they scurry back to their hotel, make tea, and look out from their window a while before eating a bad meal. Lawrence never explores why the people are cross dressing, but he does describe the meal in detail).
The writing at times is amazing and the book provides a peek at an area of the world at a moment in time that is long gone. For this reason it is worth reading. On the other hand, it is unclear why Lawrence ever left home.
January 8, 2012
I really really liked this book! As a Sardinian I enjoyed to read the (accurate) descriptions of the places I know, it's been very interesting to read how Lawrence portrayed the city where I live.
In particular, I liked the way he described those aspects of ordinary life typical of a Sardinia which I never knew (a Sardinia of the first years of XX century), but it's curious how certain things are still the same like generosity, spontaneity and also the snobbish behaviour typical of the people of Cagliari (I appreciated the fact that Lawrence mentioned both positive and negative aspects of his trip). What I found intriguing was in particular the style, very intimate I would say, and I loved indeed the way he described the nature of Sardinia in all its forms. This island is still a wonderful place to see unique landscapes, which leave you astonished even if you were born here.
In particular, I liked the way he described those aspects of ordinary life typical of a Sardinia which I never knew (a Sardinia of the first years of XX century), but it's curious how certain things are still the same like generosity, spontaneity and also the snobbish behaviour typical of the people of Cagliari (I appreciated the fact that Lawrence mentioned both positive and negative aspects of his trip). What I found intriguing was in particular the style, very intimate I would say, and I loved indeed the way he described the nature of Sardinia in all its forms. This island is still a wonderful place to see unique landscapes, which leave you astonished even if you were born here.
July 28, 2019
One doesn't think of him as such, but D.H. Lawrence is a natural-born travel writer. His Sea and Sardinia is a joy throughout. It starts slow as he works his way north to the interior of the island via third-class rail with his wife Frieda (whom he refers to as Queen Bee or, more frequently, q-b). Then it really comes alive as the Lawrences leave Sardinia via a circuitous route and brings the author into contact with commercial travelers who carp endlessly about the favorable exchange rate the pound sterling has with the lira. Lawrence can be very funny when he blows his stack.
Lawrence's Sardinia journey was more or less a vacation, so I am amazed he was able to work the material into a good-size book. There are numerous inns where both accommodation and meals are problematic -- others less so. I love his comments on Nouro:
Lawrence's Sardinia journey was more or less a vacation, so I am amazed he was able to work the material into a good-size book. There are numerous inns where both accommodation and meals are problematic -- others less so. I love his comments on Nouro:
There is nothing to see in Nuoro: which, to tell the truth, is always a relief. Sights are an irritating bore. Thank heaven there isn't a bit of Perugino or anything Pisan in the place: that I know of. Happy is the town that has nothing to show. What a lot of stunts and affectations it saves! Life is then life, not museum-stuffing. One could saunter along the rather inert, narrow, Monday-morning street, and see the women having a bit of a gossip, and see an old crone with a basket of bread on her head, and see the unwilling ones hanging back from work, and the whole current of industry disinclined to flow. Life is life and things are things. I am sick of gaping things, even Peruginos. I have had my thrills from Carpaccio and Botticelli. But now I've had enough. But I can always look at an old, grey-bearded peasant in his earthy white drawers and his black waist-frill, wearing no coat or over-garment, but just crooking along beside his little ox-wagon. I am sick of "things," even Perugino.I regard Sea and Sardinia as a travel classic and an all-around good read.
January 14, 2017
I am a great fan of Corsica, but I have never visited its close neighbour Sardinia, so it was with great interest that I lighted on D.H. Lawrence's account of his visit a few years after World War I. I was a bit disappointed. I wasn't expecting a conventional travelogue, but in fact Lawrence and Frieda visited for only about three or four nights during January and saw very little of any interest while they were there. They found it very cold, the journeys between places interminable and the food inedible.
Some of Lawrence's descriptions of the landscape are lyrical and his observations on the Sardinian character are pertinent and often amusing. He also makes an impassioned plea for separatism and against globalisation when it was just beginning. However, I generally find him petulant and self-obsessed when he isn't being sardonic. And the soubriquet "queen bee" (or its abbreviation q-b) that he applies to Frieda grated after a while.
So, while I learned something about Sardinia, I learned rather more about D.H. Lawrence.
Some of Lawrence's descriptions of the landscape are lyrical and his observations on the Sardinian character are pertinent and often amusing. He also makes an impassioned plea for separatism and against globalisation when it was just beginning. However, I generally find him petulant and self-obsessed when he isn't being sardonic. And the soubriquet "queen bee" (or its abbreviation q-b) that he applies to Frieda grated after a while.
So, while I learned something about Sardinia, I learned rather more about D.H. Lawrence.
September 3, 2022
3,5 stars- English paperback
Found in a seconfhsnd bookstore some years ago. Looked like it never been read.
Review follows later.
Found in a seconfhsnd bookstore some years ago. Looked like it never been read.
Review follows later.
June 22, 2024
This travelogue by D.H. Lawrence isn't your typical postcard paradise. Forget sandy beaches and bustling piazzas. Here, Sardinia is a land of rugged charm, a world away from the "peaky confinement" of Sicily, as Lawrence puts it.
Lawrence craved a raw, unadulterated experience. In 1921, Sardinia fit the bill perfectly. The island was untouched by mass tourism, a place where shepherds and goatherds ruled the roost. Imagine a Mediterranean island frozen in time, its ancient traditions defying the homogenizing forces of the post-war world.
This wasn't a comfortable journey, filled with luxurious hotels and Michelin-starred meals. Lawrence and his wife endured uncomfortable nights and the island's lack of modern amenities. But within this discomfort, Lawrence found something profound. He saw Sardinia as a land "lost between Europe and Africa," a place stubbornly clinging to its unique identity. Perhaps it was this very resistance to change that resonated with him, a man yearning for a world less tethered to convention.
Lawrence's writing style reflects his restless spirit. Don't expect a neatly packaged travel guide. This is a rambling exploration, filled with Lawrence's observations and frustrations. But for those willing to navigate his quirks, the rewards are substantial. You'll encounter the island's soul through Lawrence's vivid descriptions, its characters leaping off the page to become your companions on this literary adventure.
I read it because of a trip to the island. I assume it may merit more stars for local interest readers, travelers and fans of Sardinia or of Lawrence. Very enjoyable but non-essential.
Lawrence craved a raw, unadulterated experience. In 1921, Sardinia fit the bill perfectly. The island was untouched by mass tourism, a place where shepherds and goatherds ruled the roost. Imagine a Mediterranean island frozen in time, its ancient traditions defying the homogenizing forces of the post-war world.
This wasn't a comfortable journey, filled with luxurious hotels and Michelin-starred meals. Lawrence and his wife endured uncomfortable nights and the island's lack of modern amenities. But within this discomfort, Lawrence found something profound. He saw Sardinia as a land "lost between Europe and Africa," a place stubbornly clinging to its unique identity. Perhaps it was this very resistance to change that resonated with him, a man yearning for a world less tethered to convention.
Lawrence's writing style reflects his restless spirit. Don't expect a neatly packaged travel guide. This is a rambling exploration, filled with Lawrence's observations and frustrations. But for those willing to navigate his quirks, the rewards are substantial. You'll encounter the island's soul through Lawrence's vivid descriptions, its characters leaping off the page to become your companions on this literary adventure.
I read it because of a trip to the island. I assume it may merit more stars for local interest readers, travelers and fans of Sardinia or of Lawrence. Very enjoyable but non-essential.
November 1, 2017
I read this after having visited Italy several times, studied the language for years, and spent two months travelling around Sardinia this summer. The book was interesting for seeing how much some things have changed since a century ago and, even more, how little others have. The public transport is still underdeveloped; the people in general are still hospitable and genuine, even if often reserved and closed towards outsiders, which is refreshing after the typical Sicilian and South Italian false friendliness; finding decent accommodation for a reasonable price is still tough; as a tourist in Italy one still feels a little unwelcome, judged by nationality rather than personality, and like a chicken to be plucked for money; the food on the ferry is still awful; yet despite everything it's still a wonderful place to visit.
Lawrence does come across as grumpy, but it's something I could relate to since travelling isn't always glamorous. His final whisky-induced outburst about all the negative aspects of Italy and the Italians was just too similar to some of my own rants after a bit too much time spent being unfairly judged just for being an outsider, having my fluent Italian replied to in broken English, and narrowly avoiding being ripped off. Similar too were the disbelieving replies: "ma siamo buoni", there's no way that us Italians can be anything less than perfect, we'll happily criticise ourselves but a foreigner need not dare to.
Sure, he and his wife only spent a few days there and only a night in each place, some of the places they chose were not exactly tourist destinations, and it was winter so they didn't experience the beaches and nature that the island is most famous for. But it was enough to get a realistic impression of the culture and the way of living in the more rural parts, and I found myself nodding along as I read about their experiences of the landscapes, the towns, the transport, and above all the people.
Lawrence does come across as grumpy, but it's something I could relate to since travelling isn't always glamorous. His final whisky-induced outburst about all the negative aspects of Italy and the Italians was just too similar to some of my own rants after a bit too much time spent being unfairly judged just for being an outsider, having my fluent Italian replied to in broken English, and narrowly avoiding being ripped off. Similar too were the disbelieving replies: "ma siamo buoni", there's no way that us Italians can be anything less than perfect, we'll happily criticise ourselves but a foreigner need not dare to.
Sure, he and his wife only spent a few days there and only a night in each place, some of the places they chose were not exactly tourist destinations, and it was winter so they didn't experience the beaches and nature that the island is most famous for. But it was enough to get a realistic impression of the culture and the way of living in the more rural parts, and I found myself nodding along as I read about their experiences of the landscapes, the towns, the transport, and above all the people.
June 10, 2013
Sea and Sardinia is a record of a trip D. H. Lawrence took with his wife Frieda in 1921. The central character is Lawrence himself—a cranky but deeply intelligent observer of people and place. The book puts you right there—in an ancient bus lumbering through the bleak Sardinian countryside; at a fair in a small city where normal life has been cast aside for an ancient bacchanal; on a creaky boat with bad food, seasick as it makes a primeval crossing.
To be sure, there are also the all-too-familiar D.H. Lawrence rants against “liberalism,” against politics, against the absorption and endless discussion of “the news” that was not yet all pervasive in 1921. No doubt he would have opposed universal health care and food programs for the poor. But just when I found his persona most insufferable, Lawrence points out that his annoying crankiness is merely one manifestation of the uniqueness that makes us human—the uniqueness literature tries to capture and the modern world is happy to destroy.
I don’t know how Lawrence manages to make each moment of his travel glow with significance. Few alive today are his match.
May 17, 2023
'And suddenly there is Cagliari: a naked town rising steep, steep, golden-looking, piled naked to the sky from the plain at the head of the formless hollow bay. It is strange and rather wonderful, not a bit like Italy. The city piles up lofty and almost miniature, and makes me think of Jerusalem: without trees, without cover, rising rather bare and proud, remote as if back in history, like a town in a monkish, illuminated missal. One wonders how it even got there. And it seems like Spain - or Malta: not Italy. It is a steep and lonely city, treeless, as in some old illumination. Yet withal rather jewel-like: like a sudden rose-cut amber jewel naked at the depth of a vast indenture. The air is cold, blowing bleak and bitter, the sky is all curd. And that is Cagliari. It has that curious look, as if it could be seen but not entered. It is like some vision, some memory, something that has passed away.'
March 13, 2023
Reactionary and nationalistic, very little understanding for self in relation to others, Lawrence is constantly antagonizing Italian and Sardinian people and keeps on wondering why they might not seem to friendly towards him. This wasn't interesting or insightful at all, 200 pages of complaint.
January 17, 2024
Lawrence is a grumpy man but how beautiful the pictures he paints with his words.
July 11, 2022
Bit whingy for being on holiday in Italy tbh…
September 17, 2022
Travel diary describing D.H.Lawrence's journey through Italy and Sardinia 100 years ago, very interesting insights and opinions about the social and cultural landscape first of all, although obviously, many will come up as a bit offensive nowadays. Good read but indeed, more suited for true D.H. Lawrence fans:)
March 28, 2021
Bir gezi kitabı, Sicilya adasından Sardinya Adası’na giden ve adada gezen yazarın yaşadıkları, gözlemleri ve gezdiği yerlere dair güzel bilgiler içeriyor. Çok durağan olması beni yer yer sıksa da özellikle gezemediğimiz bu dönemde içimi açtı, kendimi kısa bir süreliğine de olsa bir İtalyan adasındaymış gibi hissettim.. Büyük beklentiye girmeden, boş bir zamanda okunabilir bir kitap..
January 30, 2023
A brief confession to start: Sea and Sardinia is my very first foray into the mind of D. H. Lawrence.
The experience was all new territory for me and the reason I delved into his work at all was because, having visited Sardinia for the first time recently, a dear friend (Sardinian by birth) gifted me the book. I found it fascinating in several different ways.
First, I was blown away by Lawrence's obvious delight with the natural beauty of the island. The very best portions of the book were the passages where he was seemingly transported by the look and feel of the land, sea, and sky. When he gave himself over to eruptions of prose describing his surroundings and, occasionally, the inhabitants of those surroundings, the book was at its very best. Those sections were, for me, the absolute best portions of this travel narrative. They brought back and freshened my fond memories of seeing the same landscape.
Second, and not as pleasantly surprising, were the points where he alluded to or baldly stated his disdain for many of the people he encountered on his travels. Sometimes he came across as the stereotypical, judgmental, English tourist and sometimes it bordered on simple bigotry. Such passages were somewhat jarring and off-putting. More unsettling were his oft-expressed views that he desired a return to a less homogenized culture, including, apparently, a more robust nationalism and a great deal less internationalism. His views on social stratification were similarly out-of-step with modern sensibilities, and the passage where he fervently wishes for a new Attila to sweep in to demolish "every bit of art in Europe" was a truly frightening prospect. Having been written in 1920, just before the curtain rose on the barbarism of fascism and their perpetrators, the new Attilas, I was left wondering exactly how he would have received the arrival of his dire wish realized. I was surprised to hear such deeply conservative, almost reactionary, views expressed by an author whose other works were so shocking to conservatives.
I'm so glad to have read this one. The imagery of the natural world of Sardinia was so transcendental I'm able to forgive the author's more retrograde moments and views. A fascinating addition to travel literature.
The experience was all new territory for me and the reason I delved into his work at all was because, having visited Sardinia for the first time recently, a dear friend (Sardinian by birth) gifted me the book. I found it fascinating in several different ways.
First, I was blown away by Lawrence's obvious delight with the natural beauty of the island. The very best portions of the book were the passages where he was seemingly transported by the look and feel of the land, sea, and sky. When he gave himself over to eruptions of prose describing his surroundings and, occasionally, the inhabitants of those surroundings, the book was at its very best. Those sections were, for me, the absolute best portions of this travel narrative. They brought back and freshened my fond memories of seeing the same landscape.
Second, and not as pleasantly surprising, were the points where he alluded to or baldly stated his disdain for many of the people he encountered on his travels. Sometimes he came across as the stereotypical, judgmental, English tourist and sometimes it bordered on simple bigotry. Such passages were somewhat jarring and off-putting. More unsettling were his oft-expressed views that he desired a return to a less homogenized culture, including, apparently, a more robust nationalism and a great deal less internationalism. His views on social stratification were similarly out-of-step with modern sensibilities, and the passage where he fervently wishes for a new Attila to sweep in to demolish "every bit of art in Europe" was a truly frightening prospect. Having been written in 1920, just before the curtain rose on the barbarism of fascism and their perpetrators, the new Attilas, I was left wondering exactly how he would have received the arrival of his dire wish realized. I was surprised to hear such deeply conservative, almost reactionary, views expressed by an author whose other works were so shocking to conservatives.
I'm so glad to have read this one. The imagery of the natural world of Sardinia was so transcendental I'm able to forgive the author's more retrograde moments and views. A fascinating addition to travel literature.
May 20, 2025
This book was awful. If Lawrence had been with me, I would have left him behind at a lonely bus station so he could complain to himself to his heart’s content. What an insufferable bore. Everyone he meets is stupid, dumb, ignorant, and annoying.
This book was difficult for me to find before a trip to Sardinia, which I should have taken as an indicator.
Really, you can skip it. Read Lonely Planet or watch a YouTube video instead.
This book was difficult for me to find before a trip to Sardinia, which I should have taken as an indicator.
Really, you can skip it. Read Lonely Planet or watch a YouTube video instead.
June 20, 2025
Det lämpligaste sättet att läsa denna text på är såklart i fallet när man själv är på Sardinien och följer i författarens fotspår, varför det blir svårt att ge den något annat än en femma. Fantastisk upplevelse!
5/5
5/5
July 19, 2022
One for Lawrence fans only. Do not read as a guide to Sardinia.
October 2, 2017
Timeless. Loved this book! I also had the pleasure of reading a very old copy from the library - worn leather, cut pages, deep musty smell of old books that transported me. What an amazing journey.
March 23, 2025
لارنسِ ناداستاننویس گویا از لارنسِ داستاننویس جالبتر است. مقصد سفر یعنی ساردینیا به هیچ وجه توریستی نیست، علیالخصوص نسبت به مابقی ایتالیا که قدم زدن در کوچههای برخی شهرها تفاوتی با گشت و گذار در موزهای شگفت ندارد. اما لارنس همراه با همسرش عزم سفر به ساردینیا میکند؛ برای چه؟ اولین جملهی سفرنامه چرایی این سفر را توضیح میدهد:
راستش همین گشایشِ نسبتا گنگ بود که مرا جذب کتاب کرد.
در ادامهاش هم بیشتر از اینکه عوارض طبیعی جزیرهی ساردینیا یا خلق و خوی روستاییان ایتالیایی برایم جالب باشد (گرچه بعضا اپیزودهای بامزهای از دلش در میآمد)، خود نثر لارنس گیرم انداخت. غنی و در عین حال بیافاده، بی قصد تحقیر مخاطب و به رخ کشیدن سوادش و البته با آن چاشنی طنز به خصوص انگلیسی. کمی هم آدم افسوس میخورد که چطور «انگلیسینویسی» عرصه را به «آمریکایینویسی» باخته، قبول کنیم حتی نویسنده انگلیسی معاصر هم دارد آمریکایی مینویسد.
گاهی هم بر آدمیزاد نیازی مبرم غالب میشود که به راه بیفتد.
راستش همین گشایشِ نسبتا گنگ بود که مرا جذب کتاب کرد.
در ادامهاش هم بیشتر از اینکه عوارض طبیعی جزیرهی ساردینیا یا خلق و خوی روستاییان ایتالیایی برایم جالب باشد (گرچه بعضا اپیزودهای بامزهای از دلش در میآمد)، خود نثر لارنس گیرم انداخت. غنی و در عین حال بیافاده، بی قصد تحقیر مخاطب و به رخ کشیدن سوادش و البته با آن چاشنی طنز به خصوص انگلیسی. کمی هم آدم افسوس میخورد که چطور «انگلیسینویسی» عرصه را به «آمریکایینویسی» باخته، قبول کنیم حتی نویسنده انگلیسی معاصر هم دارد آمریکایی مینویسد.
March 24, 2012
It's in his travel books that the real D.H. Lawrence reveals himself, and while his three books about traveling in Italy are almost a century old now, they hold up very well.
Naturally the writing is lovely, the descriptions wonderful. Has anyone have ever wielded a more sensitive or poetic pen or one more far ranging in its coloristic effects than Lawrence at the top of his game? And, at the same time, he is quite good about exactly where he went and how he went and how much time it took and exactly how much it cost: which is purely historical at this point. But then travel in Europe forty years ago, when I was young and on the road, was also dirt cheap compared to today with the inflated Euro.
But while Tuscany and Sicily-- subjects of his two other travel in Italy books -- are well traversed by now and wealthier and much changed from when Lawrence visited, Sardinia remains off the beaten path and so mysterious and not often visited even in 2012. And so this book is one of the more interesting of all travel books of the period (1922) in that I suspect a lot of what Lawrence writes of could be easily duplicated today.
Then, it was only a few years after the First World War, and people there were stil living peasant lives and wearing peasant cosutmes and following peasant cusotms going back centuries -- his description of a holiday in one town, almost entirely occupied by younger men in outrageous drag, is very good. Of course the disruption of the war had changed much, and he shows how that made a great difference in some, if not all, of those lives. For the most part, the younger people he writes about are young people in all times and places. So the pocket-sized pictures we get of various locals--bus drivers and conductors, wounded soldiers, waitresses --are eternal.
Lawrence never holds back in his criticism nor his annoyance, and he can be very irritated and very irritated indeed. He refers to his Hilda, his soul-mate, the woman of his life, as "the q-b" short for "queen bitch," even when he's being kind to her. But he can admire too, and he has no qualms about calling men handsome or beautiful or even seductive, when they are. That's refreshing!
At just under two hundred pages, and available also in a collection of all three of his Italian travle books, Sea and Sardinia is a worthwhile read.
Naturally the writing is lovely, the descriptions wonderful. Has anyone have ever wielded a more sensitive or poetic pen or one more far ranging in its coloristic effects than Lawrence at the top of his game? And, at the same time, he is quite good about exactly where he went and how he went and how much time it took and exactly how much it cost: which is purely historical at this point. But then travel in Europe forty years ago, when I was young and on the road, was also dirt cheap compared to today with the inflated Euro.
But while Tuscany and Sicily-- subjects of his two other travel in Italy books -- are well traversed by now and wealthier and much changed from when Lawrence visited, Sardinia remains off the beaten path and so mysterious and not often visited even in 2012. And so this book is one of the more interesting of all travel books of the period (1922) in that I suspect a lot of what Lawrence writes of could be easily duplicated today.
Then, it was only a few years after the First World War, and people there were stil living peasant lives and wearing peasant cosutmes and following peasant cusotms going back centuries -- his description of a holiday in one town, almost entirely occupied by younger men in outrageous drag, is very good. Of course the disruption of the war had changed much, and he shows how that made a great difference in some, if not all, of those lives. For the most part, the younger people he writes about are young people in all times and places. So the pocket-sized pictures we get of various locals--bus drivers and conductors, wounded soldiers, waitresses --are eternal.
Lawrence never holds back in his criticism nor his annoyance, and he can be very irritated and very irritated indeed. He refers to his Hilda, his soul-mate, the woman of his life, as "the q-b" short for "queen bitch," even when he's being kind to her. But he can admire too, and he has no qualms about calling men handsome or beautiful or even seductive, when they are. That's refreshing!
At just under two hundred pages, and available also in a collection of all three of his Italian travle books, Sea and Sardinia is a worthwhile read.
September 15, 2025
This book is a bit of a surprise read for me. Travel isn’t a genre I usually go for. And the Mediterranean isn’t somewhere I know, as it’s far too hot for me!
And yet this has been on my bookshelf ever since I first read it over four decades ago. It seems surprising now, but one of my O-level English Lit set-texts was “Sons and Lovers” and we’d been advised to “read around it” to get extra brownie points in our essays. I remember being overwhelmed by the dense orange wall of all the DH Lawrence spines in their Penguin editions. And the slimmest - and cheapest (costing an entire week’s pocket money at £1.50) - was “Sea and Sardinia”.
I have to say, I’m now baffled how I ever managed the book as a fifteen year old. It’s written in DH Lawrence’s very distinctive style - which isn’t exactly easy-read. It’s highly stylised and emotive to the point of rhapsodic. Lawrencian idiosyncrasies include things like:
- Excessive use of exclamations marks (at least three on each page, in glorious contravention of Fowlers’ [sic!] King’s English).
- Words and phrases echoed and repeated so that it’s more like reading poetry than prose (“It is raining - dismally, dismally raining” p19)
- Direct appeals and exhortations (“Where then? Spain or Sardinia?” p10 or “I hope, dear reader, you like the metaphor” p262).
- Elevated language verging on the pretentious (“Nay, sometimes, verily, one can feel a new current of her demon magnetism” p9).
- Baffling vocabulary (“empyrean” and “metempsychosis” in the same paragraph on p8).
- A kind of encyclopaedic Tourette’s (“Aspromonte! Garibaldi! I could always cover my face when I see it, Aspromonte” p18).
Lawrence’s emotive and exuberant style can take a bit of getting used to. It’s like being with someone who’s very excitable and who wants you to respond at the same continuous fever-pitch of enthusiasm.
But it’s also surprising readable. In fact, once you get into the exultant style, it sweeps you along. The opening pages, for example, capture so magically the feeling of going away on holiday - getting up at the crack of dawn, nervously gulping down breakfast standing up, repeatedly checking windows are locked, and shivering in the early morning chill.
This recalled for me with startling intensity how as a child I’d be literally sick with excitement at the start of family holidays, with the Morris Traveller loaded up before dawn for self-catering in locations far less exotic than Sardinia.
DH Lawrence has a reputation of intellectual earnestness that can seem dry and remorseless. Or arch and sardonic, as I found recently in his “Mr Noon”. So I was really struck by the gentle humour in this book. Some lovely examples include:
- Lawrence impishly calling his travelling companion “the q-b” - as in queen bee - not a term of affection anyone else would try on with the formidable Frieda von Richthofen, I should imagine.
- The description of his unreliable wristwatch “with its impudent phosphorescent face” p11 (“impudent” to describe a slow watch - how perfect is that!)
- The fellow passengers on the train to Palermo who see a thermos flask for the first time and worry that it might be a bomb (p24).
- The mess that thoroughly spoilt children make at tea-time on the steamer-crossing, as they “mix themselves and the table into a lemon-milk-orange-tea-sugar-biscuit-cake-chocolate mess” p64) - surely the longest compound adjective ever written!
- The farmer who tries to get on board the community bus “with two little black pigs, each of which is wrapped in a little sack, with its face and ears appearing like a flower from a wrapped bouquet” (p223).
- The festival in Nuoro where the men of the town have fun dressing up in drag (“They had stuffed their bosoms, and stuffed their bustles, and put on hats and various robes, and they minced along with little jigging steps like little dolls” p204).
- The sardonic jibe (p218) that “There is nothing to see in Nuoro: which, to tell the truth, is always such a relief. Sights are an irritating bore” (which perhaps explains why Lawrence felt he could “do” Sardinia on just a whistle-stop five-day tour in mid-winter).
The book is also full of beautifully articulated observations and descriptions that made me stop and think. Some examples include:
- “I used to think there was no absolute evil. Now I know there is a great deal” (p20).
- “It was not alone the war which exhausted the world. It was the deliberate evil wastefulness of the war-makers in their own countries” (p95).
- Strange is a Celtic landscape, far more moving, disturbing, than the lovely glamour of Italy and Greece” (p122).
- “To tell the truth, I should have liked to go to Tonara with him and his mate and do the brisk trade: if only I knew what trade it would be” (p161). Lawrence is captivated by the lusty young pedlar man with his handsome best buddy who the peddler affectionately calls his “wife” as they share everything including kisses and a sleeping bag).
So why a three-star rating and not a four-star one? Well, it comes down to this. DH Lawrence’s prose is gorgeous. The sunsets, donkeys, fruit markets and mountain railways - they’re all exquisitely described. And his picaresque adventures and encounters are vivid and amusing.
But Lawrence also doesn’t hold back on his opinions. His arbitrary passions veer illogically from exaggerated panegyric for the design of a locally-woven cloth to a furious hatred of, say, living on limestone rather than granite (“I hate limestone, to live on limestone or marble or any of those limy rocks. I hate them!” p123).
His moods are intense, petulant and sometimes just ranty. And what was forthright and witty a century ago can now come across as strident and insensitive. In fact, I’m a bit uncomfortable with the whole genre of opinionated travel writing that objectifies foreignness with its condescending tone of “how quaint the peasant girls”!
And I have to say I winced at many of Lawrence’s sweeping stereotypes, with entire cities, countries and populations judged on pretty offensive racial grounds - the “Eskimo-looking” Sardinians (p82), “swarthy feline southerners” p15), Neapolitans “with great macaroni paunches” (p16), “degenerate aborigines” p146) and his gratuitous use of the N-word.
Sharp-tongued cleverness can quickly turn into the supercilious, judgemental and discriminatory. Such astonishing sensitivity with words, such brilliance with ideas, but oh dear, Mr Lawrence, what a disappointment about the casual racism …
Mind you, perhaps I’m just as guilty, in committing the smug virtue of taking offence on behalf of someone else. Though I may be offended by some of his derogatory references, Sardinia is evidently sufficiently proud of his patronage to have named both a road and a main square in his honour - Piazzetta David Herbert Lawrence in the city of Cagliari and Via David Herbert Lawrence in the little town of Sorgono (which is particularly forgiving as Lawrence is astonishingly damning about this place and its inhabitants).
And yet this has been on my bookshelf ever since I first read it over four decades ago. It seems surprising now, but one of my O-level English Lit set-texts was “Sons and Lovers” and we’d been advised to “read around it” to get extra brownie points in our essays. I remember being overwhelmed by the dense orange wall of all the DH Lawrence spines in their Penguin editions. And the slimmest - and cheapest (costing an entire week’s pocket money at £1.50) - was “Sea and Sardinia”.
I have to say, I’m now baffled how I ever managed the book as a fifteen year old. It’s written in DH Lawrence’s very distinctive style - which isn’t exactly easy-read. It’s highly stylised and emotive to the point of rhapsodic. Lawrencian idiosyncrasies include things like:
- Excessive use of exclamations marks (at least three on each page, in glorious contravention of Fowlers’ [sic!] King’s English).
- Words and phrases echoed and repeated so that it’s more like reading poetry than prose (“It is raining - dismally, dismally raining” p19)
- Direct appeals and exhortations (“Where then? Spain or Sardinia?” p10 or “I hope, dear reader, you like the metaphor” p262).
- Elevated language verging on the pretentious (“Nay, sometimes, verily, one can feel a new current of her demon magnetism” p9).
- Baffling vocabulary (“empyrean” and “metempsychosis” in the same paragraph on p8).
- A kind of encyclopaedic Tourette’s (“Aspromonte! Garibaldi! I could always cover my face when I see it, Aspromonte” p18).
Lawrence’s emotive and exuberant style can take a bit of getting used to. It’s like being with someone who’s very excitable and who wants you to respond at the same continuous fever-pitch of enthusiasm.
But it’s also surprising readable. In fact, once you get into the exultant style, it sweeps you along. The opening pages, for example, capture so magically the feeling of going away on holiday - getting up at the crack of dawn, nervously gulping down breakfast standing up, repeatedly checking windows are locked, and shivering in the early morning chill.
This recalled for me with startling intensity how as a child I’d be literally sick with excitement at the start of family holidays, with the Morris Traveller loaded up before dawn for self-catering in locations far less exotic than Sardinia.
DH Lawrence has a reputation of intellectual earnestness that can seem dry and remorseless. Or arch and sardonic, as I found recently in his “Mr Noon”. So I was really struck by the gentle humour in this book. Some lovely examples include:
- Lawrence impishly calling his travelling companion “the q-b” - as in queen bee - not a term of affection anyone else would try on with the formidable Frieda von Richthofen, I should imagine.
- The description of his unreliable wristwatch “with its impudent phosphorescent face” p11 (“impudent” to describe a slow watch - how perfect is that!)
- The fellow passengers on the train to Palermo who see a thermos flask for the first time and worry that it might be a bomb (p24).
- The mess that thoroughly spoilt children make at tea-time on the steamer-crossing, as they “mix themselves and the table into a lemon-milk-orange-tea-sugar-biscuit-cake-chocolate mess” p64) - surely the longest compound adjective ever written!
- The farmer who tries to get on board the community bus “with two little black pigs, each of which is wrapped in a little sack, with its face and ears appearing like a flower from a wrapped bouquet” (p223).
- The festival in Nuoro where the men of the town have fun dressing up in drag (“They had stuffed their bosoms, and stuffed their bustles, and put on hats and various robes, and they minced along with little jigging steps like little dolls” p204).
- The sardonic jibe (p218) that “There is nothing to see in Nuoro: which, to tell the truth, is always such a relief. Sights are an irritating bore” (which perhaps explains why Lawrence felt he could “do” Sardinia on just a whistle-stop five-day tour in mid-winter).
The book is also full of beautifully articulated observations and descriptions that made me stop and think. Some examples include:
- “I used to think there was no absolute evil. Now I know there is a great deal” (p20).
- “It was not alone the war which exhausted the world. It was the deliberate evil wastefulness of the war-makers in their own countries” (p95).
- Strange is a Celtic landscape, far more moving, disturbing, than the lovely glamour of Italy and Greece” (p122).
- “To tell the truth, I should have liked to go to Tonara with him and his mate and do the brisk trade: if only I knew what trade it would be” (p161). Lawrence is captivated by the lusty young pedlar man with his handsome best buddy who the peddler affectionately calls his “wife” as they share everything including kisses and a sleeping bag).
So why a three-star rating and not a four-star one? Well, it comes down to this. DH Lawrence’s prose is gorgeous. The sunsets, donkeys, fruit markets and mountain railways - they’re all exquisitely described. And his picaresque adventures and encounters are vivid and amusing.
But Lawrence also doesn’t hold back on his opinions. His arbitrary passions veer illogically from exaggerated panegyric for the design of a locally-woven cloth to a furious hatred of, say, living on limestone rather than granite (“I hate limestone, to live on limestone or marble or any of those limy rocks. I hate them!” p123).
His moods are intense, petulant and sometimes just ranty. And what was forthright and witty a century ago can now come across as strident and insensitive. In fact, I’m a bit uncomfortable with the whole genre of opinionated travel writing that objectifies foreignness with its condescending tone of “how quaint the peasant girls”!
And I have to say I winced at many of Lawrence’s sweeping stereotypes, with entire cities, countries and populations judged on pretty offensive racial grounds - the “Eskimo-looking” Sardinians (p82), “swarthy feline southerners” p15), Neapolitans “with great macaroni paunches” (p16), “degenerate aborigines” p146) and his gratuitous use of the N-word.
Sharp-tongued cleverness can quickly turn into the supercilious, judgemental and discriminatory. Such astonishing sensitivity with words, such brilliance with ideas, but oh dear, Mr Lawrence, what a disappointment about the casual racism …
Mind you, perhaps I’m just as guilty, in committing the smug virtue of taking offence on behalf of someone else. Though I may be offended by some of his derogatory references, Sardinia is evidently sufficiently proud of his patronage to have named both a road and a main square in his honour - Piazzetta David Herbert Lawrence in the city of Cagliari and Via David Herbert Lawrence in the little town of Sorgono (which is particularly forgiving as Lawrence is astonishingly damning about this place and its inhabitants).
February 4, 2019
Yes, DH Lawrence was a misogynist, racialist, and wife-beater, and yes these traits are on full display in "Sea and Sardinia." Yes, I'm about fifty years too late to make an original critique of this. Lawrence's hatefulness has been apparent to readers since at least the 60s.
Yes, also nothing much happens in this travelogue. Most of the bulk of the story is taken up by extremely repetitive descriptions of every meal, banal conversation, and outfit DH Lawrence encounters. I've read daily planners with more range.
Either of those two problems, by themselves, could ruin a good book. Remarkably, neither is even the worst aspect of "Sea and Sardinia." The real book-killer is that DH Lawrence is so unrepentantly whiny on every single page. By the end, you're surprised his wife didn't sneak out in the middle of the night. Every meal, every inn, every vehicle, and every personality that Lawrence meets is treated with palpable disdain. He bemoans the death of true masculinity with lousy "back in my day" sentimentalities, while himself acting priggish and weak-tempered. Worse, Lawrence regards the Sardinian people, on whose hospitality he is reliant, as filthy "half-savages," and the proud peasant women as "sludge queens." Then he has the goddamn audacity to complain even more, as the main repeated theme of the book, that the Sardinians are too quick to judge Englishmen like himself. It apparently never occurs to Lawrence that the reason he is sometimes treated poorly is because of the air of entitlement he wafts around him over the course of his journey.
"Sea and Sardinia" is a book that, like an unwanted travelmate, is best left at the first rest stop.
Yes, also nothing much happens in this travelogue. Most of the bulk of the story is taken up by extremely repetitive descriptions of every meal, banal conversation, and outfit DH Lawrence encounters. I've read daily planners with more range.
Either of those two problems, by themselves, could ruin a good book. Remarkably, neither is even the worst aspect of "Sea and Sardinia." The real book-killer is that DH Lawrence is so unrepentantly whiny on every single page. By the end, you're surprised his wife didn't sneak out in the middle of the night. Every meal, every inn, every vehicle, and every personality that Lawrence meets is treated with palpable disdain. He bemoans the death of true masculinity with lousy "back in my day" sentimentalities, while himself acting priggish and weak-tempered. Worse, Lawrence regards the Sardinian people, on whose hospitality he is reliant, as filthy "half-savages," and the proud peasant women as "sludge queens." Then he has the goddamn audacity to complain even more, as the main repeated theme of the book, that the Sardinians are too quick to judge Englishmen like himself. It apparently never occurs to Lawrence that the reason he is sometimes treated poorly is because of the air of entitlement he wafts around him over the course of his journey.
"Sea and Sardinia" is a book that, like an unwanted travelmate, is best left at the first rest stop.
May 29, 2020
Only D.H. Lawrence could gripe and grumble his way through one of the world's loveliest islands, yet still render such an exquisite, spellbinding portrait of its land and its people. The book details a brief getaway to Sardinia that he and wife Frieda (whom he refers to as the "q-b," or queen bee—yuck) took while they lived in Sicily during the tumultuous years following WWI. Given that it was the dead of winter, travel in the region was maddeningly slow and unreliable, and they stayed only a night or two in any town they visited, part of me wanted to backhand him in return for the litany of disappointments and ask him what on earth else he expected. When something does strike his fancy, though, his quicksilver mood change is so infectious and his rhapsodic prose so uncannily beautiful that it's easy to forgive him, like a grouchy but basically good-hearted relative. Consider: “Ah the lovely morning! Away behind us the sun was just coming above the sea’s horizon, and the sky was all golden, all a joyous fire-heated gold, and the sea was glassy bright, the wind gone still, the waves sunk into long, low undulations, the foam of the wake was pale ice-blue in the yellow air.” How can you be mad at that?
December 18, 2021
My opinion of this book vacillated throughout the time I read it. Some parts were funny and descriptive in the way the best travel writing is, but other parts truly seemed dated and judgmental, if not outright annoying. Lawrence spends what seems like 60% of the book calling different Italian people fat and even more time than that pontificating about how poor the service is or how silly the peasants are yet whining about how everyone treats him as an extension of the British government, empire, you name it. He says more than once that he wants to be treated as an individual, yet he fails to do that with most of those he encounters on his journey.
I chose this book for 2 reasons: I studied some Italian and was interested in an English book about Italy and because I set a goal to read a book published 100 years ago in 1921 for my 2021 reading challenge. If you don’t have a similar reason to prompt you to read this book, probably just skip it. I upped it from 2 stars just for the parts that were tender or funny, but if you’re not a D.H. Lawrence scholar or fan of English literature in this period, pick up another book.
I chose this book for 2 reasons: I studied some Italian and was interested in an English book about Italy and because I set a goal to read a book published 100 years ago in 1921 for my 2021 reading challenge. If you don’t have a similar reason to prompt you to read this book, probably just skip it. I upped it from 2 stars just for the parts that were tender or funny, but if you’re not a D.H. Lawrence scholar or fan of English literature in this period, pick up another book.
February 6, 2017
Lawrence was a very good travel writer and an excellent poet. He visited or lived in several countries, including several places in Italy. This book was first published in 1921 and describes a visit David Herbert and Frieda Lawrence made to the island of Sardinia while living in Italy (at Taormina in Sicily, at the foot of Mount Etna). His skills of observation, expression and use of poetic language, even when describing the less picturesque aspects of the trip, are demonstrated to the full.
Several of the characters in his novels do think about, talk about and indulge in sex, but that is not what he should be remembered for. His descriptive writing is always excellent and this book makes an good introduction to his work for anyone put off his novels by his reputation (although I think most people nowadays realise it was undeserved). His descriptions of the trip include some delightful tender moments of Freida's reactions, otherwise known as Queen-Bee, during the train and ferry journey to the island.
Several of the characters in his novels do think about, talk about and indulge in sex, but that is not what he should be remembered for. His descriptive writing is always excellent and this book makes an good introduction to his work for anyone put off his novels by his reputation (although I think most people nowadays realise it was undeserved). His descriptions of the trip include some delightful tender moments of Freida's reactions, otherwise known as Queen-Bee, during the train and ferry journey to the island.
January 24, 2022
This is a really gorgeous, cynical, honest book, less a travel guide, then a state of mind.
Lawrence is an Englishman in 1912, with all of the biases and prejudices of his time, and he traverses the rural, primitive, backward island of Sardinia blasting the food, the lodgings, the crudeness of the buildings and the manners.
He excels in his descriptive powers whether he is eating bad food, freezing, enduring filth, lack of bathing, or bad wine. Sleeping in dirty beds, bemoaning sanitation and peasant manners, he holds nothing back.
There is too much that is well written in here to jot down in this review.
I would urge you to read this short, brutal, direct book, because there is a lot to learn about writing even if Lawrence knows not much about the Sardinians. This is not a scholarly guide to Sardinia, but a kind of hate poem rendered in prose.
Lawrence is an Englishman in 1912, with all of the biases and prejudices of his time, and he traverses the rural, primitive, backward island of Sardinia blasting the food, the lodgings, the crudeness of the buildings and the manners.
He excels in his descriptive powers whether he is eating bad food, freezing, enduring filth, lack of bathing, or bad wine. Sleeping in dirty beds, bemoaning sanitation and peasant manners, he holds nothing back.
There is too much that is well written in here to jot down in this review.
I would urge you to read this short, brutal, direct book, because there is a lot to learn about writing even if Lawrence knows not much about the Sardinians. This is not a scholarly guide to Sardinia, but a kind of hate poem rendered in prose.
November 7, 2024
Snobby brit and his wife (why would you call ur wife queen bee?) going in the lands of color, smell and taste — Italia 🤌🏻🤌🏻
Sometimes fun and interesting, and at times makes you think times before internet on your fingertips should have been very boring. Unnecessarily elaborate sentences, observations… but who am I to judge …
Very funny how he calls the real men in Europe to be in Sardinia — the last bastion of Masculinity. Quotes below.
After all — The Author for sure has Passive Agressive Personality Disorder. He is not able to express his anger and frustration outwardly and directly, but instead chooses to keep it to himself and with his berating observations under his pen.
But overall, quite interesting to read — to see the Italy and Europe of 1920s, its different people, traditions, regions. And also to read it from the eyes of a critical, sharp, and very observant intellectual. I started it during my trip in Sardinia, so it was quite interesting. Gives the reader a nice view of the life then, for example, when he is very surprised how the horse carts are able to pull through the steep and narrow streets of Cagliari, and that cars would never come to the city — of course thats not the case now. Its a really nice book for a road trip — and especially if it has the places that the book observes.
/////Very *interesting* observations//////:
“There must be something curious about the proximity of a volcano. Naples and Catania alike, the men are hugely fat, with great macaroni paunches, they are expansive and in a perfect drip of casual affection and love. But the Sicilians are even more wildly exuberant and fat and all over one another than the Neapolitans. They never leave off being amorously friendly with almost everybody, emitting a relentless physical familiarity that is quite bewildering to one not brought up near a volcano.”
/////There is something that he deeply envies about how touchy people are *able* to be in Italy and Mediterranean culture/////:
“This is more true of the middle classes than of the lower. The working men are perforce thinner and less exuberant. But they hang together in clusters, and can never be physically near enough.”
“Lemon trees, like Italians, seem to be happiest when they are touching one another all round.”
“And that also is how they are. So terribly physically all over one another. They pour themselves one over the other like so much melted butter over parsnips. They catch each other under the chin, with a tender caress of the hand, and they smile with sunny melting tenderness into each other's face. Never in the world have I seen such melting gay tenderness as between casual Sicilians on railway platforms, whether they be young lean-cheeked Sicilians or huge stout Sicilians.”
Queer how they bring that feeling of physical intimacy with them. You are never surprised if they begin to take off their boots, or their collar-and-tie. The whole world is a sort of bedroom to them. One shrinks, but in vain.
////// A salad of Fascination with the Exotic, and then Bashing Europe & Soft European Men/Culture/Masculinity, mixed with a pinch of Nietzsche and his master/slave dialectic and Freudian Self Analysis //////:
“The crowd is across the road, under the trees near the sea. On this side stroll occasional pedestrians. And I see my first peasant in costume. He is an elderly, upright, handsome man, beautiful in the black-and-white costume. He wears the full-sleeved white shirt and the close black bodice of thick, native frieze, cut low. From this sticks out a short kilt or frill, of the same black frieze, a band of which goes between the legs, between the full, loose drawers of coarse linen. The drawers are banded below the knee into tight black frieze gaiters. On his head he has the long black stocking-cap, hanging down behind.
How handsome he is, and so beautifully male! He walks with his hands loose behind his back, slowly, upright, and aloof. The lovely unapproachableness, indomitable. And the flash of the black-and-white, the slow stride of the full white drawers, the black gaiters and black cuirass with the bolero, then the great white sleeves and white breast again, and once more the black cap—what marvellous massing of the contrast, marvellous, and superb, as on a magpie. -How beautiful maleness is, if it finds its right expression.-And how perfectly ridiculous it is made in modern clothes.
There is another peasant too, a young one with a swift eye and hard cheek and hard, dangerous thighs. He has folded his stocking-cap, so that it comes forward to his brow like a phrygian cap. He wears close knee-breeches and close sleeved waistcoat of thick brownish stuff that looks like leather. Over the waistcoat a sort of cuirass of black, rusty sheepskin, the curly wool outside. So he strides, talking to a comrade.
How fascinating it is, after the soft Italians, to see these limbs in their close knee-breeches, so definite, so manly, with the old fierceness in them still. One realises, with horror, that the race of men is almost extinct in Europe. Only Christ-like heroes and woman-worshipping Don Juans, and rabid equality-mongrels. The old, hardy, indomitable male is gone. His fierce singleness is quenched. The last sparks are dying out in Sardinia and Spain. Nothing left but the herd-proletariat and the herd-equality mongrelism, and the wistful poisonous self-sacrificial cultured soul. How detestable.
But that curious, flashing, black-and-white costume! I seem to have known it before: to have worn it even: to have dreamed it. To have dreamed it: to have had actual contact with it. It belongs in some way to something in me-to my past, perhaps. I don't know.
But the uneasy sense of blood-familiarity haunts me. I know I have known it before. It is something of the same uneasiness I feel before Mount Eryx: but without the awe this time.”
Sometimes fun and interesting, and at times makes you think times before internet on your fingertips should have been very boring. Unnecessarily elaborate sentences, observations… but who am I to judge …
Very funny how he calls the real men in Europe to be in Sardinia — the last bastion of Masculinity. Quotes below.
After all — The Author for sure has Passive Agressive Personality Disorder. He is not able to express his anger and frustration outwardly and directly, but instead chooses to keep it to himself and with his berating observations under his pen.
But overall, quite interesting to read — to see the Italy and Europe of 1920s, its different people, traditions, regions. And also to read it from the eyes of a critical, sharp, and very observant intellectual. I started it during my trip in Sardinia, so it was quite interesting. Gives the reader a nice view of the life then, for example, when he is very surprised how the horse carts are able to pull through the steep and narrow streets of Cagliari, and that cars would never come to the city — of course thats not the case now. Its a really nice book for a road trip — and especially if it has the places that the book observes.
/////Very *interesting* observations//////:
“There must be something curious about the proximity of a volcano. Naples and Catania alike, the men are hugely fat, with great macaroni paunches, they are expansive and in a perfect drip of casual affection and love. But the Sicilians are even more wildly exuberant and fat and all over one another than the Neapolitans. They never leave off being amorously friendly with almost everybody, emitting a relentless physical familiarity that is quite bewildering to one not brought up near a volcano.”
/////There is something that he deeply envies about how touchy people are *able* to be in Italy and Mediterranean culture/////:
“This is more true of the middle classes than of the lower. The working men are perforce thinner and less exuberant. But they hang together in clusters, and can never be physically near enough.”
“Lemon trees, like Italians, seem to be happiest when they are touching one another all round.”
“And that also is how they are. So terribly physically all over one another. They pour themselves one over the other like so much melted butter over parsnips. They catch each other under the chin, with a tender caress of the hand, and they smile with sunny melting tenderness into each other's face. Never in the world have I seen such melting gay tenderness as between casual Sicilians on railway platforms, whether they be young lean-cheeked Sicilians or huge stout Sicilians.”
Queer how they bring that feeling of physical intimacy with them. You are never surprised if they begin to take off their boots, or their collar-and-tie. The whole world is a sort of bedroom to them. One shrinks, but in vain.
////// A salad of Fascination with the Exotic, and then Bashing Europe & Soft European Men/Culture/Masculinity, mixed with a pinch of Nietzsche and his master/slave dialectic and Freudian Self Analysis //////:
“The crowd is across the road, under the trees near the sea. On this side stroll occasional pedestrians. And I see my first peasant in costume. He is an elderly, upright, handsome man, beautiful in the black-and-white costume. He wears the full-sleeved white shirt and the close black bodice of thick, native frieze, cut low. From this sticks out a short kilt or frill, of the same black frieze, a band of which goes between the legs, between the full, loose drawers of coarse linen. The drawers are banded below the knee into tight black frieze gaiters. On his head he has the long black stocking-cap, hanging down behind.
How handsome he is, and so beautifully male! He walks with his hands loose behind his back, slowly, upright, and aloof. The lovely unapproachableness, indomitable. And the flash of the black-and-white, the slow stride of the full white drawers, the black gaiters and black cuirass with the bolero, then the great white sleeves and white breast again, and once more the black cap—what marvellous massing of the contrast, marvellous, and superb, as on a magpie. -How beautiful maleness is, if it finds its right expression.-And how perfectly ridiculous it is made in modern clothes.
There is another peasant too, a young one with a swift eye and hard cheek and hard, dangerous thighs. He has folded his stocking-cap, so that it comes forward to his brow like a phrygian cap. He wears close knee-breeches and close sleeved waistcoat of thick brownish stuff that looks like leather. Over the waistcoat a sort of cuirass of black, rusty sheepskin, the curly wool outside. So he strides, talking to a comrade.
How fascinating it is, after the soft Italians, to see these limbs in their close knee-breeches, so definite, so manly, with the old fierceness in them still. One realises, with horror, that the race of men is almost extinct in Europe. Only Christ-like heroes and woman-worshipping Don Juans, and rabid equality-mongrels. The old, hardy, indomitable male is gone. His fierce singleness is quenched. The last sparks are dying out in Sardinia and Spain. Nothing left but the herd-proletariat and the herd-equality mongrelism, and the wistful poisonous self-sacrificial cultured soul. How detestable.
But that curious, flashing, black-and-white costume! I seem to have known it before: to have worn it even: to have dreamed it. To have dreamed it: to have had actual contact with it. It belongs in some way to something in me-to my past, perhaps. I don't know.
But the uneasy sense of blood-familiarity haunts me. I know I have known it before. It is something of the same uneasiness I feel before Mount Eryx: but without the awe this time.”
March 15, 2011
I liked this book very much. Lawrence paints an extremely vivid picture of rural Italy on the eve of industrialization. You can almost see him with his backpack at the train stations, in a pensione, etc. A very natural manner of expression; conversational almost.
April 3, 2013
I feel drugged Lawrence is the English Bunin and conversely Bunin is the Russian Lawrence: both write from nature not of it they are not sappy worshippers but profound detailed shamen; they see what we never will
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