Auf verbotenen Wegen

by D.H. Lawrence, Georg Goyert (Translator)

The Trespasser (1912) D. H. Lawrence Lawrence's second novel is influenced by one of the author's friends, Helen Corke, who had an adulterous relationship with a married man which ended in suicide.

Genres: Fiction, Classics, Novels, Romance, 20th Century, English Literature, British Literature

170 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1912

About the author

David 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...

Reviews

[Sawsan · Rating 3 out of 5]

رواية أحداثها قليلة رغم طولها لكنها مميزة بجمال اللغة وأسلوب الوصف
دي اتش لورانس الفنان الذي يمنح الوصف كل ما يملك من تعبيرات بديعة
علاقة حب بين امرأة ورجل متزوج تصبح الزوجة الطرف الثالث فيها
كل منهم حائر في فعل ما يرغب فيه فعلا وبين نُكران الذات وفعل ما يُفترض أنه صواب
معاناة سيجموند وصراعه مع نفسه كان الأوضح والأقوى, حتى يصل لآخر لحظات الألم والانهيار
الزوجة والحبيبة كل منهما عاشت حياتها كما ترغب بعد موته
وكأن موته كان الحل الأمثل للخلاص من المعاناة والحيرة
الرواية نُشرت عام 1912 استطاع لورانس أن يعرض فيها جوانب من طبيعة الحياة والمشاعر والناس

[Georgia Scott · Rating 4 out of 5]

The ultimate tease. Smack at the beginning, Lawrence tells us the main character will die. Then, he puts him on an island with fast tides, caves that flood, and a young woman who drives him mad with lust. Cold showers won't cure him any more than those swims. Will she give in to him, ever? She loves him. He loves her. Then, that death thing. How does it happen? Which cave or swim or hilltop in the dark? Lawrence kept me reading to find out.

[MJ Nicholls · Rating 3 out of 5]

This sophomore novel is a cross between Brief Encounter and Touching from a Distance (the Ian Curtis memoir), exploring a doomed affair between two surprisingly staid characters. The first half has some fine bucolic writing and not much else, the second half kicks into life when Lawrence explores the depression of Siegmund in an age when depression was remarkably unbritish. The seeds of Lawrence’s mercurial, passionate antiheroes and antiheroines are here, with the characters avidly loving each other in one paragraph and scowling with hatred in the next. And now, having completed Lawrence’s novels in this Year of the Plague 2020, here are my best to worst rankings.

D.H. Lawrence . . . RANKED

NOVELS:

1 — Women in Love
2 — Sons and Lovers
3 — Lady Chatterley’s Lover
4 — The Lost Girl
5 — Kangaroo
6 — Aaron’s Rod
7 — The White Peacock
8 — The Rainbow
9 — The Plumed Serpent
10 — The Trespasser
11 — The Boy in the Bush*

NOVELLAS:

1 — St. Mawr
2 — The Virgin and the Gipsy
3 — The Fox
4 — The Captain’s Doll
5 — The Princess
6 — The Ladybird
7 — The Escaped Cock

* This is an MS from Mollie Skinner DHL tweaked and “recast” . . . as DHL contributed only ¼ of the text, I refute this novel’s place in the DH canon.

[Eman Alshareef · Rating 3 out of 5]

رواية مليئة بالجمال والبشاعة

لا استطيع قول المزيد

[Laura · Rating 3 out of 5]

Free download available at Project Gutenberg.

5* Women in Love
4* Sons and Lovers
5* Lady Chatterley's Lover
3* The Rainbow
3* The Fox
3* The Virgin and the Gipsy
3* The Prussian Officer
3* Daughters of the Vicar
3* The Captain's Doll
4* The Ladybird
3* England, My England
3* The Prussian Officer and The White Stocking
3* Aaron's Rod
3* The Shades Of Spring
3* A Modern Lover and Other Stories
3* Goose Fair
3* Love Among the Haystacks
3* A Mortal Coil and Other Stories
4* The Rocking-Horse Winner
4* STUDIES IN CLASSIC AMERICAN LITERATURE
4* The Daughter-In-Law
4* The Boy in the Bush
3* The Trespasser
TR The Escaped Cock
TR Selected Short Stories
TR Kangoroo
TR The White Peacock
TR The Lost Girl
TR Selected Critical Writings
TR The Man Who Loved Islands

About D.H. Lawrence:
5* The World Broke in Two: Virginia Woolf, T.S. Eliot, D.H. Lawrence, E.M. Forster and the Year that Changed Literature by Bill Goldstein

[Nahed.E]

لم أتوقع حين بدأت بها أن ينتهي الأمر سريعا إلي تصنيف
( كتب لم تكتمل )
!!
لا أعلم لماذا شعرت بكل هذه الغربة عن الكتاب ؟ لماذا شعرت أنني بعيدة ، مع أشخاص أقرأ عنهم وكأنهم أشباحاً علي ورق !
فقط سطور تبدأ وتنتهي وأنا معهم ودونهم في الوقت نفسه .. !!
لا أحب الكتاب الذي يدعني اسرح بعيداً عن أحداثه ..
ولا الذي يسمح لي أن أبتعد بذهني وعيوني عن صفحاته ..

وربما أكون قد تسرعت في الحكم ؟
لا أعلم .. ولكن .. اسم د . هـ لورانس يستحق الصبر .. ويستحق منهي محاولة ثانية ...

رغم ضميري الذي يتعبني حين أترك كتاباً هكذا من بدايته ..
إلا أنني لا أريد أن اضيع مزيداً من الوقت في التردد بين الاستمرار والترك ..

ولن اقيمها الأن ..
في لقاء آخر بإذن الله
...

[Robert · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Trespasser by D. H. Lawrence

I’m not sure about the best way to enjoy writing this comment on D.H. Lawrence’s second novel, The Trespasser. With Lawrence it seems to easy to say it is a very fine, intensely wrought novel that presaged even greater work to follow. If you were an editor/publisher and received this work from a relatively unknown writer, for instance, you’d know right away that the man had immense and peculiar talent. You’d question the narrow focus of the plot and the confusing opening and ending of the manuscript, but you’d have no doubt, sentence after sentence, that Lawrence understood early in his career that you could write about things in the English language that normally are ineffable.

The story is fairly simple. A musician in a bad early marriage falls in love with a younger musician, spends a week on the Isle of Wight with her, and realizes, upon returning home, that he can’t go on without her (Helena) or abandon Beatrice (his wife) and the children he shares with Beatrice. So he commits suicide. Hangs himself. Within a year, Beatrice has moved on with help from her family, and Helena has found a new suitor who slowly, slowly, is getting his fingers in position to pry her fingers off Siegmund’s memory.

There is something intentionally Wagnerian about this, but let’s skip that and go back to this peculiar quality of Lawrence’s writing. He manages, in describing the week on the Isle of Wight, to describe the moment to moment rise and fall all lovers experience in their earliest passion. He relates a passing glance to nothing less than death. He grants the sky and sun and waves outrageous primacy in reflecting human emotions to which, we probably believe, nature is utterly indifferent. He simply has the tenacity to not let go of what happens between two erotically engaged people taking a walk, lying on the beach, wondering privately to themselves whether there is a future to this passion or an onrushing calamity.

Carrying this emotional nothingness, devoid of clear action and certain outcome for the longest time, is a very difficult task for a writer. But Lawrence, like some other English writers before him (Blake comes to mind) had the gift of re-valuing his native language itself. Yes, Nietzsche theorized and practiced such revaluation in German, too; I’m conscious of that and want to bring him into the discussion just a bit, especially because he first loved and then hated Wagner, and the young Lawrence wasn’t nearly as astute and bitter and learned as Nietzsche.

No matter, here is a novel by Lawrence I had never heard of before that isn’t infected by some of his later histrionics and excesses. Curiously, the smaller Lawrence wrote (some of the short stories and The Fox come to mind), the more purely he wrote, with less affectation and overt criticism of almost everyone who couldn’t quite believe in his theories of “the blood.”

The Trespasser reaches an appalling high point toward the end as Siegmund realizes he can’t go on. His analysis is clear and deadly. His relations with his wife, who is fed up with him, and his children, who are fed up with him, are dreadful. He is truly someone who at least should run away, and we know he will do that, we just don’t know, until the beautifully awkward discovery of his body, how he will do it.

Those of us who would condemn him in principle are likely to stop condemning him as they get as good a look at his home life when he returns from the Isle of Wight. That’s when Lawrence’s drama becomes action, not metaphysics, logic, not fantasy, and my God, by God, he’s going to do it...he’s going to do it...he’s done it...he’s dead.

And then? This business of Beatrice refusing to mourn him, this business of Helena contemplating, within a year, the advances of a new lover. Actually, it’s a little brutal, a little too realistic, a little disappointing in a way that puts the whole of our little lives into an unpleasant perspective.

The first time I ran into such an ethos--the ethos of so what if we live, so what if we die--occurred during my freshman year in college. My roommate informed me that if I were to die, he wouldn’t care in the least; he wouldn’t care if anyone died, himself or his family included. Life to him was a material phenomenon, and so if Earle was dead, big deal. He wasn’t being histrionic, nor was Lawrence being histrionic in The Trespasser He really meant that in the context of the sun and stars and galaxies, we don’t matter, so those of us who survive a little longer should just get on with it.

This anecdote of mine ends badly. Obviously I didn’t die. My roommate died. He already, at seventeen (he was a math prodigy), was on the road to alcoholism. By his late forties, he would call me and talk about things drunkenly, and because somehow we’d remained friends, I would listen, and then he got around to telling me his liver was shot and there was no remedy and by fifty, he was gone. That’s a brutal death. My mother, who was a nurse, once told me that cirrhosis of the liver causes the worst death of all. She’d seen it and many other kinds of death and that was her opinion.

In the case of The Trespasser, the approach to suicide is as finely recounted as moments of erotic bliss just a few days earlier on the Isle of Wight. The only error our editor/publisher might have made upon receiving this exceptional early novel was not insisting Lawrence get into it and out of it more cleanly and quickly. But the young Lawrence wanted some irony and distance from his dismal vision, and so only ninety percent of the text is unremittingly acute. The other ten percent is novelizing. Ultimately with Women in Love, Lawrence spat the novelizing out. All he gave his readers was his really unusual rendition of relentless passion lurking beneath everything we say and do.

[Cliff M · Rating 4 out of 5]

A masterclass in descriptive writing, with a bitter-sweet ending following a tragedy involving two lovers (a book without lovers would not be a book by DHL!). Normally I’m not a fan of descriptive writing as it is the sign of hormonal high school writing and/or the middle-class colleague who announces via email that they are “leaving the organisation to write” (cue loud groans around the office as you know you will all be expected to read it, and brace yourself for: ‘clouds like cotton-wool’, ‘the sunshine state’, ‘a chip off the old block’, ‘the calm before the storm’, ‘like an angel’ etc). But when you read Lawrence you are reminded that descriptive writing can be amazing when performed (and it does feel more than a little performed) by a master.

[Stuart Aken · Rating 4 out of 5]

D.H.Lawrence’s The Trespasser, published, after The White Peacock, in 1912 is very much of its time. Unlike the more famous Lady Chatterley’s Lover, this is a book that might excite the interest of a modern publisher but wouldn’t be actually published. The language, full of deeply poetic angst, is identifiably old fashioned, and the plot is so thin, and no longer in any form unique, that no current editor could consider publication.

We live in a different age and few these days would have the patience to read this piece of literature in the way necessary to absorb fully the subtlety of the nuanced language. As a step back into an earlier time, when readers were prepared to mull over the words and ideas presented by an author, it did an excellent job for me. But, I admit, there were descriptive passages I skipped, wanting to get back to the emotional conflicts and leave the landscape to my imagination.

Lawrence has a way of employing language in ways that most writers wouldn’t dare, and he not only gets away with it, but produces evocative and moving prose. If the story is thin, the characters most certainly are not. This is a book all about character in its literal and metaphorical senses. Modern readers, by which I mean those young enough to remain unaware of the furore over Lady C (which I read in my late teens, when it was finally released in UK), are unlikely to understand the moral dilemma at the heart of the novel. When the idea of faithfulness in marriage has been as widely disparaged as it has in modern literature, it must be hard to comprehend why anyone would put themselves through the torture here described simply in order to satisfy the whim of then current social and religious mores.

I’d like to report that I enjoyed the book, but it is a work more to be endured, whilst the empathetic reader is compelled to discover an outcome that is, in reality, inevitable. Those interested in Lawrence, studying literature, or fascinated by portrayals of English life at the beginning of the last century will find a great deal here. For the rest, I suspect the archaic language and the lack of a modern plot will prevent any real enjoyment.

[Aya Abo3ghreb]

حاولت حقا أن أكملها.
جاهدت معها كثيرا ..
لكني فكرت أن الحياة أقصر من أرغم نفسي علي قراءة رواية رتيبة جدا كهذه فقط لأنها كلاسيكية!
فترتكتها
وتقييمي لها يُترك أيضا !

[James Hartley · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lawrence's second novel is intermittently fascinating. The story of a doomed affair, for me it was let down by the construction, which sags nastily in the middle.
The opening section of the book on the Isle of Wight has some stunning writing - things only Lawrence could come up with - although after an initial high, the overall effect wanes. You can't help thinking, "all right, all right, get on with it - what happens?" When things do start to happen - the couple returning to normal life, again the book lights up with incredible descriptions of character and action. Again, overwroughtness drags the whole thing down and you close the book with some fond memories but an overall feeling of relief.
It's grown on me in the few days since I've read it and the vivid sections are there in my memory like real events, more for the writing, though, and not so much for the characters or even the story.

[Paul Christensen · Rating 3 out of 5]

This story is based on real events (its Wagnerian echoes seem forced).
Helena is a modern girl who flees both cold and warmth;

An anemone, to her, is just a kaleidoscopic shape
But, for her lover Siegmund, is a thing to evaluate;

He gets beneath its skin; but the flesh is distasteful to her,
She is positively anaemic, exhausts her passions in a blur,

Til Siegmund's violin is the only thing that remains of him.
The cold condemning eyes of his wife, the grave eyes of his children

No longer matter now, for he is in an empty place
(Niflheim, limbo) forgetting Helena's empty face.

[Yosum · Rating 4 out of 5]

D.H.Lawrence çok severek okuduğum bir yazar. Yine çok güzel bir kitapla buluşturdu beni. Kitabın kahramanları 38 yaşında, evli, çocuklu bir müzik öğretmeni olanSiegmund ile ondan uzun yıllardır keman dersi alan 27 yaşındaki Helena. Kitap bu ikilinin yasak aşkını anlatıyor. Helena ve Sigmund bir adada 5 günlük bir deniz tatili yaptıktan sonra Londra'ya dönüyorlar. Siegmund karısının ve çocuklarının O'nu aşağılayan, yok sayan tavırlarına dayanamıyor. Ne ailesini bırakıp Helena ile olabiliyor ne de Helena'yı bırakıp ailesine dönebiliyor. Bu çözümsüzlük onu intihara götürüyor. O'nun ölümünden sonra ise yaşam devam ediyor. Her zaman olduğu gibi...

[Selim Njeim · Rating 3 out of 5]

Narrative about acutely distressed individuals seeking to abate the unfair forces turning their lives upside down, making them wallow in insurmountable depression--but constantly failing at that (as a lot characters do in contemporaneous works).

A lot of description, so little events, making a review of this not worth the while. Good Sunday read, though.

[Maha Alhasawi · Rating 2 out of 5]

عندما انقسم النقاد في تصنيف هذه الرواية ان كانت ذات المستوى او دون ذلك، فقد أنحزت وبامتياز الى القسم الثاني برغم ما تحمله الرواية من عميق المعنى في وصف لحظات الانهيار الأخيرة ، الا انها ككل لا تفي بالامتيازات التي حققت بقلم د ه لورانس فيما سبقها .

[Mighty Aphrodite · Rating 5 out of 5]

Non credo che troverò mai le parole o il coraggio per parlare di questo libro.

[Zachary Ngow · Rating 3 out of 5]

Cannot be bothered writing a proper review for some reason but I liked it more than I expected. I had the impression that this was his worst novel, but it wasn't too bad though the middle section perhaps could have been cut down. Interesting the switch from first to third person from his first novel, and the smaller scope. This one had better relationships than The White Peacock. Also there were some very satisfying sentences especially to read aloud.

[Allan MacDonell · Rating 5 out of 5]

This early D. H. Lawrence novel is basically the Ian Curtis story set in an earlier England. If you’re feeling trigger happy, maybe quit The Trespasser while you’re ahead. There’s no prize for forcing yourself on to the end.

[Colin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Are the characters sympathetic? Not really. Is the plot a bit slow? Yes. But the sentences, my god, the sentences!

[Gresi e i suoi Sogni d'inchiostro · Rating 4 out of 5]

“ So che il cuore della vita è buono perché lo sento, altrimenti sceglierei di vivere come atto di sfida. Ma la vita è spesso più grande di chiunque altro. Soffriamo e spesso non sappiamo perché. La vita non lo spiega. “

I romanzi che << fanno per me >>, quelli in cui amo sguazzarci impunemente, scorrazzare come un furetto in una splendida e verdeggiante prateria, sono quelli il cui respiro è tendenzialmente lontano, se non preistorico. Chi mi conosce, bonariamente mi ha sempre definita come lettrice dall’anima vecchia, quella che ama impegnarsi in vicende complicate, cervellotiche e pragmatiche, in cui non basta una semplice e risoluta pacca sulla spalla a condensare o smorzare qualunque tensione, quanto un’indagine a fondo. Quasi sempre questa indagine coincide con quella relativa l’anima, negli ultimi tempi frequentatrice di salotti letterari in cui fanno da sfondo vicende che un tempo non avrei mai immaginato o sognato. Ad inizio anno, mi sono intestardita a voler compiere dei passi che, solo il tempo lo dirà, mi condurranno lontana. Non solo di letteratura, ma, in generale, convergenti lungo una strada in cui la mia anima possa sentirsi ristorata, consapevole ma contenta di ciò che da sempre confida di scovare, e fra questi progetti sicuramente il proposito di affondare o sondare il terreno sui diversi fronti della letteratura.
Non posso ignorare l’eco altisonante dei classici, alle mie orecchie è un suono dolce in cui tutto il resto, il resto che lo circonda, sembra un surrogato, una figura meramente scopiazzata. Eppure, una pila di gigantesca di libri non potrà mai conciliare il piacere di tutta una vita, uno scambio di anime, quell’ immancabile appuntamento fra autore e lettore in cui il bandolo della matassa è che da ciò non si cerca nient’altro che quello scambio di avere ed essere dato. Come uno scambio di lettere o di email che alla fine di un viaggio, di un ritiro si poggiano su esperienze personali o meno che conducono lontano o vicino dall’obiettivo iniziale, ed accrescono il piacere della lettura, della sua compagnia mediante la ricerca di un uomo o una donna - il nostro guru - che ci guidi o conduca nei posti più impensabili.
Basta fare il primo passo nella direzione giusta e il resto viene da sé. O quasi. La letteratura è divenuta parte integrante della mia vita ma, mio Dio, quante cose ho visto e vissuto, quante cose si sono susseguite a quel aprire un semplice libro di favole, osservare le figure colorate ed essere risucchiata in un mondo in cui, all'epoca non ne ero del tutto consapevole, si dibatteva con la mia coscienza. Nel tempo quest’arte è stata perfezionata, ma come dimenticare la magia che invase il mio spirito, plasmò la mia pelle, quando conobbi Harry e la splendida Hogwarts?
Come spiegare quel piacere che nutrì quando conobbi, quando avevo diciannove anni, D H Lawrence, mediante la storia di una giovane coppia e del loro indicibile amore? Forse si trattava di quella magia che ogni tanto attribuisco all’incontro che spesso la vita ci riserva, quando conosciamo o scopriamo un nuovo autore, ma fu qualcosa che mi piacque irrimediabilmente, generò un certo fascino, instillò quel seme della passione per i classici, già gettato con l’amore tragico di Catherine e Heathcliff, di cui io avrei dovuto solo prenderne cura. Nonostante tante cose non mi erano chiare, nonostante tanti passaggi fossero incomprensibili, tante scelte dei personaggi inspiegabili, ma trastullata con superficialità dal tepore di una storia che aveva messo su quelle fondamenta da cui adesso, in età adulta, posso attingere per la realizzazione del mio rendimento culturale. Una specie di cornice infilata nella cornice di uno specchio in cui i personaggi erano una specie di << santoni >> insoddisfatti della vita, anime vacue che vagano lungo la riva dell’assurdo e i cui gesti spesso insensati e sconsiderati sono dettati dal mal di vivere. Da forme di soffocamento che inducono a sciogliere qualunque legame, ma che sottraggono forme di tranquillità. Helena, infatti, è conoscitrice di queste forme di soffocamento, quasi sempre sballottata come una gigantesca onda, a seconda del suo incontrollato flusso, da una parte all’altra, e a cui la vita le ha riservato il compito di custodire, tra le sue piccole mani, un fiore delicato ma bellissimo. Forse abdicare ad un potere assoluto in cui il sesso maschile diviene sturmento e distruzione di fonti di vita, di forme di umanità purchè divenga comprensiva e gestibile, la relega in una realtà in cui sembra impossibile scorgere alcunchè, moralista ma forte e indomabile come la natura il cui destino è trascinato in conclusioni meschine e malvagie. Ma questo mal del secolo è un male incurabile che cresce nel suo organismo come una malattia incurabile, privandola di quella bellezza di vita, quella mancanza di obiettivi che come una condanna grava sulla sua testa come una spada di Damocle. Helena aveva un ché di rassicurante e ordinato …. ma nascondeva un mondo vasto di tante cose che nella cornice di uno specchio incrinato, lucido ma frantumato in più parti, non sfolgora quanto resta una macchia opaca difficile da togliere.
E non credo ci siano bisogno di tante parole per dire che, Helena, così come Sigmund, furono qui funamboli generati da Lawrence come espediente narrativo all’influenza del mondo che è volontà, in cui i vasti echi schopenhaueriani, il tema della morte come piegamento ai limiti della sregolatezza individuale, l’atto del recidere ogni legame,qualunque assetto positivo essi conferiscono, sono forme di perdita ma rigenerazione atti all’annientamento. E, in questo splendido ma tragico quadro, una musicalità tipica di quella warneriara e manniana, in cui Lawrence delina quel margine invalicabile fra bisessualità, rapporti carnali asmatici di carne e spirito, cristallina in un paesaggio circostante immobile ma disseminato di simboli in cui lo scontro con la natura, la sua forza matrice genera impotenza, incapacità ad non essere travolto dagli affetti. La musicalità di certi affetti è aggiunzione, imperativo al pensiero, alla moralità lawrenciana, così incommensurabile, ricca e produttiva,e ogni azione o gesto specchio di ogni atto cui sia capace l’uomo. Dinanzi al rapporto uomo/natura siamo nient’altro che delle forme nevrotiche che possono trastullarsi dinanzi la superficie deliziosa e calda della vita, ma mossi da idiomi inesplicabili di malinconia e sofferenza che stanno al di sotto, quella che l’autore all’epoca disconosce.
Il mondo è un vasto cosmo di tante cose che tentiamo di interpretare mediante chiavi di lettura in cui a dettare le regole è solo l’autore, e pur quanto i personaggi abbiano forza e respiro non riescono a sciogliersi da quella sinfonia del componimento generato dalla stessa natura quanto a prevalere gli stessi personaggi. Difficili da scorgere chiaramente se non avvolti in una coltre di opacità, una certa tendenza a sovrapporre la volontà creativa della musica stessa. E ciò che se ne ricava è un torrente di emozioni, sentimenti che danno il via libera a forme di energie logoranti
Il gusto più grandioso di una forma rigenerante che non ristora quanto annienta, assioma che folgora come un accecante luce, elemento aggiuntivo di un componimento musicale concepito, così come il suo titolo, dall’esperienza di una sua ex amica e delle sue relazioni che intrattenne con un uomo sposato che finisce poi per suicidarsi.
Questo folle e spietato meccanismo che è una subordinazione alla vita, e in cui, delle volte, mi sono sentita persino intrappolata, soffocata, oppressa da qualcosa che è esistito solo nella mia testa, perché fui così immersa in qualcosa che mi affascinò e infastidì tantissimo, sbandando e perdendo un po' la direzione, mettendo gli occhi in primis su due anime innamorate e sul loro approccio alla vita, non riuscendo però a valicare i confini del possibile, la dolcezza del mio cuore era in netto contrasto con quella tragicità tipica della filosofia Schopenhaueriana. Ma la cui frustrazione che gravava come un fardello troppo pesante sulle loro coscienza inquina fin troppo spesso il sorriso. Fin troppo proiettati in una realtà disumana, l’inizio di un processo amorfo e ineluttabile in cui l’intento fatalista era reso all’estremo, si abbraccia o si segue una linea di nullità come un male incurabile e invincibile, impossibile da estirpare, e niente di tutto questo sarebbe stato possibile, magari figli di carta di un Thomas Hardy o di una Elizabeth Gaskell, la cui luce interiore splendeva fin troppo. Accecava persino i nostri occhi deboli. E ciò, questo spregevole sistema, li avrebbe annientati. Sarebbe stato impossibile contrastarli, così facile da trovarsi lì, ora che
cresce e si consolida in un paesaggio che sembra si stia avvizzendo, in cui si avverte il desiderio del possesso e la tacita richiesta d’aiuto. Ma ottenendo come unica occasione di riscatto o rinascita, una vita che è sempre stata vuota e appagante.

[Vi · Rating 4 out of 5]

From the back cover:

“The Trespasser, Lawrence’s second novel, foreshadows the passion of Lady Chatterley’s Lover. Helena and Siegmund are in love. But there is more than one obstacle to their happiness. Siegmund is a married man with children and Helena is full of inhibitions. They spend a week together on the Isle of Wright, but on their return to London Siegmund faces a deadlock.”

The Trespasser is an emotional tug of war – sensuality mixed with a hefty dose of tension, just what I love about and have come to expect from a D.H. Lawrence novel. Love and anxiety, even foreboding, interplay with every word, particularly in the first two-thirds of the novel as we are introduced to Siegmund, a conflicted and adulterous father of four, and his lover Helena, during their vacation by the sea. This short novel is more than a love story, however; it is a personal and family drama, raw, human, and with a gamut of shades of love and betrayal.

My favourite aspect of Lawrence’s writing is the sensuality he evokes through rich imagery and tactile vocabulary. It all comes in waves of softness and harshness, making his words so alive that they feel like a summer breeze against my skin.

[John Deaton]

It was his first, I believe (D.H. Lawrence), and hasn't the narrative control of "Lady Chatterly," but it is interesting to see how he fearlessly writes about his characters. For one thing, he mixes their viewpoints, which I was told not to do. That is, he has her thoughts about something in the same paragraph that also contains his thoughts. It is as though we are traveling inside a cocoon with them, larvae all, and I also like the way he instintively sets the stage for each scene, which attracts modern readers who are used to seeing filmed stories. Writing a novel is like seeing a movie, really. It reels forward just so. The main difference, given the reality that it isn't a movie, or isn't yet a movie, is that one can stop it and restart it and take off in a new direction. But make no mistake. The movie is there awaiting the author and that is part of the pull of the writing itself, the unique joy of one's own internal vision, indivisible except by its creator. I'm looking forward to finishing "The Trespasser" because it is in a compendium entitled "Erotic Works of D.H. Lawrence," and contains "Lady Chatterly" as well as assorted other pieces.

[Victor Carson · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have read the author's more famous works and liked them very much. This early work recently became available as an audiobook, on Audible.com, at a reasonable price, so I indulged myself. The story is unsatisfying because it lacks diversity. Lawrence draws an interesting portrait of a married man of about 40, an artist, who starts an affair with a young woman and joins her for a week's holiday on the Isle of Wight. He is bored with his wife but loves his children and knows that this affair will only lead to his own destruction. Whether he and the woman even consummate their affair is unclear -- something I would not have believed based on Lawrence's other books. The novel merely consists of the details of their holiday, his return to his very angry, resentful family, and his suicide. The character portraits are interesting and the author's language is always arresting, but I missed the elaborate narrative development of Women In Love or Lady Chatterley's Lover and the candid sexual themes.

[Margarita · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 out of 5 stars - There is something melancholic about this work which really appeals to me. Although the story is quite simple and awkwardly bookended, Lawrence's ability to describe nature and landscape is unparalleled. His talent is there, just raw. There are glimpses in this novel of his greater, more fulsome works to come (thinking "Lady Chatterley's Lover"). Lawrence keenly observes the human spirit – both its fragility and strength – and he pointedly attacks difficult and controversial ideas instead of shying away from them. It is his fearlessness which attracts me most to his work.

[Edzy · Rating 3 out of 5]

The edition I read--I couldn't find the Cambridge-Penguin edition--has an introduction by Richard Aldington, who took Ford Madox Ford to task for not recommending this novel. But this is one of Lawrence's weaker works, although still worth reading once.

The ending is not especially convincing. The writing is draped in all sorts of Lawrencian clichés--"he loved her... and he hated her"--much like The Rainbow. If you are a completist, you might be interested in The Trespasser. If you're only interested in the Best of D. H. Lawrence, you can give this book a miss.

[Jessie · Rating 5 out of 5]

To get the most out of this book you need to slow the bleep down but when you do that you get little moments in your mind that are perfect... don't race to finish this book! Immerse yourself in it, feel yourself in its images. Best meditation.

[Annalise]

terribly depressing

[Bert Christie · Rating 1 out of 5]

Not my "cup of tea " - What more can I say.

[Fred Clough · Rating 3 out of 5]

I tried one of Lawrence's later novels, Kangaroo, a year or two ago, and did not get on with it at all, so I approached this hitherto unknown and much earlier novel with some scepticism.
There is no doubt that Lawrence is capable of working considerable magic, and this novel is no exception – more of that later. But most of it consists of the record of a week's holiday at the seaside undertaken by a young unmarried woman, Helena, and a slightly older man, Siegmund, who is married: they are both evidently cultivated and very self-conscious people; and much of the writing is concerned to delve into their intense and often conflicting feelings about each other and their adulterous escapade. This would be all right – except that instead of showing these feelings, dramatising them, Lawrence tries to analyse them directly, to finger them, pick them apart, question their real and precise nature, as though both man and woman were patients on the psychoanalyst's couch. After a little while this becomes frankly tedious. It is a manner of writing that Lawrence often resorted to, though much less in the really great novels such as The Rainbow and Women in Love, and hardly if at all in the much briefer novellas and short stories.
But there is magic in this novel, and it is towards the close where (without giving the story away) the two lovers are separated, the focus is elsewhere, and the writing becomes unfailingly taut, dramatic. The final chapter, in which Helena seems to be beginning a new life, but one which is overshadowed by the mistakes of her past, brought to mind the closing of Kafka's Metamorphosis, where the tone of optimism at a new beginning is similarly qualified by the darkness of the preceding narrative.

[Shane]

I enjoyed reading this novel –– though I will admit to being a bit bored (or, unengaged) throughout a decent portion of it. While I feel no sympathy/empathy towards any of the characters (this novel's greatest 'fault'), it is a beautifully intricate romance/falling-out-of-love (?) novel. D.H. Lawrence's prose and his attention to detail in developing the characters (their inner thoughts and outer expressions/postures; their worldviews; etc) is the major draw towards reading this novel. The small moments of passion (and the decline thereof) between Siegmund and Helen -- as well as the private reflective moments that these characters have with the world and their situation within it -- are written so beautifully. The play that transpires between each lover, their outward expressions, and their inner experiences and desires is lovingly written with such incredible detail. I might call D.H. Lawrence a philosopher of love if I didn't respect him so much -- he is certainly attuned towards the interplay of every minute aspect and expression of love (passion, jealousy, hatred, etc., etc., etc.) more than any other I've read, and I am very excited to read more of his texts in the near future.