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D.H. Lawrence and Italy
In these impressions of the Italian countryside, Lawrence transforms ordinary incidents into passages of intense beauty. Twilight in Italy is a vibrant account of Lawrence's stay among the people of Lake Garda, whose decaying lemon gardens bear witness to the twilight of a way of life centuries old. In Sea and Sardinia, Lawrence brings to life the vigorous spontaneity of a society as yet untouched by the deadening effect of industrialization. And Etruscan Places is a beautiful and delicate work of literary art, the record of "a dying man drinking from the founts of a civilization dedicated to life."
528 pages, Paperback
First published September 14, 1966
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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 - 29 of 29 reviews
July 1, 2019
Ovo sam (naravno) pročitao pre 18-dnevnog putovanja po Italiji. I nisam imao pojma ko je DH Lorens pre toga (napisao je Lady Chatterley's Lover, ne baš najbolja preporuka).
Početak, koji govori o njegovim nedeljama u okolini jezera Garda, je poprilično dosadan. Morao sam da ga preletim, da bih uopšte imao motiva da nastavim. Deo o Sardiniji je bolji, posebno opis približavanja Kaljariju iz pravca Sicilije, ali i opisi glavnog grada, pa kasnije i zapisi iz putešestvija po planinama i selima Sardinije. Turizam se otvarao početkom 20. veka, ali ovo kako je opisao, više je avanturizam nego turizam. Putovanja, iako su koristila sva moderna sredstva (železnica, parobrodi, autobusi), dosta su mučna, a Lorens ne gleda na sve te mogućnosti baš kao na čudo tehnike.
S druge strane, nama nama koji smo navikli na AirBnB i Google Maps, interesantno je kako se nalazi apartman za noćenje (uđeš u prvu kuću i pitaš da li imaju slobodan krevet - naravno, imaju, uz to spremaju ti i hleb) i kako se nalazi večera u srcu Sardinije (jedeš pečeno jare u društvu pastira). Nakon što si video stotine Kineza koji isprobavaju različite akrobatske poze ispred Tornja u Pizi, nekako zavidiš turistima od pre 100 godina.
Ovih 500-injak strana vredi pročitati samo u delovima, ako ništa drugo zbog moći zapažanja koju ima Lorens. Kako samo mi moderni turisti proletimo pored stvari koje su interesantne.... Ovi opisi detalja ("zalaženje u sitna crevca," rekli bi neki) nas opominju da treba (još) više truda uložiti u posmatranje za vreme putovanja.
Ipak, to detaljisanje je verovatno i najveći minus. Istovremeno sam čitao Ljubav u Toskani: i drugi nežni zapisi Crnjanskog. Blago je reći da mu Lorens nije ni do kolena. Dok 'DH' piše nešto što bi danas podsećalo na blog (išli smo tamo, pa smo sreli pastira, pa nam je ovaj ispričao to i to), Crnjanski je pesnik. Mnogo je koncizniji, zna da skrati priču gde je to potrebno, ima više smisla za humor, a posebno je simpatičan kad usred putopisa krene da potencira slovenstvo (ne samo jugo-slovenstvo), maltene diže bunu protiv jarma jačih naroda.
Početak, koji govori o njegovim nedeljama u okolini jezera Garda, je poprilično dosadan. Morao sam da ga preletim, da bih uopšte imao motiva da nastavim. Deo o Sardiniji je bolji, posebno opis približavanja Kaljariju iz pravca Sicilije, ali i opisi glavnog grada, pa kasnije i zapisi iz putešestvija po planinama i selima Sardinije. Turizam se otvarao početkom 20. veka, ali ovo kako je opisao, više je avanturizam nego turizam. Putovanja, iako su koristila sva moderna sredstva (železnica, parobrodi, autobusi), dosta su mučna, a Lorens ne gleda na sve te mogućnosti baš kao na čudo tehnike.
S druge strane, nama nama koji smo navikli na AirBnB i Google Maps, interesantno je kako se nalazi apartman za noćenje (uđeš u prvu kuću i pitaš da li imaju slobodan krevet - naravno, imaju, uz to spremaju ti i hleb) i kako se nalazi večera u srcu Sardinije (jedeš pečeno jare u društvu pastira). Nakon što si video stotine Kineza koji isprobavaju različite akrobatske poze ispred Tornja u Pizi, nekako zavidiš turistima od pre 100 godina.
Ovih 500-injak strana vredi pročitati samo u delovima, ako ništa drugo zbog moći zapažanja koju ima Lorens. Kako samo mi moderni turisti proletimo pored stvari koje su interesantne.... Ovi opisi detalja ("zalaženje u sitna crevca," rekli bi neki) nas opominju da treba (još) više truda uložiti u posmatranje za vreme putovanja.
Ipak, to detaljisanje je verovatno i najveći minus. Istovremeno sam čitao Ljubav u Toskani: i drugi nežni zapisi Crnjanskog. Blago je reći da mu Lorens nije ni do kolena. Dok 'DH' piše nešto što bi danas podsećalo na blog (išli smo tamo, pa smo sreli pastira, pa nam je ovaj ispričao to i to), Crnjanski je pesnik. Mnogo je koncizniji, zna da skrati priču gde je to potrebno, ima više smisla za humor, a posebno je simpatičan kad usred putopisa krene da potencira slovenstvo (ne samo jugo-slovenstvo), maltene diže bunu protiv jarma jačih naroda.
June 17, 2024
Lord, what a trip.... take me DH, my body is ready....
***
"Again I had to think of the Italian soul, how it is dark, cleaving to the eternal night. It seems to have become so, at the Renaissance, after the Renaissance.
And the flesh, the senses, are now self-conscious. They know their aim. Their aim is in supreme sensation. They seek the maximum of sensation. They seek the reduction of the flesh, the flesh reacting upon itself, to a crisis, an ecstasy, a phosphorescent transfiguration in ecstasy.
The mind, all the time, subserves the senses. As in a cat, there is subtlety and beauty and the dignity of the darkness. But the fire is cold, as in the eyes of a cat, it is a green fire. It is fluid, electric. At its maximum it is the white ecstasy of phosphorescence, in the darkness, always amid the darkness, as under the black fur of a cat. Like the feline fire, it is destructive, always consuming and reducing to the ecstasy of sensation, which is the end in itself.
There is the I, always the I. And the mind is submerged, overcome. But the senses are superbly arrogant. The senses are the absolute, the god-like. For I can never have another man’s senses. These are me, my senses absolutely me. And all that is can only come to me through my senses. So that all is me, and is administered unto me. The rest, that is not me, is nothing, it is something which is nothing. So the Italian, through centuries, has avoided our Northern purposive industry, because it has seemed to him a form of nothingness.
It is the spirit of the tiger. The tiger is the supreme manifestation of the senses made absolute. This is the
Tiger, tiger, burning bright,
In the forests of the night
of Blake. It does indeed burn within the darkness. This is the supremacy of the flesh, which devours all, and becomes transfigured into a magnificent brindled flame, a burning bush indeed.
This is one way of transfiguration into the eternal flame, the transfiguration through ecstasy in the flesh. Like the tiger in the night, I devour all flesh, I drink all blood, until this fuel blazes up in me to the consummate fire of the Infinite. In the ecstasy I am Infinite, I become again the great Whole, I am a flame of the One White Flame which is the Infinite, the Eternal, the Originator, the Creator, the Everlasting God. In the sensual ecstasy, having drunk all blood and devoured all flesh, I am become again the eternal Fire, I am infinite.
This is the way of the tiger; this is the spirit of the soldier.
So the Italian, so the soldier."
***
"Again I had to think of the Italian soul, how it is dark, cleaving to the eternal night. It seems to have become so, at the Renaissance, after the Renaissance.
And the flesh, the senses, are now self-conscious. They know their aim. Their aim is in supreme sensation. They seek the maximum of sensation. They seek the reduction of the flesh, the flesh reacting upon itself, to a crisis, an ecstasy, a phosphorescent transfiguration in ecstasy.
The mind, all the time, subserves the senses. As in a cat, there is subtlety and beauty and the dignity of the darkness. But the fire is cold, as in the eyes of a cat, it is a green fire. It is fluid, electric. At its maximum it is the white ecstasy of phosphorescence, in the darkness, always amid the darkness, as under the black fur of a cat. Like the feline fire, it is destructive, always consuming and reducing to the ecstasy of sensation, which is the end in itself.
There is the I, always the I. And the mind is submerged, overcome. But the senses are superbly arrogant. The senses are the absolute, the god-like. For I can never have another man’s senses. These are me, my senses absolutely me. And all that is can only come to me through my senses. So that all is me, and is administered unto me. The rest, that is not me, is nothing, it is something which is nothing. So the Italian, through centuries, has avoided our Northern purposive industry, because it has seemed to him a form of nothingness.
It is the spirit of the tiger. The tiger is the supreme manifestation of the senses made absolute. This is the
Tiger, tiger, burning bright,
In the forests of the night
of Blake. It does indeed burn within the darkness. This is the supremacy of the flesh, which devours all, and becomes transfigured into a magnificent brindled flame, a burning bush indeed.
This is one way of transfiguration into the eternal flame, the transfiguration through ecstasy in the flesh. Like the tiger in the night, I devour all flesh, I drink all blood, until this fuel blazes up in me to the consummate fire of the Infinite. In the ecstasy I am Infinite, I become again the great Whole, I am a flame of the One White Flame which is the Infinite, the Eternal, the Originator, the Creator, the Everlasting God. In the sensual ecstasy, having drunk all blood and devoured all flesh, I am become again the eternal Fire, I am infinite.
This is the way of the tiger; this is the spirit of the soldier.
So the Italian, so the soldier."
September 10, 2012
(Note: This is a review of Sea and Sardinia. I'm linking it to the Penguin edition because that's the most common version in print in the United States.)
D. H. Lawrence: when he's good, he's great, and when he's bad, he's awful.
Having just finished Grazia Deledda's Reeds in the Wind, I was excited to return to the same landscapes through a different pair of eyes -- Lawrence is one of my favorite novelists. What I got, however, was the worst of Lawrence. I had a distinct sensation of reading pages that Lawrence had to somehow get out of his system in order to be a finer writer in his other books. He should have written this and then cheerfully burned it to ashes.
The book begins with Etna and ends with a traditional Italian commedia dell'arte, but its unspoken subject is the state of Europe in the aftermath of WWI, and both the mountain and the stage show turn out to be symbols of that conflict. Lawrence is miserable about the effect of the war on Europe's cosmopolitan culture. As he travels through Italy and Sardinia, he is always reminded that he is an Englishman, first and foremost. To an Italian he is indistinguishable from other Englishmen, because of the galvanizing nationalisms that led to WWI -- chasms that only got worse during the uneasy peace of the 1920s and 1930s, in part because of the devastated Italian and German economies. This erasure of his precious individuality sends Lawrence into a rage:
The simplest scenes, like one description of a man eating noisily, become strangely infused with mourning for Europe's fractured family: "'Mother, she's clapping!' I would yell with anger, against my sister. The German word is schmatzen." It's almost Lawrence's version of The Butter Battle Book: animosity over nothing, over differences of table etiquette.
This all probably makes Lawrence sound more humane and sensitive than he really is. In fact, he tries to keep himself going by adopting every single one of these harmful, petty enthusiasms. He complains that the Italians do not prepare good afternoon teas, which is pretty funny for somebody so desperate not to appear overly English. He fusses over coffee as well, and milk, and ferry prices. He swallows Italian wines and liqueurs under protest. In short, he comes across as precisely the kind of homesick traveller who makes life insufferable for everyone else. (In addition to the implied presence of the war, there is also the submerged fact of Lawrence's chronic tuberculosis. This probably made it harder for him to travel, but he refuses to mention it directly, and sneers whenever a local feels sorry for him.)
Lawrence even tries to get on board with nationalism:
To read this now, in light of the fascist movements that led to the Second World War, is more than a little unsettling. Lawrence's absurd conflation of nationalism and individualism as a heroic rejection of global Communism is completely in line with Nazi propaganda.
But even this grandstanding is not enough for Lawrence. He eventually feels compelled to invent an entirely apolitical theme for his narrative, namely "the battle of the sexes." This is nothing but misdirection, and Lawrence knows it, and protests too much:
Who is this "symbolic old ghoul-female"? Like the wrinkled old woman in Ulysses, who becomes James Joyce's symbol for Ireland, Lawrence's "ghoul-female" is really each and every European power, with their "black and grinning" colonial subjects, and their demonic war machines coughing "smoke and sulfur." But Lawrence is petulantly "literal" about his symbolism, as it were, and depicts a legion of masculine paladins struggling mightily against feminine Morgan Le Fay, the crone.
It's a tawdry and familiar magic, this enchantment of the world by nationalism, and then Lawrence's related daydream of men defending themselves against women. Lawrence proves, for the umpteenth time, that he is bisexual. He makes fun of his wife. He romanticizes Sardinian courtship, a subject about which he knows nothing. That's it -- that's about all he can do with "the battle of the sexes." Lawrence seems, by the end, a bit like those peasants in Sicily, tilling exhausted patches of soil in the shadow of a volcano.
D. H. Lawrence: when he's good, he's great, and when he's bad, he's awful.
Having just finished Grazia Deledda's Reeds in the Wind, I was excited to return to the same landscapes through a different pair of eyes -- Lawrence is one of my favorite novelists. What I got, however, was the worst of Lawrence. I had a distinct sensation of reading pages that Lawrence had to somehow get out of his system in order to be a finer writer in his other books. He should have written this and then cheerfully burned it to ashes.
The book begins with Etna and ends with a traditional Italian commedia dell'arte, but its unspoken subject is the state of Europe in the aftermath of WWI, and both the mountain and the stage show turn out to be symbols of that conflict. Lawrence is miserable about the effect of the war on Europe's cosmopolitan culture. As he travels through Italy and Sardinia, he is always reminded that he is an Englishman, first and foremost. To an Italian he is indistinguishable from other Englishmen, because of the galvanizing nationalisms that led to WWI -- chasms that only got worse during the uneasy peace of the 1920s and 1930s, in part because of the devastated Italian and German economies. This erasure of his precious individuality sends Lawrence into a rage:
I can't walk a stride without having this wretched cambio, the exchange, thrown at my head. And this with an injured petulant spitefulness which turns my blood. For I assure them, whatever I have in Italy I pay for: and I am not England. I am not the British Isles on two legs..... And still, for all that, I must insist that I am a single human being, an individual, not a mere national unit, a mere chip of l'Inghilterra or la Germania. I am not a chip of any nasty old block. I am myself.
The simplest scenes, like one description of a man eating noisily, become strangely infused with mourning for Europe's fractured family: "'Mother, she's clapping!' I would yell with anger, against my sister. The German word is schmatzen." It's almost Lawrence's version of The Butter Battle Book: animosity over nothing, over differences of table etiquette.
This all probably makes Lawrence sound more humane and sensitive than he really is. In fact, he tries to keep himself going by adopting every single one of these harmful, petty enthusiasms. He complains that the Italians do not prepare good afternoon teas, which is pretty funny for somebody so desperate not to appear overly English. He fusses over coffee as well, and milk, and ferry prices. He swallows Italian wines and liqueurs under protest. In short, he comes across as precisely the kind of homesick traveller who makes life insufferable for everyone else. (In addition to the implied presence of the war, there is also the submerged fact of Lawrence's chronic tuberculosis. This probably made it harder for him to travel, but he refuses to mention it directly, and sneers whenever a local feels sorry for him.)
Lawrence even tries to get on board with nationalism:
The workman's International movement will finally break the flow towards cosmopolitanism and world-assimilation, and suddenly in a crash the world will fly back into intense separations.... For myself, I am glad. I am glad that the era of love and oneness is over: hateful homogeneous world-oneness. I am glad that Russia flies back into savage Russianism, Scythism, savagely self-pivoting. I am glad that America is doing the same. I shall be glad when men hate their common, world-alike clothes, when they tear them up and clothe themselves fiercely for distinction, savage distinction, savage distinction against the rest of the creeping world: when America kicks the billy-cock and the collar-and-tie into limbo, and takes to her own national costume: when men fiercely react against looking all alike and being all alike, and betake themselves into vivid clan or nation-distinctions. The era of love and oneness is over. The era of world-alike should be at an end. The other tide has set in. Men will set their bonnets at one another now, and fight themselves into separation and sharp distinction. The day of peace and oneness is over, the day of the great fight into multifariousness is at hand.
To read this now, in light of the fascist movements that led to the Second World War, is more than a little unsettling. Lawrence's absurd conflation of nationalism and individualism as a heroic rejection of global Communism is completely in line with Nazi propaganda.
But even this grandstanding is not enough for Lawrence. He eventually feels compelled to invent an entirely apolitical theme for his narrative, namely "the battle of the sexes." This is nothing but misdirection, and Lawrence knows it, and protests too much:
With smoke and sulphur leaps in Beelzebub. But he is merely the servant of the great old witch. He is black and grinning, and he flourishes his posterior and his tail. But he is curiously inefficacious: a sort of lackey of wicked powers.
The old witch with her grey hair and staring eyes succeeds in being ghastly. With just a touch, she would be a tall, benevolent old lady. But listen to her. Hear her horrible female voice with its scraping yells of evil lustfulness. Yes, she fills me with horror. And I am staggered to find how I believe in her as the evil principle. [italics mine] Beelzebub, poor devil, is only one of her instruments.
It is her old, horrible, grinning female soul which locks up the heroes, and which sends forth the awful and almost omnipotent malevolence. This old, ghastly woman-spirit is the very core of mischief. And I felt my heart getting as hot against her as the hearts of the lads in the audience were. Red, deep hate I felt of that symbolic old ghoul-female. Poor male Beelzebub is her loutish slave. And it takes all Merlin's bright-faced intelligence, and all the surging hot urgency of the Paladins, to conquer her.
Who is this "symbolic old ghoul-female"? Like the wrinkled old woman in Ulysses, who becomes James Joyce's symbol for Ireland, Lawrence's "ghoul-female" is really each and every European power, with their "black and grinning" colonial subjects, and their demonic war machines coughing "smoke and sulfur." But Lawrence is petulantly "literal" about his symbolism, as it were, and depicts a legion of masculine paladins struggling mightily against feminine Morgan Le Fay, the crone.
It's a tawdry and familiar magic, this enchantment of the world by nationalism, and then Lawrence's related daydream of men defending themselves against women. Lawrence proves, for the umpteenth time, that he is bisexual. He makes fun of his wife. He romanticizes Sardinian courtship, a subject about which he knows nothing. That's it -- that's about all he can do with "the battle of the sexes." Lawrence seems, by the end, a bit like those peasants in Sicily, tilling exhausted patches of soil in the shadow of a volcano.
March 3, 2009
A superb collection of travel essays and stories, starting with a trek southward across the Bavarian Alps past scores of crucifixes, a sojourn in a lakeside inn, and ruminations on viticulture. The second part of the book is mainly Lawrence's rather artistic reflections on Etruscan tomb culture and what their funerary art has to say about the human condition. Writing that is somehow both wonderfully descriptive of place, mood, and people and still stunning in its power to shock and enthrall.
October 7, 2016
https://msarki.tumblr.com/post/151461...
It was exciting to get my hands on this book of three travelogues which basically has D.H. Lawrence recording his travels through Italy during three different periods in his life, first by land, another by sea, and one ultimately ending as his own life did, below ground. I made a few notes in my initial excitement over reading this book that are revealing, and some are worth repeating here:
Another book to savor this summer. I see resemblances here to the descriptive contemporary Cormac McCarthy.
Now this is some beautiful writing and personal observations and beliefs that I may or may not agree with, but it is interesting to witness somebody with the gristle to bring it on hastily. From the start, the fact he hates the bible makes him OK with me.
A densely-made smorgasbord of language and song.
There is a long introduction that is very helpful in preparing you for the reading of this book. Now that I am reading Lawrence himself, I am eager to learn what he has to say.
The last book being his death march. Interesting. Deep into the caves.
It took me as long to read this entire triptych travelogue as it did for Lawrence to walk his way around them all. First the book found its way to Michigan, surrounded by the Huron National Forest in late Spring of 2012, where I received the hefty book in the mail at my local post office box. I then lugged it back to Louisville with me in mid August for a week when I just had to take my wife to a Jackson Browne solo concert, and then I hauled it back up to the north woods of Michigan until mid-September before unpacking it again in Louisville for the beginning of my fall reading period. Throughout the book's travels I read pages of it every day. I was continually impressed with the way Lawrence found fault with so many things he saw and in almost every location he traveled to. If it was indeed a place he might have admired it waned in his abhorrence for what the stewards had done to destroy what was good in it. So many parallels to my own life experience even a century and a half later. But the book was much more than a public complaint. Lawrence informed and at times, most likely, rewrote a little history, at least as he saw it.
The travelogues are not something any of us should take along with us today to map out our strategy for seeing Italy. They are helpful in preparing yourself for the worst, but many things have most likely changed. I am sure that the food is better, the hotels cleaner, and the people of Italy more conformed to the importance of the tourist dollars being spent in their vicinities, providing for livelihoods and a higher standard of living than the peasants were accustomed to in the period of Lawrence's travels. Lawrence offers his opinion on many things and his opinions are the highlights for me in all three books. He makes what seems to be spontaneous remarks and his wit and clever responses are quite enjoyable.
It was exciting to get my hands on this book of three travelogues which basically has D.H. Lawrence recording his travels through Italy during three different periods in his life, first by land, another by sea, and one ultimately ending as his own life did, below ground. I made a few notes in my initial excitement over reading this book that are revealing, and some are worth repeating here:
Another book to savor this summer. I see resemblances here to the descriptive contemporary Cormac McCarthy.
Now this is some beautiful writing and personal observations and beliefs that I may or may not agree with, but it is interesting to witness somebody with the gristle to bring it on hastily. From the start, the fact he hates the bible makes him OK with me.
A densely-made smorgasbord of language and song.
There is a long introduction that is very helpful in preparing you for the reading of this book. Now that I am reading Lawrence himself, I am eager to learn what he has to say.
The last book being his death march. Interesting. Deep into the caves.
It took me as long to read this entire triptych travelogue as it did for Lawrence to walk his way around them all. First the book found its way to Michigan, surrounded by the Huron National Forest in late Spring of 2012, where I received the hefty book in the mail at my local post office box. I then lugged it back to Louisville with me in mid August for a week when I just had to take my wife to a Jackson Browne solo concert, and then I hauled it back up to the north woods of Michigan until mid-September before unpacking it again in Louisville for the beginning of my fall reading period. Throughout the book's travels I read pages of it every day. I was continually impressed with the way Lawrence found fault with so many things he saw and in almost every location he traveled to. If it was indeed a place he might have admired it waned in his abhorrence for what the stewards had done to destroy what was good in it. So many parallels to my own life experience even a century and a half later. But the book was much more than a public complaint. Lawrence informed and at times, most likely, rewrote a little history, at least as he saw it.
The travelogues are not something any of us should take along with us today to map out our strategy for seeing Italy. They are helpful in preparing yourself for the worst, but many things have most likely changed. I am sure that the food is better, the hotels cleaner, and the people of Italy more conformed to the importance of the tourist dollars being spent in their vicinities, providing for livelihoods and a higher standard of living than the peasants were accustomed to in the period of Lawrence's travels. Lawrence offers his opinion on many things and his opinions are the highlights for me in all three books. He makes what seems to be spontaneous remarks and his wit and clever responses are quite enjoyable.
September 19, 2015
Parts of the first two books (Twilight in Italy, Sea and Sardinia) were very interesting, and worth a reread at some time. Not so Etruscan Place, which I would still rate 3 stars.
Of course these books are around a century old now, so they describe things which for the most part would be changed perhaps beyond recognition by now. However, it might be very interesting, on a leisurely trip to parts of Italy that Lawrence writes about, to try to make an actual log of how those things have (or have not) changed. This might be particularly interesting if one is visiting Sardinia, which I would guess has changed less than most other parts of Europe in the last century.
Of course these books are around a century old now, so they describe things which for the most part would be changed perhaps beyond recognition by now. However, it might be very interesting, on a leisurely trip to parts of Italy that Lawrence writes about, to try to make an actual log of how those things have (or have not) changed. This might be particularly interesting if one is visiting Sardinia, which I would guess has changed less than most other parts of Europe in the last century.
October 21, 2019
I doubt I would ever read this again, in fact I know I won't, but I am certainly glad I visited here once.
April 8, 2019
I really enjoyed this collection of D.H. Lawrence's travel writings in Italy. The fiery and controversial voice who wrote the banned novels 'The Rainbow' and 'Lady Chatterley's Lover' here recounts his own snapshot accounts of different parts of Italy. Except I know Lawrence would already hate that metaphor of the 'snapshot', just like in 'Etruscan Places' he lambasts the modern mind's conception of art as that of the camera only capturing the frame of the horse rather than its real, living fibres of being. And this is a look into the kind of mind which Lawrence is: difficult to categorise, in fact he hates the whole notion of categorisation, strongly opinionated (but with a surprising soft-side here and there), and at times ruthlessly authoritarian and harsh in his judgements. The openness with which he offers himself here to the reader throughout the three accounts is a testament to the kind of man Lawrence was and the strength of this book as a whole. Formed of three different journeys throughout his life; 'Twilight in Italy' (1915), 'Sea and Sardinia' (1921), and 'Sketches of Etruscan Places' (1928), they each bring together a different Lawrence as he ages and develops. And in each we see a slightly different Lawrence, as Lawrence himself puts it it is a great folly to think we have one soul when in fact we have so many, our character continually evolving and adapting to its different environments.
In the 1970s introduction by Antony Burgess, found in the Appendix of this edition, Burgess notes how Lawrence valued not the thinking of the intellect, but the thinking of the loins. Anyone who has read 'Lady Chatterley's Lover' will know this a very Lawrence way of thinking, and he continuously goes against what he sees as the highly mental, constructed nature of modern commercial life. It is both what draws and repulses him by the Italian provincial peasants he meets, that they are - by his perception - far more instinctive and tied to the land. Whether its watching a religious procession and having the whole congregation looking suspiciously at him and his wife as they watch from the back of the village church, or his anger at getting ripped off by the ferry-man, or the sympathetic moments where he gets to know and bonds with the Italian peasants who see the destruction caused by urban life and the betrayal of Italy after the First World War, or the way he describes and mocks the possessive husband - or so he suspects him to be - on the rough-and-ready bus journey, one feels a deep power in the way in which Lawrence is able to convey this (even when one disagrees with him, which in his brash manner, one is apt to do). But as he himself says, those things which we feel (and for Lawrence those are the deepest and most important things in life) are rarely completely right or wrong, but occupy some middle ground somewhere.
And yet there are some really powerful moments and insights which, through this perspective, Lawrence offers. He has a very beautiful passage on how we fail to touch and convey touch in our society, unlike the Etruscans and, to a certain extent still today, in Southern European cultures more generally there is a sense of intimacy and physical contact between people. Even in art very little touch which resonates to the inner core of our being.
This is not a guide book - as Lawrence himself says he 'is not a Baedeker' - and yet there is a great awareness and vividness to the places which he mentions. The images of the Etruscan tombs he provides, for example, are bound to stick with me and provide a very deep sense to them. His wanderings in Sardinia too are nicely signposted by place, but Lawrence also doesn't hesitate to allow his full imaginative powers to bear on the sights he sees providing his strong, personal perspective on things. This is a very beautiful book on Italy, rhapsodic at times, very entertaining, candid, and very often humorous.
In the 1970s introduction by Antony Burgess, found in the Appendix of this edition, Burgess notes how Lawrence valued not the thinking of the intellect, but the thinking of the loins. Anyone who has read 'Lady Chatterley's Lover' will know this a very Lawrence way of thinking, and he continuously goes against what he sees as the highly mental, constructed nature of modern commercial life. It is both what draws and repulses him by the Italian provincial peasants he meets, that they are - by his perception - far more instinctive and tied to the land. Whether its watching a religious procession and having the whole congregation looking suspiciously at him and his wife as they watch from the back of the village church, or his anger at getting ripped off by the ferry-man, or the sympathetic moments where he gets to know and bonds with the Italian peasants who see the destruction caused by urban life and the betrayal of Italy after the First World War, or the way he describes and mocks the possessive husband - or so he suspects him to be - on the rough-and-ready bus journey, one feels a deep power in the way in which Lawrence is able to convey this (even when one disagrees with him, which in his brash manner, one is apt to do). But as he himself says, those things which we feel (and for Lawrence those are the deepest and most important things in life) are rarely completely right or wrong, but occupy some middle ground somewhere.
And yet there are some really powerful moments and insights which, through this perspective, Lawrence offers. He has a very beautiful passage on how we fail to touch and convey touch in our society, unlike the Etruscans and, to a certain extent still today, in Southern European cultures more generally there is a sense of intimacy and physical contact between people. Even in art very little touch which resonates to the inner core of our being.
This is not a guide book - as Lawrence himself says he 'is not a Baedeker' - and yet there is a great awareness and vividness to the places which he mentions. The images of the Etruscan tombs he provides, for example, are bound to stick with me and provide a very deep sense to them. His wanderings in Sardinia too are nicely signposted by place, but Lawrence also doesn't hesitate to allow his full imaginative powers to bear on the sights he sees providing his strong, personal perspective on things. This is a very beautiful book on Italy, rhapsodic at times, very entertaining, candid, and very often humorous.
January 18, 2025
I purchased this book in an antiquarian in Budapest in 2018. There was a street, or perhaps a block full of antiquarians. The names are long forgotten now but the desire was always the same: a book (preferably not absolutely depressing) to remember the trip by. It was extremely challenging to find something in English and there was no particular interest in Lawrence who tends to lean towards the dark side of the human experience. However, among the piles of books, somewhere in the bottom of one of the decks, there was “Twilight in Italy”, the 1917 edition, promising to emphasize on the happiest part of Lawrence’s life, when he and Frieda were still a runaway couple. I will always remember a section of one of the poems Lawrence wrote in his series of love poems “Look! We Have Come Through”:
We have done wrong
many times;
but this time we begin to do right.
Thus, it was with this promise of seeing some sort of beauty and lightness that this book was purchased. With a similar promise it was abandoned. Budapest was cold and windy and not in the least light, at least for me. Returning to the book required a good amount of 6 years and 3 months. Again, I had to re-find it in a pile of books, somewhere near the bottom of some decks of books that I have kept in a box. Again, I was looking for light reading, this time to not remember (or rather not be present in) the mental trip I was going through as opposed to demarcating it. As such, Twilight in Italy was read. It starts out with an essay describing the old imperial path from Germany to Italy and all the crucifixes that inhabit the different landscape. D.H observes beautifully how the diverse depictions of Christ across different lands are embedded with the spirit of the people, who are themselves embedded within the essence of their land, and whose very souls, in turn, embed the sacred into their creations. So the book starts and from this point and onward it’s just whatever Lawrence thought as he was in Italy (in my opinion to avoid some thinking) and so I experienced this book as whatever was occurring as I was reading this book (in my case definitely to avoid some thinking). Hence, it was a thing of beauty. Introspective but also just passing by, touching lightly but always upon topics that usually overwhelm: death, the dual nature of the sacred, permanence, continuity, the future, the industrial revolution – everything as it happens but slowed down by the patches of lemons, cyclamens, Lago di Garda and everything else.
We have done wrong
many times;
but this time we begin to do right.
Thus, it was with this promise of seeing some sort of beauty and lightness that this book was purchased. With a similar promise it was abandoned. Budapest was cold and windy and not in the least light, at least for me. Returning to the book required a good amount of 6 years and 3 months. Again, I had to re-find it in a pile of books, somewhere near the bottom of some decks of books that I have kept in a box. Again, I was looking for light reading, this time to not remember (or rather not be present in) the mental trip I was going through as opposed to demarcating it. As such, Twilight in Italy was read. It starts out with an essay describing the old imperial path from Germany to Italy and all the crucifixes that inhabit the different landscape. D.H observes beautifully how the diverse depictions of Christ across different lands are embedded with the spirit of the people, who are themselves embedded within the essence of their land, and whose very souls, in turn, embed the sacred into their creations. So the book starts and from this point and onward it’s just whatever Lawrence thought as he was in Italy (in my opinion to avoid some thinking) and so I experienced this book as whatever was occurring as I was reading this book (in my case definitely to avoid some thinking). Hence, it was a thing of beauty. Introspective but also just passing by, touching lightly but always upon topics that usually overwhelm: death, the dual nature of the sacred, permanence, continuity, the future, the industrial revolution – everything as it happens but slowed down by the patches of lemons, cyclamens, Lago di Garda and everything else.
September 27, 2022
Sea and Sardinia, Lawrence and the q-b's travels in early 20th century Sardinia, where fortunately the food and transportation have vastly improved. Commonly described as a grumpy travelogue, Lawrence nevertheless provides some insightful observations and lovely descriptions of the island their travel experiences.
December 16, 2021
Wonderfully descriptive account of his travels during the interwar period in Italy before the ruinations began.
Lawrence's writing reflects the prejudice of the era so beware. The discripitude is sometimes overdone, but his uncommon words often made me consult fthe dictionary.
Lawrence's writing reflects the prejudice of the era so beware. The discripitude is sometimes overdone, but his uncommon words often made me consult fthe dictionary.
February 19, 2022
D. H. Lawrence can be quite interesting to read, as much for the things that he describes, as for his own character showing through these descriptions. But in my view, he goes too far in condemning the people and societies he describes. Still, a fascinating look at Italy in the early 20th century.
April 15, 2022
It gives you an idea of how people used to travel. His hotel recommendations were interesting. I’d give it 4 stars, but had to take one star away due to his food choices. I don’t think he ate pasta or pizza in Italy, and that’s a sacrilege!
July 5, 2024
Couldn't finish because it's so drab, there's something inherently pathetic about English travel writers. More so the guy who self imposed his own exile because nobody likes him... And nobody cares
Lots of complaining and ego here
Lots of complaining and ego here
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
June 21, 2023
Enjoyed
August 2, 2024
quatro estrelas pelo último capítulo
April 16, 2025
Arrogant though insightful
November 30, 2022
alert! I read another edition and could not locate it here. Published in 1990 by Barrie & Jenkins Ltd with lots of art work and, listing thereof at the end.
I found DH Lawrence descriptions of Italians mean spirited and demeaning , though it was typical of the English, and others, at the time. For someone who was so open to exploring he was pretty closed off when it came to human beings. His geographical descriptions along with the pictures of paintings and sketches, made the stories tolerable.
I will keep this book for the paintings.
I found DH Lawrence descriptions of Italians mean spirited and demeaning , though it was typical of the English, and others, at the time. For someone who was so open to exploring he was pretty closed off when it came to human beings. His geographical descriptions along with the pictures of paintings and sketches, made the stories tolerable.
I will keep this book for the paintings.
July 28, 2011
I was a bit disappointed by this book. Although written very well, it missed things that I wanted to see. There were lots of descriptions of the people he met. Unfortunately, since this was right after World War 1, it has little to bear on today's population of Italians. I was really hoping to read more descriptions of places, so that I could compare them to nowadays. There were indepth descriptions of tombs, but not much else.
August 11, 2013
I wanted to read this book, but the beginning was very slow for me. Definitely a book that I read because I am in the field and wanted to see what it was about, but wouldn't recommend it to anyone who wants to read for pleasure. It is VERY descriptive...old style of writing, but could appreciate many parts of it.
December 30, 2010
Really wanted to like this as I have enjoyed other Lawrence works... and any European travel-writing (especially historically rich and sentimental) is almost always a sure thing.
However, I don't really know how to describe why I couldn't get into this; mostly, the writing was extemely dense and there was way too much 'Christ' and 'Him' and religious capitalizations which were distracting.
However, I don't really know how to describe why I couldn't get into this; mostly, the writing was extemely dense and there was way too much 'Christ' and 'Him' and religious capitalizations which were distracting.
July 6, 2014
This book got me more interested in reading about the Etruscan civilization and then to read more about the Sardinian Nuraghe culture going on at tha same time, in fact earlier.
Lawrence's observations ate personal and often enlightening.
Lawrence's observations ate personal and often enlightening.
April 24, 2008
wow. that was awful. i haven't even been able to bring myself to give him another chance.
December 28, 2008
I found this book at a used book store in North Carolina. It was published in the 1930's. It is a lovely read - part tour book, part musings on the lost Etruscan people and society.
March 30, 2009
D. H. Lawrence and Italy: Twilight in Italy; Sea and Sardinia; Etruscan Places (Penguin Twentieth-Century Classics) by D. H. Lawrence (1997)
September 14, 2012
It just did not engage me.
Read
May 5, 2013Now I remember why I disliked reading Lawrence. Pure torture!
September 19, 2012
The most insightful writing on Italian culture Ive read.
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