Sea and Sardinia D H Lawrence 9781612039381 Books
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Sea and Sardinia is a travel book by the English writer D. H. Lawrence. It describes his excursion with his wife Frieda from Taormina to the interior of Sardinia. They visited Cagliari, Mandas, Sorgono, and Nuoro. Despite the brevity of his visit, Lawrence distils an essence of the island and its people that is still recognizable today. "Very dark under the great carob tree as we go down the steps. Dark still the garden. Scent of mimosa, and then of jasmine. The lovely mimosa tree invisible. Dark the stony path. The goat whinnies out of her shed. The broken Roman tomb which lolls right over the garden track does not fall on me as I slip under its massive tilt. Ah, dark garden, dark garden, with your olives and your wine, your medlars and mulberries and many almond trees, your steep terraces ledged high up above the sea, I am leaving you, slinking out. Out between the rosemary hedges, out of the tall gate, on to the cruel steep stony road. So under the dark, big eucalyptus trees, over the stream, and up towards the village. There, I have got so far." D. H. Lawrence was an English novelist, poet, playwright, essayist, literary critic and painter whose works represent a reflection upon the dehumanizing effects of modernity and industrialization. In his writings Lawrence confronts issues relating to emotional health and vitality, spontaneity, and instinct often apposing current social acceptance. E. M. Forster, in an obituary notice, described him as "the greatest imaginative novelist of our generation."
Sea and Sardinia D H Lawrence 9781612039381 Books
I was captured by the beauty of its language from the start. Have a look at just a few lines from one of the first paragraphs, describing the Etna and the surroundings of Taormina, where David Herbert Lawrence and his wife Frieda von Richthofen (named Queen-Bee, or Q-B, throughout the book) lived at the time:"Comes over one an absolute necessity to move. And what is more, to move in some particular direction. A double necessity then: to get on the move, and to know whither.
Why can't one sit still? Here in Sicily it is so pleasant: the sunny Ionian sea, the changing jewel of Calabria, like a fire-opal moved in the light; Italy and the panorama of Christmas clouds, night with the dog-star laying a long, luminous gleam across the sea, as if baying at us, Orion marching above; how the dog-star Sirius looks at one, looks at one! he is the hound of heaven, green, glamorous and fierce!--and then oh regal evening star, hung westward flaring over the jagged dark precipices of tall Sicily: then Etna, that wicked witch, resting her thick white snow under heaven, and slowly, slowly rolling her orange-coloured smoke. They called her the Pillar of Heaven, the Greeks. It seems wrong at first, for she trails up in a long, magical, flexible line from the sea's edge to her blunt cone, and does not seem tall. She seems rather low, under heaven. But as one knows her better, oh awe and wizardy! Remote under heaven, aloof, so near, yet never with us. The painters try to paint her, and the photographers to photograph her, in vain."
Lawrence and his wife travel to and from Sardinia by train and ship, and while on the island, they use the motor bus, still a novelty at that time. The people, the landscape, the villages and towns as well as the interior of the inns and hotels they stay at are described in a way that definitely makes you glad to live almost a century later, with all the comfort we have gotten used to. Most of the humble places where they stay are bitterly cold, no cleaner than a cow shed, offer too little food to make up for the lack of other comforts, and so the Lawrences never stay very long in one place.
The author is fascinated by local costume and the rather archaic, simple way of life and character he finds in the village people. It helps that both he and Frieda are fluent in Italian, and he reports many a conversation with inn-keepers, bus drivers and fellow passengers.
I enjoyed this read, and also enjoyed reading up about the couple on wikipedia. Frieda von Richthofen was German, six years older than David Herbert Lawrence, who became her lover while she was still married to an English professor and he was his student. They eloped to Germany (leaving her three children behind) and married after her divorce came through. They stayed together for the rest of Lawrence's life, which ended early: he died in 1930, aged 44, from tuberculosis. Frieda married again and lived until 1956.
Times have changed, and I guess most Sardinians wear their traditional costume only for touristy events and maybe a national holiday or patron saint feast, but I'd like to know how much of what the author describes of Nuoro, Cagliari, Mandas, Sorgono and Terranova still is recognizable today.
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Tags : Sea and Sardinia [D. H. Lawrence] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. Sea and Sardinia is a travel book by the English writer D. H. Lawrence. It describes his excursion with his wife Frieda from Taormina to the interior of Sardinia. They visited Cagliari,D. H. Lawrence,Sea and Sardinia,Bottom of the Hill Publishing,1612039383,Europe - Italy,Travel & holiday guides,Travel - Foreign,Travel Europe Italy
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Sea and Sardinia D H Lawrence 9781612039381 Books Reviews
Well written, but not as much about Sardinia as the title would suggest and most of the observations were not particularly flattering.
That being said the descriptions were exceptionally descriptive, occasionally amusing and made me glad I did not have to travel under
the circumstances of that era.
This book is a travelogue of Sardinia. I found the descriptions of the people, their dress and their behavior to be very very good. The author puts you where he is and you enjoy the trip as much as he does and doesn't. Much of the dialogue is internal musing which I seem to do too. This is a man's book. He travels with his wife but everything is from his point of view. She never has a direct dialogue. He calls her "q-b" as in Queen Bee. He reports her likes and dislikes but in a very objective sort of way. This style may annoy female persons. However it is a glimpse into the male psyche.
This is a travelogue of a tour Lawrence and his wife the Queen Bee took after World War One. They travel from Sicily to Cagliari, the capital of Sardinia, then other cities in Sardinia. He captures the atmosphere of each place, the pride of the people, their lifestyle. It's so interesting to read about a place as it was at the time Lawrence was writing. It was a poor area, Third World, lacking infrastructure and the amenities that exist now. What makes this book so interesting is Lawrence's facility with language and observation. He puts the reader right into the scenes he creates. Recommended especially for people who have been in that area.
This Okitoks edition is a disgrace mircrofiche-size print and poorly designed format. And once again, fails to protect its customers from cheap print-on-demand hucksters.
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.
I was captured by the beauty of its language from the start. Have a look at just a few lines from one of the first paragraphs, describing the Etna and the surroundings of Taormina, where David Herbert Lawrence and his wife Frieda von Richthofen (named Queen-Bee, or Q-B, throughout the book) lived at the time
"Comes over one an absolute necessity to move. And what is more, to move in some particular direction. A double necessity then to get on the move, and to know whither.
Why can't one sit still? Here in Sicily it is so pleasant the sunny Ionian sea, the changing jewel of Calabria, like a fire-opal moved in the light; Italy and the panorama of Christmas clouds, night with the dog-star laying a long, luminous gleam across the sea, as if baying at us, Orion marching above; how the dog-star Sirius looks at one, looks at one! he is the hound of heaven, green, glamorous and fierce!--and then oh regal evening star, hung westward flaring over the jagged dark precipices of tall Sicily then Etna, that wicked witch, resting her thick white snow under heaven, and slowly, slowly rolling her orange-coloured smoke. They called her the Pillar of Heaven, the Greeks. It seems wrong at first, for she trails up in a long, magical, flexible line from the sea's edge to her blunt cone, and does not seem tall. She seems rather low, under heaven. But as one knows her better, oh awe and wizardy! Remote under heaven, aloof, so near, yet never with us. The painters try to paint her, and the photographers to photograph her, in vain."
Lawrence and his wife travel to and from Sardinia by train and ship, and while on the island, they use the motor bus, still a novelty at that time. The people, the landscape, the villages and towns as well as the interior of the inns and hotels they stay at are described in a way that definitely makes you glad to live almost a century later, with all the comfort we have gotten used to. Most of the humble places where they stay are bitterly cold, no cleaner than a cow shed, offer too little food to make up for the lack of other comforts, and so the Lawrences never stay very long in one place.
The author is fascinated by local costume and the rather archaic, simple way of life and character he finds in the village people. It helps that both he and Frieda are fluent in Italian, and he reports many a conversation with inn-keepers, bus drivers and fellow passengers.
I enjoyed this read, and also enjoyed reading up about the couple on wikipedia. Frieda von Richthofen was German, six years older than David Herbert Lawrence, who became her lover while she was still married to an English professor and he was his student. They eloped to Germany (leaving her three children behind) and married after her divorce came through. They stayed together for the rest of Lawrence's life, which ended early he died in 1930, aged 44, from tuberculosis. Frieda married again and lived until 1956.
Times have changed, and I guess most Sardinians wear their traditional costume only for touristy events and maybe a national holiday or patron saint feast, but I'd like to know how much of what the author describes of Nuoro, Cagliari, Mandas, Sorgono and Terranova still is recognizable today.
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