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“Dolce vita” and Italian Anxieties (Social Chaos, Emigration, Revolution) between the 1910s and early 20s

Nick Ceramella

Résumé

Lawrence’s travel book, Twilight in Italy offers a good introduction to life in Italy before WW1. That is when, for the first time abroad, he and Frieda stayed in Gargnano by Lake Garda, (3rd September 1912 - 11th April 1913). Observing people there excited Lawrence’s interest in national character both in comparison with other Europeans and southern Italians. Lawrence had a particular instinct for perceiving the mood of Italy and its people as they were experiencing a major economic crisis which was soon to lead to the political unrest and the social turmoil of the “biennio rosso” (1919-1920). Indeed, there was a growing conviction on the part of the Italian working class that a socialist revolution was inevitable. However, in March 1919 Mussolini launched his Fascist movement and, in the autumn of 1920, his Fascist squads began their punitive expeditions resulting in an absolute social chaos. A number of Lawrence’s writings reflect his disillusion with post-war Italy. He did not miss the frustration that people showed, following the “unfair” treatment Italy received in the Versailles Treaty (1919). The emigration issue emerges too when the chauffeur of the bus he and Frieda are travelling on begs him to find him a job as a driver in England. Lawrence thinks then that emigrating had become some sort of disease, Andare fuori dall’Italia. To go out of Italy. To go out-away—to go away—to go away. It has become a craving, a neurasthenia with them.” (“Sea and Sardinia”).

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Texte intégral

Italy in the 1910s

1Lawrence and Frieda stayed at Gargnano by Lake Garda (September 1912 and April 1913). He had the opportunity to record his impressions about people and places in a few articles written on the spot for some daily papers. Later, he expanded and revised them substantially before adding a few more articles he would write from scratch in 1915 for Twilight in Italy (published in the U.S. in 1916).

  • 1 Villa De Paoli (courtesy of Comitato Storico per Gargnano; henceforth CSG).

Fig. 1. Lawrence and Frieda rented this Villa from Mr De Paoli.1

Fig. 1. Lawrence and Frieda rented this Villa from Mr De Paoli.1
  • 2 Courtesy of Paul Eggert; henceforth PE.

Fig. 2. Silvia, née Comboni, and her husband Pietro De Paoli.2

Fig. 2. Silvia, née Comboni, and her husband Pietro De Paoli.2

2Though this is Lawrence’s first travel book, it does not follow the travelogue conventions but offers the readers a great chance to enjoy people and admire places as he sees them. So, one can also feel the tense pre-war atmosphere marked by the bewildering anxieties before the crucial event of the Great War. After the first enthusiastic contact with Italy, as Lawrence strengthened his awareness of the changes that turned the country into an industrialised and modern reality, he began to feel disappointed. However, before realising this, just one day before crossing Austria into Italy, he wrote a letter to Louie Burrows, dated 15th September 1912, describing the border area around Riva (which was Austrian at the time).

I have been walking through the Tirol down here. It was very nice – and sounds swanky, but it isn’t. Riva is fearfully nice – at the head of Lake Garda. It is quite Italian – so is Trient for the matter – only the Austrians have collared them and stocked them with Chocolate Soldiers. The folk are Italian, speak only Italian, even use a lot of Italian money. But the border is only about 3 miles down the lake. […] I think I shall spend the winter in Gargnano – about 20 miles down the lake, in Italy. (L 1, 452)

3Two days later, he said to Arthur McLeod, “I’m on the Lago di Garda. Riva is still Austria, but as Italian as an ice-cream Man. […]” (ibid., 455). It seems, then, that Lawrence initially entertained somewhat romantic notions about Italians, but the deeper insight, gained through proximity with the locals in Gargnano, favoured a more realistic understanding marked by likes and dislikes of the people. Therefore, his attitude towards Italians changed according to circumstances and mood. For example, on 16th September, when he and Frieda are looking for a flat in the small town, he writes:

Frieda hates me because I daren’t broach these Italians about flats and rooms. We know about two words in Italian. She hankered after a red place at Terbole. We hesitated for hours. Then she attacked a man, with three words. “Prego – er – er – quartiere – d’affittare.” [‘Please – flat – to rent.]. (Ibid., 453)

4By contrast, just three weeks later, Lawrence appreciates the cheerful and straightforward lifestyle of the Italians as opposed to that of the English:

I can’t bear to be in England when I am in Italy. It makes me feel so soiled. […] No I don’t believe England need be so grubby. What does it matter if one is poor, and risks ones livelihood, and reputation? […]
The Italians here sing. They are very poor, they buy two pennorth of butter and a pennorth of cheese. But they are healthy, and they lounge about in the little square where the boats come up and nets are mended, like kings.
I go in a little place to drink wine near Bogliaco. It is the living room of the house. The father, sturdy as these Italians are, gets up from table and bows to me. The family is having supper. […] They are all so warm with life. (Ibid., 460)

5Lawrence, according to a letter to Ernest Collings, dated 7th November 1912, loved all that and was very happy there: “I live in sunshine and happiness, in exile and poverty, here in this pretty little hole” (ibid., 468).

  • 3 Gargnano: Alley leading right to Lake Garda beach (courtesy Elizabetta Campregher; henceforth EC).

Fig. 3. Gargnano: Alley leading right to the Lake Garda beach.3

Fig. 3. Gargnano: Alley leading right to the Lake Garda beach.3

6Sadly, the reality was that the world was in deep turmoil. Italy was fighting a war against the Ottoman Empire (1911-1912), which would lead to the conquest of Tripoli. The Germans tacitly guaranteed their support in the Tripolitanian campaign, but the hostilities threatened to spread into Macedonia where Austro-Hungary had significant interest, and Germany could not but support them, too. In the following letter to David Garnett, Lawrence shows he is aware of that complex situation, which could easily lead, as it unfortunately did, to the Balkan War, a possibility that Garnett had hinted at in a previous letter in which Lawrence begins by presenting the Italian scenario, saying that there is a deceptive calm as if the Italians were not involved.

I love you as an alarmist. I see myself and Frieda fleeing out of Gargnano, each of us seated upon an ass, scouring for the Austrian border, the Villa Igea in flames. But everything is so still. The greatest excitement was early Sunday morning, while it was yet dark, when there came great and ferocious howling under the bedroom windows, that hang over the road. Frieda lay in terror – she is a Tedesca (German) so her conscience in Italy is bad. But I as Inglese lie with a firm heart, ready to rush to defend the stone staircase should they force the garden gate. But it’s only the rejoicing of two wounded sons of “Villa” returned from Tripoli, and their mates. They have been drinking all night. Frieda says “If war makes people as that, then – no, it’s too bad. That’s the saddest noise I’ve heard.” “My dear,” I answer, “it’s the wine.” (Ibid., 473-4).

7Then, Lawrence tells Garnett about their daily life and the people who visit them, including his private tutor of Italian.

We’ve had two first visits this week: one from Signorina Feltrelline [sic Feltrinelli], who teaches Italian. It’s a screaming farce: she wears black gloves and keeps F. and me in order. I can’t help drinking a little wine, to assert my masculine and marital independence, I feel I am put in so small a place by Signorina Feltrelline. Like humble children. F. and I lisp our lessons. Of course I’m much quicker than F. [Frieda Weekley interjects: a lie] but Signorina Feltrellline – she’s 38 and ’s got a slight squint – prefers Frieda and constantly represses me. The lesson goes on in French, German and Italian – I merely swear in English.
Then the Wirtin of the Stag Hotel – really del Cervo – came to coffee yesterday. Frieda kept me all morning long scrubbing floors like a galley slave – did they scrub floors? […] It was no good my pleading my genius, scrub I had to. I felt like Mr Mantelini [In Nicholas Nickleby]. (Ibid., 474)

8Most importantly, normal circumstances such as the above allowed Lawrence to meet ordinary people and excited his interest in more profound aspects of the Italian national character. Another good chance, though unexpected, came from attending the local theatre, which offered a surprisingly quality programme even if the performances were limited to the Xmas season. It made Lawrence consider through the plays put on the stage the existing cultural gap (i.e., psychological approach to life) between northern and southern European countries (cf. his analysis of the Gargnano spectators’ response to Hamlet compared to the way they responded to D’Annuzio’s La Fiamma, in the essay “The Theatre”). Later, he extended that to mark the difference between northern and southern Italy. He thought that southerners, unlike northerners, preserved a genuine and straightforward relationship among them within the pulsing and vital cycle of nature. Perhaps this is quite well synthesised by Paul Eggert, who quite rightly says that “Lawrence is far more attentive to the peasant culture and the social gradation of the local scene, as well as to the natural environment” (Lake Garda 28). In fact, in the essay “The Theatre,” in which Lawrence depicts an overall picture of the local community that uses the small theatre itself as the venue where they can socialise:

At the theatre, now the play is over, the peasants in their black hats and cloaks crowd the hall […] Upstairs, the quality has paid its visits and shaken hands: the Syndaco [sic] and the well-to-do, half Austrian owners of the woodyard, the Bertolini, have ostentatiously shown their mutual friendship; our padrone, Signor di Paoli, has visited his relatives the Graziani in the box next stage, and has spent two intervals standing down below, pathetic, thin contadini of the old school, like worn stones, have looked up at us if we are the angels in heaven with a reverential, devotional eye, themselves far away below, standing in the bay at the back, below all.(TI 153)

  • 4 Courtesy of Archive Gargnano Town Hall, Umberto Perini’s Collection; henceforth UP.

Fig. 4. Curtain of “Teatro Sociale” (1806), representing Gargnano’s Town Hall, shown at 1st International Symposium Lake Garda: Gateway to D.H.L.’s Voyage to the Sun, 2012.4

Fig. 4. Curtain of “Teatro Sociale” (1806), representing Gargnano’s Town Hall, shown at 1st International Symposium Lake Garda: Gateway to D.H.L.’s Voyage to the Sun, 2012.4
  • 5 Courtesy of UP.

Fig. 5. Play at the Gargnano Theatre, showing actors and musicians, early 20th century.5

Fig. 5. Play at the Gargnano Theatre, showing actors and musicians, early 20th century.5

9Going to the theatre was a one-off yearly event over the Christmas holiday, which nobody in town wanted to miss, including Lawrence’s landlords Mr and Mrs De Paoli, Mr Luigi Feltrinelli, the village magistrate, the Lord Mayor, and the other VIPs listed below. Nevertheless, Lawrence did not ignore the average crowd, sitting on the benches «by church instinct,” most women on the left with the odd man, and the majority of men, peasants (“contadini”), fishermen with just a few girls on the right. Not forgetting several groups of bersaglieri (i. e. elite soldiers) and a bunch of young people, “the more reckless spirits of the village” (ibid., 134).

Fig. 6. Lists of box-holders at the theatre in Gargnano, Lawrence and Frieda sat in the 1st row, box No. 8 (courtesy of UP).

Fig. 6. Lists of box-holders at the theatre in Gargnano, Lawrence and Frieda sat in the 1st row, box No. 8 (courtesy of UP).

10Most interestingly, Lawrence was to observe a similar division a few years later in Palermo, when he and Frieda went to see a typical Sicilian theatrical entertainment, a puppet show. The spectators, as recorded at the end of Sea and Sardinia (1921), were even more segregated, and Lawrence commented, “This male audience was so tense and pure in attention” (SS 188).

Fig. 7. Going fishing, Gargnano 1910 (courtesy of CSG).

Fig. 7. Going fishing, Gargnano 1910 (courtesy of CSG).

11Although the rhythm of life in the community seemed to go on in tranquillity as usual, in truth, it was not so. Only a few miles north, the Austrians occupied Garda, and Italy was at war against Turkey. In 1916, that situation led Lawrence to revise “The Theatre” since the ongoing catastrophe of WWI would now be felt nearer and nearer. This made him consider that the European society was drifting apart and deepened his perception of the changes that the Italian society was undergoing. Most importantly, he noticed that a sense of national identity was growing thanks to the Nationalist Movement, whose leaders aimed to turn Italy into a modern world power modelled on the ancient Roman Empire, as we have learnt from history's delirious dream. As it often happens, the reality was that there were some significant issues that Lawrence could not ignore, such as an unprecedented mass emigration to the Americas. In effect, between 1875 and 1928, about 17 mln Italians emigrated. Lawrence reports in a letter to May Holbrook (February 1914):

Here almost every man has spent his time in America – seven years in Buenos Ayres, or in the United States. They will not stay any longer in Italy to be peasants without money […] And the men can’t settle any more. They seem to have a nostalgia of restlessness. Italy is a country on the change and suffering it acutely. Fifty years ago, almost every man was a peasant. In one generation it has all changed. (L I, 148-9)

12Lawrence also refers to this problem in Twilight in Italy, in which he is talking about people he had met in person. In fact, on leaving Gargnano after seven months, he and Frieda walked up to the hamlet of San Gaudenzio, where they stayed as paying guests on the farm of a young couple of peasants, Paolo and Maria Capelli, for two weeks (30 March-11 April). Lawrence wrote an essay titled “San Gaudenzio,” a place that he describes as follows: “Up at San Gaudenzio, perched on the brim of the mountains over the lake, in a farm-stead of olives and vines, a situation beautiful as a dream. We are going up there this afternoon.” (L I, 527)

Fig. 8. View of Lake Garda from San Gaudenzio (courtesy of UP).

Fig. 8. View of Lake Garda from San Gaudenzio (courtesy of UP).
  • 6 She was a friend of the novelist and publisher David Garnett, the son of Lawrence’s friend, the cri (...)

13Lawrence evokes a special event: a peasant dance at the inn that sounds like an “orgasmic” experience. Thanks to his masterly writing skill, he makes us share what Frieda and a Swedish artist, Antonia Almgren6 who happened to be lodging there, experienced. Nevertheless, besides the evident allegorical qualities of the passage (the dance as love-act), Lawrence perhaps also meant to use the dance device to describe the savage masculinity/sexuality of the Italian man. In the following passage, he seems to be constructing conflicting messages about sexuality in general:

It is a strange dance, strange and lilting, and changing as the music changed. But it had always a kind of leisurely dignity, a trailing kind of polka-waltz, intimate, passionate, yet never hurried, never violent in its passion, always becoming more intense. The women's faces changed to a kind of transported wonder, they were in the very rhythm of delight. From the soft bricks of the floor the red ochre rose in a thin cloud of dust, making hazy the shadowy dancers; the three musicians, in their black hats and their cloaks, sat obscurely in the corner, making a music that came quicker and quicker, making a dance that grew swifter and more intense, more subtle, the men seeming to fly and to implicate other strange inter-rhythmic dance into the women, the women drifting and palpitating as if their souls shook and resounded to a breeze that was subtly rushing upon them, through them; the men worked their feet, their thighs swifter, more vividly, the music came to an almost intolerable climax, there was a moment when the dance passed into a possession, the men caught up the women and swung them from the earth, leapt with them for a second, and then the next phase of the dance had begun, slower again, more subtly interwoven, taking perfect, oh, exquisite delight in every interrelated movement, a rhythm within a rhythm, a subtle approaching and drawing nearer to a climax, nearer, till, ooooh, there was the surpassing lift and swing of the women, when the woman's body seemed like a boat lifted over the powerful, exquisite wave of the man's body, perfect, for a moment, and then once more the slow, intense, nearer movement of the dance began, always nearer, nearer, always to a more perfect climax. And the women waited as if in transport for the climax, when they would be flung into a movement surpassing all movement. They were flung, borne away, lifted like a boat on a supreme wave, into the zenith and nave of the heavens, consummate.
Then suddenly the dance crashed to an end, and the dancers stood stranded, lost, bewildered, on a strange shore. (TI 168-9)

Fig. 9. “Ballo della mazurka” by Celestino Turletti (between 1864 and 1904).

Fig. 9. “Ballo della mazurka” by Celestino Turletti (between 1864 and 1904).

14In the central portion of this passage, a long sentence fragmented by commas and semi-colons suggests the movement of this frantic dance, rising to a crescendo and “crashing to an end.” The effect seems to have a double aim, mimicking the dance rhythm with the sex act itself. Here, Lawrence catches the sense of the Italian “dolce vita,” as it were, or if you like the Senecan philosophical principle of “carpe vitam,” which Italians have turned into one of their distinctive national features.

Fig. 10. Maria & Paolo Capelli: photographs taken at San Gaudenzio, 1979, of a pencil drawing of the couple, presumably made by a journeyman artist. (courtesy of PE)

Fig. 10. Maria & Paolo Capelli: photographs taken at San Gaudenzio, 1979, of a pencil drawing of the couple, presumably made by a journeyman artist. (courtesy of PE)

15However, if this episode represents the positive side of things, which as usual makes people forget about the hard reality, there is the other side which Lawrence hears about when chatting with Paolo, who tells him that he had no choice but to emigrate to America just after his younger son Marco was born.

[…] Paolo went away to California, leaving his San Gaudenzio, travelling with several companions, like blind beasts, to Havre, and thence to New York, then to California. He stayed five years in the gold-mines, in a wild valley, living with a gang of Italians in a town of corrugated iron. […]
In real truth he was at San Gaudenzio all the time, his fate was riveted there. His going away was an excursion from reality, a kind of sleep-walking. He left his own reality there in the soil above the lake of Garda. That his body was in California, what did it matter? It was merely for a time, and for the sake of his earth, his land. He would pay off the mortgage. But the gate at home was his gate all the time, his hand was on the latch. (TI 162-3)

  • 7 Courtesy of Nick Ceramella; henceforth NC.

Fig. 11. San Gaudenzio: Capelli’s property, Sep. 2012.7

Fig. 11. San Gaudenzio: Capelli’s property, Sep. 2012.7

16This attachment to the land brings to mind a chat I had with the late Mr Capelli when, as part of the First International D.H. Lawrence Symposium, we organised a splendid party, with food, wine, and music from Lawrence’s days, at his house up in San Gaudenzio, to commemorate the writer’s presence there between 1912 and 1913, precisely a century before. Here is what Mr Capelli told me: “My grandfather was right in telling me that I should never sell this property and keep it in the family forever. So, I am very pleased tonight. Thank you very much for making this event possible.”

17Most interestingly, Lawrence, as “prophetically” as it often happened to him through his life, felt that the idyllic world of the country was giving way to the spreading industrialisation in Italy too:

The peasant is passing away, the workman is taking his place. The stability is gone. […] Giovanni is in America, unless he has come back to the war. He will not want to live in San Gaudenzio when he is a man, he says. He and Marco will not spend their lives wringing a little oil and wine out of the rocky soil, even if they are not killed in the fighting which is going on at the end of the lake. (TI 165)

18Closely linked to that was the problem of the growing emigration, to which Lawrence had good reason to dedicate the following two essays in Twilight in Italy. In “Il Duro” (The tough one), he writes about a young man who emigrated to America. His real name was Faustino Magri, who had been over the Atlantic twice for seven years altogether, even if he could speak only “a very little English” (TI 175). Eventually, he returned to San Gaudenzio.

  • 8 In booklet from 1st International Symposium Lake Garda: Gateway to D.H.L.’s Voyage to the Sun, 2012 (...)

Fig. 12. Faustino Magri, “Il duro.”8

Fig. 12. Faustino Magri, “Il duro.”8

19The following essay, entitled “John” (the Capellis’ son), deals more widely with an emigration story. John had worked in the States for a couple of years as a shop assistant in a “smallish town” (TI 182) in Pennsylvania, where he regularly attended night classes to learn English to facilitate his integration into a very different culture. Everything was fine until he became the victim of a gang of boys who attacked him verbally and physically, calling him names, “You damn Dago, dirty dog.” (TI 184). When John meets the Lawrences, he tells them he “could speak very well,” but it had gone after two years without speaking it. Nevertheless, since he wanted to go back one day, his father asked whether Frieda, the “Signora,” could help him practice English. This tells us about the poverty and depression tearing the Italian society. Moreover, although John was not so poor, he decided to leave even his wife and son behind and return to the U.S., which was the only thing that made him feel there was a future out there waiting for him.

20After their short stay at San Gaudenzio, Lawrence and Frieda travelled around Italy, Germany, and England until they went back to London, where they got married at Kensington Register Office on 13th July 1914. Unfortunately, despite their plans to travel back to Italy, because England declared war on Germany on 4th August, the newly married couple were not allowed to leave the country, and, after moving from place to place, they decided to settle down in Cornwall where they stayed for three years. No doubt it was a time of great despair and hopelessness in their lives: the frustration of the War years, the Cornwall “seclusion,” which only came to an end when, following the accusation of their being German spies, they were banned from living anywhere near the British coastline. However reluctantly, they moved back to London in the autumn on 15th October 1917. Lawrence, in particular, did not enjoy big crowded cities like London and its intellectual circles, so they spent as long as they could in Derbyshire. Meanwhile, their application to the War Office to return to Cornwall, which they preferred to London, was rejected. They were blocked in England by the military authorities until November 1919, when, at last, they received permission to travel to Italy on the 15th. It is no wonder that getting out of England made Lawrence feel so relieved that he thought of Italy as a cheerful country, despite all the problems it was going through. His enthusiasm transpires in this letter to Lady Cynthia Asquith, which was written on the Ligurian Riviera in Lerici on 18th November:

Yesterday a blazing sun, a lapping Mediterranean – bellezza! The south! The South, The South! Let me go south – I must go south.
Italy is still gay – does all her weeping and press – takes her politics with her wine, and enjoys them. Great excitement over the elections [General elections] – but lively and amused excitement, nothing tragic or serious. (L III, 417)

Italy in the early 1920s

21So, the Lawrences returned to Lerici, where they had stayed until May 1914, before returning to England, which would turn into a trap for about five long years. Most importantly, although Lawrence had been away for such a lengthy period, his interest in Italy was as intense as ever. He began writing Aaron’s Rod when they moved to London in 1917 and continued working on it at intervals and managed to complete it only on 1st June 1921. Lawrence had great difficulty in completing this novel for reasons such as his growing interest in the human psyche and the nature of relationships outside marriage. Nonetheless, considering the aim of the present article, it is worth adding that he must have been aware that he lacked the necessary Italian material he added in the final version. On arriving in Novara (Piedmont), Aaron, the protagonist of the story, is soon to face some of the problems of the country. It starts with a discussion with a cabman on the rate of exchange (lira vs pound), which was going to be a “leitmotiv” through Sea and Sardinia (SS 132), to continue in the following days with the usual discussions on the high prices for goods, and problems in finding a suitable and affordable accommodation. Unlike when Lawrence was first in Italy, Aaron realises that the political situation is much more severe. Indeed, it was pretty normal to see street demonstrations like those Aaron witnesses in Milan and Florence. For example, while he is having coffee in his hotel restaurant in the centre of Milan:

Suddenly there was a noise of two shots, final and in rapid succession. Aaron turned to look into the quiet piazza. Furthermore, to his amazement, the pavements were empty “not a soul was in sight.” He asked the waiter, “What was it? What were the shots?” '“Oh—somebody shooting at a dog,” said the man negligently. “at a dog! Said Aaron, with round eyes”. (AR 181)

22Lawrence notes the somewhat threatening and tense atmosphere “and the endless restless nervous drift of a north Italian crowd, so nervous, so twitchy” (ibid., 181). Not long after, as Aaron is lying on his hotel bed, “he heard a loud hoarse noise of humanity in the distance, something frightening. Rising, he went on his little balcony. It was a sort of procession, or march of men, here and there a red flag fluttering from a man’s fist” (ibid., 182-3). Then a crowd, whistling, arguing, and shouting out loud in mockery and derision, are part of a demonstration until trumpets signalling an attack are heard, “and out of nowhere a sudden rush of grey-green carabinieri battering the crowd wildly with truncheons” come into action (ibid., 185).

23Later in November, when Aaron goes to Florence, the socialists are having a demonstration against the imprisonment of one of the railway-strikers, “an anarchist shot a man dead, the carabinieri fired back and “people were bolting and fighting like devils” (ibid., 277). It is self-evident that the story’s narration is inconsistent, especially concerning names and the characters’ backgrounds. The inaccuracy of such details led the critic Richard Aldington to say that these chapters of Aaron’s Rod “are improvised variations on Lawrence’s own experience and satirise people Lawrence knows.” (AR Intro, Aldington 7). Most relevantly to the subject of this article, this novel is also about coping with the aftermath of the First World War and its effect on ordinary people. Before the book begins, the war is over, but people cannot help thinking about its immediate consequences. The photo below is unequivocal proof of that.

Fig. 13. Demonstration organised by the “National Association of Disabled ex-servicemen”

Fig. 13. Demonstration organised by the “National Association of Disabled ex-servicemen”

24The various additions and changes that Lawrence introduced reflect his growing disenchantment with post-war Italy and Italian politics. So, unlike the mood expressed in the letters quoted above, he reveals an entirely different attitude in a letter to Mackenzie on 7th October 1920: “Italy feels awfully shaky and nasty, and for the first time my unconscious is uneasy of the Italians” (L III, 609). He has the opportunity to explore the Italians’ deepest impulses as they emerge in their social, political and religious activities. Perhaps one of the reasons that made him eager to go back to Italy after the long Cornwall exile was the hope to find a new identity. While England had seemed weary and gloomy in the war’s aftermath, Italy appeared unsteady and restless as agitation spread across the country. Aaron encounters various expatriates who, in their ways, ponder the concerns of their times. In brief, his instinct for perceiving the people’s mood, undermined by the political unrest caused by the rise of fascists against communists, reached its apex during the “biennio rosso” (1919-1920).

And so Italy was made—modern Italy. Fretfulness, irritation, and nothing in life except money: this is what the religious fervour of Garibaldians and Mazzinians works out to—in united, free Italy as in other united, free countries. No wonder liberty so often turns to ashes in the mouth, after being so fair a fruit to contemplate. Man needs more than liberty. (Movements 291)

  • 9 “Biennio rosso”: armed workers occupy factories in Milan (1920). Retrieved on Sep 2021 from https:/ (...)

Fig. 14. “Biennio rosso”: armed workers occupy factories in Milan (1920).9

Fig. 14. “Biennio rosso”: armed workers occupy factories in Milan (1920).9

Fig. 15. “Biennio rosso” (“Red Biennium” 1919-1920). National Association of Disabled ex-servicemen.10

Fig. 15. “Biennio rosso” (“Red Biennium” 1919-1920). National Association of Disabled ex-servicemen.10

25In March 1919, Mussolini founded his Fascist movement, and, in the autumn of 1920, his Black Shirts squads attacked any progressive and radical groups, communists and socialists in particular. Their punitive expeditions created utter social chaos. When they founded the Italian Communist Party in January 1921, the workers had already lost their enthusiasm for a revolution. So, while there was a growing conviction of the Italian working class that a socialist revolution was inevitable, by March 1919, Mussolini launched his Fascist movement and, in the autumn of 1920, the Fascist squads began their punitive expeditions resulting in an unprecedented social chaos.

26Concerning all that, Lawrence wrote the poem “Hibiscus and Salvia Flowers” on 31st January 1921 when he was living in Taormina. It represents his immediate response to the events above-mentioned, which he quite likely connected with the high unemployment level of Britain, reaching 22.4 % in July of that year. In the words of the Northern Irish poet Tom Paulin, Lawrence’s viewpoint came from an “essentially right-wing strand within English non-conformism.” (Lawrence in the Modern World 180). In fact, Lawrence was both a member of the Nonconformist Church as well as a social dissenter. As we can read in his essay “Democracy,” written in 1919, but published in 1923, he found the State despicable because it is not organic but mechanical, turning individuals into mere statistical figures. He concludes, basing his ideas on the doctrine of the supremacy of the free individual conscience, that the State is a “dead ideal” and so are Democracy and Socialism. Nonetheless, as often, his ideas can appear confused. For example, here he also maintains, perhaps ironically, that he is against private property, which is the conclusion he comes to in “Democracy” saying: “If we are to keep our back unbroken, we must deposit all property on the ground, and learn to walk without it. […] This is the Democracy: the new world” (ISF 83). This kind of statement is also present in some of the letters written between 1916-1921. Likewise, in “Hibiscus and Salvia Flowers,” a poem sounding like a letter, Lawrence expresses his ideas about socialism. It opens with the words, “Hark! Hark! The dogs do bark! It’s the socialists come to town,” (the traditional children’s refrain echoing Ariel’s first song in Shakespeare’s The Tempest: “Hark, hark! / The watch-dogs bark!”Act I, sc.ii). In the poem, the young Sicilian socialists ramble in intimidating gangs, staring at every forestiere (foreigner), seen, once again, as a bad person taking advantage of the favourable, high rate of exchange which allowed him to stay in luxurious hotels. Concerning that, we know from a letter Lawrence had written two weeks earlier than the poem that he rejected the mere association with the wealthy hotel guests whom the socialists did not like: “My wife and I are poor people. We live here and keep house for ourselves. So we know well enough what it is to be scared of hotel prices” (L III, 649). Then, in the poem, he alludes to the Book of Exodus, asking, “Who smeared their doors with blood? / Who on their breasts / Put salvias and hibiscus?” (ISF 311). These lines are meant to associate the Sicilian socialists with the Israelites in Egypt, who wore a red hibiscus to mark out that they were chosen – a reminiscence of a passage from Exodus: “And the blood shall be to you for a token upon the houses where ye are, and when I see the blood, I will pass over you and the plague shall not be upon you to destroy you, when I smite the land of Egypt” (xii, 13). In other words, Lawrence thought that the Sicilian Socialists wanted to free themselves from the enslavement to a tourist economy, imposed on them by the “foreigner,” just as the Israelites were the chosen people who struggled to liberate themselves from their subjection to the Egyptians. At the same time, interestingly, the socialists’ walking along the Corso (the main street in town), outside hotels, symbolise their will to keep outside European civilization. This is emphasised by their association through the flowers with the ancient Polynesian aristocracy, “Rose of the oldest races of princesses, Polynesian / Hybiscus” (ISF 314). While the following lines, “Eve, in her happy moment, / Put hibiscus in her hair, / Before she humbled herself, and knocked her knees with repentance,” (ibid.,) link the primaeval theme with the prelapsarian Eden before the Fall. Lawrence is even tempted to join the revolutionaries, saying, “I fly to join you” (ibid.,) which, as we have seen before, he had already hinted at in “Democracy.” Yet he is aware of the menace represented by the socialists, “the louts along the Corso” (ISF 316). But he considers himself above them and says:

What rot, to see the cabbage and hibiscus-tree
As equals!
What rot, to say the louts along the Corso
In Sunday suits and yellow shoes
Are my equals!
I am their superior, saluting the hibiscus flower, not them. (Ibid.)

27In the end, Lawrence cannot help admiring the Bolshevist louts, and even if they manage to destroy this despicable world, an outcome that he would not mind at all, he says: “And still I cannot bear it / That they take hibiscus and salvia flower” (ibid., 318). This shows his reluctance to give in to the ideology, perhaps because he feels his possible ideological commitment might threaten his freedom as an artist. The socialists are here making an unfounded claim to an aesthetic freedom, which is more the artist’s by right, which justifies his sense of “noblesse oblige.” It is this subversive and consequently disturbing challenge that makes him conclude, as just cited above. Therefore, this poem which depicts the Italian political situation of the time, represents an ideal background to understand Lawrence’s works of that period.

Fig. 16. Peasants’ Demonstration in Agrigento, Sicily 1920.11

Fig. 16. Peasants’ Demonstration in Agrigento, Sicily 1920.11

28While still in Sicily less than a year later, he writes a letter to Eleanor Farjeon on 14th January 1921, telling her that it was about time for Italy to have a revolution, saying that he would willingly take an active part in it: “If I knew how to, I’d really join myself to the revolutionary socialists now. I think the time has come for a real struggle. […] But I know there must and should be a deadly revolution very soon, and I would take part in it if I knew how” (L III, 649). By contrast, in a letter to his friend Samuel Koteliansky, written on 2nd March 1921, he is so discouraged by the development of the events in Italy that he says a revolution would never happen because of the country's historical division into two opposing factions: “I think Italy will not revolute or bolsh any more. The thing will settle down to a permanent socialist v. fascisti squibbling – the old Italian faction, Guelph and Ghibelline – and so the house will come to bits. It will have no one smash like Russia” (L III, 676).

29On 11th March 1920, Lawrence expressed his disappointment declaring that he had not only lost hope in a surge of radical change; he even took an extreme right-wing position:

What remaining belief I had in Socialsim dies out of me more and more as the time goes by. I feel I don’t care. […] I am not interested in the public – it all seems so far off, here in Sicily – like another world. The windows look east over the Ionian Sea: somehow, I don’t care what happens behind me, in the north west. – Lasciami stare. (Leave me alone.) (Ibid., 486)

  • 12 From The Life of Lawrence. An Illustrated Biography by K. Sagar (Chaucer Press, 2003).

Fig. 17. House where Lawrence and Frieda lived in Taormina, 1920-1921. Picture taken by Keith Sagar.12

Fig. 17. House where Lawrence and Frieda lived in Taormina, 1920-1921. Picture taken by Keith Sagar.12

Sea and Sardinia: Sicilians and Sardinians

30By 22nd March 1920, Lawrence is expressing his dislike of Sicilians whom he found too “sophisticated.” He says to Compton Mackenzie: “I don’t like people – truly I don’t like them” (L III, 491). Then, three days later, he writes to Lady Cynthia Asquith: “The worst of Taormina is that it is a parterre of English weeds all cultivating their egoes hard, one against the other. Save me from my countrymen” (ibid., 494). Finally, on 5th January 1921, Lawrence and Frieda went off to Sardinia, hoping to find Sicily's primitiveness through its high culture. This journey lasted until 13th January and resulted in Lawrence’s second travel book Sea and Sardinia (U.S. Dec. 1921). According to what the writer himself said: “I never made a note for that […] I returned home, to Taormina, and had nothing to do. So, I wrote the thing in about six weeks or less. Only one draft” (A Composite Biography, 108.) He put the other works aside, including Aaron’s Rod, and concentrated on Sea and Sardinia, which, like Aaron’s Rod, shows Lawrence’s disillusion with post-war Italy and lends itself to the purpose of this article, highlighting Lawrence’s proximity to people. Indeed, in Sea and Sardinia, he had the opportunity to mix with the locals and talk to them all the time, thus finding out what life was like out there. If, on the one hand, this exposed him to the risk of perpetuating a series of stereotypes, on the other one, it allowed him to see for himself how Italians behave and think. So, in the first pages of the book, there is an episode showing how careful Lawrence is in discrediting a “cliché,” according to which Southern Italians (i. e. Sicilians) should all be short and dark. It is dawn when he and Frieda are waiting for the train to Palermo at Taormina station:

Humanity is, externally, too much alike. Internally there are insuperable differences. So one sits and thinks, watching the people on the station. […] You would look in vain this morning for the swarthy feline southerner of romance. It might, as far as features are concerned, be an early morning crowd waiting for the train on a north London suburb train. As far as feature go. (SS 12)

31What follows after that highlights the idea that Italians generally think they are handsome and so irresistibly attractive that they gain the reputation of being ladies’ men.

They are mostly young fellows going up the line to Messina to their job: not artizans, lower middle class. […] They are lively, they throw their arms round one another’s necks, they all but kiss. […] That is how they are. Each one thinks he is as handsome as Adonis, and as “fetching” as Don Juan. Extraordinary! […] They never leave off being amorously friendly with almost everybody, emitting a relentless physical familiarity that is quite bewildering to one not brought up near a volcano.
This is more true of the middle classes than of the lower. (Ibid., 12-13)

32Who would disagree that there is something of a Casanova in most Italian men? Lawrence remarks that this is not equally true of Sardinians. While walking in the streets of Cagliari, he thinks: “Here men don’t idealise women by the looks of things. Here they don’t make those great leering eyes, the inevitably yours-to-command look of Italian males” (SS 67). By contrast, women are as challenging as men, which creates a balance between the two sexes, and Lawrence likes it a lot. Another idiosyncrasy, which Lawrence did not overlook, is that there are perhaps more officials of the Ferrovia dello Stato (State Railways) than passengers who love chatting.

They are like bees round a hive, humming in an important conversazione, and occasionally looking at some paper or other, and extracting a little official honey. But the conversazione is the affair of affairs. To an Italian official, life seems to be one long and animated conversation–the Italian word is better–interrupted by casual trains and telephones. (Ibid., 17)

33However, during the whole trip from Taormina to Cagliari (Sardinia’s capital), the Lawrences realised that conversazione is common at all levels of the society. While, among other things, Lawrence notices that a young Sicilian woman is happy to attract his attention, unlike Sardinian women. “She expects me to pay homage to her beauty: just to that: I can see that: not homage to herself, but to her as a bel pezzo [i. e. “hot stuff” rather vulgar]. She casts little aloof glances at me under her eyelids” (19).

  • 13 Photo taken by Daniele Marzeddu in Aug. 2021.

Fig. 18. An old train standing at Taormina Station, August 2021. It is still running after a century, and it is likely that Lawrence and Frieda travelled on it (courtesy Daniele Marzzedu).13

Fig. 18. An old train standing at Taormina Station, August 2021. It is still running after a century, and it is likely that Lawrence and Frieda travelled on it (courtesy Daniele Marzzedu).13

34During the trip, Lawrence describes the conversations he and Frieda have with people, among which there is one with a carpenter that annoys Lawrence:

The English and the Americans flocked to Italy, with their sterline and their dollari, and they bought what they wanted for nothing, for nothing. Ecco! […] You become if you are English—l’Inghilterra, il carbone, and il cambio: and as England, coal and exchange you are treated. It is more than useless to try to be human about it. You are a State usury system, a coal fiend and an exchange thief. Every Englishman has disappeared into this triple abstraction, in the eyes of the Italian, of the proletariat particularly. (Ibid., 50)

35About the rate of exchange, it is worth remembering that, as a matter of pride, one of the main points of the Fascist propaganda against Britain was to reduce the rate of exchange of the pound to the lira. Lawrence says he cannot stand that and walks away. Unfortunately, the carpenter, whom he calls a “mosquito,” comes back like one and tries to use his charm to seduce Frieda, his q-b. As already hinted at, this is another feature characterising Italians, the famous Latin lovers:

The mosquito hovers—and hovers. But the stony blank of the side of my cheek keeps him away. Yet he hovers. And the q-b feels sympathetic towards him: quite sympathetic. Because of course he treats her—a bel pezzo—as he would lick her boots, or anything else that she would let him lick. (Ibid., 51)

36It did not take long before they disembarked in Cagliari, where they found decent accommodation at the “Scala di Ferro” and, as Lawrence says:

After a really good meal we went out to see the town (56). This sentence allows me to introduce another aspect characterising Italians as observed by Lawrence: food and drinks. A good place to talk about that is Café Roma in central Via Roma, which “is all social Cagliari” (SS 60), along the sea promenade, some sort of open air parlour where people today still enjoy meeting: “At the tables were seated mostly men, taking coffee or vermouth or aqua vitae [a type of grappa that they call filu e ferru], all familiar and easy, without the modern self-consciousness. (Ibid., 61)

  • 14 This inn, taking its name from its original owner, signor Lunetta, has been refurbished and opened (...)

37After two days in Cagliari, Lawrence and Frieda were “en route” again. They got on a train to Mandas, which, though it was only fifty miles away, took them five hours. They were tired and immediately looked for a bed and something to eat. The inn “Antica Locanda Lunetta” was on the station premises, where they had a meal – cabbage soup with bits of macaroni, beefsteaks, fried pork, and boiled eggs, wine. As ironic as ever, Lawrence recounts that the diners they sat at the table with because of the way they ate their soup sounded like a “joyful trio of soup-swinkelring. They sucked it in from their spoons with long, gusto-rich sucks” (ibid., 77). What he called “the maialino [piglet] was the ‘treble’—he trilled his soup into his mouth with a swift, sucking vibration, interrupted by bits of cabbage, which made the lamp start dither again” (ibid., 78). The other two members of the “trio” sounded like a “baritone” and a “bass” respectively. The most talkative of them was the “maialino,” with whom they discussed about politics (Socialism was the hot topic in those days), the difference between Sardinians and Sicilians and the languages they spoke. Then, when Frieda said she liked Sardinia, the maialino asked her why, and Lawrence said, “Yes, the Sardinians please me more than the Sicilians […] They are more open—more honest” (ibid., 78). To which he added, “the padrone is a Sicilian.”14

Fig. 19. Mandas train in the 1920s (courtesy of NC).

Fig. 19. Mandas train in the 1920s (courtesy of NC).

38Under such circumstances, Lawrence and Frieda got to know people in their natural setting and, equally important, learned about their eating habits. It is true then that, as Lawrence quite rightly says: “If one travels one eats” (117). Today, more than ever before, it is widely acknowledged that people also connect to their cultural or ethnic group through food patterns, which are often used as a means of retaining their cultural identity.

39The following day they travelled to Sorgono, where they stayed at the only place available, opposite the station, the “Ristorante Risveglio” whose host Lawrence “hated [for his] filthy appearance” (ibid., 92). Lawrence found the place so depressing: on arrival, there was not even a cup of milk to drink, no fire, and what made it even worse there were no toilets, so people had to go out and take care of their needs in the side streets. Lawrence wrote: “I cursed the degenerate aborigines, the dirty-breasted host who dared to keep such an inn” (ibid., 96). Eventually, they had a kid roasted in some sort of cold “dungeon” with no furniture in the evening, but there was a lot of wine and aqua vitae. Lawrence dedicates about six pages to the description of that situation. Today the situation cannot be compared with that in the past, the town is nice and clean. However, Lawrence's description reads: “We pass into a big, dreary bar, where are innumerable bottles behind a tin counter” (ibid., 92). If we leave aside the dreariness, the abundance of wines recalls what you can see there now. The Ristorante Risveglio was completely refurbished in 2021 by Iuri and Enrico Marras, who, hoping to attract tourists, have have gone so far as to name a wine of their winery after Lawrence and Frieda, creating two little puppets which evoked the couple who lodged there. On continuing their trip, at Tonara, they were advised to go to Nuoro. This time they stopped at an inn, whose floor was “beautifully clean” (Ibid., 125). As Lawrence says, “we were dying with hunger” (ibid., 125). They had cinghiale, wild boar, and brodo, (broth). “It was perfectly plain, strong meat-stock, without vegetables. But how good and invigorating it was, and what an abundance! We drank it down, and ate the good, cold bread. Then came the boar itself.” (Ibid., 126) To make things even better,

The Nuoro citizen now produced a huge bottle of wine, which he said was finissimo, and refused to let us go with the dark wine on the table, of which every guest was served with a bottle. So, we drank up, and were replenished with the redder, lighter, fine Sorgono wine. It was very good. (Ibid., 126)

40So, ironically, the better wine came from Sorgono, the place Lawrence disliked most. Naturally, Iuri was thrilled on hearing what Lawrence had written in the essay titled “To Nuoro,” and he even said that he would use that quotation on the label of the next year’s wine.

Fig. 20. Box of wine dedicated to Lawrence and Frieda on the centenary of their visit at Sorogono (Sardinia), (courtesy Iuri Marras).

Fig. 20. Box of wine dedicated to Lawrence and Frieda on the centenary of their visit at Sorogono (Sardinia), (courtesy Iuri Marras).

41Since this is very telling about how most Italians are and what it means for them to consume a meal and a bottle of wine in good company, I cannot possibly end this episode without mentioning that Lawrence adds: “the Nuoro citizen insisted on paying. He would let me pay, he said, when he came to England. In him, and in our bus men, the famous Sardinian hospitality and generosity still lingers” (ibid., 129).

42During the next part of the journey to the following village, Orosei, they talked again about the consequences of the Great War. So, Lawrence and Frieda had to bear listening to the passionate nationalistic views of the omnibus driver who said that

there wasn’t a man in Italy who wasn’t dying to get at the throat of France. France! […] Even the old—anche i vecchi. Yes, there must be war—with France. […] Ah, the French! For arrogance, for insolence, Dio!—they were not to be borne. The French—they thought themselves lords of the world—signori del mondo! (Ibid., 151)

43Lawrence, without telling the man a word, indirectly commented:

But dear chap, he shouldn’t speak so loudly for all Italy—even old. The bulk of Italian men are only too anxious to beat their bayonets into cigarette-holders, and smoke the cigarette of eternal and ever-lasting peace, to coincide at all with our friend. Yet there he was—raging at us in the bus as we dashed along the coast. (Ibid., 151)

44As we have already said, this is one of the major problems that Italy was facing in the aftermath of World War One. Therefore, we need to refer to what happened at the end of the conflict. Even if Italy won the war as a member of the Entente, its demand for Fiume was not met, which resulted in a growing anti-foreign feeling, especially against France that supported the newly created Yugoslavia to preserve the status quo. Regarding the “bulk” of Italians Lawrence refers to, they were mainly socialists, bourgeois neutralists, and disillusioned people such as peasants and workers.

45Then, a long silence was interrupted by the bus driver, who asked the Lawrences:

When are we going to London? And are there many motor-cars in England? —many many? In America too? Do they want men in America? I say no, they have unemployment out there: they are going to stop immigration in April: or at least cut it down. Why? He asks sharply. Because they have their own unemployment problem. (Ibid., 151)

46Lawrence told him straight that he would not even be issued a passport to try and go to America. He realised that emigrating had become some sort of disease in Italy: Andare fuori dall’Italia. To go out of Italy. To go out-away—to go away—to go away. It has become a craving, a neurasthenia with them.” (SS 152) While the bus driver was driving to the port of Olbia, Lawrence thought:“The man wants to leave Italy so badly that he is prepared to be a bus driver, or rather prefer to be a gentleman’s chauffer—in England.” But Lawrence has to disappoint him again, saying, “[…] but in England also we have more men than jobs. […] To my horror I feel he is believing in my goodness of heart. And as for the motor-cars, it is all I can do to own a pair of boots, so how am I to set about employing a chauffeur” (ibid., 151).

47We have here an apparent conflict between heart and mind. Lawrence could only sympathise with the “bus-mate” who was so eager to leave Italy that he did not give up and handed him a note, reading:

“You will find me a post in England, when you go in the summer? You will find me a place in London as a chauffeur -!”
“If I can, “ said I. “But it is not easy.”
He nodded his head at me with the most bright confidence, quite sure now that he had settled his care perfectly.
On the paper he had written his name and his address, and if anyone would like him as a chauffeur they have only to say so. On the back of paper the inevitable goodwill: Auguri infiniti e buon Viaggio. Infinite good wishes and a good journey.
I folded the paper and put it in my waistcoat pocket, feeling a trifle disconcerted by my new responsibility. He was such a dear fellow and such bright trusted eyes. (Ibid., 157-8)

  • 15 The Italian writer Gabriele D'Annunzio, to respond to the unfair treatment received by Italy at the (...)

48Nothing particularly relevant happened until they were travelling on the train from Rome to Naples where they met a big group of poor D’Annunzio Legionaries about whom a sick soldier said, “Oh yes, they are fine chaps. But it was a folly. D’Annunzio is a world poet—but Fiume was a mistake you know. And these chaps have got to learn a lesson” (ibid., 174). That was indeed a truthful picture of one of the sad consequences of the aftermath of the War.15 Then, a schoolmistress began to discuss about another “old topic”: pensions. She complained how unfair it was that a fully qualified professor like her got five thousand lire a year, while a ticket-collector puncher got twelve thousand. This conversation went on and on and continued until they arrived in Naples and also continued on the ship sailing to Palermo. We can easily imagine how irked Lawrence was to hear the same story over and over again.

Were we English? asked the schoolmistress. We were. Ah, a fine thing to be English in Italy now. Why? — rather tart from me. Because of the cambio, the exchange. You English with your money exchange, you come here and buy everything for nothing, you take the best of everything, and with your money you pay nothing for it. Whereas we poor Italians we pay heavily for everything at an exaggerated price, and we can have nothing. Ah it is very nice to be English in Italy now. You can travel, you go to the hotels, you can see everything, and it costs you nothing. (Ibid., 176)

49Lawrence told her that she was wrong and that it was not true that one could live in Italy for nothing. So, he thought to himself:

“Am I always to have the exchange flung in my teeth, as if I were a personal thief.” But the woman persisted.
“Ah,” she said. “We Italians, we are so nice, we are so good. Noi siamo così buoni. We are so good-natured. But others, they are not buoni. We are so goo-natured.” (Ibid., 176)

Conclusion

50I have tried to present a fairly exhaustive picture of Italian society through the first two decades of the 20th century as seen through Lawrence’s eyes. Besides the novel Aaron’s Rod and the poem “Hibiscus and Salvia Flowers,” which I have mainly used to describe the aftermath of World War One, a frame necessary to understand the historical and socio-economic context that Lawrence saw for himself, I mainly drew from Twilight in Italy and Sea and Sardinia through which he filtered his personal experience. In my view, these two travel books, together with the letters, are a priceless source of first-hand information if one wants to try to understand the prevailing mentality of the Italians of the time, which in some respects is still the same today.

51Without following a scientific method, Lawrence’s instinctive sharp sense of observation, together with his remarkable ability to focus on individuals, allowed him to catch those Italian idiosyncrasies which make their nation one. Moreover, it must be said he did not completely ignore the traditional North / South divide. The most representative idiosyncrasies that he handpicked also include what I would categorise under “dolcevita”: men thinking they are so handsome and irresistibly charming that they usually leer at women (cf. the Valentino type of male), the pleasure of eating and drinking in good company, music and dancing. Most Italians still think that they are good-natured (“brava gente”), generous, enjoy chatting (i. e. “conversazione”), feel sorry for themselves. The resulting picture of the country is sometimes humorous and at other times irritating. Overall, Lawrence succeeded in catching all that and much more thanks to the fact that he loved mixing with the ordinary people in the street, sharing their company and habits, and talking with them about everyday life problems. After all, in this way, he undoubtedly achieved what he had in mind all the time, catching the spirit of place wherever he was and under whatever circumstances he happened to be.

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Bibliographie

Aldington, Richard (1976). Introduction. Aaron’s Rod by Lawrence, D.H. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books. p. 7.

Ceramella, Nick. “‘Sea and Sardinia: An Italian Perspective’ in An Art of True Relatedness – Lawrence and Italy,” in Études Lawrenciennes, 14/15. Paris: Université Paris X, 1995-1996.

Ceramella, Nick. “Lorenzo at the Theatre: Meeting Actors and Audience,” in Eastwood: Journal of the D.H. Lawrence Society, vol. 4, n° 2 (2016).

Ceramella, Nick, ed. Lake Garda: Gateway to D.H. Lawrence’s Voyage to the Sun. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2013.

Lawrence, D.H. “Democracy,” in Reflections on the Death of a Porcupine and Other Essays, Michael Herbert (ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988.

Lawrence, D.H. Aaron’s Rod. Ed. Mara Kalnins. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979.

Lawrence, D.H. Twilight in Italy and Other Essays. Ed. Paul Eggert. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994.

Lawrence, D.H. Sea and Sardinia. Ed. Mara Kalnins. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979.

Lawrence, D.H. Letters I. Ed. James T. Boulton & Andrew Robertson, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979.

Lawrence, D.H. Letters III. Ed. James T. Boulton & Andrew Robertson, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984.

Lawrence, D.H. The Complete Poems. Introduction & Notes by Vivian De Sola Pinto & F. Warren Roberts. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1977.

Nehls, Edward, ed. D.H. Lawrence: A Composite Biography, 3 vols. Madison, 1957-9.

Paulin, Tom. “Hibiscus and Salvia Flowers’: The Puritan Imagination,” in D.H. Lawrence in the Modern World. Ed. Peter Preston & Peter Hoare. London: MacMillan, 1989.

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Notes

1 Villa De Paoli (courtesy of Comitato Storico per Gargnano; henceforth CSG).

2 Courtesy of Paul Eggert; henceforth PE.

3 Gargnano: Alley leading right to Lake Garda beach (courtesy Elizabetta Campregher; henceforth EC).

4 Courtesy of Archive Gargnano Town Hall, Umberto Perini’s Collection; henceforth UP.

5 Courtesy of UP.

6 She was a friend of the novelist and publisher David Garnett, the son of Lawrence’s friend, the critic Edward Garnett.

7 Courtesy of Nick Ceramella; henceforth NC.

8 In booklet from 1st International Symposium Lake Garda: Gateway to D.H.L.’s Voyage to the Sun, 2012 (courtesy of CSP).

9 “Biennio rosso”: armed workers occupy factories in Milan (1920). Retrieved on Sep 2021 from https://www.fattiperlastoria.it/biennio-rosso-in-italia/

10 “Biennio rosso” (“Red Biennium”1919-1920) Retrieved on Sep. 2021 from https://www.fattiperlastoria.it/biennio-rosso-in-italia/

11 Retrieved on Sep. 2021 from https://www.google.com/search?q=rivolta+contadina,+agrigento+1919-20

12 From The Life of Lawrence. An Illustrated Biography by K. Sagar (Chaucer Press, 2003).

13 Photo taken by Daniele Marzeddu in Aug. 2021.

14 This inn, taking its name from its original owner, signor Lunetta, has been refurbished and opened again by his niece Barbara in 2010. In an interview with Daniele Marzeddu, the film director of the docu-film “Return to Sea and Sardinia” (2021), she confirmed that her great-grandmother used to say that the Lawrences stayed there for the night and that her husband was a Sicilian carabinieri officer. After accomplishing his military duty, he decided to settle down there and start that business.

15 The Italian writer Gabriele D'Annunzio, to respond to the unfair treatment received by Italy at the Paris Peace Conference (1919), organised a group of so-called “legionaries” and conquered Fiume (now Rijeka, Croatia). Then, he proclaimed the independent Regency of Carnaro, which he annexed to the Kingdom of Italy. All that was done despite the disagreement of the Italian government, which liberated the city on the 12th November 1920.

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Table des illustrations

Titre Fig. 1. Lawrence and Frieda rented this Villa from Mr De Paoli.1
URL http://journals.openedition.org/lawrence/docannexe/image/3384/img-1.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 57k
Titre Fig. 2. Silvia, née Comboni, and her husband Pietro De Paoli.2
URL http://journals.openedition.org/lawrence/docannexe/image/3384/img-2.png
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Titre Fig. 3. Gargnano: Alley leading right to the Lake Garda beach.3
URL http://journals.openedition.org/lawrence/docannexe/image/3384/img-3.jpg
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Titre Fig. 4. Curtain of “Teatro Sociale” (1806), representing Gargnano’s Town Hall, shown at 1st International Symposium Lake Garda: Gateway to D.H.L.’s Voyage to the Sun, 2012.4
URL http://journals.openedition.org/lawrence/docannexe/image/3384/img-4.png
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Titre Fig. 5. Play at the Gargnano Theatre, showing actors and musicians, early 20th century.5
URL http://journals.openedition.org/lawrence/docannexe/image/3384/img-5.png
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Titre Fig. 6. Lists of box-holders at the theatre in Gargnano, Lawrence and Frieda sat in the 1st row, box No. 8 (courtesy of UP).
URL http://journals.openedition.org/lawrence/docannexe/image/3384/img-6.jpg
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Titre Fig. 7. Going fishing, Gargnano 1910 (courtesy of CSG).
URL http://journals.openedition.org/lawrence/docannexe/image/3384/img-7.jpg
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Titre Fig. 8. View of Lake Garda from San Gaudenzio (courtesy of UP).
URL http://journals.openedition.org/lawrence/docannexe/image/3384/img-8.png
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Titre Fig. 9. “Ballo della mazurka” by Celestino Turletti (between 1864 and 1904).
URL http://journals.openedition.org/lawrence/docannexe/image/3384/img-9.jpg
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Titre Fig. 10. Maria & Paolo Capelli: photographs taken at San Gaudenzio, 1979, of a pencil drawing of the couple, presumably made by a journeyman artist. (courtesy of PE)
URL http://journals.openedition.org/lawrence/docannexe/image/3384/img-10.jpg
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Titre Fig. 11. San Gaudenzio: Capelli’s property, Sep. 2012.7
URL http://journals.openedition.org/lawrence/docannexe/image/3384/img-11.jpg
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Titre Fig. 12. Faustino Magri, “Il duro.”8
URL http://journals.openedition.org/lawrence/docannexe/image/3384/img-12.jpg
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Titre Fig. 13. Demonstration organised by the “National Association of Disabled ex-servicemen”
URL http://journals.openedition.org/lawrence/docannexe/image/3384/img-13.jpg
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Titre Fig. 14. “Biennio rosso”: armed workers occupy factories in Milan (1920).9
URL http://journals.openedition.org/lawrence/docannexe/image/3384/img-14.jpg
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Titre Fig. 15. “Biennio rosso” (“Red Biennium” 1919-1920). National Association of Disabled ex-servicemen.10
URL http://journals.openedition.org/lawrence/docannexe/image/3384/img-15.jpg
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Titre Fig. 16. Peasants’ Demonstration in Agrigento, Sicily 1920.11
URL http://journals.openedition.org/lawrence/docannexe/image/3384/img-16.jpg
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Titre Fig. 17. House where Lawrence and Frieda lived in Taormina, 1920-1921. Picture taken by Keith Sagar.12
URL http://journals.openedition.org/lawrence/docannexe/image/3384/img-17.jpg
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Titre Fig. 18. An old train standing at Taormina Station, August 2021. It is still running after a century, and it is likely that Lawrence and Frieda travelled on it (courtesy Daniele Marzzedu).13
URL http://journals.openedition.org/lawrence/docannexe/image/3384/img-18.jpg
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Titre Fig. 19. Mandas train in the 1920s (courtesy of NC).
URL http://journals.openedition.org/lawrence/docannexe/image/3384/img-19.jpg
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Titre Fig. 20. Box of wine dedicated to Lawrence and Frieda on the centenary of their visit at Sorogono (Sardinia), (courtesy Iuri Marras).
URL http://journals.openedition.org/lawrence/docannexe/image/3384/img-20.jpg
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Nick Ceramella, « “Dolce vita” and Italian Anxieties (Social Chaos, Emigration, Revolution) between the 1910s and early 20s »Études Lawrenciennes [En ligne], 54 | 2022, mis en ligne le 15 décembre 2022, consulté le 18 avril 2026. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/lawrence/3384 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/lawrence.3384

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Auteur

Nick Ceramella

Nick Ceramella has taught English literature and language in various Italian Universities. He has been visiting professor at the Universities of Moscow (Russia), and Maceiò - Alagoas (Brazil) and has lectured at Stony Brook University (New York), and in most European countries. From 2010 to 2013, he was a curricula developer and consultant of English Literature, Translation Studies, and ESP, in the EU financed project for the Advancement of Languages in South Eastern Europe. Forthcoming publications: The Marriage between Literature and Music. C.S.P. (UK), May 2022; Domenico’s New Year / (Il Capodanno di Domenico) by Francis T. Galway, translation, introduction and notes. Tropea (Italia): Meligrana Editore, May 2022; Return to Sea and Sardinia: Transmuting the Spirit of Place into Literary and Photographic Art. A Photobook, N. Ceramella & D. Marzeddu (eds.). CSP (UK), July 2022.

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