Complete Works of D.H. Lawrence, page 773
Yet, despite his summer wanderings, he had been back only a few weeks when he felt “an absolute necessity to move”. We should remember that his poetical descriptions of Taormina and Etna refer to sunny clays, and that during November and December, 1920, it rained “with such persistence and stupidity that one loses all one’s initiative and remains cut off” There was “lovely weather” on the 1st January, 1921, but on the 20th lie was writing that “it thunders and lightnings for twenty-four hours, and hailstorms continually”. In his diary he made the laconic note: “meditate trip to Sardinia”.
Why Sardinia, and in winter? It is very hard to say. In spite of his cockiness and dogmatism Lawrence was secretly much given to moods of self-mistrust and vacillation. He may have chosen Sardinia because he had been tempted in exactly the opposite direction by reading a book about Africa by a learned German who had invented an ancient African civilisation which fascinated Lawrence. Moreover, Lawrence constantly wavered between the needs of his amiable social self and his revulsion from the society in which he .found himself involved. He might easily have revolted from the English-speaking inhabitants of Taormina, more especially as he was really preparing himself to leave Europe altogether. A little later, discussing that flight, he wrote his American .friend, Brewster: “Dio mio, I am so ridiculous, wavering between east and west”. And this uncertainty and restlessness of early 1921 were symptoms of the greater urge which was to take him round the world of Ceylon, Australia and Mexico.
In Sea and Sardinia there is a quite unconscious portrait of the author, that irresistibly charming Lawrence who had the gift of making even the most commonplace things seem wonderful. There was a kind of magic in his company which to a much less extent passed into his written words. If you can respond to that magic you may go happily and interestedly with him through every mile of that journey. The magic perhaps will not reach the highbrow literary person or those who are enslaved by journalism; but there are others. All the time Lawrence is giving out life, giving you the sensation of Iris unique perception of a world which to him was marvellously alive and variously interesting. He cares nothing about writing for writing’s sake, that self-conscious and abject conforming to the artificial tastes of literary sects which is so boring. In his critical vocabulary the most contemptuous of adjectives was “literary”.
You will not then be surprised to find that the majestic grandeur of Etna and Calabria and the Ionian Sea serves as a frame for the clerks and other poor workers waiting for the early morning train at Taormina station “like a line of caricatures between oneself and the naked sea”. In his zest for life Lawrence enjoyed re-living the railway journey to Palermo and the people he saw in the train and at the station as much as that gorgeous religious procession at Nuoro. The contents and packing of the “kitchenino” are as interesting in their place as the first glimpse of Cagliari and the starry sky over the Mediterranean. And this is not because he was unselective, but because, like Kipling in his very different way, Laurence saw nothing common in the world, had a wider than ordinary scale of values. He loved the lonely landscapes and picturesque villages and old-world people, but in another way he enjoyed the soup-sucking socialists of Manilas just as much.
Parts of Sea and Sardinia appeared in The Dial for October and November, 1921. and Lawrence was dismayed and annoyed by the cuts made. “Had Dial with scrappy Sea and Sardinia — hate it that they mauled it about. A vile Sunday”. (30th October, 1921.) It first appeared in book form in the United States, being issued in December, 1921, by Seltzer, with eight coloured illustrations by Jan Juta. Martin Seeker’s edition (same illustrations) did not appear until April, 1923. Lawrence’s bibliographer says of the Seeker edition, “taken merely as a hook, this is perhaps the most beautiful Lawrence item”.
RICHARD ALDINGTON
I. AS FAR AS PALERMO
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. Because why? Because the near ridges, with their olives and white houses, these are with us. Because the riverbed, and Naxos under the lemon groves, Greek Naxos deep under dark-leaved, many-fruited lemon groves, Etna’s skirts and skirt-bottoms, these still are our world, our own world. Even the high villages among the oaks, on Etna. But Etna herself, Etna of the snow and secret changing winds, she is beyond a crystal wall. When I look at her, low, white, witch-like under heaven, slowly rolling her orange smoke and giving sometimes a breath of rose-red flame, then I must look away from earth, into the ether, into the low empyrean. And there, in that remote region, Etna is alone. If you would see her, you must slowly take off your eyes from the world and go a naked seer to the strange chamber of the empyrean. Pedestal of heaven! The Greeks had a sense of the magic truth of things. Thank goodness one still knows enough about them to find one’s kinship at last. There are so many photographs, there are so infinitely many water-colour drawings and oil paintings which purport to render Etna. But pedestal of heaven! You must cross the invisible border. Between the foreground, which is our own, and Etna. pivot of winds in lower heaven, there is a dividing line. You must change your state of mind, A metempsychosis. It is no use thinking you can see and behold Etna and the foreground both at once. Never. One or the other. Foreground and a transcribed Etna. Or Etna, pedestal of heaven.
Why, then, must one go? Why not stay? Ah. what a mistress, this Etna! with her strange winds prowling round her like Circes panthers, some black, some white. With her strange, remote communications and her terrible dynamic exhalations. She makes men mad. Such terrible vibrations of wicked and beautiful electricity she throws about her, like a deadly net! Nay, sometimes, verily, one can feel a new current of her demon magnetism seize one’s living tissue and change the peaceful life of one’s active cells. She makes a storm in the living plasm and a new adjustment. And sometimes it is like a madness.
This timeless Grecian Etna, in her lower-heaven loveliness, so lovely, so lovely, what a torturer! Not many men can really stand her, witout losing their souls. She is like Circe. Unless a man is very strong she takes his soul away from him and leaves him not a beast, but an elemental creature, intelligent and soulless. Intelligent, almost inspired, and soulless, like the Etna Sicilians, Intelligent daimons, and humanly, according to us, the most stupid people on earth. Ach. horror! How many men, how many races, has Etna put to flight? It was she who broke the quick of the Greek soul. And after the Greeks, she gave the Romans. the Normans, the Arabs, the Spaniards, the French, the Italians, even the English, she gave them all their inspired hour and broke their souls.
Perhaps it is she one must flee from. At any rate, one must go: and at once. After having come back only at the end of October, already one must dash away. And it is only the third of January. And one cannot afford to move. Yet there you are: at the Etna bidding one goes.
Where does one go? There is Girgenti by the south. There is Tunis at hand, Girgenti, and the sulphur spirit and the Greek guarding temples, to make one madder? Never. Neither Syracuse and the madness of its great quarries. Tunis? Africa? Not vet, not yet. Not the Arabs, not yet. Naples, Rome, Florence? No good at all. Where then?
Where then? Spain or Sardinia. Spain or Sardinia. Sardinia, which is like nowhere. Sardinia, which has no history, no date, no race, no offering. Let it be Sardinia. They say neither Romans, nor Phoenicians, Greeks nor Arabs ever subdued Sardinia. It lies outside; outside the circuit of civilisation. Like the Basque lands. Sure enough, it is Italian now, with its railways and its motor-omnibuses. But there is an uncaptured Sardinia still. It lies within the net of this European civilisation, but it isn’t landed yet. And the net is getting old and tattered. A good many fish are slipping through the net of the old European civilisation. Like that great whale of Russia. And probably even Sardinia. Sardinia then. Let it be Sardinia.
There is a fortnightly boat sailing from Palermo — next Wednesday, three days ahead. Let us go, then. Away from abhorred Etna, and the Ionian sea, and these great stars in the water, and the almond trees in bud, and the orange trees heavy with red fruit, and these maddening, exasperating, impossible Sicilians, who never knew what truth was and have long lost all notion of what a human being is. A sort of sulphureous demons. _Andiamo!_
But let me confess, in parenthesis, that I am not at all sure whether I don’t really prefer these demons to our sanctified humanity.
Why does one create such discomfort for oneself! To have to get up in the middle of the night — half-past one — to go and look at the clock, Of course this fraud of an American watch has stopped, with its impudent phosphorescent face. Half-past one! Half-past one, and a dark January night. Ah, well! Half-past one! And an uneasy sleep till at last it is five o’clock. Then light a candle and get up.
The dreary black morning, the candle-light, the house looking night-dismal. Ah, well, one does all these things for one’s pleasure. So light the charcoal fire and put the kettle on. The queen bee shivering round half dressed, fluttering her unhappy candle.
“It’s fun,” she says, shuddering.
“Great,” say I, grim as death.
First fill the thermos with hot tea. Then fry bacon — good English bacon from Malta, a god-send, indeed — and make bacon sandwiches. Make also sandwiches of scrambled eggs. Make also bread and butter. Also a little toast for breakfast — and more tea. But ugh, who wants to eat at this unearthly hour, especially when one is escaping from bewitched Sicily.
Fill the little bag we call the kitchenino. Methylated spirit, a small aluminium saucepan, a spirit-lamp, two spoons, two forks, a knife, two aluminium plates, salt, sugar, tea — what else? The thermos flask, the various sandwiches, four apples, and a little tin of butter. So much for the kitchenino, for myself and the queen bee. Then my knapsack and the q-b’s handbag.
Under the lid of the half-cloudy night sky, far away at the rim of the Ionian sea, the first light, like metal fusing. So swallow the cup of tea and the bit of toast. Hastily wash up, so that we can find the house decent when we come back. Shut the door-windows of the upper terrace and go down. Lock the door: the upper half of the house made fast.
The sky and sea are parting like an oyster shell, with a low red gape. Looking across from the veranda at it, one shivers. Not that it is cold. The morning is not at all cold. But the ominousness of it: that long red slit between a dark sky and a dark Ionian sea, terrible old bivalve which has held life between its lips so long. And here, at this house, we are ledged so awfully above the dawn, naked to it.
Fasten the door-windows of the lower veranda. One won’t fasten at all. The summer heat warped it one way, the masses of autumn rain warped it another. Put a chair against it. Lock the last door and hide the key. Sling the knapsack on one’s back, take the kitchenino in one’s hand and look round. The dawn-red widening, between the purpling sea and the troubled sky. A light in the capucin convent across there. Cocks crowing and the long, howling, hiccupping, melancholy bray of an ass. “All females are dead, all females-och! och! och! — hoooo! Ahaa! — there’s one left.” So he ends on a moaning grunt of consolation. This is what the Arabs tell us an ass is howling when he brays.
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.
It is full dawn — dawn — not morning, the sun will not have risen. The village is nearly all dark in the red light, and asleep still. No one at the fountain by the capucin gate: too dark still. One man leading a horse round the corner of the Palazzo Corvaia. One or two dark men along the Corso. And so over the brow, down the steep cobble-stone street between the houses, and out to the naked hill front. This is the dawn-coast of Sicily. Nay, the dawn-coast of Europe. Steep, like a vast cliff, dawn-forward. A red dawn, with mingled curdling dark clouds, and some gold. It must be seven o’clock. The station down below, by the sea. And noise of a train. Yes, a train. And we still high on the steep track, winding downwards. But it is the train from Messina to Catania, half an hour before ours, which is from Catania to Messina.
So jolt, and drop, and jolt down the old road that winds on the cliff face. Etna across there is smothered quite low, quite low in a dense puther of ink-black clouds. Playing some devilry in private, no doubt. The dawn is angry red, and yellow above, the sea takes strange colours. I hate the station, pigmy, drawn out there beside the sea. On this steep face, especially in the windless nooks, the almond blossom is already out. In little puffs and specks and stars, it looks very like bits of snow scattered by winter. Bits of snow, bits of blossom, fourth day of the year 1921. Only blossom. And Etna indescribably cloaked and secretive in her dense black clouds. She has wrapped them quite round her, quite low round her skirts.
At last we are down. We pass the pits where men are burning lime — red-hot, round pits — and are out on the highway. Nothing can be more depressing than an Italian high-road. From Syracuse to Airolo it is the same: horrible, dreary, slummy high-roads the moment you approach a village or any human habitation. Here there is an acrid smell of lemon juice. There is a factory for making citrate. The houses flush on the road, under the great limestone face of the hill, open their slummy doors, and throw out dirty water and coffee dregs. We walk over the dirty water and coffee dregs. Mules rattle past with carts. Other people are going to the station. We pass the Dazio and are there.
Humanity is, externally, too much alike. Internally there are insuperable differences. So one sits and thinks, watching the people on the station: like a line of caricatures between oneself and the naked sea and the uneasy, clouding dawn.
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 station. As far as features go. For some are fair and some colourless and none racially typical. The only one that is absolutely like a rare caricature is a tan stout elderly fellow with spectacles and a short nose and a bristling moustache, and he is the German of the comic papers of twenty years ago. But he is pure Sicilian.
They are mostly young fellows going up the line to Messina to their job: not artizans, lower middle class. And externally, so like any other clerks and shopmen, only rather more shabby, much less socially self-conscious. They are lively, they throw their arms round one another’s necks, they all but kiss. One poor chap has had earache, so a black kerchief is tied round his face, and his black hat is perched above, and a comic sight he looks. No one seems to think so, however. Yet they view my arrival with a knapsack on my back with cold disapprobation, as unseemly as if I had arrived riding on a pig. I ought to be in a carriage, and the knapsack ought to be a new suitcase. I know it, but am inflexible.
That is how they are. Each one thinks he is as handsome as Adonis, and as “fetching” as Don Juan. Extraordinary! At the same time, all flesh is grass, and if a few trouser-buttons are missing or if a black hat perches above a thick black muffler and a long excruciated face, it is all in the course of nature. They seize the black-edged one by the arm, and in profound commiseration: “Do you suffer? Are you suffering?” they ask.
And that also is how they are. So terribly physically all over one another. They pour themselves one over the other like so much melted butter over parsnips. They catch each other under the chin, with a tender caress of the hand, and they smile with sunny melting tenderness into each other’s face. Never in the world have I seen such melting gay tenderness as between casual Sicilians on railway platforms, whether they be young lean-cheeked Sicilians or huge stout Sicilians.
There must be something curious about the proximity of a volcano. Naples and Catania alike, the men are hugely fat, with great macaroni paunches, they are expansive and in a perfect drip of casual affection and love. But the Sicilians are even more wildly exuberant and fat and all over one another than the Neapolitans. They never leave off being amorously friendly with almost everybody, emitting a relentless physical familiarity that is quite bewildering to one not brought up near a volcano.
This is more true of the middle classes than of the lower. The working men are perforce thinner and less exuberant. But they hang together in clusters, and can never be physically near enough.
It is only thirty miles to Messina, but the train takes two hours. It winds and hurries and stops beside the lavender grey morning sea. A flock of goats trail over the beach near the lapping wave’s edge, dismally. Great wide deserts of stony river-beds run down to the sea, and men on asses are picking their way across, and women are kneeling by the small stream-channel washing clothes. The lemons hang pale and innumerable in the thick lemon groves. Lemon trees, like Italians, seem to be happiest when they are touching one another all round. Solid forests of not very tall lemon trees lie between the steep mountains and the sea, on the strip of plain. Women, vague in the orchard under-shadow, are picking the lemons, lurking as if in the undersea. There are heaps of pale yellow lemons under the trees. They look like pale, primrose-smouldering fires. Curious how like fires the heaps of lemons look, under the shadow of foliage, seeming to give off a pallid burning amid the suave, naked, greenish trunks. When there comes a cluster of orange trees, the oranges are red like coals among the darker leaves. But lemons, lemons, innumerable, speckled like innumerable tiny stars in the green firmament of leaves. So many lemons! Think of all the lemonade crystals they will be reduced to! Think of America drinking them up next summer.
