D. H. Lawrence: Underground in Italy

Etruscan painted tomb
Etruscan painted tomb

book cover
Destination: Etruscan Italy

Book: Etruscan Places: Travels Through Forgotten Italy by D. H. Lawrence (First published in 1932, NEW edition 2011)

D. H. Lawrence accompanied me into the hospital maternity ward. Well, not the man himself–that would be a little weird–but almost as strange, my husband read to me from Lady Chatterley’s Lover as I waited for waves of contractions to sweep through my body.

The association of Lawrence, the novelist of the erotic, with labor pains, did not deter me from devouring his novels and a biography in one book-filled year.  Thanks to Tauris Parke Books and Palgrave MacMillan, Lawrence’s non-fiction travelogues are being rescued from oblivion. I rediscovered the joy of D. H. Lawrence as a travel writer  in  Etruscan Places.

At times Etruscan Places  reads like a not-quite-final work and indeed the new foreword  by Michael Squires (author of nine books about Lawrence) tells us that Lawrence intended this to be a longer work.  The six essays themselves seem rather raw, as though the author had not finished arranging paragraphs and sentences in logical sequence. And I will admit to skipping lightly over pages of dense philosophizing, and concentrating on his sharp, clear portraits of what he saw and experienced.

Etruscan burial urn
Etruscan burial urn in Volterra, Italy

The power of Lawrence lies in those superbly descriptive sentences.  Unhampered by the need to appear scholarly (although he clearly has read widely on the subject) he lets his imagination loose to wander among the Etruscans and interpret their lives. He warns against being influenced by scholarly interpretations– “thinking how things ought to be, when already they are quite perfectly what they are.”

Written about a trip taken in 1927 , the essays reflects the still oozing wounds of World War I and Lawrence’s hatred of facism and war. He had me laughing out loud with his sarcasm.

Besides, the Etruscans were vicious. We know it, because their enemies and exterminators said so. Just as we knew the unspeakable depths of our enemies in the late war….However, those pure, clean-living, sweet-souled Romans, who smshed nation after nation and crushed the free soul in people after people, and were ruled by Messalina and Heliogabalus and such-like snowdrops, they said the Etruscans were vicious…And those naughty neighbors of the Romans as least escaped being Puritans.

No wonder he loved the joyous, free spirited phalic-inspired Etruscans.

Etruscan phallic objects
Etruscan phallic objects

By the doorway of some tombs there is a carved stone house, or a stone imitation chest with sloping lids like the two sides of the roof of an oblong house.  The guide-boy…mutters that every woman’s tomb had one of these stone houses or chess over it…and every man’s tomb had one of the phallic stones, or lingams.

Lawrence spent his life fighting against restrictions on his free-thinking books that celebrate not just the joy of sex, but the centrality of sex to humankind.  (After several decades of  steamy soap opera and bawdy reality shows on TV and R- rated movies, someone coming to his books in the 21st century is going to wonder what all the fuss was about 80 years ago when he was taken to court for writing obscene literature.)

D. H. Lawrence never shies away from giving his opinion. For instance, he describes the Palazzo Vitelleschi, the museum in Tarquinia as “exceedingly interesting and delightful…” He goes on to say:

If only we would realize it, and not tear things from their settings.  Museums anyhow are wrong.  But if one must have museums, let them be small, and above all, let them be local.  Splendid as the Etruscan museum is in Florence, how much happier one is in the museum at Tarquinia, where all the things are Tarquinian, and at least have some association with one another, and form some sort of organic whole. [Emphasis by Lawrence]

Lovers, Etruscan style
Lovers, Etruscan style

Later in the book, he describes in detail a family tomb recreated in Florence’s Archaeology Museum.

But one is filled with doubt and misgiving. Why, oh why, wasn’t the tomb left intact as it was found, where it was found?  The garden of the Florence museum is vastly instructive, if you want object-lessons about the Etruscans.  But who wants object-lessons about vanished races? What one wants is a contact.  The Etruscans are not a theory or a thesis. If they are anything, they are an experience.

RIGHT ON, Mr. Lawrence!  We travel to experience other cultures, past and present–not to dissect and analyze.

In 1927 he traveled to Cerveteri (northwest of Rome), Tarquinia (90 minutes by train from Rome), Vulci and Volterra in Tucscany (Also popular with fans of Twilight and Vampires). Unesco considers the significance of  Cerveteri and Tarquinia as World Heritage Sites here.

In looking for these links, I discovered two things. There’s not a lot of travel information on the Internet about these Etruscan sites, and that’s a GOOD thing for travelers like me who like the less discovered places. And second, there’s a LOT more to see in all of these places than there was in Lawrence’s day, not to mention improved transportation and lodgings. His vivid descriptions of the Etruscan tombs in Etruscan Places has me planning a return trip to Italy to some lesser known sites and museums, and when you add this book to your traveler’s library, I believe it may have the same effect on you.

Incidentally,  I read a quote from a travel writer calling Lady Chatterley’s Lover the best guide ever written to England’s Midlands, so maybe Lawrence was really meant to be a travel writer and only accidentally became a novelist. I’ve lost the reference, and if you know who said that, please end my sleepless nights by letting me know.

Lawrence also lived in New Mexico and wrote about the country of Mexico in Mornings in Mexico, another Tauris Parke re-issue.

The book title is linked to Amazon for your convenience. If you click through to Amazon and purchase anything at all, I get a few cents which helps support A Traveler’s Library. Thanks.

I am overwhelmed with gratitude to the several photographers whose pictures of Etruscan art I have used here (from Flickr with Creative Commons License. Please click on the images to learn more about the photographers.

 

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About Vera Marie Badertscher

A freelance writer who loves to travel. When she is not traveling she is reading about travel. When she is not reading or traveling, she is sharing with the readers of A Traveler's Library, or recreating her family's past at Ancestors In Aprons . She has written for Reel Life With Jane, Life is a Trip and other websites. Also co-author of a biography, Quincy Tahoma, The Life and Legacy of a Navajo Artist. Contact Vera Marie by e-mail.

12 thoughts on “D. H. Lawrence: Underground in Italy

  1. I like LL’s response. What a great memory. I never brought a book with me to the hospital, sadly I can remember having to watch Jenny Jones once when there was absolutely nothing else available to keep me distracted.

    1. Mark–appreciate the compliment.
      And Thanks for your comments, all. While I love Lawrence’s works (except for the tedious portions) I’ll always think first of hearing his words while I was in labor.

  2. How lovely for your husband to soothe you with the words of D.H. Lawrence during labor. Sure beats a foot rub!

  3. There’s something completely lovely about having Lady Chatterley’s Lover read to you while you’re in labor.

  4. Very cool to have two men accompany you into the maternity ward. 😉 I’m interested in this book. I’ll put it down on my book list.

  5. As impressive as the Etruscan ruins may be, more vivid still is the image of a young woman in labor being soothed by her husband’s voice reading aloud from Lady Chatterley’s Lover. Priceless!

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