- Mass Market Paperback: 512 pages
- Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd; New edition edition (27 Nov 1997)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0141180307
- ISBN-13: 978-0141180304
- Product Dimensions: 19.3 x 13.2 x 2.5 cm
- Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 1,350,886 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- See Complete Table of Contents
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Product Description
Product Description
Written at the height of D.H. Lawrence's creative energies, TWILIGHT IN ITALY (1916) is composed of seven short pieces that sparkle with the humor and lively sensory images for which he is known. Features an Introduction by Anthony Burgess.
About the Author
D.H. Lawrence (1885-1930), English novelist, storywriter, critic, poet and painter, one of the greatest figures in 20th-century English literature. Among his works, Sons and Lovers appeared in 1913, The Rainbow (1915), Women In Love (1920), and many others.
Tim Parks grew up in London and studied at Cambridge and Harvard. In 1981 he moved to Italy where he has lived ever since. He has written twelve novels as well as two non-fiction accounts of life in northern Italy, and two collections of essays.
--This text refers to the Paperback edition.
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First Sentence
The imperial road to Italy goes from Munich across the Tyrol, through Innsbruck and Bozen to Verona, over the mountains. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
The imperial road to Italy goes from Munich across the Tyrol, through Innsbruck and Bozen to Verona, over the mountains. Read the first page
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
"So that for us to go to Italy and penetrate into Italy is like a most satisfying act of self-discovery - back,back down the old ways of time.Strange and wonderful chords awake in us, and vibrate again after many hundreds of years of complete forgetfulness". Thus Lawrence acknowledges his debt to Italy. This trilogy is drenched with the most exquisite prose and ravishing metaphors (" And looking down the hill,among the grey smoke of olive leaves, pink puffs of smoke are rising up. It is the almond and apricot trees, it is the Spring") and similes ("The sky and sea are parting like an oyster shell, with a low red gape").He,typically,repeats and artfully re-works his ideas to enhance the effects. "And cork trees! I see curious,slim oaky-looking trees that are stripped quite naked below the boughs standing brown,ruddy...They remind me of glowing,coffee-brown,naked aborigines of the South Seas. They have the naked suavity,skin-bare and intense coffee-red colour of unclothed savages". I therefore enjoyed this book far more than the novels. And I was impressed by how this working-class boy peppered these Italian dishes with Biblical, classical and literary references.Of course, his philosophy and view of history is flawed. as is his attempt to penetrate minds and cultures with so little acquaintance, yet they do tell us a great deal about what was going on in his very original mind. Lawrence is not scientific. His heightened perception is subjective, idiosyncratic and anti-rational. He is physically aroused by nature and the ancient blood and life forces, the consequence of his fragile health that kept him out of the army, obliged him to give up his job and brought him to a premature death. But this was also the young man who walked from Switzerland to Italy. His account is conversational, humorous and sarcastic at times."I am thoroughly sick to death of the sound of liras.No man can hear ten words of Italian today without two thousand or two million or ten or twenty or two liras flying like mosquitoes round his ears. Liras - liras- liras-nothing else". His prophetic and major theme, shared with Blake, Ruskin and others, is the corrupting and impending threat of the machine and industrialisation."It is the hideous rashness of the world of men,the horrible desolating harshness of the advance of the industrial world upon the world of nature that is so painful. It looks as though the industrial spread of mankind were a sort of dry disintegration advancing and advancing. If only we could learn to take thought for the whole world instead of for merely tiny bits of it" . In his 'Italy' we are led through art, beauty ,thoughts and reflections - rather as Lawrence was , by a guide,through the Etruscan Tombs.
1 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I do not think that the quality of this book acceptable. The paper is what I would call semi transparent. One can see the print on the other side of the paper whilst reading. Also the maps at the back leave a little to be desired. The sea is black and almost obscures the names printed on it.ie Amalfi on page 451 - Lawrence's Italy.
I am rating the quality of the book not the written contents.
I am rating the quality of the book not the written contents.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
8 reviews
27 of 27 people found the following review helpful
Journal of Italian travel....
17 Nov 2001
Format:Mass Market Paperback
D.H. LAWRENCE AND ITALY is composed of three stories: 'Twilight in Italy', 'Sea and Sardinia' and 'Etruscan Places'. The first two "books" seem to be based on journals he wrote while traveling with his German born lover then wife Frieda, whom he refers to as q-b for queen bee, through various villages on the mainland of Italy and the island of Sardinia. Lawrence does not record his experience of "famous" sights in these two books, in fact he says he is not interested in historical places, museums etc. but rather he wishes to see the people and the places in the out-of-the way areas of Italy. He and Frieda travel by bus, train, and boat--close to the ground.
Those who have read Lawrence's fiction will recognize his writing. He describes what he encounters with a visceral language--people, clothing, food, establishments. Some of the places are stunning and some so filthy you wonder how he could have stayed overnight. He visits lemon and olive groves and various high places along the coast and in the interior valleys. His writing is graphic--the reader will be as appalled and enchanted. He reflects Italy just before and after WWI.
In the third book, 'Etruscan Places', Lawrence describes his visits to various Etruscan sites, including the painted tombs of Tarquinia. His writing is less descriptive than that of the first two books. He is concerned with nothing less than the meaing of life, and the conflict between religion and truth (he died a few short years later at age 44 so his reflections seem almost prescient). He muses that societies are organized around death or life. He speaks of the use of fertility symbols such as fish and lambs for Christians and dolphins and eggs for Etruscans; the significance of the color vermillion -- male body painting by warrior classes where red paint connotes power contrasted with the the red skin coloring of the Etruscan tomb portraits which seems to have connoted the blood of life. He says the Etuscans loved life and the Romans who subdued them loved power.
Lawrence's book provides good background for those who would know more about Italy. Many of the places he describes have changed since the 1920s--some for the better. The people have changed--their clothing, homes, etc. are less unique and colorful, but they are better fed, warmer in winter, and cleaner. Hopefully their lives are better, but I don't think Lawrence would agree.
9 of 9 people found the following review helpful
Thoughtful and Beautiful
24 Aug 2005
Format:Mass Market Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
These essays are classics. Etruscan Places almost single-handedly revived "modern" interest in the Etruscans and was essential to the preservation and study of their tombs and paintings. Throughout, Lawrence is sensitive and insightful. An added patina to these works is the fact that they were written in the 1930s during the build-up toward WWII. There is an immediacy mixed with nostalgia here that is compelling.
23 of 28 people found the following review helpful
An extraordinary in a world... that still exist
15 May 1999
Format:Mass Market Paperback
Had the wonderful feeling of being lost in a magic world, while reading this book. Brought to the magic island of Sardinia, on an old train, on the mountains of the island. And then, when I had the chance to be there, it all became true. The same train, the same atmosphere... in a world that did not change...after all.
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