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About Sea And Sardinia
Written after the First World War when he was living in Sicily, Sea and Sardinia records Lawrence’s journey to Sardinia and back in January 1921. It reveals his delighted response to a new landscape and people, and his ability to transmute the spirit of place into literary art. Like his other travel writings, the book is also a shrewd enquiry into the political and social values of an era which saw the rise of communism and fascism. On one level an indictment of contemporary materialism, Sea and Sardinia is nevertheless an optimistic book, celebrating the creativity of the human spirit and seeking in the fundamental laws of human nature fresh inspiration for the present.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 river–bed, 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.
