DH Lawrence's Travels to Flore

Francesca Pieri ‘This is Tuscany, and Nowhere are the Cypresses so Beautiful and Proud’: D.H. Lawrence’s Travels to Florence, Scandicci and Volterra The aim of this essay is to focus on D.H. Lawrence’s travels to Tuscany, of which he appreciated both its natural beauties and its artistic treasures. In this respect, his private letters bear witness to the author’s feelings and thoughts about this area, which provided proper settings not only for his travel books but also for some of his novels. For instance, in the letters and in some Italian essays, Lawrence often referred to Florence as a beautiful, pleasant city and as such it became the right place for Aaron, the protagonist of Aaron’s Rod (1922), to temporarily live in. The letters also deal with Lawrence’s strong admiration for the Florentine countryside and with his decision in 1926 to move from Florence to Villa Mirenda in Scandicci. From this silent place, in 1927 he set out on a journey to the Etruscan areas of the Maremma coast, visiting Volterra and other cities, as he recorded in Etruscan Places. The Beauties of Tuscany D.H. Lawrence’s strong desire to travel around the world derived not only from his need to free himself from the oppressive conventions of British society, but also from his restless and unstable personality, which led him to continually move from one country to another, always searching for a peaceful and unspoilt place to live. His emotional instability was evident in the way that, during his travels, his initial enthusiasm for discovering new people and cultures was soon followed by a general dissatisfaction with them and by the necessity to change location. Moreover, Lawrence’s serious physical illness inevitably conditioned his journeys, sometimes forcing him to move to a warmer climate.1 In this respect, Italy represented for the writer a sort of paradise, a beautiful country abounding in varied landscapes and with good climatic conditions.2 Lawrence certainly loved Italy and his 1 See also Simonetta De Filippis’s interpretation of Lawrence’s travels: ‘Travelling, for Lawrence, was in some respects a method of inner exploration which, on the one hand, intensified his sense of cultural identity, while, on the other, it allowed him to reflect upon his own culture more clearly, but at a distance. His craving for a place which still retained its savagery, untouched by machines and by the power/money ideology, and where the creative force of life was still alive, made him decide to set out on a new journey’. Introduction to D.H. Lawrence, Sketches of Etruscan Places and Other Italian Essays (London: Penguin, 1999), pp. xv-xliv (p. xvi). 2 An analysis of Lawrence’s travels to Italy can be found in Mary Corsani, D.H. Lawrence e l’Italia (Milan: Mursia, 1965). 136 Pieri private letters bear witness to his admiration for this country. For instance, in a letter to Hilda Brown, written in November 1919, he described it as ‘very nice, sunny and gay still, with good red wine’.3 Lawrence visited several Italian regions, from North to South, but was particularly fascinated by Tuscany, with its natural beauties and its artistic treasures, some of which he saw in Florence in the 1920s. His appreciation for the green Florentine countryside was so great that he decided to move to the Villa Mirenda in Scandicci, from May 1926 to June 1928. From this quiet place near Florence, where he wrote Lady Chatterley’s Lover (1928), he traveled to the surrounding Etruscan areas, visiting Volterra and other cities, as he recorded in Sketches of Etruscan Places, published posthumously in 1932. In Lawrence’s eyes Tuscany appeared as a beautiful place which emblematically condensed the elements of the two fundamental dichotomies of town versus country, and culture versus nature: the first pair of opposites is linked with the monuments and museums of Florence, and the second with the countryside surrounding the city. The passage below shows one of his first impressions of this region, written in September 1921 when he was in Fiesole, a little town near Florence: We were on the height in Fiesole – one sees far, far, the Appenines and the great valley, with the Arno, the river, which comes down from the distance just like the steps-down exactly like steps. […] It’s lovely, when one can see far, far, and on the plain the city so alone, so feminine, and on the hills the villas, white or pink, and again and again the cypresses, like black shadow-flames crowding together. This is Tuscany, and nowhere are the cypresses so beautiful and proud, like black flames from primeval times, before the Romans had come, when the Etruscans were still here, slender and fine and still and with naked elegance, black haired, with narrow feet.4 The author describes this charming landscape, firstly seeing the Apennines in the distance, the valley with the Arno river, then emphasizing, on the one hand, the city on the plain, and on the other, the coloured villas in the countryside. Here the cypresses, compared to ‘black flames from primeval times’ have a shape visually similar to a flame and seem to recall the distant past, when the Etruscans lived in this area. Lawrence’s poem ‘Cypresses’5 (1920) is centred on the writer’s great liking for these dark Tuscan trees,6 3 The Letters of D.H. Lawrence, eds J.T. Boulton and A. Robertson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), III, p. 420. 4 The Letters of D.H. Lawrence, eds W. Roberts, J.T. Boulton, and E. Mansfield (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), IV, p. 84. 5 D.H. Lawrence, The Complete Poems (London: Heinemann, 1957), II, pp. 22-24. 6 The Tuscan cypresses are also mentioned in Aaron’s Rod, when the protagonist goes to Settignano, a little village in the foothills of Florence: ‘So he took the tram to .

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