Twilight in Italy – D.H. Lawrence (1916)

We start in the snow. Lawrence is walking south through the Tyrol into Italy. It is September 1912. Around him, the mountains are drifts and peaks of white. But here and there beside the path are crucifixes with wooden Christs hung on them, objects of veneration to the local peasants. For Lawrence, this is not just a walking tour but an escape from the guilt and repression of the Christian north to the warmth of the pagan south. Six months before, he had met and fallen in love with Frieda Weekly, the wife of his college professor(and sister of the future German fighter ace, Baron von Richthoven). She had left England with him and was now tramping beside him in the snow. However in this account of the trek he does not mention her.

Lawrence’s travel writing sweeps you up in his enthusiasms and shows the world with the film of familiarity stripped off. He writes rapturously here about the sun and flowers -his two great positives. For him the sun meant personal redemption – the English winters would have killed him-and flowers symbolised not only the frailty of beauty but its strength. He liked to think of their seasonal return outlasting the works of man. But the most haunting episode is his visit to the lemon gardens. The trees have been covered for the winter in great wooden sheds reared on pillars. Heavy with pale fruit, they loom like ghosts in the underworld.

‘Looking down the Hades of the lemon-house, the many ruddy-clustered oranges beside the path remind me of the lights of a village along the lake at night , while the pale lemons above are the stars. There is a subtle, exquisite scent of lemon flowers. Then I notice a citron. He hangs heavy and bloated upon so small a tree, that he seems a dark green enormity. There is a great host of lemons overhead, half-visible, a swarm of ruddy oranges by the paths, and here and there a fat citron. It is almost like being under the sea.’