August 2025 Editorial
It has always been a philosophy of this editorial to not moan about it being too hot but life is short and therefore U-Turns are inevitable. So here it is: It’s too hot. In July, your editor went wild camping across Italy and when he arrived in Florence it was pushing 40 degrees. It didn’t matter how many ice creams he shoved down his trap, the heat was unbearable. But off he trotted with his backpack to Scandicci to visit Lawrence’s old gaff Villa Mirenda. It’s a typical Lawrence home – remote, high-up, surrounded by fields. And in the scorching heat your editor plodded along, swearing at the various flies nibbling at his sweaty thighs, swearing at Google maps because the GPS signal had gone, etc, etc.
Now Google may have gone down, but fortunately your editor was accompanied by an Italian friend who had a printed map and spatial awareness and was able to direct us up a winding path past a derelict church to our final destination. Our pilgrimage was complete. But the gates were locked and the owners had no intention of engaging with the latest bunch of sweaty pilgrims paying homage to the bearded one.
‘You should have called them first or emailed.’
‘Yes, I should’
‘But you didn’t’
‘I didn’t’
And on and on this went for a bit until we decided to head back and get a glass of vino in town. In hindsight, your editor is glad that he was not able to get closer to Lawrence’s home. There’s something more satisfying in the failure and instead took solace in Geoff Dyer’s words in Out of Sheer Rage: “Life is bearable even when it's unbearable: that is what's so terrible, that is the unbearable thing about it. To be interested in something is to be involved in what is essentially a stressful relationship with that thing, to suffer anxiety on its behalf.” For more on Dyer, see Torpedo the Ark further down this bulletin.
Less stressful and less sweaty for you lot is the prospect of a certain festival kicking off in August to celebrate that special date in 1885 when the world changed forever. All the informatio for that was in our previous Substack’clatfarting’.
We hope to see you in the glorious countryside of Eastwood for the start of the D.H.Lawrence Festival and that you are able to go on walks, listen to talks, and fill the last burning embers of summer with those who share your passion for celebrating the lives of people who tried to make a difference in their allotted time.
Stay safe people
You’ve got to fight for your right to parterre…
You may be thinking from this picture that the Beastie Boys have dug out their bling and reunited, but you are mistaken. This is Councillor Robert Bullock, David Amos, and Town mayor Ken Woodhead posing on a bench on the D.H. Lawrence trail to kick off the 2025 D.H. Lawrence Festival.
Slow it down…
Here at the D.H. Lawrence Society we like to slow things down by producing one page of a comic per month. This is the latest installment of John and Justin Lapoint’s Jessie Chambers Story. For new readers, we’re on PTII page 4.
D. H. Lawrence, David Ellis
(Reaktion Books, 2025, £12.99
“An approachable critical biography of the English novelist, most famous as the author of Lady Chatterley’s Lover.
This book offers a concise yet comprehensive look at D. H. Lawrence’s turbulent life and career. Tracing Lawrence’s journey from a mining village outside Nottingham to his early death in the South of France, the book provides fresh perspectives on his major works. David Ellis covers the essential aspects of Lawrence’s life and writings and presents a balanced view, steering between admirers and critics. Written in an accessible style, this book is ideal for both students new to Lawrence and readers looking to revisit one of Britain’s greatest early twentieth-century writers.”
Source: Publisher
Click the video above to find out what Lawrence was up to, 100 years ago in August. If you would like to read what happened with endotes for references, see the The Digital Pilgrimage blog here
Luigi Pirandello: Italian dramatist who brought chaos to the stage
Luigi was part of the Sicilian Futurist movement, discussed in Shelfie below. The BBC write “It’s a hundred years since the infamous premiere of Luigi Pirandello’s experimental play Six Characters in Search of an Author, when an enraged Rome theatre audience yelled abuse at the Italian playwright and chased him out of the theatre. Since then, the play has gained iconic status as a piece of theatre which helped move Western culture into modernity. But what of the author of this play? He was a complex figure who found inspiration from his wife’s madness as well as the actors he worked with, and he formed an unlikely association with the Italian Fascist Prime Minister Benito Mussolini which still intrigues theatre critics and academics to this day.”
Listen to the Luigi Pirandello programme here.
Sicily sits at the crossroads of the Mediterranean and for over 2,000 years has been the gateway between Europe, Africa and the East. It is equidistant from Rome and Tripoli, closer to Tunis than Naples, and is a point of division between ‘civilised’ and ‘barbarian’ peoples.
This volcanic island has been home to many influential writers including Goethe, Guy de Maupassant, Oscar Wilde, Hemingway and, of course, D.H. Lawrence. When Sigmund Freud visited in 1910 ‘something disturbed him about this exotic, stiflingly hot place.’ The art and architecture were ‘a benchmark of Western civilisation, but at the same time it was also wild and somehow dangerous. It was both inside and outside Europe.’ On his return to Vienna, Freud had a bout of paranoia that led him to doubt his professional vocation and would later view Sicily as ‘a place where the unconscious and conscious minds become muddled: a limit point of the ego itself.’
This fascinating book is split into two parts. The first is a historical time frame spanning from 800bc to the modern period. Part II takes a closer look at Sicily’s modern history from 1693 onwards. But it is Chapter 7: ‘A Modernist Dystopia (1891 – 1943)’ which will interest readers of this blog for the context it provides to Lawrence’s time spent here.
At the end of the nineteenth century, tens of thousands of Sicilians were in dire poverty while the bourgeoise enjoyed a ‘period of unprecedented prosperity.’ In 1891, Palermo joined the likes of Florence and Milan in hosting the Italian Expo, an international showcase of the latest technological and cultural innovations. But it was the geographical impact that had the longest lasting impact on the capital. To accommodate the Expo and impress the international visitors, Mondello, an ‘uninhabitable marshland,’ was transformed with art nouveau buildings, creating a thriving ‘second’ city centre. Literary salons and poetry schools would emerge and over time, Mondello would become Sicily’s first coastal resort.
Between 1902 and 1908 Sicily experienced ‘massive economic growth, largely thanks to the proliferation of new medium-sized rubber, chemical, metalwork and textile factories in and around Piedmont’ but only the bourgeoisie in the north profited which led to a ‘significant popular backlash against laissez faire economics’ giving voice to socialist views regarding nationalisation and a fair redistribution of wealth.
When WWI broke out Sicily initially came out as neutral but by 16 May 1916 the king, Victor Emmanuel III, declared it was once more time to fight the Austrians and sided with the French and British. Many Sicilians attempted to avoid the draft by fleeing to the Nebrodi mountains where previous generations had once lived as bandits. 500,000 Sicilians would serve on the Front Line with 10% losing their lives. Those who returned home safely faced mass unemployment and high rates of inflation for their efforts. Then came Benito Mussolini…
Another significant movement that emerged during this period was the Futurists who saw technological utopianism as an alternative to outdated state institutions. In 1909 Filippo Tommaso Marinetti published ‘Manifesto of Futurism’ in which he pledged to remove libraries and museums and replace them with intangibles such as ‘energy and fearlessness’ (…) ‘courage, boldness and rebellion’ and ‘speed, war and technology’
These ideas, and aspects of fascism, appealed to many of the youth post WWI as the closest chance they had of achieving ‘individua liberation.’ Many artists were drawn to the ‘novelty of ideology’ and opportunities to ‘break with ‘boring’ high cultured canonical tradition that was still being perpetuated by the nobility’. This antipathy towards ‘ancient revivalism’ led to some fanciful suggestions, such as repurposing the ancient Greek theatre at Syracuse to host experimental works of art or in the fascist-futurist aesthetic of Pippo Rizzo’s paintings. In 1927, Sicily hosted the first national futurist conference. The dress code was black shirt only…
Lawrence lived in Fontana Vecchia, near Taormina, from March 1920 to February 1922. He described their home as like a ‘fortress’ and that ‘here one feels as if one had lived for a hundred thousand years.’ Fontana Vecchia would later become home to novelist Truman Capote and the playwright Howard Agg. Though Harold Acton would dismiss Taormina as ‘a polite synonym for Sodom’ that attracted the wealthy and artistically minded.
Mackay’s history of this volcanic and volatile island is a wonderful read. It is accessible, engaging, and informative. You are left realising that Sicily is formed out of multiple influences and impossible to pin down. It is complex and contradictory. No wonder it appealed to Lawrence.
Mackay, James, The Invention of Sicily: A Mediterranean History, (Version, 2021) £16.99
Read a longer version of this on The Digital Pilgrimage here.
Here are the latest little fragments of Lawrence-infused critical theory from Torpedo the Ark...
Heaven and How to Get There
Ultimately, doesn't Lawrence encourage us to choose to be amongst the scarlet poppies of Hell rather than in a Heaven "where the flowers never fade, but stand in everlasting sameness" ...?
Read it here.
Heads You Lose
Thoughts on those monolithic human figures with giant heads carved from consolidated volcanic ash by the Rapa Nui people on Easter Island.
Read it here.
D. H. Lawrence and Rudolph Valentino: the Priest of Love Versus the Latin Lover
Like many men at the time, D. H. Lawrence was not a fan of cinema's greatest male sex symbol of the silent era, Rudolph Valentino, the so-called Latin Lover ...
Read it here.
Why Growing Up is So Problematic for an Artist
Do we have to decide between growing up or becoming an artist? Even Lawrence speaks of artistic expression in relation to innocence and naïveté.
Read it here.
I Stood Watching the Shadowy Fish ... Notes on the First Line of The White Peacock
Reflections on the first line spoken by Cyril Beadsall who is as enchanted by the intense stillness of the water as by the grey-silvery fish and the manner in which the entire scene is 'gathered in the musing of old age'.
Read it here.
On the Art and Politics of Triviality (Wilde vs Adorno)
Lawrence's post-cataclysmic emphasis on the small scale - on being more modest in all things, including our architectural ambitions and personal aspirations - does not mean a fall into triviality (simply peeling potatoes and listening to the radio).
Read it here.
On the Law of Inertia and the Principle of Evil
Lawrence challenged the classical idea that objects are ever truly at rest ...
Read it here.
Finally, Bulletin readers might be interested in Stephen’s thoughts on Geoff Dyer's new book, Homework: A Memoir (2025), if so, they can click here.
From the Archives:
Futurist Constitution and Manifesto (1909)
“Fondazione e manifesto del futurismo (Futurist constitution and manifesto) is the founding manifesto of the Futurist movement, first published in the Paris newspaper Le Figaro on February 20, 1909. Futurism was a short-lived artistic movement, founded in 1909 by the Italian writer Filippo Tommaso Marinetti (1876-1944). The goal of the Futurists was to discard the art of the past and to usher in a new age that rejected tradition and celebrated change, originality, and innovation in culture and society. The original Futurist manifesto of 1909, written by Marinetti, exalted the beauty of the machine and the new technology of the automobile, with its speed, power, and movement. The Futurists glorified violence and conflict and called for the destruction of cultural institutions such as museums and libraries.”
Source here.