D.H. Lawrence left to Sardinia with the q-b (the queen bee, as he had nicknamed Frieda) in December 1920. After a train journey across part of Sicily, and after waiting for three days for the fortnightly boat, they were able to sail from Palermo to Cagliari, with a brief stop-over in Trapani. But why did they decide to visit Sardinia? Apart from an urging need to travel, the Lawrences were looking for an absolutely pre-industrial place, remote from the western civilization: " They say neither Romans nor Phoenicians, neither Greeks nor Arabs ever subdued Sardinia. It lies outside; outside the circuit of civilization...sure enough it is Italian now, with its railways and its motor omnibuses. But there is an uncaptured Sardinia still." (ch.1)
Cagliari fascinated him at the very first look from the boat: "And suddenly there is Cagliari: a naked town rising steep, steep, golden looking, piled naked to the sky from the plain at the head of the formless hollow bay. It is strange and rather wonderful, not a bit like Italy. The city piles up lofty and almost miniature, and makes me think of Jerusalem: without trees, without cover, rising rather bare and proud, remote as if back in history, like a town in a monkish, illuminated missal" (ch.2). In Cagliari they spent a few days visiting the town and enjoying in particular the colourful life as it to be seen in markets: Frieda was enthusiastic, and D.H. too, usually rather introvert, appears to be in good spirit. They were surprised by the contrast between the poverty of some people, some of them barefoot, and the children and middle class people, very elegantly dressed. Then they took a very slow train (which still nowadays runs the same distance at the same speed…) to Sorgono, a small village in the central part of the Island. Together with the wild, uncontaminated beauty of the landscapes, the Lawrences were impressed by the natural politeness of the humble, rough country people; and by the absence of good manners and sentimentalism, which D.H. Lawrence so violently abhorred. Then they continued the journey by bus, visiting Nuoro and Olbia, where they took the boat back to the mainland.
On the whole, Lawrence found a place which was rather different from what he had imagined. Though sometimes his descriptions seem frankly affected by the ideas he was tempestuously developing in those years, he depicts Sardinia and its people with few vigorous strokes, revealing the hand of a great master.


River Flumendosa in Sardinia


Liceo Scientifico Michelangelo Cagliari - ® 2000