Some of the most typical themes in
D.H.Lawrence's work are to be found also in "Sea and Sardinia". This
shows that the period 1920-23 is crucial for the development of his mature work.
The post-war period, both for personal experience (his first love affairs had
resulted in a refusal of western rationalism which in his opinion prevented man
from living life to the full) and for social and historical reasons (the war
needed well disciplined men, fit to have a place in the army or to work in a war
economy, destroying all individuality) led Lawrence to dream of a pre-industrial,
even pre-Apollonian society, in which man would be free from the psychological
menacles of rationalism.
The search for a pre-industrial and pre-christian civilization (culturally due
to the influence of the german philosopher Friederick Nietzsche, is to be found
in several passages:
"One sees a few fascinating faces in Cagliari: those great dark unlighted
eyes. There are fascinating dark eyes in Sicily, bright, big, with an impudent
point of light and a curious roll, and long lashes: the eyes of old Greece,
surely. But here one sees eyes of soft, blank darkness, all velvet, with no imp
looking out of them. And they strike a stranger, older note: Before the soul
became self-conscious. before the mentality of Greece appeared in the world.
Remote, always remote, as if the intelligence lay deep into the cave, and never
came forward. One searches into the gloom for one second, while the glance lasts.
But without being able to penetrate to the reality. It recedes, like some
unknown creature, deeper into its lair. There is a creature, dark and potent.
But what?" (ch.3)
And again: "They have no inkling of our crucifixion, our universal
consciousness. Each of them is pivoted and limited to himself, as the wild
animals are. They look out, and they see other objects, objects to ridicule or
mistrust, or to sniff curiously at. But "Thou shalt love thy neighbour as
thyself" has never entered their soul at all, not even even the thin end of
it. they might love their neighbour with a hot, dark, unquestioning love. But
the love would probably leave off abruptely. The fascination of what is beyond
them has not seized on them. Their neighbour is a mere external...One feels for
the first time the real old medieval life, which is enclosed in itself and has
no interest in the world outside...They are not going to be broken in upon by
world-consciousness. They are not going into the world's common clothes. Coarse,
vigorous, determined, they will stick to their own coarse coarse dark stupidity
and let the big world find its own unenlighted hell. Their hell is their own
hell, they prefer it unenlightened." (ch.5)
Another theme, which is to be found along all of Lawrence's works is the search
of individuality, the desire to escape frof the massification of a homogenious
world, which deprived people of their own individual freedom: "I am glad
that the era of love and oneness is over: hateful homogenious world-oneness. I
am glad that Russia flies back into savage Russianism, Scythism, savagely
self-pivoting. I am glad America is doing the same. I shall be glad when men
hate their their common, world-alike clothes, when they tear them up and clothe
themselves fiercely for distinction, savage distinction, savage distinction
against the rest of the creeping world: when America kicks the billy-cock and
the collar-and-tie into limbo, and takes to her own national costume...The era
of love and oneness is over. The era of world-alike should be at an end. Men
will set their bonnets at one another now, and fight themselves into separation
and sharp distinction. The day of peace and oneness is over, the day of the
great fight into multifariousness is at hand. Hasten the day, and save us from
proletarian homogeneity and khaki all-alikeness." (ch.5).