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).