Twilight in Italy
D.H. Lawrence
CONTENTS
THE CRUCIFIX ACROSS THE MOUNTAINS
ON THE LAGO DI GARDA
1 _The Spinner and the Monks_
2 _The Lemon Gardens_
3 _The Theatre_
4 _San Gaudenzio_
5 _The Dance_
6 _Il Duro_
7 _John_
ITALIANS IN EXILE
THE RETURN JOURNEY
_The Crucifix Across the Mountains_
The imperial road to Italy goes from Munich across the Tyrol, through
Innsbruck and Bozen to Verona, over the mountains. Here the great
processions passed as the emperors went South, or came home again from
rosy Italy to their own Germany.
And how much has that old imperial vanity clung to the German soul? Did
not the German kings inherit the empire of bygone Rome? It was not a
very real empire, perhaps, but the sound was high and splendid.
Maybe a certain Grössenwahn is inherent in the German nature. If only
nations would realize that they have certain natural characteristics, if
only they could understand and agree to each other's particular nature,
how much simpler it would all be.
The imperial procession no longer crosses the mountains, going South.
That is almost forgotten, the road has almost passed out of mind. But
still it is there, and its signs are standing.
The crucifixes are there, not mere attributes of the road, yet still
having something to do with it. The imperial processions, blessed by the
Pope and accompanied by the great bishops, must have planted the holy
idol like a new plant among the mountains, there where it multiplied and
grew according to the soil, and the race that received it.
As one goes among the Bavarian uplands and foothills, soon one realizes
here is another land, a strange religion. It is a strange country,
remote, out of contact. Perhaps it belongs to the forgotten, imperial
processions.
Coming along the clear, open roads that lead to the mountains, one
scarcely notices the crucifixes and the shrines. Perhaps one's interest
is dead. The crucifix itself is nothing, a factory-made piece of
sentimentalism. The soul ignores it.
But gradually, one after another looming shadowily under their hoods,
the crucifixes seem to create a new atmosphere over the whole of the
countryside, a darkness, a weight in the air that is so unnaturally
bright and rare with the reflection from the snows above, a darkness
hovering just over the earth. So rare and unearthly the light is, from
the mountains, full of strange radiance. Then every now and again recurs
the crucifix, at the turning of an open, grassy road, holding a shadow
and a mystery under its pointed hood.
I was startled into consciousness one evening, going alone over a marshy
place at the foot of the mountains, when the sky was pale and unearthly,
invisible, and the hills were nearly black. At a meeting of the tracks
was a crucifix, and between the feet of the Christ a handful of withered
poppies. It was the poppies I saw, then the Christ.
It was an old shrine, the wood-sculpture of a Bavarian peasant. The
Christ was a peasant of the foot of the Alps. He had broad cheekbones
and sturdy limbs. His plain, rudimentary face stared fixedly at the
hills, his neck was stiffened, as if in resistance to the fact of the
nails and the cross, which he could not escape. It was a man nailed down
in spirit, but set stubbornly against the bondage and the disgrace. He
was a man of middle age, plain, crude, with some of the meanness of the
peasant, but also with a kind of dogged nobility that does not yield its
soul to the circumstance. Plain, almost blank in his soul, the
middle-aged peasant of the crucifix resisted unmoving the misery of his
position. He did not yield. His soul was set, his will was fixed. He was
himself, let his circumstances be what they would, his life fixed down.
Across the marsh was a tiny square of orange-coloured light, from the
farm-house with the low, spreading roof. I remembered how the man and
his wife and the children worked on till dark, silent and intent,
carrying the hay in their arms out of the streaming thunder-rain into
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