The great globe of the sky

“No life was now in sight: even no ship upon the pale blue sea. The great globe of the sky was unblemished and royal in its blueness and its ringing cerulean light.”

—D.H. Lawrence, Sea and Sardinia, 1923.

dark eyes

“There are fascinating dark eyes in Sicily, bright, big, with an impudent point of light and curious roll, and long lashes: the eyes of old Greece, surely. But here one seen 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 within the cave, and never came forward. One searches in to the gloom for a 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?”

—D.H. Lawrence, Sea and Sardinia, 1923.

Italian khaki

“Usually . . . the peasants of the South have left off the costume. Usually it is the invisible soldier’s grey-green cloth, the Italian khaki, this grey-green war clothing. How many millions of yards of the thick, excellent, but hateful material the Italian Government must have provided I don’t know: but enough to cover Italy with a felt carpet, I should think. It is everywhere. It cases the tiny children in stiff and neutral frocks and coats, it covers their extinguished fathers, and sometimes it even encloses the women in its warmth. It is symbolic of the universal grey mist that has come over men, the extinguishing of all bright individuality, the blotting out of all wild singleness. Oh, democracy! Oh, khaki democracy!”

—D.H. Lawrence, Sea and Sardinia, 1923.

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The green and vivid-coloured world of fruit-gleams

“Peasant women, sometimes barefoot, sat in their tight little bodices and voluminous, coloured skirts behind the piles of vegetables, and never have I seen a lovelier show. The intense deep green of spinach seemed to predominate, and out of that came the monuments of curd-white and black-purple cauliflowers: but marvellous cauliflowers, like a flower show, the purple ones intense as great bunches of violets. From this green, white and purple massing struck out the vivid rose-scarlet and blue-crimson of radishes, large radishes like little turnips in piles. Then the long, slim, grey-purple buds of artichokes, and dangling clusters of dates, and piles of sugar-dusty white figs and sombre-looking black figs, and bright burnt figs: basketfuls and basketfuls of figs. A few baskets of almonds, and many of walnuts. Basket-pans of native raisins. Scarlet peppers like trumpets: magnificent fennels, so white and big and succulent: baskets of new potatoes: scaly kohlrabi: wild asparagus in bunches, yellow-budding sparacelli: big, clean-fleshed carrots: feathery saldas with white hearts: long, brown-purple onions, and then, of course, pyramids of big oranges, pyramids of pale apples, and baskets of brilliant shiny mandarini, the little tangerine oranges with their green-black leaves. The green and vivid-coloured world of fruit-gleams I have never seen in such splendour as under the market roof at Cagliari: so raw and gorgeous. And all quite cheap. . . .”

—D.H. Lawrence, Sea and Sardinia, 1923.

lemons, lemons, innumerable

“The lemons hang pale and innumerable in the thick lemon groves. Lemon trees, like Italians, seem to be happiest when they are touching one another all round. Solid forests of not very tall lemon trees lie between the steep mountains and the sea, on the strip of plain. Women, vague in the orchard under-shadow, are picking the lemons, lurking as if in the undersea. There are heaps of pale yellow lemons under the trees. They look like pale, primrose-smouldering fires. Curious how like fires the heaps of lemons look, under the shadow of foliage, seeming to give off a pallid burning amid the suave, naked, greenish trunks. When there comes a cluster of orange trees, the oranges are red like coals among the darker leaves. But lemons, lemons, innumerable, speckled like innumerable tiny stars in the green firmament of leaves. So many lemons!”

—D.H. Lawrence, Sea and Sardinia, 1923.

a universe on fire

“Some light penetrated very weakly into my consciousness again, a tiny
ray of sunlight, making me ecstatically warm. More sunlight flowed in,
a gentle delicate silky light, which brushed so sweetly against me.
Then the sun grew stronger and stronger, blazing brilliantly on my
temples, piercing with heavy and burning heat into my emaciated brain.
At the end a mad open fire blazed up before my eyes, a heaven and an
earth ignited, men and animals of fire, mountains of fire, devils of
fire, a chaos, a wilderness, a universe on fire, a smoking final day.”

—Knut Hamsun, Hunger, 1890; translation by Robert Bly, 1967.

bracing their heels against a comma

“Some flies and gnats were sitting on my paper and this disturbed me; I breathed on them to make them go, then blew harder and harder, but it did no good. The tiny beasts lowered their behinds, made themselves heavy, and struggled against the wind until their thin legs were bent. They were absolutely not going to leave the place. They would always find something get hold of, bracing their heels against a comma or an unevenness in the paper, and they intended to stay exactly where they were until they themselves decided it was the right time to go.”

—Knut Hamsun, Hunger, 1890; translation by Robert Bly, 1967.