“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.