Soundscape in D.H. Lawrence’s Writings: Music and Dance from the Etruscans to Classical Music

In this article, I will discuss Lawrence’s passion for music and dance, which led him to combine sound, rhythm and movement as a new form of communication and which he shared also with the Futurists and avant-garde painters like Picasso and Matisse. Music and dance represent a leitmotiv throughout his lifelong career. His interest was rooted in his childhood when his mother played the piano in the long, cold winter evenings (cf. the poem “Piano”). While his father, as described by John Worthen in his biography, was a “graceful dancer” and used to sing cheerfully even following the rhythm of the hammer as he mended his boots (cf. Sons and Lovers and his sister’s memoirs, Ada Lawrence 23). Indeed, Ada reports that he seduced his wife by his graceful dancing. In Italy, Lawrence had many opportunities to see people dancing and singing, such as is the case in Sea and Sardinia where he is attracted by the rhythmic dances of the Mamuthones, scary carnival masques. I will focus on the essay “The Dance” in Twilight in Italy where we can admire two amazing local dancers, “Il Duro” and a wooden-legged man, who virtually hypnotise Frieda and another English lady “by the transport of repeated ecstasy.” (TI 169) The two men are seen as god-like figures who seem to have a strong Dyonisiac power which affects the two English women and brings them almost to a loss of control through the power of a polka played on a mandolin and a guitar.