Capri in 1926 was decadent, cosmopolitan, and bohemian, providing refuge for writers and intellectuals from the ugliness of modernity...
Capri became a popular refuge for artists and celebrities after the publication of Discovery of the Blue Grotto by the German artist August Kopisch (1838). In the 20th century it became popular with the LGBTQ community. Compton Mackenzie, who Lawrence visits at his ‘big and handsome villa,’ would later satirise a lesbian colony in his 1928 novel Extraordinary Women. It’s a very different island now, rammed with celebs like Beyoncé and tourists hoping to grab a selfie.
Lawrence and Frieda have temporarily parted ways which Lawrence surmises is a common feature of marriage, as Mrs. Compton MacKenzie is ‘another who loves her husband but can’t live with him.’ His own relationship seems to mirror the ‘uncertain’ weather which is ‘stormy, then too hot, then too cold.’
After accepting he is too ill to travel far this year, he concedes ‘there’s a good bit in quite a lot of people. If we are to live, we must make the most of that’ but this comes with a caveat. People must display ‘real courage.’ The kind ‘that knows how to face facts and live beyond them’.
These video essays are based on the letters of D.H. Lawrence one hundred years ago and are published monthly. To see previous Locating Lawrence videos from 1926, click here, from 1923, click here, from 1924, click here, from 1925, click here.
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