Mornings in Mexico and Etruscan Places

by D.H. Lawrence

Book Overview

Much of D.H. Lawrence's life was defined by his passion for travel and it was those wanderings that gave life to some of his greatest novels. In the 1920s Lawrence travelled several times to Mexico,... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0140015132
• ISBN13: 9780140015133
• Release Date: January 1971
• Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
• Length: 215 Pages
• Weight: 0.35 lbs.

Customer Reviews

unique travel piece

D.H. Lawrence writes like a painter would write were he to. What is most real in the writings of Lawrence is the physical world, and of course the body. Mornings in Mexico is really a slight work but with a charm to it. There is a relating of facts (especially about Indian life and thought) that you would expect from a travel piece but the charm is in the kind of easy sauntering pace that the narrative keeps. That feeling that it is vacation time and there really is no hurry. The house he lives in for his stay in Mexico and the surrounding markets and open fields in which he walks and the balcony he stands on in the morning with parrot are all pleasantly described. It feels like a place you want to be. The way time away should feel. There is a slight mournful air to the fact that the Americans are beginning to spoil the place, it is as if the Americans have brought that intruder time itself into this timeless land. It's not so much the details you will remember as the overall feel of the work. And Lawrence himself. And here he seems at ease, searching as always but not desperately so, which is a nice Lawrence to spend time with.

Mexico - by a first rate traveller

Lawrence was a good traveller in these parts and he spent a lot of time carefully observing the Indians he met along the way. He was particularly interested in the ways of thought of the Indians and their religious beliefs and the ways their ideas differed from yours and mine. On simple concepts like time and distance, for example: "To an Indian, time is a vague, foggy reality. There are only three times: en la manana (morning); en la tarde (afternoon); en la noche (night). But to the white monkey (you and me) there are exact spots of time, such as five o'clock and half past three." The Indian's concept of God was different from ours. "With the Indians...there is strictly no god. The Indian does not consider himself as created and therefore external to God, or the creature of God. There is, in our sense of the word, no God. But all is godly. There is no great mind directing the universe. Yet the mystery of creation, the wonder and fascination of creation shimmers in every leaf and stone... There is no God looking on. The only God there is is involved all the time in the dramatic wonder and inconsistency of creation. God is immersed, as it were, in creation, not to be separated or distinguished. There can be no ideal God." Lawrence does a wonderful job of digging into this exotic culture and explaining to us the significance of Indian rituals and dances. I particularly liked one of his statements: "The Indian is completely immersed in the wonder of his own drama." There is also a lovely example of descriptive travel writing in "Market Day", a chapter that makes you slow down your reading pace to savor the beautiful descriptions of small things like a bird's flight or flowers in a doorway. I guess this is the difference between reading and information-processing, which we do so much of today.