D.H. Lawrence, Montecassino and the "spirit of place"

Abstract

An episode concerning Lawrence's sojourn in Italy seems to me to have special significance in that it relates to his visit to the abbey of Montecassino in February 1920 and to his account of his visit, published later in his Memoir of Maurice Magnus, which is one of the most remarkable pieces of travel writing in Lawrence's prose. On his way travelling south from Rome, Lawrence had passed by the big noble towering monastery like a fortress crowning a great precipice. He and Frieda were in Capri when he received a letter from a friend, a certain Maurice Magnus. He had met Magnus earlier in Florence in the circle of British expatriates, including Norman Douglas and Reggie Turner, many of them homosexuals. Magnus informed him that he would be staying at the monastery as a guest there (he was, ostensibly, intending to join the Benedictine order) and invited Lawrence to visit him. Lawrence was both attracted and repelled by Magnus who excited his homoerotic tendencies.