#il duro

[coriannemerit]

And so it must have been before. The pyramid builders of America must have had some old idea, remnant of an idea, in common with the Egyptian and the Etruscan. And the Celt, the Gaul, the Druid, must have had some lingering idea of the ancient cosmic meaning of the waters, of the leaping fish, of the undying, ever re-born dead, shadowily sharing it with the ancient Italic peoples, as well as with the Hittites or the Lydians.

D.H. Lawrence, “The Florence Museum”, Il Duro, p. 54

[coriannemerit]

Now our own tide of consciousness is on the ebb, so we can catch the ripples of the tide that ebbed as we arose, and we may read their meaning.

D.H. Lawrence, “The Florence Museum”, Il Duro, p. 52

[coriannemerit]

Civilisations rise in waves, and pass away in waves. And not till science, or art, tries to catch the ultimate meaning of the symbols that float on the last waves of the prehistoric period; that is, the period before our own; shall we be able to get ourselves into right relation with man as man is and has been and will always be.

D.H. Lawrence, “The Florence Museum”, Il Duro, p. 52

[coriannemerit]

What we have to realise in looking at etruscan things is that they reveal the last glimpses of a human cosmic consciousness -- or human attempt at cosmic consciousness -- different from our own.

D.H. Lawrence, “The Florence Museum”, Il Duro, p. 51

[coriannemerit]

Every religion, every philosophy, and science itself, each has a clue to the cosmos, to the becoming aware of the cosmos. Each clue leads to its own goal of consciousness, then is exhausted. So religions exhaust themselves, so science exhausts itself, once the human consciousness reaches its own limit.

D.H. Lawrence, “The Florence Museum”, Il Duro, p. 51

[coriannemerit]

Man is _always_ trying to be conscious of the cosmos, the cosmos of life and passion and feeling, desire and death and despair, as well as of physical phenomena. And there are still millions of undreamed-of ways of becoming aware of the cosmos. Which is to say, there are millions of worlds, while cosmic worlds, to us yet unborn.

D.H. Lawrence, “The Florence Museum”, Il Duro, p. 51

[coriannemerit]

But there were two deep emotions or culture-rhythms which persisted in all the confusion: and one was some old, old Italian rhythm of life, belonging to the soil, which invaded every invader; and the other was the old cosmic consciousness, or culture principle, of the prehistoric Mediterranean, particularly of the eastern Mediterranean.

D.H. Lawrence, “The Florence Museum”, Il Duro, p. 51

[coriannemerit]

And in those dim days where history does not exist -- not because men, intelligent men did not then exist, but because one culture wipes out another as completely as possible; in those dim days, there were invasions, invasion after invasion no doubt, from the wild north on foot, from the old, cultured Aegean basin, in ships. Men kept on coming, and kept on coming: strangers.

D.H. Lawrence, “The Florence Museum”, Il Duro, p. 50