To mark the centennial of celebrated British novelist D.H. Lawrence's arrival in Italy, Gargnano on Lake Garda will celebrate D.H. Lawrence week from the 19th to the 24th of September.
Organised by the city and the Committee for Historic Gargnano, the celebration's public events kick off on the 19th with a series of public lectures. Two films—Lady Chatterley on Thursday and the Priest of Love on Sunday—marry the author's literary vision with images, while Friday's performance by soprano and piano sets twelve Lawrentian poems to music.
Through the 27th of September, an exhibit at the Ex-Sala Consigliere in Gargnano walks visitors through Lawrence's complete history on Lake Garda, interweaving the author's words and rarely-seen paintings with vintage and modern photos illustrating the locations he describes.
The centrepiece of the week, an international literary symposium from the 20th to the 23rd, focuses on Lake Garda as the impetus for Lawrence's epic voyage toward the sun and unites literary experts from four continents, including Paul Eggert, the editor of the most authoritative version of Twilight in Italy.
Lawrence arrived in Gargnano on the 18th of September, 1912, after spending the summer hiking across the Alps with his companion Freida von Richtofen. Upon reaching Riva di Garda at the northern edge of the lake—and Italy at the time—the pair decided they had to settle on Lake Garda and took a house in Gargnano.
Lawrence's time in Gargnano was one of the most productive of his life. He completed Sons and Lovers—named on of the top 10 novels of the 20th century—wrote two plays and his famous travel book Twilight in Italy, and began The Rainbow and Women in Love.
