Colm Kerrigan
'Homer sometimes nods': Lawrence in Trento
This paper examines Lawrence's brief stay in the city of Trento in 1912, with shorter references also to his passage through Vipiteno (Sterzing) and Bolzano on the way there and, afterwards, at Riva del Garda. The 'nods' in the title refers to the fact that Lawrence, normally an indisputed master of the travel genre, in this journey through what was then the Tyrol and is now Italy, seems to have had very little idea of the significance of what he was seeing. Why is this worthy of interest?
The main omission from his account of this journey is any mention of the irredentist movement. Irredentism refers to the return of Italian-speaking regions outside Italy to the Kingdom of Italy. At the time Lawrence and Frieda were there, it was the burning social and political issue of the day in the Austro-Hungarian Empire's province of Trentino, or Southern Tyrol, of which Trento was the main city. For the Italian majority in Trentino, the issue was, briefly, whether they should be able to maintain an Italian identity within the Empire or whether the Trentino should become part of the Kingdom of Italy.
Despite direct manifestations of the issue (eg, the surly waiter who would not speak German, the vast Austrian military presence, the provocative statue of Dante by the station), Lawrence makes no mention of irredentism in his letters or in Mr Noon. Almost as surprising as this omission is the failure of his biographers and commentators to point it out. This paper explains what irredentism is and why an understanding of it is necessary to make sense of some of the encounters of Lawrence and Frieda between Vipiteno and Riva, but particularly in Trento, the centre of irredentism at the time.
I conclude that writing about Trento in 1912 without taking irredentism into account would be rather like writing about Ireland in the same year without mentioning Home Rule.