D. H. Lawrence passed through Mallorca the spring of 1929 with his wife. Although the island did not excite them, he wrote the poems "In a Spanish Tram-Car" and "Andraitx - Pommegranate flowers" and worked on the Nettles poetry book and some articles.
Andraitx – Pomegranate Flowers
It is June, it is June
The pomegranates are in flower,
The peasants are bending cutting the bearded wheat.
The pomegranates are in flower
Beside the high road, past the deathly dust,
And even the sea is silent in the sun.
Short gasps of flame in the green of night, way off
The pomegranates are in flower,
Small sharp red fires in the night of leaves.
And noon is suddenly dark, is lustrous, is silent and dark
Men are unseen, beneath the shading hats;
Only, from out the foliage of the secret loins
Red flamelets here and there reveal
A man, a woman there.
"Andraitx - Pommegranate flowers" Nettles and More Pansies, 1929
(Eastwood, Nottinghamshire, England, 1885 – Vence, France, 1930). A novelist, poet, playwright, writer of short stories, essays and travel books, literary critic, painter and translator, D.H. Lawrence was born into a working class family in Eastwood, a mining town in northern England. His poor health freed him from having to go and work in the mine. His working class background and tensions between his parents gave him a direct source of material for many of his works. In his literature, Lawrence would return to the town of his birth on several occasions to what he called «the country of my heart».
For health and ideological reasons, he left England in 1916 and, during his life, he lived and travelled to numerous different places, including Australia, Italy, France, Spain, Sri Lanka, the United States and Mexico. Lawrence is one of the great 20th century novelists. Together with Sons and Lovers (1913) and Women in Love (1921), his most famous novel Lady Chatterly’s Lover (1928) is partly famous due to the scandal that it caused as a result of its explicitly sexual vocabulary and contents.
Lawrence came to Mallorca with his wife Frieda von Richthofen in the spring of 1929 (staying from April to June). The said months were spent at different hotels in Cala Mayor like Hotel Royal or Hotel Príncipe Alfonso. During their stay, they went on outings to places in the Tramuntana mountains. In the handwritten letters that he sent to several friends, he describes these outings. In Mallorca, he wrote the poems "In a Spanish Tram-Car" and "Andraitx- Pomegranate Flowers", as well as working on the book of poetry Nettles and on some articles.
Plaza de España is a square that forms part of the town of Andratx’s regular-shaped urban fabric. Surrounding it are important buildings, mansions and old estate houses that all constitute part of the town’s architectural heritage. When renovation work was recently carried out to the square, a well was found dating back to 1882 that can now be seen, covered with protective glass. Not far from the square is the oldest part of the town: the Pantaleu and Pou Amunt districts. Their irregular layouts and narrow streets are suffused with the history of old houses, towers and windmills.
