REVIEW: SEVEN PILLARS OF WISDOM BY T. E. LAWRENCE (1926)

I've been struggling to find time for these phlog posts, and when I 
do it's so cold inside like now that my hands struggle to work at 
the keyboard. On the up side combining physical discomfort with a 
faultering memory might keep this review of my latest literary 
consumption to less than a publishable length itself.

My copy is a 1949 hardcover of the 1940 edition including a preface 
by brother A. W. Lawrence which explains the various drafts and 
editions to that time, this one omitting book VII, from the first 
1922 private edition, which has been included in some relatively 
recent editions. It was given to me many years ago with other books 
by a friend of my mother's who was clearing out some of her late 
parent's things.

Written after the Arab Revolt, but based on diaries and a 
mysteriously lost earlier first draft by the author, this is 
overall an exceedingly personal account of the (arguably) pivotal 
role he played in supporting the Arabs against the Turkish army up 
to the end of WWI. Yet in bouncing, often somewhat jarringly, from 
one narrow subject of focus to another it often gives the 
impression that its 122 short chapters could be selected to make 
separate books. Besides the expected wartime adventure, within it 
is also a travelogue, a formal justification and outline of 
strategy for guerrilla warfare in general, academic studies of the 
various Arab tribes and their differing cultures (how much changed 
today?), detailed profiles of individuals both key and incidental, 
as well as branches out to topics such as geology. Plus quite a lot 
of information about camels, apparantly an understandably 
inexhaustable topic of discussion among the Bedouin tribes.

However probably the greatest impression is left from the most 
personal passages. His openness about the state of depression he 
entered while burnt out from the brutality of war and facing his 
own complicity in betraying British promises of independence for 
the Arab people is very striking. Also the description of his rape 
by a Turkish officer in Dera'a which has since been a topic of 
particularly unresolved debate over its truthfulness. Nevertheless 
Lawrence offers scant insight into his personal life before and 
after the war beyond enigmatic references such as the opening 
dedication to "S.A.", and the presumably-related secret personal 
motive he describes as his strongest in the war "dead, before we 
reached Damascus".

The difficult subjects are also often burried in difficult writing 
due to his rather dated and elaborate turns of phrase. While these 
sometimes work rather well, especially for the many humorous 
anecdotes that he surprisingly keeps up throughout the book, he 
does tend often to write paragraphs where the meaning of the first 
sentence doesn't become clear until reaching the last one. Quite a 
challenge for someone like me who obsesses over understanding every 
detail of such a text, at which I did often fail. But it is a 
'great' work, and for academia to accept art as such, some 
difficulty in actually getting through it seems to be a key 
requirement. Indeed as an academic (not a soldier, as he often 
reiterates), a timeless 'great' work was largely what Lawrence was 
aspiring to produce, although reportedly not truely satisfied with 
his end result and anyway forbidding its full publication beyond 
around a hundred private editions and a heavily abridged US edition 
until after his untimely death in a motorbike crash in 1935.

In the introduction Lawrence states: "In these pages the history is 
not of the Arab movement, but of me in it. It is a narrative of 
daily life, mean happenings, little people. Here are not lessons 
for the world, no disclosures to shock peoples. It is filled with 
trivial things, partly that no one mistake for history the bones 
from which some day a man may make history, and partly for the 
pleasure it gave me to recall the fellowship of the revolt.". 
Perhaps this would seem true if later events had proven right the 
compromises for partition of the modern middle-eastern nations, 
which Lawrence worked with Churchill to establish following his 
failure to secure the Arabs outright autonomy by leading them into 
Damascus before the British during the Turkish retreat. Instead the 
constant chaos in the region continuing since, even with the recent 
bombing of Damascus' government buildings by Israel, puts a focus 
on the abrupt end to the book. After capturing Damascus, Lawrence 
describes rather proudly working to mould the Arab tribes together 
into a "de facto Government, which endured for two years, without 
foreign advice, in an occupied country wasted by war, and against 
the will of important elements among the Allies". The taking of 
Syria by France after those two years, under threat of invasion, 
and Lawrence's failed diplocatic efforts to stop it, are not 
mentioned directly in the book. But the message he weaves 
throughout his final drive for Damascus is clear in its assertion 
that the Arab people must secure their own government and can't be 
guided successfully under the force of a foreign power regardless 
of that power's outwardly good intentions. It's a message which 
still seems saddeningly poignant today. Indeed only after reading 
the book did I discover that long before the 2003 invasion with the 
USA, Britain invaded Iraq in the 1920s to squash the Iraqi Revolt 
there, started in response to their failure to grant Arab rule 
after the war.

Escaping these final unwritten chapters of his story in Arab 
politics seems to have been what prompted Lawrence into the 
reclusive life which he struggled to maintain in spite of his fame 
after the war. On the march to Damascus, after making camp on the 
day of his thirtieth birthday he describes recalling alone how: 
"four years ago, I had meant to be a general and knighted, when 
thirty. Such temporal dignities (if I survived the next four weeks) 
were now in my grasp--only that my sense of the falsity of the Arab 
position had cured me of crude ambition: while it left me my 
craving for good repute among men". The fame which followed him 
after the war was reminicient of the great famous generals of the 
British empire who preceeded him, such as Gordon and Kitchener. 
Eccentric and enigmatic characters seeming to have some special 
mastry over the natives in Britain's most foreign posessions. 
Themselves (so far as their actions were reported by a generously 
patriotic press) personifying Britain itself. Whether "Lawrence of 
Arabia" broke this formula by rejecting the path to such a position 
and disowning his faith in Britain to stand by its morale 
principles, or whether Britain's compromised position after WWI 
took away the environment to breed new figures of its own success, 
he seems to have been about the last in the line.

The book is now out of copyright in many jurisdictions and the 
Wikipedia page offers a list of different sources for downloadable 
copies:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_pillars_of_wisdom#External_links

Project Gutenberg Australia has it in Text, HTML, EPUB, and MOBI 
formats:
http://gutenberg.net.au/plusfifty-a-m.html#lawrence2

DOCUMENTARIES

Naturally I dug up a healthy selection of T. E. Lawrence docos to 
fill my TV screen in the gap between finishing the book and the 
screening of Lawrence of Arabia in Melbourne. These are fairly 
plentiful, with three produced over the years just by the BBC. 
Their first one from the 1960s has some good interviews with people 
who vaguely knew Lawrence, and photos he took in Arabia (which is 
surprising given that none are reproduced in the book, although it 
contains various portraits and some comic sketches). The 1980s one 
aims to be a reassessment of T. E. Lawrence and picks at some of 
the more controversial topics but doesn't conclude anything all 
that outstanding. It does include interviews with more people who 
met Lawrence, including one who claims to have seen his injuries 
received allegedly by the orders of the Turkish officer in Dera'a 
after Lawrence resisted his advances.

The latest BBC doco, The Legacy of Lawrence of Arabia from 2010 is 
the most insightful since it compares Lawrence's experiences and 
writings to the modern Allied occupation of Iraq. It's quite unique 
since the presenter served as a British administrator in Iraq 
during that occupation. Also rather shocking is the revelation that 
US officers at the time were given copies of Seven Pillars (or I'm 
guessing surely extracts from it) and encouraged to read it for 
inspiration, in an apparant blindness to how the whole structure of 
the US army in Iraq was exactly the design Lawrence's guerrilla 
strategies were aimed at undermining. His favoured tactic of 
blowing up railway tracks/bridges (and preferably a train at the 
same time) translates clearly to "IEDs" blowing up vehicles 
travelling between army bases in in Iraq. Indeed one thing I wonder 
is whether there were any T. E. Lawrence like figures sent by the 
USA to Afghanistan while they were fighting off the Soviet Army in 
the 1980s, that would have been a better application of Lawrence's 
strategic teachings, albeit soon to be used back at the Western 
armies again there too. Of course those turn-arounds aren't new 
either. Twenty years before the end of WWI the United States was 
fighting the brutal Philippine-American War against the Filipino 
people straight after helping them fight off their Spanish colonial 
government. That's another interesting and significant war I only 
recently discovered even though it's far closer to home here in 
Australia than most.

https://docuwiki.net/index.php?title=The_Legacy_of_Lawrence_of_Arabia_%28BBC%29

For somewhat essential background on Lawrence's personal story and 
coverage of the events following those he described in the book, 
Lawrence of Arabia: The Battle for the Arab World by PBS in 2003 
seems to cover things best. It also includes footage of 
re-enactments at a surprisingly grand scale for a documentary, as 
if attempting to rival the 1960s movie. This doco also claims to 
uncover the identity of "S.A." from the book's dedication, as an 
arab man who Lawrence might have had a homosexual relationship with 
during his earlier work at archeological sites in Arabia before the 
war, and who died before its end.

https://docuwiki.net/index.php?title=Lawrence_of_Arabia:_The_Battle_for_the_Arab_World

THE MOVIE

During his introductory speach the enthusiastic projectionist who 
made the documentary I described in 2025-02-0770mm.txt mentioned 
that they were booked out for their one yearly screening of 
Lawrence of Arabia (1962). Which is some surprising popularity even 
with a relatively small theatre (their original vintage theatre 
space having been split up into smaller ones). Indeed they added a 
second screening a couple of weeks later for those who missed out. 
Whether that's a response to how topical the subject is now given 
what's in the news, or 70mm screenings are getting really popular 
again generally, I'm not sure.

Curiously I'm not the first person to be inspired to travel some 
way to see Lawrence of Arabia in it's genuine 70mm film format. 
This guy went much further and he hadn't even read the book:

https://www.rogerebert.com/features/a-difficult-journey-why-i-flew-across-the-country-to-see-lawrence-of-arabia

Of course the story is itself of a journey, and the movie captures 
that general story quite well for the standards of Hollywood (and 
especially these Hollywood Epics of the 1950s and 60s). Of course 
it does do all the tricks of adding/combining characters and events 
for the sake of increased drama and action, but even in almost four 
hours of run time it's clear that they couldn't get everything on 
the screen without some breaks with the specifics of the book. 
Besides painting the relationship between Emir Feisal and Lawrence 
as far more distant than was true, I'd say the biggest break with 
the book is towards the end. For one thing it plays up Lawrence's 
madness, including his participation in a revenge massacre against 
the retreating Turkish army, which could be seen as reading between 
the lines of a self-biased writer. But more damning is how it 
depicts the collapse of the Arab government in Damascus which in 
the book Lawrence prided himself with helping to establish, and the 
film shows that as justification for the Allied occupation. Here 
history does seem side with Lawrence in that the Arab government 
had to be forced out by the French rather than simply giving up and 
going home of its own accord. It definitely walks over the message 
of the book, effectively portraying an indepent Arab nation as a 
fantasy of a madman. But again the honest alternative of ending the 
movie with two years of political manoeuvrings at the Paris Peace 
Conference which even Lawrence didn't bother to describe would 
hardly have been an entertaining finale.

What the film did supply in excess, and what I most sought from it 
after months of Lawrence's intangible descriptions of the Arabian 
desert landscapes, was a real look at the sights he describes. I 
looked up some photos online, and saw his own photos in the 60s BBC 
documentary, but somehow they don't capture the scale he describes. 
Maybe this is why Lawrence chose not to include any of his photos 
in the book itself. But, rewarded by my early booking with a prime 
seat in the middle of the relatively small theatre, the widescreen 
70mm presentation paid off from as soon as the sun theatrically 
rose over the empty desert when the journey began. It really was 
excellently shot, with its beautiful yet harsh desert scenes and a 
certain artistic flair of composition perhaps beyond that of the 
typical Hollywood epic. For all the trouble of getting there (and 
empty seats around me told that a few other early-bookers didn't) 
it did pay off really. Not that I'm ready to go through it all 
again to see Ben Hur there next month though.

Oh and because I'm documentary obsessed, here's a doco about 
Hollywood epics I recently watched, which does briefly cover 
Lawrence of Arabia. Lots more left which I've never seen.

https://docuwiki.net/index.php?title=Epic:_A_Cast_of_Thousands


 - The Free Thinker