Seven Pillars of Wisdom: a Triumph by T.E. Lawrence
Harmondsworth: Penguin Books in association with Jonathan Cape, 1975 printing
(First published privately in 1926, first published by Jonathan Cape in 1935, and by Penguin in 1962)
ISBN 0140016961
I first read Seven Pillars of Wisdom at university, which is when I suspect many young men read it, at least in the 70s and 80s, when the book had almost a cult status with those who would like to think they were in some way intellectual. Like many others of impressionable age at an impressionable time in their lives, I was very impressed by it. I still have the copy I purchased second-hand in the Monash University co-op, and I note that I paid the then (for me) princely sum of five dollars, which was the equivalent of several beers or a decent meal at that stage in my life.
I had always intended re-reading the book, but have been put off the task over the years by the notion that it was a book for young men, and that those wearied by the natural cynicism of age had found it just so much twaddle when they went back to it. That was my father's advice to me as well, and I didn't want to destroy my good opinion of the book. But then lockdown hit, and I've had a bit of a project to read some classic works, so I decided to bite the bullet and risk destroying an icon after watching an interesting television documentary about Lawrence that got me thinking about him, and Seven Pillars.
Is it as good as I remember? No. Is it just so much twaddle? No. Is it a great classic? Of that I'm not sure. It is definitely more than an exciting narrative of someone's wartime adventures, but it is also definitely less than a great work of literature. What it most definitely is, is an insight into the complex and difficult character that was T.E. Lawrence.
Seven Pillars of Wisdom, ostensibly about the Arab Revolt and the consequent battle of the Arabs against the Turks from Medina to Damascus, is actually about the wish-fulfilment of Lawrence's dreams to become famous, by whatever means became open to him. He admits as much several times in the book, while going on to admit that in fulfilling his wishes, he destroyed his soul through lying, killing, and the degradations that came to him during the campaign.
His opportunity, which came about when he was appointed liaison and intelligence officer to Feisal, became a legend, and he burnishes the legend (while seeming to deprecate it) in this book. He claims to run not only the Arabs, but also the British intervention in their theatre of war, explaining how his intelligence and forward thinking ran rings not only around the Arabs, who he describes as petty and unthinking, but also the British staff officers, who in his eyes are hide-bound and old-fashioned.
The book is a series of descriptions of his travels throughout the theatre, and some of the actions in which he took part, and of some of the characters he met along the way. Anyone who agreed with him, or fell in with his ideas, is painted glowingly, and those that didn't are not. The best parts of the book are his descriptions of his travels through the Hejaz and Jordan, with his writing placing the reader on the back of the camel with him, feeling his tiredness and hunger, and elation at arriving at a well-watered camp.
It is when he switches to mystic mode that the book suffers. Like many young idealistic men, his ideas about the beauty of man's struggle, of the meaning of war and society, and of the differences between men are incohate and hard to decipher in any meaningful way. He wishes to bring the Arabs into their hegemony, and so tries in his writing to make them more than they were: to create castles and kings from tents and wandering nomads.
There is no doubt that Lawrence was a troubled soul. His upbringing was harsh, and sexually he was not classifiable, and there are passages in Seven Pillars of Wisdom where he revels in the degradation forced on him through his wanderings with the Arab tribes. He seems to have a theory that beauty and truth are unobtainable in the physical world, and so one should eschew the physical and in fact try and destroy it. There is no doubt in my mind that by the end of the campaign Lawrence was suffering mentally from his trials, and he just made it over the line in Damascus, so that the prize that he had been hoping for came to him as a bitter fruit indeed.
His mental state was definitely affected by his capture torture and rape in Deraa, which I think led not only to him hating the Turks, but also to hating the Arabs. In a strange way the reader gets the feeling that Lawrence almost felt that he'd deserved such punishment, and after the incident on several occasions the reader finds Lawrence uncaring about whether he lives or dies.
It struck me while reading the book that Lawrence is very much a precursor to the modern age, and the modern person. It is all about him, everything is done according to his plan, and other people are just so many chessmen to be placed on the board. It strikes me that Lawrence would have been a natural on social media, an influencer and icon.
There is no doubt that Lawrence hoped that Seven Pillars of Wisdom would become a great classic - a classic of endurance, of struggle and overcoming, and of the mystical beauty of a people and their history. That he failed in achieving that I think he knew, and we know as well. However, it is still a fine book, a worthy book, and no doubt a book that will continue to inspire those young men who find it at the right time in their lives.
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