"T.E.L. Opus Fecit"
I love this man:
Of course, I love him from afar and not at all like that because a) he's been dead for about 74 years and b) he was very uncomfortable with the idea of people loving him (in general and most especially like that). And I love him too well to willfully make his spirit rest uncomfortable.
I have been rereading John E. Mack's award-winning biography of the above (which is excellent, though--I hope--now dated in some of its Freudian assumptions). Here is Mack's elegant summation:
"Lawrence's personality was replete with paradoxes and contradictions. These relate to the complexities and ambiguities of his origins, family relationships, and childhood development, but are not explained by them.... He retained on the one hand a childlike immaturity--like a gifted schoolboy--and a responsiveness to the child's world, while at the same time he assumed throughout his life extraordinary adult responsibilities. He possessed an unusual capacity for relationships with many different sorts of human beings, while retaining an essential isolation and aloofness. He was highly open to sensuous experience yet remained always an ascetic who rejected many of the pleasures of the flesh, especially sexual ones. Self-absorbed and egocentric, he was nevertheless unselfish and giving of himself. He suffered troubling forms of psychopathology and was 'neurotic' in many ways. Yet out of his sufferings he found new solutions and values, and was often able to convert his personal pathology to creative public endeavors. His own moral conflicts became irreconcilable and he never fully recovered a full sense of his own worth. Yet he continuously helped others feel more worthwhile in themselves" (Mack 457). [1]
Finally, Lawrence to G. B. Shaw on joining the air force:
"I haven't answered your last line 'What is your game really?' Do you never do things because you know you must? Without wishing or daring to ask too deeply of yourself why you must? I just can't help it. You see, I'm all smash, inside: and I don't want to look prosperous or be prosperous, while I know that. And on the easy level of the other fellows in the R. A. F. I feel safe: and often I forget that I've ever been different" (382). [2]
Poor good, sad man. If only a hundredth of us could live half so well, in the little ways.
[1] Mack, John E. A Prince of Our Disorder: The Life of T. E. Lawrence. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1976.
[2] Lawrence, T. E. T. E. Lawrence: The Selected Letters. Ed. Malcolm Brown. New York: Paragon, 1992.
Of course, I love him from afar and not at all like that because a) he's been dead for about 74 years and b) he was very uncomfortable with the idea of people loving him (in general and most especially like that). And I love him too well to willfully make his spirit rest uncomfortable.
I have been rereading John E. Mack's award-winning biography of the above (which is excellent, though--I hope--now dated in some of its Freudian assumptions). Here is Mack's elegant summation:
"Lawrence's personality was replete with paradoxes and contradictions. These relate to the complexities and ambiguities of his origins, family relationships, and childhood development, but are not explained by them.... He retained on the one hand a childlike immaturity--like a gifted schoolboy--and a responsiveness to the child's world, while at the same time he assumed throughout his life extraordinary adult responsibilities. He possessed an unusual capacity for relationships with many different sorts of human beings, while retaining an essential isolation and aloofness. He was highly open to sensuous experience yet remained always an ascetic who rejected many of the pleasures of the flesh, especially sexual ones. Self-absorbed and egocentric, he was nevertheless unselfish and giving of himself. He suffered troubling forms of psychopathology and was 'neurotic' in many ways. Yet out of his sufferings he found new solutions and values, and was often able to convert his personal pathology to creative public endeavors. His own moral conflicts became irreconcilable and he never fully recovered a full sense of his own worth. Yet he continuously helped others feel more worthwhile in themselves" (Mack 457). [1]
Finally, Lawrence to G. B. Shaw on joining the air force:
"I haven't answered your last line 'What is your game really?' Do you never do things because you know you must? Without wishing or daring to ask too deeply of yourself why you must? I just can't help it. You see, I'm all smash, inside: and I don't want to look prosperous or be prosperous, while I know that. And on the easy level of the other fellows in the R. A. F. I feel safe: and often I forget that I've ever been different" (382). [2]
Poor good, sad man. If only a hundredth of us could live half so well, in the little ways.
[1] Mack, John E. A Prince of Our Disorder: The Life of T. E. Lawrence. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1976.
[2] Lawrence, T. E. T. E. Lawrence: The Selected Letters. Ed. Malcolm Brown. New York: Paragon, 1992.