T.E. Lawrence

sus

sus

Moderator
Seems like a wild guy. Is he some national hero across the pond? I think it's one of those names Americans vaguely know from David Lean (but maybe confuse with D.H.).

Collin Wilson was very interested in him as an archetypal outsider, someone driven to test the limits or boundaries of the world. To work with the invisible things, aura and charisma and courage and defy the usual limits of 'rational' or 'reasonable' minds.

"I wanted to feel what it was like to be the mainspring of a national movement, and to have some millions of people expressing themselves through me; and being a half-poet, I don't value material things much. Sensation and mind seem to me much greater, and the ideal, such a thing as the impulse that took us into Damascus, the only thing worth doing."

(Which Wyld compares to Jim Morrison: "Let's just say I was testing the bounds of reality. I was curious to see what would happen. That's all it was: justs curiosity."
 
sus

sus

Moderator
It's very much a story out of colonial Romance, too, yeah?

"Lawrence flees modern civilization on horseb ack without any military training whatsoever to live among primitive peoples in a strange desert land. After proving himself, he ends up leading them to victory, becoming somebody else entirely."

Which is basically the plot of Avatar, or Dune, or the real-life story of Joseph Banks, ethnobotanist for Cook's 1769 trip to Tahiti. These outsider (often scientist or prophet types) figures on the fringes—very inward, very intense people who seem to live in their own reality, who cultivate these world-transformational capabilities. Intense charisma. World-bending mind/energy.
 
sus

sus

Moderator
"The real-life LAwrence felt ever since his childhood that he was born to lead a people to freedom."

I'm envious of the way some people create these prophecies for themselves, in childhood. Again, a vision. or imaginary. that is slowly made real by will and other magical arts
 
ver$hy ver$h

ver$hy ver$h

Well-known member
sus said:
Seems like a wild guy. Is he some national hero across the pond?
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According to my dad, my grandad was very taken with him, loved the film and said if you wanted to understand the Middle East you had to read Seven Pillars of Wisdom. He was also a racist and was stationed in Palestine some time around the Second World War, so his perspective was somewhat skewed.
 
ver$hy ver$h

ver$hy ver$h

Well-known member
sus said:
"The real-life LAwrence felt ever since his childhood that he was born to lead a people to freedom."

I'm envious of the way some people create these prophecies for themselves, in childhood. Again, a vision. or imaginary. that is slowly made real by will and other magical arts
Click to expand...

Boris Johnson's reported to have declared his ambition to be "world king" when he was only eight years old.
 
?

.....

Well-known member
forget ambition, I'm just saying that as a kid, you never thought that be obscenely powerful or wealthy would be fun?
 
sus

sus

Moderator
I wanted to be a composer when I was a kid, loved watching Amadeus. Or maybe an officer in the American Civil War, or even a pirate. But never immensely powerful worldking
 
ver$hy ver$h

ver$hy ver$h

Well-known member
0bleak said:
forget ambition, I'm just saying that as a kid, you never thought that be obscenely powerful or wealthy would be fun?
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I don't remember ever really thinking about it in those terms. I remember wishing I had superpowers like Spider-Man, but I don't remember wanting to be some sort of king or anything like that.

This is also getting off the point somewhat. We're not talking about vague childhood fantasies of power, we're talking about people who declared their ambitions early on then willed them into reality. The Boris anecdote's only important because of what he went on to do.
 
ver$hy ver$h

ver$hy ver$h

Well-known member
sus said:
It's very much a story out of colonial Romance, too, yeah?
Click to expand...

"I think you are another of these desert-loving English: Doughty, Stanhope, Gordon of Khartoum. No Arab loves the desert. We love water and green trees, there is nothing in the desert. No man needs nothing."
 
ver$hy ver$h

ver$hy ver$h

Well-known member
sus said:
Seems like a wild guy. Is he some national hero across the pond? I think it's one of those names Americans vaguely know from David Lean (but maybe confuse with D.H.).

Collin Wilson was very interested in him as an archetypal outsider, someone driven to test the limits or boundaries of the world. To work with the invisible things, aura and charisma and courage and defy the usual limits of 'rational' or 'reasonable' minds.

"I wanted to feel what it was like to be the mainspring of a national movement, and to have some millions of people expressing themselves through me; and being a half-poet, I don't value material things much. Sensation and mind seem to me much greater, and the ideal, such a thing as the impulse that took us into Damascus, the only thing worth doing."

(Which Wyld compares to Jim Morrison: "Let's just say I was testing the bounds of reality. I was curious to see what would happen. That's all it was: justs curiosity."
Click to expand...

Deleuze was a fan. There's a piece on him in Essays Critical and Clinical called 'The Shame and the Glory'.
 
sus

sus

Moderator
luka said:
i watced lawrence of arabia recebtly. he says you arabs are filthy brutal animals. greedy and short sighted. you will never become a great nation because you are not disciplined. the english he said are disciplined.
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jenks

jenks

thread death
I think of Thesiger as his opposite - products of similar environments but WT disappears into his exotic location - erases himself amongst the marsh Arabs - both have a homoerotic projection onto these ‘others’ and I suppose both attempt to produce their own myth of themselves. Both good prose stylists in their own way but I wonder how for how much longer they’ll be read.
 
C

catalog

Well-known member
The film is amazing but very long and does not work on small screen so not enough people know about him.

He represents, to me, a certain mode of englisheness which I admire and loathe in equal parts.

Alec guineas terrirotul
 
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