quote from Letters of T. E. Lawrence
The Letters of T.E. Lawrence -To His Brother, Will Lawrence-June 8, 1911
(from Carchemish)..................."I left my special subject (the Crusades) till the last two weeks
of the last term. It was mosotly done while the examination was actually in progress in
three all-night sittings: special subjects, if you know all but the facts are a matter of
simple cram. I should certainly not recommend doing it (except to know your ground, if it is
territorial) before the last term: or the term before the last, leaving the last for revision.
If it is a matter like the Crusades two or three weeks are more than enough. Other subjects
have more to read: but always read something that throws a side-light on the set
authorities. ...You are going to too many lectures." [Archaeology]
from the Letters of T. E. Lawrence
Letter 65: To V.W. Richards, Dec. 10, 1913.........written at Carchemish "Dear Richard, It's quaint, isn't it, to begin again a correspondence which has lapsed for about a twelve-month? but, you know, I'm about as sick of myself and my affairs as one can well be, and it would be a consolation, if not exactly a comfort, to hear something of the sort from you. The fault was in ever coming out to this place, I think, because really ever since knowing it I have felt that (at least for the near future) to talk of settling down to live in a small way anywhere else was beating the air: and so gradually I slipped down, until a few months ago when I found myself an ordinary archaeologist. I fought very hard, at Oxford and after going down, to avoid being labelled: but the insurance people have nailed me down, now." from the letters of T.E. Lawrence (Archaeology chapter) ...author also known as Lawrence of Arabia (page 160)
from 'this book will save your life' by a.m. homes
"We live in a time when no none wants to remember. We pretend we are where it starts. Look at the way we live - we build houses on cliffs, on fault lines, in the path of things, and when something happens, we don't learn history, we build it again, right on the same spot, bigger and better......Fallout accumulates. What we've got now is a blend of fact and fiction that we're agreeing to call reality."
the Letters of T.E. Lawrence
Letter 131, Mesopotamia, by Ex-Lieut-Colonel. T.E.Lawrence (Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford) (Mr. Lawrence, whose organization and direction of the Hedjaz against the Turks was one of the outstanding romances of the war, has written this article at our request in order that the public may be fully informed of our Mesopotamian commitments.) "The people of England have been led in Mesopotamia into a trap from which it will be hard to escape with dignity and honour. They have been tricked into it by a steady withholding of information. The Bagdad communiques are belated, insincere, incomplete. Things have been far worse than we have been told, our administration more bloody and inefficient than the public knows. It is a disgrace to our imperial record, and may soon be too inflamed for any ordinary cure. We are today not far from a disaster." {This first paragraph might indicate how history repeats itself; the parallels to present day geo-politics are uncanny.} written in August of 1920
the Letters of T.E. Lawrence
Letter 161: To Bernard Shaw, written August 17, 1922 from 14 Barton Street, Westminster........."Dear Mr. Shaw, You will be puzzled at my writing to you: but Cockerell some months ago took me round to you and introduced me, and you did not talk too formidably. I want to ask you two questions: the first one, 'Do you still read books?', doesn't require an answer. If you still go on reading I'm going to put the second question: if you don't, then please skip the two inside pages of this note and carry over to my signature at the end, and burn it all without replying. I hate letter-writing as much as I can, and so, probably, do you. My real wish is to ask if you will read, or try to read, a book which I have written. It's about the war, which will put you off, to start with, and there are technical unpleasantnesses about it. For instance it is very long: about 300,000 words I suspect, though I have not counted them. I have very little money and do not wish to publish it: however it had to be printed, so I got it done on a lino. press, in a newspaper office. That means it's beastly to look at, two columns on a quarto page, small newspaper type which hurts your eyes, and dozens of misprints, corrected roughly in ink: for only five copies exist, and I could not afford a proof. The punctuation is entirely the compositor's fancy: and he had an odd fancy, especially on Mondays." {This letter refers to T.E. Lawrence's book, "The Seven Pillars of Wisdom".}
From 'the sea, the sea' by Iris Murdoch
I spoke of a memoir. Is this what this chronicle will prove to be? At this moment, a page old, it feels more like a diary than a memoir. Well, let it be a diary then. How I regret that I did not keep one earlier...But now the main events of my life are over and there is to be nothing but 'recollection in tranquility'. To repent of a life of egoism? Not exactly, yet something of the sort. I never said this to the ladies and gentlemen of the theatre. They would never have stopped laughing.
The theatre is certainly a place for learning about the brevity of human glory: oh all those wonderful glittering absolutely vanished pantomimes! Now I shall abjure magic and become a hermit: put myself in a situation where I can honestly say that I have nothing else to do but to learn to be good. The end of life is rightly thought of as a period of meditation. Will I be sorry that I did not begin sooner?
the Letters of T.E. Lawrence
Letter 350: To H.S. Ede (sent April 16, 1928) mailed from Karachi, Pakistan. From Chapter "The Years of Hide and Seek"............"I hope that the Gallery has now re-opened, and restored itself, as the best art entertainment in London. You may feel that it's hopelessly slow and cloggy: but I confess that Frys and Ivor Churchills and Courtaulds* do not sum up more than the yesterday of expression, in my backward regard. It makes me smile, sometimes, to think that all the varying pictures produced in 1928 will all date themselves, by some subtlety of likeness to 1928, in the eyes of 2028. Yet today we are hardly on speaking terms. Of pictures and sculpture I'm not talking, now, but of the writing gangs: the Joyces and the Kiplings, the Steins and Wells, the Forsters and the D.H. Lawrences: they will all date within 20 years, by some yet-imperceptible solidarity. There WILL be a common thread between T.S.Eliot and Alfred Noyes."..............{comment: T.E. Lawrence is now writing in a somewhat jaded fashion of these great writers, not dismissively but with respect and yet percieving their work as books that will be quickly dated. The writing of this day had such high standards without being aware of it, that Lawrence (after years of internal ambivalence concerning his own book "The Seven Pillars of Wisdom") was maybe too close to these writers to see the genious in their work. He seems to exclude from this general opinion, the writing of T.S. Eliot and Alfred Noyes.} *footnote: Roger Fry, the critic, Lord Ivor Churchill and Samuel Courtauld have made famous collections of works of art.
sample of poetry by Alfred Noyes
A LOOM OF YEARS
In the light of the silent stars that shine on the struggling sea,
In the weary cry of the wind and the whisper of flower and tree,
Under the breath of laughter, deep in the tide of tears,
I hear the Loom of the Weaver that weaves the Web of Years.
The leaves of the winter wither and sink in the forest mould
To colour the flowers of April with purple and white and gold:
Light and scent and music die and are born again
In the heart of a grey-haired woman who wakes in a world of pain.
The hound, the fawn, and the hawk, and the doves that croon and coo,
We are all one woof of the weaving and the one warp threads us through,
One flying cloud on the shuttle that carries our hopes and fears
As it goes thro’ the Loom of the Weaver that weaves the Web of Years.
The green uncrumpling fern and the rustling dewdrenched rose
Pass with our hearts to the Silence where the wings of music close,
Pass and pass to the Timeless that never a moment mars,
Pass and pass to the Darkness that made the suns and stars.
Has the soul gone out in the Darkness? Is the dust sealed from sight?
Ah, hush, for the woof of the ages returns thro’ the warp of the night!
Never that shuttle loses one thread of our hopes and fears,
As it comes thro’ the Loom of the Weaver that weaves the Web of Years.
O, woven in one wide Loom thro’ the throbbing weft of the whole,
One in spirit and flesh, one in body and soul,
Tho’ the leaf were alone in its falling, the bird in its hour to die,
The heart in its muffled anguish, the sea in its mournful cry,
One with the flower of a day, one with the withered moon
One with the granite mountains that melt into the noon
One with the dream that triumphs beyond the light of the spheres,
We come from the Loom of the Weaver that weaves the Web of Years.
Alfred Noyes
{This poet/writer mentioned with T.S.Eliot in previous post}
