Keringo

The best memoir I've ever read. It's weird, but that's the point

I've read a few war memoirs before, but this one is quite a riddle. Usually what happens is a sane person finds himself in insane circumstances, but here it's actually the opposite. Lawrence doesn't say much about himself (even his age until after 90% of the book), and you have to 'solve' what the hell he was thinking, so I can only guess. Oh Freud would love to chat with him, and I mean it in a good way, as in his deep inner conflicts were thriving during the war, which surprises you when reading as well as it seemed to surprise Lawrence himself. At the beginning you think Lawrence is pretty normal, but the more you read the weirder he gets.

His opinion might change to the opposite in the next paragraph, his mood changes every so many pages, his development from a young idealism to disappointment in himself is insane. He might say 'we' as in 'we, Englishmen' along with 'them' as in 'them, Arabs' and then switches to 'we, Arabs' & 'them, Englishmen' in the next sentence, he deceives you by attributing his own flaws to others and then condemning them. It seems Lawrence wants to believe all the terrible things he does are necessary evil, but every time he reassures you this is the case and he doesn't enjoy violence something like this happens:

Seeing me tolerably unemployed, the women rushed, and caught at me with howls for mercy. I assured them that all was going well: but they would not get away till some husbands delivered me. These knocked their wives off and seized my feet in a very agony of terror of instant death. A Turk so broken down was a nasty spectacle: I kicked them off as well as I could with bare feet, and finally broke free.

Quite interesting to compare it to the 1922 version:

... I kicked them off in disgust as well as I could with my bare feet, and finally broke free of them.

There are many instances when Lawrence is way more angry and sad and ashamed and violent in the 1922 version of the book. Nobody asked him to blow up any trains or commit massacres more than once, but when he does he writes that he will 'never be clean again' after all the things he's done. The more he achieves the stronger shame he feels.

It was going to be a massacre and I should have been crying-sorry but after the angers and exertions of the battle my mind was too tired to care to go down into that awful place and spend the night saving them. <...> This evening there was no glory left, but the terror of the broken flesh...

It's very weird when he's almost bragging about evil he's capable of and then immediately feeling ashamed of it, but I guess this is the part of his conflicted mind that desired punishment both to himself and others. He tries to explain everything in the most rational way but every reader will see that he's likely hiding his desire for violence and the psychological and (suddenly) sexual conflicts behind this rationality. There is no rational explanation for such a focus on punishment and pain and even terror of childbirth. He wants to believe in his own good intentions but at the same time you as a reader can't ignore that his perhaps good at first intentions were replaced by something else, something he doesn't talk about but what fuels his shame.

That's why it's probably the best memoir I've ever read: Lawrence was not a regular soldier and his conflicts were way more personal than those of other memoirs'. He was a violent, prudent, confused, shy 'unreliable narrator' who was terrified of himself and of what he can do if given freedom. I guess he was also self-aware because he considered leaving Arabia multiple times but every time decided to stay, except the last one where the book ends.

I've read the 1922 version which I believe is better than the 1926 one. It has more intimate, honest, biting phrases which he softened or removed in 1926. I mean I understand why, some of them were very personal and/or quite harsh. 'Imbecile god whose worship was imbecility in us' of 1922 is way sharper than "imbecile unanimity" of 1926, and that's exactly the reason why I recommend the 1922 one.

The weirdest author I've read to say the least.

They talked of food and illness, games and pleasures: with me, who felt that to recognize our possession of bodies was degradation enough, let alone to enlarge upon their needs and attributes. These others were outwardly so like me that I would feel shame for myself, seeing them wallow in what I judged shame: since the physical could be only a glorification of man's cross. Indeed the truth was always that I did not like myself.