MICHAEL A. ANDEREGG
LAWRENCE OF ARABIA:
THE MAN, THE MYTH, THE MOVIE
Lawrence of Arabia. The title of David Lean's 1962 film evokes a
potent historical/mythic discourse. "Lawrence," T. E.
Lawrence, Thomas Edward Lawrence. The name summons up
images of Oxford common-rooms, quiet country villages, London libraries, A Boy's Own Paper, other British Lawrences (D.
H., Sir Thomas), England, Britain, Britannia. "Arabia." Exoticism, the East, the Orient, the Arabian Nights, the Crusades, the
empire. And the preposition "of"-"of Arabia." Not in Arabia,
not and Arabia, but of Arabia: derived or coming from; possessing, having; characterized or identified by. Lawrence of Arabia;
Gordon of Khartoum; Clive of India. What a world of imperial
glory those phrases suggest! The one among the many, a figure
in a landscape, the white man's burden, dangerous journeys
through "anters vast and deserts idle;" Occidental heroes in an
Oriental world.
Lawrence of Arabia. David Lean's film exemplifies, extends,
revises, mystifies, distorts, elucidates, revivifies one of the most
compelling heroic myths of the twentieth century. From the
moment his exploits became known, the character and actions of
T. E. Lawrence captured the imagination of professional and
non-professional writers alike-poets and journalists, military
historians, psychiatrists, playwrights; the exalted and the humble, the general and the private, the Viscount and the noaccount-nearly anyone, it sometimes seems, capable of putting
pen to paper. Among so many voices, so many interpreters, one
in particular stands out: T. E. Lawrence himself, whose monumental, baroque masterpiece The Seven Pillars of Wisdom
(together with Revolt in the Desert, its abbreviated offspring)
has given the myth some of its most compelling and ambiguous
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