T. E. Lawrence Correspondence

THESE TWO VOLUMES, the latest in the Wilsons' series of T. E. Lawrence correspondence, live up to the high standard set in the previous volumes. Not only are the books beautifully constructed and printed, but they adhere to the highest standards of scholarship. Here we have a monument to Lawrence for which future scholars will remain grateful for as long as Lawrence is studied, which promises to be for a very long time indeed given his preeminence in several fields, including guerrilla warfare, Intelligence work, diplomacy, writing, translation and mechanics, as well as his unique personality.

The earlier of these volumes concerns Lawrence's outstanding work on his prose translation of Homer's Odyssey, which took him four years, beginning when he was stationed in Miranshah, India, in the R.A.F. While many of the letters are to his publishers and concern such technical details as payment for his work and the possibility of trade and other editions in the United Kingdom and the United States, they are most valuable for Lawrence's insights into Homer himself and his qualities as a poet. Although he clearly respects Homer, Lawrence is also ready to criticize him when he feels it is necessary. So in these letters to American book designer Bruce Rogers in particular, he notes what he sees as Homer's occasionally weak characterization, unreal melodrama, and occasional lack of artistic power, and while he finds the Iliad a true epic, he feels that the Odyssey does not quite rise to that level. And in a remarkable letter of 16 April 1931 to Rogers, Lawrence not only states his evaluation of Homer's work but also ventures to speculate about Homer's personality and character as judged from that work. This and many other letters in this volume make fascinating reading, including those in which Lawrence details the difficulty of translation, which he sometimes was able to accomplish at the rate of five lines per hour and sometimes only one line per hour. He also had trouble with some books of the Odyssey that he considered weak. As when one studies Seven Pillars of Wisdom and Lawrence's commentary about writing it, from these letters too one gains great respect for Lawrence as a painstaking literary craftsman despite his humble self-deprecation; it is touching that Lawrence never saw himself as an extraordinary writer or translator despite his great talent in both fields.

Also fascinating are Bruce Rogers's comments on his preparation of a "book beautiful" (in William Morris's words), which was produced by Sir Emery Walker and Wilfred Merton. The book is notable for its beautiful roundels as well as its paper, print and binding, a tribute to Rogers's talents as well as those of the master publishers Walker and Merton.

After the book's publication, David Garnett's letter to Lawrence praises the translation very highly, and we read of the book's excellent sales and many reprints of the American edition, and of the royalties which enabled Lawrence to improve his Clouds Hill cottage considerably. Subsequently the head of Oxford University Press in New York asked Lawrence to translate the Arabian Nights, which he declined to do. Rogers also printed up a pamphlet, not for publication, consisting of their correspondence during their work on the Odyssey, which reveals his respect for Lawrence and his justified sense of the importance of this edition. After all of this cheer, the Wilsons' volume concludes with a sad letter from Rogers to Henry Watson Kent lamenting Lawrence's death and the void it left in him.

Given the beauty of the Rogers Odyssey and the quality of Lawrence's translation, it is not surprising that, as the Wilsons tell us in their Foreword, it was exhibited in 1973 at the Pierpont Morgan Library in New York and has been called...