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T. E. Lawrence to Bruce Rogers
30/IV/30
Dear B.R.
Take these suggestions of
mine, the few of them there are, just as suggestions, for your rejection or
acceptance: or for improvement by yourself I like your emendations throughout,
and have tried to embody them all in the substance of the text.
Many interruptions of my
leisure lately. XIV is still revision and unfit for despatch. I am afraid that
the flesh excuses for not working, on sunny evenings!
No news of Mrs. R: which
means well I hope. She is putting up a fine fight. I do hope it will not exhaust
all her strength, and that very soon all anxiety will be over. This is hard upon
you.
Yours
TES
XII
1) The snag in 'bottled
sunlight' is the limited meaning of the word 'bottle' today. 'Jarred sunlight'
is impossible. 'Liquid sunlight' - how is that? or 'Sunny-surfaced wine' which
is very near the Greek truth: 'Stored sunlight' is not bad at all. Of course
bottled sunlight is the best, if we overlook the absence of glass. I agree that
fizzy wines are detestable.
2) 'Mint it on' is not very
happy. You mint in rather than on. 'Stamp it on your heart' is all
right, though violent if you think of foot-stamping. 'Print' I rejected because
printing is today a limited specialised sense of the old word. Also the
Greek word can mean 'Keep it playing in your heart:' up and down, like a
fountain. 'Ponder' the wise men say. 'Dandle' rather. These apparently simple
words are the devil. 'Carry it ever in your heart' would do. 'Print' is jolly
good, except for the modern meaning of printing.
3) I think I deliberately
help out the sea-pieces a link, by using just enough technical terms to carry
verisimilitude. In the original they are a bit amateurish: though nobody ever
wandered about Greece and remained land-lubberly.
I'm very glad Mrs. R. goes
well.
No, I think Philip Sassoon
is already the target of too many arrows to be easily brought down. I like him:
and he is cultivated, artistic, and public-spirited.
XI There's no doubt, I
think, that he went home from that land journey: and I have a notion that he
died in Ithaca: but I (also) have no Classical Dictionary.
T.E.S.
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