【英文原声版26】Charlie Stang：Seven Pillars Of Wisdom

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How did the title “Seven Pillars of Wisdom” come into being？

“智慧七柱”这个书名从何而来？

Zachary Davis: In 1962, Columbia Pictures released Lawrence of Arabia, a nearly four-hour epic film depicting T.E. Lawrence, a British military officer who played a key role in World War I. The movie was a smash hit. It earned the equivalent of what would be today $600,000,000 at the box office and swept the Oscars, including Best Picture. 

扎卡里·戴维斯：1962年，哥伦比亚影业公司发行了《阿拉伯劳伦斯》，这是一部时长近四小时的史诗电影，描述了英国军官T.E.劳伦斯在一战中起到的关键作用。这部电影广受欢迎，票房收入相当于今天的6亿美元，包揽了最佳影片奖等多项奥斯卡奖。

Zachary Davis: Since then, its reputation has only grown and is now considered one of the greatest films ever made. It’s even the film that Steven Spielberg credits for inspiring him to become a director. What most people don’t know, however, is that Lawrence of Arabia is based on Lawrence’s book Seven Pillars of Wisdom, an autobiographical account of his role in WWI.

扎卡里·戴维斯：它从那时起口碑渐长，如今被视为有史以来最伟大的电影之一。史蒂文·斯皮尔伯格甚至就是在这部电影的鼓舞下成为了一名导演。不过大部分人不知道，《阿拉伯的劳伦斯》是根据劳伦斯本人的著作《智慧七柱》改编的。这本书是一部自传体小说，讲述了他自己在一战时的经历。

Charles Stang: It's one of the most profound reading experiences I've ever had. My name is Charles Stang. I'm a professor at Harvard Divinity School and I'm director of the Center for the Study of World Religions there.

查尔斯·斯唐：这是我读过的最棒的内容。我叫查尔斯·斯唐，是哈佛大学神学院的教授，也是神学院世界宗教研究中心的主任。

Zachary Davis: Stang first came across this book when he was abroad in the 1990s.

扎卡里·戴维斯：上世纪90年代，斯唐在国外第一次接触到这本书。

Charles Stang: Well, I was living in England at the time. And as you may know, England has these long breaks, these long vacations, and this was the Easter vacation. So I had a month to myself and I was travelling for the first time to the Middle East. And I was looking for something to bring with me to read. I happened to be reading at that time another book called The Outsider by Colin Wilson. And he has a chapter in that book on T E Lawrence as a kind of archetypal outsider.

查尔斯·斯唐：我当时住在英格兰。众所周知，英格兰有很多长假，那次刚好是复活节假期。我有一个月的空闲时间，于是就去中东地区旅游了，那是我第一次去中东。我想找点东西在旅行途中看。那时我刚好在看柯林·威尔逊的《局外人》，书中有一章讲到了T.E.劳伦斯，说他是典型的局外人。

Charles Stang: I didn't know anything about T E Lawrence. And so I was surprised to learn who he was, what he had done, and that he'd written this long and allegedly beautiful book called Seven Pillars of Wisdom. So I marched down the high street, bought a copy and took it with me as I traveled through Israel, Palestine, Egypt and Jordan. And I was reading the book in many of the places that the action of seven pillars takes place. 

查尔斯·斯唐：我当时对T.E.劳伦斯一无所知。在了解到他的身份、经历以及他那本众口交赞的长篇小说《智慧七柱》后，我着实震惊了。于是我走到街上，买了这本书，带着他游历了以色列、巴勒斯坦、埃及和约旦。读这本书的过程中，我去了书里很多事件的发生地。

Zachary Davis: Lawrence led an interesting life. He used this book not only to chronicle his time in the Middle East, but also to compile the complexities of his life and make sense of the world around him at the time. 

扎卡里·戴维斯：劳伦斯的生活很有意思。他写这本书不仅是为了记录自己在中东的经历，还为了梳理生活中的复杂一面，了解当时所处的世界。

Charles Stang: Mostly people site Lawrence like a very good guerrilla soldier or a kind of savvy diplomat or an ascetic adventure. And that's all those things are true. But I don't actually think that's the center around which to organize his chaotic and complicated life. I'm more inclined to look for it in these very difficult and demanding passages about what we would label sort of philosophy and religion.

查尔斯·斯唐：人们往往把劳伦斯看作一名杰出的游击战士、精明的外交家或是一个严于律己的传奇人物。这些确实是他的某一面，但并非构成他混乱、复杂生活的核心一面。我更想在这些复杂难懂的书中段落里寻找他对于哲学和宗教的思考。

Zachary Davis: Welcome to Writ Large, a podcast about how books change the world. I’m Zachary Davis. In each episode, I talk with one of the world’s leading scholars about one book that changed the course of history. For this episode I sat down with professor Charles Stang to discuss Seven Pillars of Wisdom.

扎卡里·戴维斯：欢迎收听：100本改变你和世界的书，在这里我们为大家讲述改变世界的书籍。我是扎卡里·戴维斯。每一集，我都会和一位世界顶尖学者探讨一本影响历史进程的书。在本集，我和查尔斯·斯唐教授一起讨论《智慧七柱》。

Zachary Davis: Thomas Edward Lawrence was born in Wales in 1888. In 1910, when he was 22, he was offered a position as an archaeologist in northern Syria for the British museum. Four years later, while he was still in the Middle East, WWI began. Lawrence remained in the Middle East for almost a decade, working for the British military during the war. He returned to the United Kingdom after the war and wrote Seven Pillars of Wisdom.

扎卡里·戴维斯：托马斯·爱德华·劳伦斯于1888年出生在威尔士。1910年，也就是22岁时，他被安排参加大英博物馆在如今叙利亚北部地区的考古行动。四年后一战爆发了，那时他仍然在中东。他在中东待了近十年，一战期间一直效力于英国军队。战后他回到英国，写下了《智慧七柱》一书。

Charles Stang: It is a book that defies genre and definition, and I think that's actually one of its achievements. And I think it's quite intentional on his part. It is on its surface a chronicle of his part in the Arab Revolt. But that actually takes up only a small portion of its hundreds and hundreds of pages. Much more than that is a description of the landscape, sometimes in excruciating detail, a description of the people that he was traveling through and with specifically the nomadic tribes that he was working with, the Bedouin.

查尔斯·斯唐：这本书不拘于体裁和人为限制，我认为这是它成就之一。劳伦斯是有意这么做的。表面上看，这本书记录了他在阿拉伯大起义中发挥的作用，但这部分内容只占了全书几百页中的一小部分。整本书更多是在描写风景，有时候描写得极其细致，此外还描写了所到之处的人们，尤其是他共事的游牧民族，贝都因人。

Zachary Davis: Before the war, Lawrence set out to write a scholarly book about seven great cities of the Middle East titled Seven Pillars of Wisdom. He abandoned the project but kept the title. He began writing this Seven Pillars of Wisdom in 1919. On a train ride he tragically misplaced his briefcase that contained a nearly-complete draft of the manuscript and had to start over. He finished the book in 1922 and it was first published in 1926. 

扎卡里·戴维斯：一战前，劳伦斯准备撰写一本关于中东七大城市的学术著作，题为《智慧七柱》。他后来放弃了这个学术项目，但沿用了这个标题。1919年，他开始写小说《智慧七柱》。一次坐火车时，他很悲剧地把公文包放错了地方，包里几乎有整本书的全部手稿，于是他不得不重写。这本书最终于1922年完成，并于1926年出版。

Zachary Davis: Lawrence wanted to write more than just a war chronicle. Although he does talk about the war, he paints a broader picture, including contemplations on the desert, religion, and landscape.

扎卡里·戴维斯：劳伦斯想写的不仅仅是战争纪实。虽然他确实谈到了战争，但他描绘了更广阔的内容，包括对沙漠、宗教和风景的感想。

Charles Stang: And the thing that really attracted me to it was these sort of almost arias, these sort of philosophical and theological meditations on topics as diverse as the theological significance of the desert, the birth of monotheism, the body and the spirit and the war between them. And that's what's sort of really drew me in to this text.

查尔斯·斯唐：真正吸引我的是这些类似于咏叹调的内容和哲学、神学方面的思考，比如思考各种沙漠的神学意义、一神论的诞生、肉体与精神以及这两者间的冲突。这才是真正吸引我看这本书的原因。

What’s the Englishman’s role in the Arab Revolt?

这个英国人在阿拉伯起义中扮演了什么角色？

Zachary Davis: When Lawrence first arrived in Syria, the country was part of the Ottoman Empire. This empire covered much of the modern Middle East, including present-day Lebanon, Jordan, Israel, and Turkey. In World War One, the Ottoman Empire sided with Germany. Germany was fighting the allied forces, France, Russia, Italy, and Britain. 

扎卡里·戴维斯：劳伦斯首次抵达如今的叙利亚时，这个地方还是奥斯曼帝国的一部分。奥斯曼帝国拥有现代中东地区的大部分领土，包括如今的黎巴嫩、约旦、以色列和土耳其。一战时，奥斯曼帝国与德意志帝国结盟，而与德意志交战的是法国、俄国、意大利和英国等国组成的联盟。

Charles Stang: So by virtue of aligning with Germany, the Ottoman Empire is now at odds with Britain and its allies. And Britain, just to remind everyone at this point has both control over Egypt, much of Iraq and of course, famously India. So its interests are very proximate to the Ottoman Empire.

查尔斯·斯唐：由于和德意志帝国结盟，奥斯曼帝国成了英国及盟友国的对头。这里需要提醒大家一下，英国当时控制着全部埃及、伊拉克的大部分地区以及印度，所以它在地缘方面的诉求与奥斯曼帝国非常接近。

Zachary Davis: The Ottoman Empire’s reach included what is today Saudi Arabia. But the people in that region wanted independence from the Ottoman empire. Britain saw these Arab forces as potential allies. What was the Arab Revolt and what was T.E. Lawrence doing there?

扎卡里·戴维斯：奥斯曼帝国的疆域还包括了如今的沙特阿拉伯。但是该地区的人们希望摆脱奥斯曼帝国的统治，因此英国将这些阿拉伯武装力量视为潜在的盟友。那么，什么是阿拉伯大起义，T.E.劳伦斯在那里做了什么呢？

Charles Stang: The Arab Revolt was conceived as an opportunity to harass the Ottoman Empire from the Eastern Front, and perhaps if lucky enough to deal a fatal blow to the Ottoman Empire in such a way that they would fall out of the war and expose Germany.

查尔斯·斯唐：阿拉伯大起义被认为可以从东部阵线动摇奥斯曼帝国的统治，幸运的话，或许会给奥斯曼帝国造成致命的打击。这样他们就可以避免与奥斯曼帝国交战，并让德意志暴露于协约国的威胁之下。

Charles Stang: The Arab Revolt started when certain British administrators opened a correspondence with a particular family—Sharif Hussein, the emir of Mecca—to encourage him to start a revolt. So he was the emir of Mecca and Medina and that family is the Hashemite Dynasty. So the Arab Revolt started when the British were trying to convince this dynasty to revolt.

查尔斯·斯唐：阿拉伯大起义是这么开始的：一些英国政府官员与侯赛因，也就是麦加城中穆斯林的长官通信，鼓励他起义。因为侯赛因是麦加和麦地那的贵族，也是哈希姆家族的族长。在英国说服这个家族起义后，阿拉伯起义便揭开了序幕。

Zachary Davis: The British imagined this revolt would start in the Arab peninsula and then reach up north, through Syria. To get the Arab forces to agree to the revolt, the British promised that after the war, they would recognize this territory as a single, independent, unified Arab state, which would extend from present-day Syria in the north, to present-day Yemen in the south. This agreement was reached through the McMahon-Hussein Correspondence.

扎卡里·戴维斯：英国人猜想起义会从阿拉伯半岛开始，穿过叙利亚一直推进到北方。为了让阿拉伯军队同意起义，英国承诺在战争结束后，他们会承认该地区为一个单一、独立且统一的阿拉伯国家，领土北至如今的叙利亚，南至如今的也门。该协议是在《侯赛因-麦克马洪信件》中达成的。

Zachary Davis: This was a series of letters exchanged between Great Britain and Hussein bin Ali, Sharif of Mecca, in which the British would recognize the Arab independence after the war in exchange for Hussein starting the Arab Revolt. By this point, Lawrence had already been working for the British military for two years surveying the Negev Desert, in what is now Israel. In 1916 he was sent by the British to help organize the Arab Revolt. 

扎卡里·戴维斯：该信件是英国与麦加的贵族侯赛因·伊本·阿里之间的一系列来往信件，其中提到：英国人将在战后承认阿拉伯独立；作为交换，侯赛因需要发动阿拉伯起义。当时，劳伦斯已经在英国部队工作了两年，考察了如今以色列的内盖夫沙漠。1916年，他被英国派去协助领导阿拉伯起义。

Charles Stang: Insofar as we can tell from Seven Pillars of Wisdom itself, what Lawrence did was serve as a kind of a sort of filter or film through which information passed from the British to the Arab side. He was literally a liaison. Eventually, his role grew and grew. He wasn't expecting it, and neither were the British.

查尔斯·斯唐：就《智慧七柱》中的内容来看，劳伦斯的作用类似于一个过滤器，将信息从英国一方传递到阿拉伯一方。他其实是个联络员。不过最终，他的作用越来越大，这既出乎他本人的预料，也出乎英国人的预料。

Charles Stang: He wasn't a trained soldier, but on the fly he had to learn enough demolitions to blow up railway trains. He wasn't a trained diplomat, but on the fly he had to learn how to build, help build a coalition of all of these Arab tribes, because, of course, it wasn't just the Emir's family in Mecca that they needed. They needed all of these tribes through whose territory the revolt was moving. They needed their either complicity or their full cooperation.

查尔斯·斯唐：他不是训练有素的士兵，但必须迅速学会各种爆破技巧来炸毁火车；他不是经验丰富的外交家，却要迅速学会如何帮助这些阿拉伯部落建立一个联盟，因为显然他们需要的不仅仅是麦加的贵族，还需要动员起义覆盖地区的所有部落。他们需要盟友或合作对象。

Charles Stang: And these were tribes that were some of them were allies. Some of them were rivals for scarce resources like wells, water and some of them were open enemies. So Lawrence helped the Prince Faisal, who was the emir's son, who became the principal leader of the revolt. Lawrence helped him build this coalition.  

查尔斯·斯唐：这些部落中，有些是盟友，有些是争夺井、水等稀缺资源的对手，而有些是公认的死敌。于是劳伦斯帮助起义军领袖、也就是侯赛因的儿子费萨尔亲王建立了联盟。

Zachary Davis: Sharif Hussen’s son, Prince Faisal, together with Lawrence and the Arab forces, made their way up what is today the Saudi Arabian peninsula using guerilla style war tactics to weaken the Ottoman Empire. 

扎卡里·戴维斯：谢里夫侯赛因的儿子费萨尔亲王与劳伦斯和阿拉伯军队一起，以游击战的方式在如今的沙特阿拉伯一带开展武装活动，削弱了奥斯曼帝国的实力。

Charles Stang: It was essentially an insurgent campaign where they harassed the Ottoman forces. They never really engaged them conventionally. What they did instead was they would detonate bombs all up and down their supply chain, which is essentially a single railroad that ran from Mecca all the way to Damascus. 

查尔斯·斯唐：他们袭击奥斯曼帝国军队的时候，本质上是在搞破坏。他们没有按常规作战方式出牌，而是在物资供应线路的南北进行轰炸。这条线路是一条从麦加延伸到大马士革的铁路。

Zachary Davis: This was known as the Hejaz Railway. Its destruction further weakened the Ottoman empire.

扎卡里·戴维斯：这就是汉志铁路。对汉志铁路的破坏进一步削弱了奥斯曼帝国的实力。

Charles Stang: And the Arab Revolt essentially moved north as the British were pushing up from Egypt towards Damascus. They took Be'er Sheva and then Jerusalem and eventually Damascus. And the Arab Revolt was this sort of eastern wing of that movement. 

查尔斯·斯唐：英国人从埃及向大马士革推进，阿拉伯军队也随之向北推进。他们前后占领了贝尔谢瓦、耶路撒冷以及大马士革。阿拉伯起义军是这场起义的东线力量。

Zachary Davis: In 1919, the British and Arabs captured Damascus, marking the end of the war. Later that year, during the Paris Peace Conference, treaties were signed and decisions were made on the settlement of the war. Lawrence attended the conference dressed in Arab robes along with prince Faisal and other members of the Arab Revolt.  He had developed a close friendship with them and wanted to make sure they got what they were promised by the British.

扎卡里·戴维斯：1919年，英国人和阿拉伯人占领了大马士革，这标志着起义的结束。1919年下半年，巴黎和会签署了多项关于起义的协议与决定。劳伦斯、费萨尔亲王以及其他阿拉伯起义军成员身穿阿拉伯长袍参加了会议。劳伦斯与阿拉伯人建立了深厚的友谊，想要确保英国人兑现承诺。

Charles Stang: And so he engaged the Arabs in this revolt on the promise that they would have some kind of self-determination. I mean, he was very ambivalent about the revolt and what came in its wake. You can see that in the opening pages of Seven Pillars of Wisdom, he is torn about whether he should have ever engaged the Arabs in this, knowing that the British were making contradictory promises to the French about renewing their colonial influence in Syria and Lebanon. 

查尔斯·斯唐：他帮助阿拉伯人起义，承诺战后阿拉伯人将拥有自治权。所以劳伦斯对这场起义和随后的事情非常纠结。你可以看到，在《智慧七柱》的开篇，他便纠结自己既然知道英法两国的交易，那是否应该让阿拉伯人卷入这场战争。当时英国承诺法国将恢复对叙利亚及黎巴嫩的殖民统治，而这与英国对阿拉伯人的承诺相冲突。

How did the revolt shape the Middle East?

起义如何影响了中东局势？

Zachary Davis: As agreed to in the McMahon-Hussein Correspondence before the war, the Arab forces were expecting their land to be recognized by the British as an independent nation. After the war, the British essentially reneged on their promise, claiming that they had a different understanding of the agreement. 

扎卡里·戴维斯：按照战前《侯赛因-麦克马洪信件》中的约定，阿拉伯军队占领之地将被英国承认为独立的国家。战争结束后，英国人背弃了诺言，声称他们对协议的理解不同。

Charles Stang: Some of the Arabs who participated in the revolt were looking forward to a robust self-determination. And at the conclusion of the war, they came to the Paris peace conference, hoping to have that self-determination affirmed by the so-to-speak world powers. They found themselves sorely disappointed because as Lawrence goes on to explain, the old men of Empire came in and remade the world just as they just as it was before.

查尔斯·斯唐：参与起义的阿拉伯人期盼着彻底的自治权。战争结束后，他们参加了巴黎和会，希望各大国可以承认他们的自治权。然而正如劳伦斯所说的那样，帝国的老朽们蜂拥而上，像从前一样瓜分了世界，这让阿拉伯人非常失望。

Zachary Davis: So what influence did Lawrence have on the shape of the Middle East in the outcome? And maybe more broadly, what is his role in the final decades of British imperialism? 

扎卡里·戴维斯：那么，劳伦斯对中东局势有何影响？或许从更广泛的角度讲，他在英国最后几十年的帝国主义政治中扮演了什么角色？

Charles Stang: So obviously the most significant thing and this is, of course, not attributable only to Lawrence, but to the British campaign against the Ottoman Empire and the Arab Revolt generally. But the Ottomans are essentially swept out of the Middle East. So what's going to come in the wake of the Ottomans?

查尔斯·斯唐：显然最重要的影响是将奥斯曼帝国赶出了中东。当然这不仅仅归功于劳伦斯，还归功于整场英国反对奥斯曼帝国的运动以及整场阿拉伯大起义。那么奥斯曼帝国退出中东之后，发生了什么？

Zachary Davis: After the Paris Peace conference, much of the Middle East was left unresolved. In 1921, Britain assigned colonial secretary Winston Churchill with the task of sorting out the post-war Middle Eastern policy. Meanwhile, in the years following the war, Lawrence had received international recognition for his role in the war and for being a critic of British policy. This caught Churchill’s attention.

扎卡里·戴维斯：巴黎和会后，中东大部分地区的归属问题仍未解决。1921年，英国派殖民地事务大臣温斯顿·丘吉尔负责战后中东政策。战后的几年中，劳伦斯因其在战争中的作用以及对英国政策的批评，在国际上广受认可。这引起了丘吉尔的注意。

Charles Stang: Winston Churchill, a very savvy young man, said, I'm going to engage this star who has publicly been writing editorials against British policy. I'm going to engage him and help and ask him to help us forge a new policy. And over the course of the next year or two, they essentially settle the modern Middle East. 

查尔斯·斯唐：这位精明的年轻人——温斯顿·丘吉尔说，我要见见这位公开发表社论、反对英国政策的著名人士。让他帮我们制定新政策。在接下来的一两年内，他们大体上勾勒出了现代中东的版图。

Zachary Davis: They gave Lebanon and Syria to France, and Palestine fell under British control. They put Prince Abdullah, another son of Sharif Hussein’s in charge of Palestine. They placed his other son Prince Faisal, leader of the Arab Revolt, as king of Iraq. Their father, Sharif Hussein, continued to rule over Mecca. But another ruler named Ibn Saud, who had already conquered much of the Arab peninsula, also had his eye on Mecca.

扎卡里·戴维斯：他们让法国托管黎巴嫩和叙利亚，让英国托管巴勒斯坦，后来又让谢里夫侯赛因的一个儿子阿卜杜勒亲王管理巴勒斯坦地区。他们还让侯赛因的另一个儿子、阿拉伯起义军领袖费萨尔亲王担任伊拉克国王。侯赛因则继续统治麦加。不过，一位征服了阿拉伯半岛大部分地区的统治者——伊本·沙特觊觎起了麦加。

Charles Stang: So that's where they leave things. They leave a peninsula kind of with these two strongmen vying for control. The Emir of Mecca, Ibn Saud. We all know where that goes. Because, of course, the peninsula is now Saudi Arabia. Ibn Saud, eventually extends his reach, consolidates his control over the entire peninsula. The King Abdullah, that family is still in control of Jordan. The Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan is the last remaining Hashemite dynasty. And they would put it put there directly by the British in 1921. 

查尔斯·斯唐：结果就是，英国让两个强悍的领袖争夺起对麦加的控制权。最终伊本·沙特统治了麦加。这点显而易见，因为这个地方现在隶属于沙特阿拉伯。伊本·沙特最终扩张了领土，巩固了对整个半岛的控制。不过统治约旦的仍然是阿卜杜勒国王的家族，这是哈希姆家族仅存的有统治权的后裔。在1921年英国将这里划分给他们之后，他们就统治着这个地区。

Charles Stang: If you look at a map of the modern Middle East, the borders these nation states are borders established by the British in 1921. I mean there are straight lines through deserts where you know no desert did. They don't make it doesn't make any sense and it doesn't make any it makes even less sense when you think of the fact that these deserts are home to nomadic people who are moving across vast territories. And we are living with that same map, even though there are new governments, new and new leaders what not. The currency. It was established by the British and Lawrence was a part of it. 

查尔斯·斯唐：若是看一看现代中东地区的地图，不难发现这些国家的边界与英国人1921年划定的边界相吻合。地图上有笔直的国界线穿过沙漠，这是前所未有的情况。这样做没有任何意义，因为这些沙漠上生活着游牧民族，他们在广阔无垠的沙漠中四处迁徙。如今中东地区的国界线和当时相同，区别只在于如今有了一些新的政权和领导者。这块版图是由英国人划定的，劳伦斯也参与了其中。

Zachary Davis: It was during this period of sorting out the Middle East that Lawrence wrote Seven Pillars of Wisdom. The text shows his ambivalence to how things played out after the war. On the surface, he claimed to be satisfied with Churchill’s solutions, but deep down he felt it wasn’t entirely fair to the Arabs. At the same time, his public reputation as a war hero was growing. 

扎卡里·戴维斯：正是在划定中东版图的这段时间里，劳伦斯写了《智慧七柱》。这本书展现了他对战后局势发展的矛盾态度。表面上看，他对丘吉尔的解决方案非常满意，但内心深处他觉得这么做对阿拉伯人并不全然公平。而与此同时，人们愈发把他视作战争英雄。

Charles Stang: Lawrence became a hero in Britain because you had a public that was devastated by the losses in the war. Lawrence himself lost two of his four brothers on that front. And in the wake of the war, Lawrence was discovered by an American journalist and essentially peddled as a kind of romantic counter point to the horrors of the Western Front.

查尔斯·斯唐：劳伦斯在英国成为了英雄，因为人们对他在战争期间的悲惨遭遇震惊不已——他的四个兄弟中，有两个都在前线牺牲了。战后，一名美国记者发掘了劳伦斯的事迹，将他的战绩宣传为“西线惨烈战况的浪漫对比”。

Charles Stang: So everything that was devastating about the Western Front, even though the allies prevailed at such staggering costs, in the east  there were so few British losses and there was a kind of orientalist fantasy ready to hand with this dashing young British officer helping lead these Arab nomads to a glorious victory. Now, that in and of itself is a myth, but it was a myth very powerfully peddled to the British and American public in the immediate wake of the war.

查尔斯·斯唐：尽管盟军在西线获胜，但代价巨大，损失惨重；而在东线，英国的损失很少。这位英勇的英国年轻军官带领阿拉伯游牧民族取得了光荣的胜利，编织出一曲颇具东方色彩的美妙战歌。东线战场的胜利变成了一段传奇，这段传奇在战争结束之际颇受英美民众的欢迎。

What’s the love story behind the book?

这本书的背后有着怎样的爱情故事？

Zachary Davis Why do you think he wrote this? Like, what was his motivation?

扎卡里·戴维斯：您觉得劳伦斯为什么会写这本书呢？他的动机是什么？

Charles Stang: The dedication to Seven Pillars of Wisdom is a remarkable poem to someone or something. The initials S. A. And no one knows who or what exactly S. A. is, what it refers to, who it refers to. Although most people and I include myself here believe that it refers to a young man who Lawrence often refers to as Dahoum.

查尔斯·斯唐：《智慧七柱》这部非凡之作是为缩写为S.A.的某人或某事而写的。没有人知道S.A.具体指什么事或是什么人。不过包括我在内的大部分人都觉得，它指的是那个常被劳伦斯叫作“达侯姆”的年轻人。

Charles Stang: Dahoum was one of the young men who worked on the archaeological site in Syria, where Lawrence was a resident archaeologist for several years before the war. And this young man and Lawrence had obviously a close and intimate relationship. I think it's undeniable that Lawrence loved him or was in love with him. Almost certainly not a relationship that was consummated. Lawrence's love for this young man helps explain his motivation for not only writing Seven Pillars of Wisdom, but even imagining the Arab Revolt itself.  

查尔斯·斯唐：达侯姆是在叙利亚考古现场工作的一个年轻人，劳伦斯在战前几年就在这里参与过考古行动，显然与这个年轻人关系密切。毋庸置疑，劳伦斯爱他或和他相互爱慕。但几乎可以肯定，这段关系并不圆满。劳伦斯对达侯姆的爱不仅仅是他写《智慧七柱》的原因，甚至也可能是他参与阿拉伯大起义的原因。

Zachary Davis: As the war was approaching, Lawrence left the archaeological site hoping to return, but things didn’t work out as expected. He became an intelligence officer and was in the war longer than he anticipated. Lawrence wasn’t able to get in touch with Dahoum during the war because communication was interrupted. 

扎卡里·戴维斯：随着战争的临近，劳伦斯离开了考古遗址想回到英国，但事与愿违，他成为了一个情报官员，在战争中任职的时间比他预期的还要长。战争期间通信中断，劳伦斯因而与达侯姆失去了联系。

Charles Stang: Several days before the revolt ended with its entry into Damascus, the Arabs entry into Damascus, Lawrence learned—we don't know quite how—but he learned through someone that this young man Dahoum had died. I believe he died of typhus, but I'm not sure about that. So he died just before Lawrence was about to achieve the end he was seeking. Now, that helps make sense of this dedicatory poem. 

查尔斯·斯唐：就在起义军占领大马士革的前几天，劳伦斯获悉达侯姆已经去世了。我们不知道他是怎么得知这个消息的，可能是有人告诉他的。达侯姆可能死于斑疹伤寒，当然这只是我个人的猜测。这个年轻人在劳伦斯实现起义目标前就去世了。知道了这个背景，我们就不难理解书中作为致辞的这段诗了：

Charles Stang: So. To S. A. I loved you, so I drew these tides of men into my hands and wrote my will across the sky and stars to earn you freedom. The seven pillared worthy house that your eyes might be shining for me when we came. Death seemed my servant on the road till we were near and saw you waiting. When you smiled and in sorrowful envy, he outran me and took you apart into his quietness.

查尔斯·斯唐：“致 S.A.：我爱你，所以我才领此波涛人马在手中，以星辰书写我志在天空，誓为你争自由：那七柱之宝屋，当我到临，你的明眸也将为我晶莹泪涌。死神沿路对我唯唯诺诺，直到目标就在前头。并看到你在鹄候：你展颜微笑，令他伤心嫉妒不再对我称臣俯首。并欺前将你掳走：囚入他死寂的冥幽。

Charles Stang: Love, the way-weary, groped to your body. Our brief wage hours for the moment before Earth's soft, soft hand explored your shape and the blind worms grew fat upon your substance. Men prayed me that I said our work, the inviolate house as a memory of you, but for fit monument. I shattered it unfinished. And now the little things creep out to patch themselves hovels in the marred shadow of your gift.

查尔斯·斯唐：爱，旅途疲惫，摸索着寻你的躯壳，这是我们的报酬，只有片刻，在大地以柔软的手对你的形貌探索、盲目的蛆也借着你的骸体长胖之前，暂时是我们的。人们祈求我将我们的成果，那座神圣的华宅，当作对你的缅怀。但我将它拆碎，重建适合你的纪念堂，尚未完成：现在，那些卑琐的东西爬出来，在你的礼物残缺不全的影子中，替他们自己拼凑陋室。”

Charles Stang: Why did he write Seven Pillars of Wisdom? Why did he engage in the Arab Revolt? There's many answers to that question. But one answer we can't ignore is that he had this deeply personal loving relationship and that he wanted to be able to offer his beloved a gift, which was freedom for the entire Arab people. A gift he was never able to deliver because the young man died before the revolt’s conclusion.

查尔斯·斯唐：他为什么要写《智慧七柱》？为什么要参加阿拉伯起义？有很多种解释，但一个难以忽略的说法是，他深爱着某个人，想要为他的爱人献上一份礼物，那就是给所有阿拉伯人自由。然而达侯姆终究没能收到这份礼物，因为他在起义结束前就去世了。

Why did Britain break its promises to Arabs?

英国为何背弃对阿拉伯人的承诺？

Zachary Davis: The war left Lawrence disenchanted with British policy. He was openly critical of the British government in Seven Pillars of Wisdom. 

扎卡里·戴维斯：这场战争让劳伦斯对英国的政策深感失望。他在《智慧七柱》中公开批评了英国政府。

Charles Stang: Well, at the same time, as he was being peddled as a kind of romantic hero, a kind of salve to the public that had just been devastated by the war. He was a public critic of the British government's reversal or failure to live up to its promises to the Arabs.

查尔斯·斯唐：与此同时，他被宣传为一位浪漫的英雄，慰藉着人们饱受战争摧残的内心。他公开批评英国政府背弃了对阿拉伯人的承诺。

Charles Stang: That's the particular thing he was calling attention to. But more generally, what he was calling attention to was the ways in which the ends of empire, which were profiting the elite in Britain, were being pursued at the expense of not just the subject peoples, but the rank and file British themselves. 

查尔斯·斯唐：这就是他想要人们关注的事情。不过从更大的角度看，他想要人们关注的是，以这种方式来拆分曾属于奥斯曼帝国的领土，虽然会使英国的精英阶层受益，但损害的不只是是阿拉伯人民的利益，也是英国普通民众的利益。

Zachary Davis: Lawrence was shedding light on the dark underbelly of British imperialism. He respected the British soldiers for their heroism and patriotism that he witnessed during the war. But he was critical of how the elite simply fed them into the imperial machine.

扎卡里·戴维斯：劳伦斯揭露了英国帝国主义的阴暗面。他尊重英国将士们在战争中的英勇无畏和爱国精神，战争期间他亲眼目睹了这一点。但他不满于上层精英利用他们来实现自己的帝国主义野心。

Charles Stang: And what was for me very interesting is the realization that the British Empire was like a hydra. It had so many heads. There was no single agency directing this thing. It makes sense. It was so massive. But there are all these different parts of the British Empire vying for influence and control, and they were at odds with one another.

查尔斯·斯唐：我意识到了一个有意思的点：大英帝国就像九头蛇海德拉一样，它有很多机构，但没有哪个机构单独主导这件事。这样就说得通了。帝国太过庞大，各个机构都在争夺影响力和控制权，彼此间存在着分歧。

Charles Stang: And Lawrence calls attention to that fact. So for in this case, he criticizes specifically, say, the British turning their backs on the Arabs’ hopes for some kind of self-determination because the British wanted to maintain petrol production in Mesopotamia. So that kind of instrumental, exploitative logic Lawrence calls attention to.

查尔斯·斯唐：劳伦斯呼吁关注这件事。对于当时的情况，他批评道，英国之所以对阿拉伯人在自治权方面的诉求置之不理，是因为想要保持对美索不达米亚地区石油的开采权。劳伦斯呼吁要警惕这种剥削利用式的做法。

Charles Stang: Now, what's curious is, though, he's ambivalent about the British empire’s aims. He's a patriot. But at the same time, he's a critic. What's curious to me is that as the years roll on after Lawrence's death, he is remembered and criticized as a kind of unthinking, uncritical cog in the imperial machine.

查尔斯·斯唐：有意思的是，他对英国政府的目的非常纠结。他爱国，但他也批评了政府。让我好奇的是，在劳伦斯去世了多年之后，人们竟然批评他是帝国主义机器中一个不加思考、批评不当的齿轮。

Zachary Davis: Despite being critical of the British Empire, Lawrence is largely remembered as just the opposite. His criticisms, however, did inspire future writers and thinkers opposed to colonialism.

扎卡里·戴维斯：虽然劳伦斯批评了大英帝国，但大体上人们觉得他还是在为大英帝国服务。不过他的批评确实鼓舞了后来的作家和思想家反对殖民主义。

Charles Stang: So he's much more savvy and critical and complicated than he's given credit for.

查尔斯·斯唐：他比人们以为的还要聪明、敢于批判，也更复杂。

What’s the religious part of the book?

这本书在宗教信仰方面讲了哪些内容？

Zachary Davis: I guess I'd like to spend some time now with the mystical or literary or meditative parts of the writing and you as a theologian, a scholar of religion, talk us through what are these passages saying? How did you interpret them at your first time reading and how have they sat with you over the decades? And should, should more people spend some time with these passages?

扎卡里·戴维斯：接下来一点时间，我想谈谈书中神秘的、富于文学性和思考性的内容。您作为神学家和宗教学者，觉得这些内容表达了什么呢？您第一次阅读时是如何理解的？在过去几十年里，这本书对你有什么影响呢？这些内容是否值得大家阅读？

Charles Stang: In answer to that last question, I would say yes. And one of the things that's been most curious to me over the years is realizing how little attention these kinds of meditative, these sort of mystical meditations have received from readers. Readers are much more likely to ask whether or not this detail of the military chronicle is true or false. Then they are to take seriously these meditations. 

查尔斯·斯唐：对于最后一个问题，我的回答是值得。多年来我一直好奇，读者们对这些思考性内容的关注少到了何种程度。读者们可能更关心书里对战争细节的描写到底是真是假。他们应当同样关注作者的所思所想。

Zachary Davis: The vast expanse of the desert had a significant influence on Lawrence and he felt it was important to include. 

扎卡里·戴维斯：劳伦斯被广阔无垠的沙漠深深打动，认为有必要在书中描写它。

Charles Stang: And that experience of the sort of divine nothingness of the desert is what Lawrence found intoxicating and served as a kind of orientation for him throughout the campaign and honestly, throughout the rest of his life. He continued to seek out that kind of experience of annihilating emptiness through different means. But that is what the desert for him essentially was, and he was convinced that Judaism, Christianity and Islam are all built on the edifice of their founders first experience with the desert.

查尔斯·斯唐：沙漠带来的神圣虚无的感觉让他陶醉，指引着他起义前进的方向，也指引着他后来人生的方向。他继续以不同的方式体验着对抗虚无的感觉。对他而言，这是沙漠的本质内涵。他相信犹太教、基督教和伊斯兰教的创始人都是在首次体验了沙漠之美后创立了这些宗教。

Zachary Davis: Lawrence wasn’t religious in the traditional sense, but he did find some form of spirituality in the desert. 

扎卡里·戴维斯：劳伦斯不是传统意义上的信教者，但他确实在沙漠中感受到某种精神内核。

Charles Stang: One of the problems in trying to figure out what Lawrence believes is that he's often ventriloquizing through the Arabs he's just claiming to describe. So many of his descriptions of what the Arabs believe these Bedouin believe seems very thinly veiled confession. He's essentially exploring what he thinks, but putting it in their mouths or attributing it to them.

查尔斯·斯唐：想弄清劳伦斯的信仰绝非易事，因为他总是借阿拉伯人之口来暗示自己的想法。在书中多处，他借阿拉伯人之口描述贝都因人的信仰，然而这似乎只是一层薄薄的掩饰。实际上他在探索自己的想法，只是借他人之口表达出来。

Charles Stang: So having maybe added that caveat, I would say what I sense in Lawrence is a kind of paradoxical confession—on the one hand of a transcendent source that is not God, or not God as he has been taught to think of God, not the biblical God, but some sort of transcendent source that is closer to nothingness; and the idea that all of creation is also somehow God, or is somehow reflective of the fullness of that source.

查尔斯·斯唐：还有一点需要补充一下，我在劳伦斯身上感受到了一种自相矛盾的信仰：一方面，他相信至高无上的力量并非上帝，至少并不是他之前以为的《圣经》中的上帝，而是一种更近似于虚无的至高无上的力量；而另一方面，他又相信万物皆有上帝之灵，或至少可以反映出上帝是万物之源。

Charles Stang: You can find both of those claims in Christianity, of course, elsewhere, but it is not the version of Christianity Lawrence was raised in, certainly. So one way you can think about Lawrence's religiosity is that he is recovering threads of a much richer tapestry of the Christian mystical tradition. But, he doesn't recognize those as really Christian. In fact, he recognizes them or labels them more like atheism. And he's not wrong. And so that's what I mean when I try to speak about this sort of atheistic mysticism in Lawrence.

查尔斯·斯唐：当然其他地方的基督教中可能也有类似的说法，但英国国教肯定没有。所以可以认为，劳伦斯重新提出了许多更为丰富的宗教神秘主义的观点，但他并不觉得这是基督教，反而认为这是无神论。当然他也不无道理。所以说他信奉的是无神论框架下的神秘主义，这就是我要表达的意思。

Zachary Davis: In Seven Pillars of Wisdom, Lawrence gives a lot of space for his meditations on the desert.

扎卡里·戴维斯：在《智慧七柱》中，劳伦斯花了很大篇幅阐述了对沙漠的印象。

Charles Stang: It's very long and it has large tracts of what I think it's fair to say or is sort of boring landscape description. I mean, Lawrence gives amazingly detailed descriptions of different kinds of rock sand formations. He's just enthralled with this detail.

查尔斯·斯唐：篇幅很长，而且可以说很大一部分都是无聊的景色描写。劳伦斯极为精细地描述了各种各样的岩层与沙层，他对这些细节异常着迷。

Charles Stang: The book that really sold well, the bestseller of Seven Pillars of Wisdom was an abridgement made in 1927 called Revolt in theDesert, which stripped out a lot of the landscapes, stripped out all the mystical meditations, stripped out all the weird philosophical and theological reflections in what you get is a much cleaner adventure narrative, a war chronicle. That book sold like hotcakes in both the United States and in Britain, so which I think tells you about what readers want. They don't want something that defies genre. 

查尔斯·斯唐：这本书非常畅销。1927年，《智慧七柱》被大幅删减，以《沙漠革命记》为名出版，畅销一时。原书中的许多景观描写、所有神秘的遐想以及奇妙的哲学与神学思考都被删去了，留下的是一个脉络清晰的冒险故事、一部战争纪实小说。这本书在美国和英国都很畅销，我觉得这反映了读者的喜好：他们不想看体裁模糊的作品。

Zachary Davis: Rock descriptions are a tough sell. 

扎卡里·戴维斯：读者对描写岩石不感冒。

Charles Stang: Yeah.

查尔斯·斯唐：没错。

How did the movie adapted from the book affect the book itself?

小说改编的电影对小说本身有何影响？

Zachary Davis: Could you tell us about the film, what you know about how it came about and why it was such a phenomenon and kind of the sad fact that is how the world knows this man?

扎卡里·戴维斯：您能跟我们聊聊这部电影吗？这部电影是如何问世的呢？为什么说，世人以这种方式来了解劳伦斯显得有些悲哀？

Charles Stang: As a film, it is an astonishing visual spectacle. It tells an amazing story. The cinematography of the desert. The composition of shots is unparalleled. I love the movie. I love it. But it has narrowed Lawrence as a figure and it has narrowed the geopolitical reality of what was going on, as any movie tends to do.

查尔斯·斯唐：电影本身无疑呈现了令人叹为观止的视觉效果，有精彩的情节、美丽的沙漠风光，所有镜头都精妙绝伦。我很爱这部电影。但它简化了劳伦斯的形象以及当时的地缘政治情况，这似乎是所有电影的通病。

Charles Stang: But because of its success, that narrowing has paradoxically overshadowed everything else, which is much more complicated and subtle, and that's the point I find somewhat frustrating, is that the reception of Lawrence in Seven Pillars of Wisdom has actually a much more interesting—It's a much more interesting story, prior to the movie. And then the movie in my mind sort of flattens the reception of him and essentially Seven Pillarsof Wisdom is consigned to oblivion. No one reads it. It's not regarded as a significant work of literature in the early 20th century.

查尔斯·斯唐：然而电影的成功反而让这些简化之处愈发明显，这样一来事情就变得更加复杂微妙了。这让我有点沮丧，因为《智慧七柱》中劳伦斯的形象要有趣得多，情节也有趣得多。在我看来，电影让劳伦斯的形象变得平淡无奇，也让原著被人淡忘。人们不再去读它，不再把它看作20世纪初重要的文学作品。

Charles Stang: When you think about books that were published right around the same time, T.S. Eliot's The Wasteland and James Joyce's Ulysses, both of which Lawrence read, esteemed and admired and actually hoped to kind of rival, you know, Seven Pillars of Wisdom has been completely forgotten. You may find interesting that Lawrence himself thought that the book was—that the proper company of Seven Pillars of Wisdom was not those two books.

查尔斯·斯唐：看看与《智慧七柱》同时期出版的书，比如托马斯·艾略特的《荒原》和詹姆士·乔伊斯的《尤利西斯》。这两本书劳伦斯都读过，他很喜欢也很佩服，希望自己的书能与之匹敌。然而如今《智慧七柱》已经鲜为人知。不过有意思的是，劳伦斯认为《智慧七柱》真正对标的并非这两本书。

Charles Stang: He thought he aspired to write what he called a titanic book. And the other instances of titanic books are Dostoyevsky's The BrothersKaramazov, Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra and Melville's Moby Dick. Incredibly ambitious. And, you know, I leave it to everyone to decide whether the Seven Pillars of Wisdom deserves to be included among those books. 

查尔斯·斯唐：他渴望写一本传奇之作，类似于陀思妥耶夫斯基的《卡拉马佐夫兄弟》、尼采的《查拉图斯特拉如是说》、梅尔维尔的《白鲸》这样的作品。他确实雄心勃勃。至于《智慧七柱》能否比得上这几本书，那就交给大家来评判吧。

Zachary Davis: Although it wasn’t a bestseller, the book was well received by some.

扎卡里·戴维斯：虽然这本书不那么畅销，但还是受到了一些人的欢迎。

Charles Stang: Despite the fact that it's been largely forgotten in recent decades, it's instructive to me to realize that the first wave of reception of the book by Lawrence's literary friends, colleagues included E.M. Forster, George Bernard Shaw, Robert Graves and Winston Churchill, all of whom thought this book was an amazing monument and in some cases helped him revise it and publish it. I mean, Churchill says of Seven Pillars of Wisdom that it ranks with the greatest books ever written in the English language. That is no faint praise from Churchill.

查尔斯·斯唐：尽管这本书近几十年来已经鲜为人知，但在首批读者中口碑甚好。当时劳伦斯很多文学界的朋友以及同事，包括爱德华·摩根·福斯特、萧伯纳、罗伯特·格雷夫斯、温斯顿·丘吉尔，都认为这本书是一座了不起的丰碑，他们还在某些情况下帮他修改并交付出版。丘吉尔认为，《智慧七柱》是有史以来用英文写成的最伟大的书，这可不是一句敷衍。

Zachary Davis: Could you tell us about the end of his life. What happened to him?

扎卡里·戴维斯：您可以讲讲他最后的几年吗？他遇到什么事情？

Charles Stang: So in the latter part of Lawrence's life, he became a real aficionado of motorcycles. And he used to love to go out on these long, super-fast motorcycle rides on his Brough Superior, which he named Borgne or guess which is Sons of Thunder, the name that Jesus gives to the brothers, Zebedee. Anyway, Lawrence obviously never wore helmet and used to speed along these small country lanes, and that got the better of him. In May of 1935, he had a motorcycle accident, suffered a traumatic head injury, and died six days later. 

查尔斯·斯唐：劳伦斯最后几年迷上了摩托车。他喜欢骑着他的高级布拉夫（声优读英语有一定困难，所以以后类似情况尽量翻译成中文版）摩托车飞驰很长一段路。他将自己的坐骑命名为“波纳尔革”，意为“雷霆之子”，是耶稣给西庇太的两个儿子起的绰号。不过劳伦斯显然从不戴头盔，还喜欢在乡间小路上飞驰。这个习惯最后害了他。1935年5月，他骑摩托车出了事故，头部受伤，六天后去世了。

Zachary Davis: Seven Pillars of Wisdom was originally published privately for friends and subscribers. Lawrence requested that it not be published outside this subscription until after he died. Weeks after his death, it was issued as a trade publication in the UK and the US.

扎卡里·戴维斯：《智慧七柱》最初面向朋友和订阅者私下出版。劳伦斯要求，等到他去世之后才能公开出版。他去世后的几周，这本书在英美两国作为商业出版物出版。

Zachary Davis: T. E. Lawrence created a work that documented his full experience of the war. But it was much more than a war story. It was a witness to the beauty and majesty of the desert and an attempt to find meaning and solace in a world covered by a shadow of violence. 

扎卡里·戴维斯：劳伦斯创作了一部作品，记录了他在战争中的全部经历。但这本书不仅讲述了战争故事，它还见证了沙漠的美丽和庄严，并努力在一个笼罩于暴力阴影下的世界中找到意义和慰藉。

Zachary Davis: Writ Large is a production of Ximalaya. Writ Large is produced by Galen Beebe, Jack Pombriant and me, Zachary Davis, with help from Feiran Du, Ariel Liu, Wendy Wu, and Monica Zhang. Our intern is Liza French. Our theme song is by Ian Coss. Don’t miss an episode. Subscribe today in the Ximalaya app. Thanks for listening. See you next time.

扎卡里·戴维斯：本节目由喜马拉雅独家制作播出。感谢您的收听，我们下期再见！