Historical and Enlightenment

HISTORICAL
Seven Pillars of Wisdom
Written between 1919 and 1926, this text tells of the campaign against the Turks in the Middle East, encompassing gross acts of cruelty and revenge, ending in a welter of stink and corpses in a Damascus hospital. Seven Pillars of Wisdom remains--like its enigmatic creator--brilliant and controversial. It describes, in the words of E. M. Forster, 'the revolt in Arabia against the Turks, as it appeared to an Englishman who took part. Round this tent-pole of a military chronicle T. E. has hung an unexampled fabric of portraits, descriptions, philosophies, emotions, adventures, dreams. He has brought to his task a fastidious scholarship, an impeccable memory, a style nicely woven of Oxfordisms and Doughty, an eye unparalleled . . . a profound distrust of himself, a still profounder faith.' 'The dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act out their dream with open eyes, to make it possible. This I did.' (Sources TBC)

ENLIGHTENMENT
The Unbearable Lightness of Being: A Novel (Milan Kundera)
A touching and sad novel, it is the story of the painful love affair of Tomas and Tereza, condemned by fate and choice to live together, yet never ceasing to cause each other enormous pain and suffering. Tomas, a surgeon living in Prague just before the famous 1968 Spring uprising, is an incorrigible womanizer, unable to resist his unending stream of meaningless sexual flings. Tereza is drawn to him, sent to him by fate, like Moses in a bulrush basket. Tomas' constant infidelities numb her with pain; yet her unending love and need draw her to him inexorably, and he to her. From the text of a Beethoven composition he takes the line: "Es muss Sein" (it must be). He even leaves the safety of Switzerland to follow her back to Prague, sealing their fate to that oppressive regime following the Russian takeover. We also meet Sabina, Czech artist fascinated with aspects of incomparable images in which the interface of the images betray one another. In her own life, including her love affairs with Tomas and Franz, she is the eternal betrayer, not unlike the tensions in her own paintings. Franz is the idealist, the man who dreams the dream of the great march of history toward some better state and ends up being killed in a trivial mugging while in Thailand on a large but failed humanitarian venture. (Sources TBC)