Where was Lawrence chez-lui?

If “transcendental homelessness” is the modern condition, Lawrence is an especially instructive example of how to live within it. His emigré life, partly imposed and partly chosen, was experienced with a vivid appreciation of the “spirit of place,” and of places. Perhaps for Lawrence to be at home w...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Michael Bell
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Presses Universitaires de Paris Nanterre 2024-10-01
Series:Études Lawrenciennes
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Online Access:https://journals.openedition.org/lawrence/3697
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Summary:If “transcendental homelessness” is the modern condition, Lawrence is an especially instructive example of how to live within it. His emigré life, partly imposed and partly chosen, was experienced with a vivid appreciation of the “spirit of place,” and of places. Perhaps for Lawrence to be at home was a cosmic state experienced most intensely through a life on the move. Martin Heidegger similarly speaks of dwelling as a state of Being and invokes Hölderlin’s words “poetically, man dwells on this earth.” But home is a temporal as well as a spatial location and whereas Heidegger privileges the rootedness of ancestral continuity, Lawrence, who also dwelt poetically, seems to seek a world always new, or renewed. The present paper seeks to illustrate this contrast by examining several moments in the oeuvre.
ISSN:0994-5490
2272-4001