The Confessions of T. E. Lawrence: The Sadomasochistic Hero

That is the “bad” book, with the Deraa chapter. Working on it always makes me sick. The two impulses fight so upon it. Self-respect would close it: self-expression seeks to open it. It's a case in which you can't let yourself write as well as you could (CS 26 xii 25).1

T. E. Lawrence's major literary works are autobiographical. Seven Pillars of Wisdom is a personal narrative of Lawrence's role in the Arab Revolt of 1916-1918; The Mint is a posthumously published journal describing his postwar years as a common airman in the Royal Air Force. Seven Pillars and The Mint comprise a single confessional project and are in the tradition of the great confessions of Augustine, Bunyan, Rousseau, and Adams.

The hero of a confession, particularly a modern confession, is often deeply wounded in his sex. Frequently the sexual wound is sadomasochistic. In Michel Leiris' Manhood the opposing symbols of Lucrece and Judith, wounded and wounding women, provide a principle of order for his revelations.2 The masochism of Arthur Adamov's “The Endless Humiliation” , as well as his sadistic hostility toward woman, is explicit: “The taste for the fall is endless. At the bottom of the world, I must discover somewhere lower still, some subsoil in which to work myself deeper, beneath