I have just begun discovering T E Lawrence far beyond his ephemeral yet captivating portrayal by David Lean in ‘Lawrence of Arabia.’ I am simultaneously reading Michael Korda’s ‘Hero: The life and legend of Lawrence of Arabia’ and Lawrence’s own masterpiece ‘Seven Pillars of Wisdom.’
I watch the movie every few weeks for many reasons, including its cinematic beauty, but equally for its many telling scenes. One of my all time favorite comes early on when Lawrence, played at once with arresting and liberating brilliance by Peter O’Toole, extinguishes a match with his thumb and index finger.
When one of his fellow Englishmen tries to emulate him, he ends up hurting himself.
“Oh, it damn well hurts,” says the fellow Englishman.
“Certainly it hurts,” says Lawrence.
The fellow English character called William Potter, asks, “Well, what’s the trick then?”
O’Toole turns around and tells him, “The trick William Potter is not minding that it hurts.”
The great line is as profound as it is foreshadowing of Lawrence’s reported addiction to masochism.
A lot has been said and written about the enormous role Lawrence played in shaping the destiny of the Arabs, though he himself tends to be rather modest. “My proper share was a minor one, but because of a fluent pen, a free speech and a certain adroitness of brain, I took upon myself, as I describe it, a mock primacy. In reality I never had any office among the Arabs: was never in charge of the British mission with them,” Lawrence writes.
Although the line about the trick being not minding that it hurts was probably the work of the movie’s writers Robert Bolt and Michael Wilson, reading Lawrence tells me that he was equally capable of having said that. Sample this bit from the book. “All men dream: but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dreams with open eyes to make it possible. This I did.”
Switching between Lawrence’s effortless cadence and Korda’s insistent detailing of his protagonist’s life is quite an experience. It is one of those rare juxtapositions, split screens if you will, between what the man thought of himself and how history views him. I recommend it.