The Long Echo of “The Great War”: The Ontology of Wandering in “Aaron’s Rod” by D.H. Lawrence

Abstract. The article analyzes the novel insufficiently comprehended by Russian Anglistics; the novel of one of the leading representatives of English modernism is looked at in the aspect, new to the studies of David Herbert Lawrence’s creativity, peculiar to both the writer and the English novel of the 1920, – the embodiment of the moral quest of the hero, deliberately separating himself from the familiar world, actively asserting his otherness, seeking his new hypostasis in the conditions of the spiritual crisis of British intellectuals after the First World War, which the writer interpreted as a catastrophe that deprived humanity of a decent future and proved what an ideological and moral impasse it had reached. In this respect, the novel is an original modification of the narrative of the “lost generation”. The article demonstrates the special place of the novel in the writer’s work, the nature and essence of his artistic experiment with plot-making, system of characters, narrative, genre model. At the same time, the role of the motive of the hero’s wanderings becomes the dominant research aim, the essay shows how the hero’s wanderings lead him to a new understanding of the meaning of life that most fully corresponds to his nature. The article demonstrates to what extent and how the plot movement of the hero is subordinated to the Lawrence’s philosophy of the new essence of human existence, developed by the writer as a result of intense painful reflections during and immediately after the war. The article demonstrates also that the wandering of the hero of this novel cannot be called escapism, since the hero is looking for another meaning of what exists in the present world, and Lawrence reinforces this point, at the end of the novel bringing the hero to the realization of a new paradigm of life in this world – voluntary submission to the Will of a wise and just Other. In this novel, Lawrence only designates this paradigm, in the novels “Kangaroo” and “The Plumed Serpent” he artistically thoroughly explores it.

Keywords: hero-wanderer, “lost generation”, “Other”, World War I, modernist novel.