Notes on 'Aaron's Rod', ed. Seamus Cooney,
(Black Sparrow Press, 1980)
I.
"It is remarkable", writes D. H. Lawrence, "how many odd or extraordinary people there are in England." [a]
And I suppose we might number Rawdon Lilly amongst this queer set; Lilly being the character in Aaron's Rod (1922) who, like Rupert Birkin before him (in Women in Love) and Richard Somers after him (in Kangaroo), serves as a kind of avatar for the author, often expressing his philosophical views, although he is not the novel's protagonist and doesn't enter the story until chapter five when the action moves from Eastwood to London ...
II.
Lilly is an artist of the literary variety who hangs around with posh bohemian types; dark and ugly of feature as well as (arguably) of character. He thinks he's terribly witty, but he's no Oscar Wilde; he thinks he's terribly clever, but he's no Nietzsche. A strange mix of sarcasm, snobbishness, and self-regard, it's no wonder he often provokes others to violence [b] and irritaes the hell out of Tanny, his blonde-haired, half-Norwegian wife.
That said, he seems to like Aaron Sisson, the flute playing ex-miner - and the latter seems to like him; they glance at one another "with a look of recognition" [61], which is always a good sign in Lawrence's world. Unlike the look of love, because love, says Lilly, is a vice. Like alcohol. Having met and been introduced (at the opera) - and having exchanged their look of recognition - Lilly invites Aaron to visit him and Tanny for lunch one day, at their house in Hampstead (an invitation that was never taken up, as far as I recall).
Despite living in Hampstead - and also owning a "labourer's cottage in Hampshire" [73] - we are asked to accept that Rawdon and Tanny were poor [c]. Perhaps this adds to Lilly's self-image as a saviour. But it doesn't explain his (racist) dislike of the Japanese, whom he thinks demonic; a quality that one might have thought he'd find attractive, since he despises Christianity and moral humanism [d].
He also dislikes those who can't - or won't - stand upright on their own two feet; those, like Jim Bricknell, who stagger and stumble like a drunk; "or worse, like a man with locomotor ataxia" [81], as if lacking all power in their legs. According to Lilly, it's an obscene desire to be loved which makes the knees go all weak and rickety - that and a sloppy relaxation of will.
For Deleuze, "the spinal column is nothing but a sword beneath the skin, slipped into the body of an innocent sleeper by an executioner" [e]. But for Lilly (as for Lawence), the backbone is crucial and should be stiffened from an early age, so that one can affirm oneself into singular being and kick one's way into the future [f].
When Tanny goes off to visit her family in Norway, Lilly stays in London, on the grounds that it's "'better for married people to be separated sometimes'" [90] and that couples who are "'stuck together like two jujube lozenges'" [91] are hateful.
He takes a clean and pleasant room, with a piano, in Covent Garden; above the market place, looking down on the stalls and the carts, etc. Mostly he liked to watch the great draught-horses delivering produce: "Funny half-human creatures they seemed, so massive and fleshy, yet so cockney" [86]; an amusingly absurd description.
But Lilly also has his eye on a "particular page-boy in buttons, with a round and perky behind, who nimbly carried a tea-tray from somewere to somewhere, under the arches beside the market" [86]. When reading Lawrence, one can pretty much take it as given that his leading male characters will be what we now term bi-curious (to say the least).
So no big surprise to find that when he gets (a poorly) Aaron up to his room, he soon has the latter undressed and tucked up in bed:
"Lilly pushed Aaron down in the bed, and covered him over. Then he thrust his hands under the bedclotes and felt his feet - still cold. He arranged the water bottle. Then he put another cover on the bed." [90]
It's kind, of course, of Lilly to nurse the flu-ridden Aaron. But does a respiratory illness usually require an erotically-charged massage with oil - and we're not talking here of a quick chest rub with Vicks VapoRub:
"Quickly he uncovered the blond lower body of his patient, and began to rub the abdomen with oil, using a slow, rhythmic, circulating motion, a sort of massage. For a long time he rubbed finely and steadily, then went over the whole of the lower body, mindless, as if in a sort of incantation. He rubbed every speck of the man's lower body - the abdomen, the buttocks, the thighs and knees, down to the feet, rubbed it all warm and glowing with camphorated oil, every bit of it, chafing the toes swiftly, till he was almost exhausted." [96]
Anyway, it seems to do the trick: "The spark had come back into the sick eyes, and the faint trace of a smile, faintly luminous, into the face" [96]. But afterwards Lilly wonders why he did it, worried that when Aaron is fully recovered and realises what was done to him it will result in another punch in the wind: "'This Aaron [...] I like him, and he ought to like me. [But] he'll be another Jim [...]'" [97]
Poor Lilly! So full of resentment - including self-resentment. But he no sooner swears to stop caring for others and interfering in their lives, than he starts darning Aaron's black woollen socks, having washed them a few days previously.
When Aaron recovers enough to sit up in bed and eat some toast with his tea, Lilly explains his thoughts on marriage - "'a self-conscious egoistic state'" [99] - and having children: '"I think of them as a burden.'" [99] He fears being suffocated "'either with a baby's napkin or a woman's petticoat'" [101] and dreams of men rediscovering their independent manhood and gathering his own soul "'in patience and in peace'" [104].
But this isn't some kind of Buddhist desire for an end to all desire:
"'It's what you get to after a lot of fighting and a lot of sensual fulfilment. And it never does away with the fighting and with the sensual passion. It flowers on top of them, and it would never flower save on top of them'" [105]
In other words, it's what Oliver Mellors would term the peace that comes of fucking [g], or Nietzsche a warrior's peace. Whether Aaron understands this idea, is debatable: Lilly irritates him rather. But, having said that, he seems in no hurry to leave, even when well enough to do so: "They had been together alone for a fortnight only: but it was like a small eternity." [106]
Thus, the two men share the room in Covent Garden, bickering like Felix and Oscar in The Odd Couple [h] and drinking endless cups of tea. They have, we are told, "an almost uncanny understanding of one another - like brothers" [106], despite the mutual hostility.
Lilly, of course, plays the traditionally feminine role: "He mashed the potatoes, he heated the plates, he warmed the red wine, he whisked eggs into the milk pudding, and served his visitor like a housemaid." [106] And when the food is ready, Lilly draws the curtains and dims the light so they can enjoy a rather romantic-sounding meal for two. Then he does the washing-up.
Of course Lilly and Aaron part on rather bad terms: for the latter, the former is too demanding; he wants something of another man's soul, or so it seems to Aaron. Anyway, Lilly heads off; first to Malta, then to Italy (and out of the novel for several chapters). Eventually, Aaron follows, with no definite purpose but to join his rather peculiar friend ...
III.
The two men, Aaron and Lilly, Lilly and Aaron, finally reunite in Florence.
Lilly doesn't seem particularly surprised to see Aaron again; or particularly fussed. For he's come to believe that there's a time to leave off loving and seeking friends; that each man has to learn how to possess himself in stillness and not care about anything or anyone. Essentially, decides Lilly, at his very core, he is alone: "'Eternally alone. And choosing to be alone. Not sentimental or lonely. Alone, choosing to be alone, because by one's nature one is alone.'" [246]
He continues:
"'In so much as I am I, and only I am I, and I am only I, [...] I am inevitably and eternally alone, and it is my last blessedness to know it, and to accept it, and to live with this as the core of my self-knowledge.'" [247]
Thus, for Lilly, even the heart beats alone in its own silence - and anti-idealism. For above all else, it's anti-idealism that defines Lilly (philosophically and politically):
"'The ideal of love, the ideal that it is better to give than to receive, the ideal of liberty, the ideal of the brotherhood of man, the ideal of the sanctity of human life, the ideal of what we call goodness, charity, benevolence, public spiritedness, the ideal of sacrifice for a cause, the ideal of unity and unanimity - all the lot - all the whole beehive of ideals - has all got the modern bee-disease, and gone putrid, stinking.'" [280-81]
His alternative is - after sufficient extermination - a "'healthy and energetic slavery'" [281] in which there is "'a real commital of the life-issue of inferior beings to the responsibility of a superior being'" [281] and enforced with military power. At least that's what he tells his interlocutor. Until then admitting with a gay, whimsical smile that he would "'say the opposite with just as much fervour'" [282].
Finally, Lilly delivers that which he believes to be the real truth: "'I think every man is a sacred and holy individual, never to be violated." [282] Which is pretty close to Aleister Crowley's great teaching that: Every man and every woman is a star [i].
IV.
So, in closing what then are we to make of Rawdon Lilly?
Aaron comes to the following conclusion:
"He had started by thinking Lilly a peculiar little freak: gone on to think him a wonderful chap, and a bit pathetic: progressed, and found him generous, but overbearing: then cruel and intolerant, allowing no man to have a soul of his own: then terribly arrogant, throwing a fellow aside like an old glove which is in holes at the finger-ends. And all the time, which was most beastly, seeing through one. All the time, freak and outsider as he was, Lilly knew. He knew, and his soul was against the whole world." [289]
Still, if forced to choose, Aaron decides he'd choose Lilly over the entire world; if he has to submit and give himself to anyone, then "he would rather give himself to the little, individual man" [290] than to the quicksands of woman or the stinking bog of society.
Personally, I'm not so sure. For whilst I agree with Lilly that we should finish for ever with words like God, and Love, and Humanity and "'have a shot at a new mode'" [291], I don't think I'd fancy placing my life in his hands. Nor do I share his to thine own self be true credo, which is ultimately just another form of idealism.
As for his insistence on the "'great dark power-urge'" [297], I'd take that a little more seriously if in comparing this to Nietzsche's concept of will to power he didn't misunderstand the latter so completely (equating it, for example, with consciousness). Lazy and erroneous thinking like this causes me to doubt much else that Lilly says.
And, finally, I don't want to submit to the positive power-soul within some hero, thank you very much: I don't have any heroes, they're all useless, as Johnny Rotten once memorably said [j].
Notes
[a] D. H. Lawrence, Aaron's Rod, ed. Mara Kalnins, (Cambridge University Press, 1988), p. 26. All future page references to this novel will be given directly in the text.
[b] I'm thinking here of the scene in Chapter VIII, when Jim Bricknell gives Lilly a punch in the wind. To be fair, although it's arguable that Lilly provoked the assault - as Tanny believes - there's really no justification for Bricknell giving him "two or three hard blows with his fists, upon the front of the body" [82]. But there you go; those who claim to act in the name of Love - and so desperately want to be loved - are often the most vicious and violent people on earth.
[c] Perhaps the Lilly's were only renting the house in Hampstead - or that it belonged to a friend who had kindly allowed them to live there rent free. Later, Lilly tells Aaron that he only has "'thirty-five pounds in all the world'" [103] and so is far from being a millionaire. (£35 in 1922 would be equivalent to around £1700 today).
[d] And, indeed, Lilly does later praise the Japanese for their ability to
be quiet and aloof and indifferent to love: '"They keep themselves taut
in their own selves - there, at the bottom of the spine - the devil's
own power they've got there.'" [81] Although, shortly after this he dismisses "'folk who teem by the billion, like the Chinese and Japs and orientals altogether'" [97], a quality which makes them vermin in his eyes.
Readers interested in knowing more about Lawrence's fascination with Japanese male bodies, are advised to see my post from June 2019 on the subject: click here.
[e] Gilles Deleuze, Francis Bacon: the logic of sensation, trans. Daniel W. Smith, (Continuum, 2003), p. 23.
Like many of his ideas and phrases, Deleuze is borrowing this from a writer of fiction; in this case, Franz Kafka. See: 'The Sword', in Diaries 1914-1923, ed. Max Brod, trans. Martin Greenberg with Hannah Arendt (Schocken Books, 1949), pp. 109-10.
[f] Readers who are interested in this topic might like to see my post from April last year on encouraging a straight back: click here. Alternatively, see Lawrence writing in Fantasia of the Unconscious (1922).
[g] See the Grange Farm letter that Mellors writes to Connie at the end of Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928) for an explanation of this phrase. And see the post from December 2021 on the Lawrentian notion of chastity: click here.
[h] The Odd Couple is a 1968 comedy directed by Gene Saks and written by Neil Simon (based on his 1965 play of the same title), starring Jack Lemmon (as fastidious Felix Ungar) and Walter Matthau (as easy-going Oscar Madison), two divorced men who decide to live together, despite being extremely different characters.
[i] See Aleister Crowley, The Book of the Law (1909), 1:3
[j] Rotten said this in an interview with Janet Street Porter for The London Weekend Show, a punk rock special broadcast on London Weekend Television on 28 November 1976 (i.e., three days before the notorious Bill Grundy incident). Click here to watch in full on YouTube. The remark quoted is at 8:13 - 8:16.
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