Pascal,Powys and Ligotti

[gveranon]

Here are a few paragraphs from Powys's essay "Melville and Poe" (from Enjoyment of Literature). His thoughts here about Poe, and the way he expresses them (really getting into the spirit of his subject matter, I'd say!), seem both Ligottian and Lovecraftian.

It is because our critical approach to Poe's poetry has been from the wrong direction that we have laid him open to these disparagements. In place of trying to explain what psychological perversions in his character and what unhappy accidents in his life moulded his genius, we ought to accept his genius -- for all his own mania for analysing it -- as the pure inspiration it was, and then, occupying ourselves with the nature of this inspiration rather than with the pathological weaknesses of its mortal medium, to seek to follow him into those particular purlieus of our race-consciousness whither his intense and abnormal subjectivity carried him.

And the interesting thing to notice here is, as I have already hinted, that there should be so little that we can localize, or trace the origin of, in the actual New York or Maryland or Virginia of this poet's sojournings.

For myself, a traveller for a score of years between all of Edgar Allan Poe's particular cities, and knowing the country round them a good deal better than I know my native Derbyshire, I confess -- though it may be because of a kindred sensibility towards the ghostly, the weird, and the horror-hinting -- I have found even in those districts, though of course far more in the "deeper" South, elements here and there that corresponded with disturbing closeness to the frightening things in his imaginary landscapes.

But it is not from those haunted pine-woods and those livid morasses and those treacherous estuaries and those weedy Lethean wharfs that the darker vistas and more troubling vistas of Poe's inspirations come.

They are conjured up from the occult symbols of pre-incarnate tremblings that we all find written on the nerves of our race, though only a few abnormal individuals can render articulate these hieroglyphs of "holy terror."

And it is as if by turning this burden of ancestral "night-thoughts" into the loveliness of perfect rhyme he was able to bestow an enchanted peace -- the peace and fulfillment of beauty -- upon the "perturbed spirits" of this "ghoul-haunted" region of the human brain.

A traveller along strange roads is the soul of man; and there come to us all, along with the undying life-seed of the generations, hints and glimpses of dark moods and occult experiences, that only a few individuals, down the long line of our dead, have been destined really to know.

Poetry as beautiful and strange as this could only have been written by a proud and lonely spirit whose intense subjectivity tapped some abiding reservoir of these debouchings from the normal path of the pilgrim soul.

[Beclabbered]

In my late teens I discovered Powys while just wandering around the University of Iowa library. I think Philosophy of Solitude was the title that caught my attention. I read that and then read several other of his non-fiction books. The more of his non-fiction books I read, the better I was able to understand his views (which are sometimes expressed obscurely or obliquely). I recommend Homer and the Aether, which is a re-telling of the Illiad. Powys adds his own interpretations, which are observations and insights he divulges through the voice of the aether.
In regards to Theodore Powys, I read and enjoyed Mr. Weston's Good Wine. His non-fiction book, Soliloquies of a Hermit was also very impressive. I intend to re-read it at some point since his ideas are also sometimes difficult to grasp.

[Bleak&Icy]

From Visions and Revisions: A Book of Literary Devotions by John Cowper Powys:

Deep yawns below Deep; and if we cannot read "the writing upon the wall," the reason may be that there is no writing there. Having lifted a corner of the Veil of Isis, having glanced once into that Death-Kingdom where grope the roots of the Ash-Tree whose name is Fear, we return to the surface, from Nadir to Zenith, and become "superficial"--"out of profundity."

The infinite spaces, as Pascal said, are "frightful." That way madness lies. And those who would be sane upon earth must drug themselves with the experience, or with the spectacle of the experience, of human passion. Within this charmed circle, and here alone, they may be permitted to forget the Outer Terror.

[Malone]

I've discovered that several of Powys' non-fiction works are available on Project Guttenburg for free perusal and download,including Visions and Revisions and One Hundred Best Books.

[Bleak&Icy]

Quote Originally Posted by Malone

I've discovered that several of Powys' non-fiction works are available on Project Guttenburg for free perusal and download,including Visions and Revisions and One Hundred Best Books.

There is another website--manybooks.net--which allows you to download ebooks in a dozen different formats. You can even create a custom pdf document. At present they have four non-fiction works by JCP available: http://manybooks.net/authors/powysj.html

[Viva June]

Three Fantasies is one of the weirdest books I own and, sadly, the only book of Powys's that I have read. I have tried several times to read some of his longer works, but occult circumstances always prevent me from reaching even the hundreth-page mark (in the case of Porius, though, I merely decided that the book was terrible).

What about the other other Powys, Llewelyn? I have been curious about him ever since I learned that he was Larkin's favourite.

[gveranon]

John Gray on John Cowper Powys

[Nemonymous]

Quote Originally Posted by gveranon

John Gray on John Cowper Powys

Thanks for that.

My review of his amazing novel THE INMATES: https://dflewisreviews.wordpress.com...-cowper-powys/

My quotes from his massive THE GLASTONBURY ROMANCE: https://weirdtongue.wordpress.com/qu...-cowper-powys/