Glastonbury Romance

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Glastonbury Romance is considered to be the main work of the Welsh poet , writer and writer of philosophical writings John Cowper Powys . The epic monumental work was published for the first time in 1932 and outlines over 1200 pages a panorama of life in the 1920s in the English provincial town of Glastonbury , which has always been associated with the legendary Avalon . Powys takes up the myths about King Arthur and the Holy Grail , Welsh and Greek myths in a variety of ways in his romance .

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Glastonbury with Glastonbury Tor

Glastonbury Romance breaks all boundaries both in terms of its scope and content, as well as the number of characters involved and its inner span . The editor of his diaries counts 46 characters. Among them are characters like Sam Dekker , the son of pastor Mat Dekker . Sam is a modern Parcifal who wants to become a saint and to whom a vision of the Fisher King appears when he gives up his (married) lover Nell Zoyland - in whom his father is also interested. For Sam , Powys was inspired by the medieval verse novels of Chrétien de Troyes . John Geard (Bloody Johnny) is an obscure itinerant preacher who seeks to make Glastonbury the center of a new religious movement. Philipp Crow is a wealthy entrepreneur and opponent of Geard , who is primarily interested in the exploitation of underground tin deposits . Owen Evans is the local antiquarian . He suffers from his sadistic disposition and wishes to witness the murder of a person one day. Powys tried to process parts of his own disposition in this figure. "This is by far the hardest of all chapters for me & this for a deep & sensitive reason, because I have to describe his sadistic feelings convincingly, and yet I am determined not to describe any feeling that could incite my own vice."

The novel begins with the return of the bon vivant John Crow to his home in Norfolk for the funeral of his grandfather William Crow . Surprisingly, the old canon left his fortune to the preacher John Geard from Glastonbury and the reader learns in the first chapter the thoughts of the deceased underground.

John Crow enters the service of Geard, comes to Glastonbury and falls in love with his cousin Mary . Geard has big plans with the inherited money: he is aiming for the mayor's office and wants to give the tranquil historical and mystical place a new shine with a passion play . In the Passion Play, Owen Evans portrays the crucified Christ in an attempt to sublimate his dangerous inclinations . A communist group tries to influence the competition for the mayor's office and use it for their own purposes.

The legends about King Arthur and the Holy Grail are not only integrated into the Passion Play, which is the narrative focus of the novel, they also play an important role in general in the city ​​towered over by Glastonbury Tor and for the awareness of its citizens.

The actions of the people in Glastonbury are not only strongly influenced by their different sexual passions, but also by diverse natural forces. Powys develops a mysticism of nature in which weather phenomena play a major role. The sun is a personal adversary, the earth is a jealous being and the moon sucks in dreams.

Glastonbury Abbey around 1900

Life presents itself as a mystery for Powys. The will and the plans of the people are only one factor besides the sexual passions, forces of nature and ancient myths. Ascent and descent into the upper and underworld are a permanent theme of the novel. Owen Evans has one foot in hell like Sam Dekker in paradise. None of the acting characters can be clearly classified, is only good or only bad. Powys is about a largely neutral representation of the diversity of life. Ultimately, "[...] this narrative [...] is so diverse in action and unfolding that the result, like life itself, will appear in different forms for different readers." The real hero of Glastonbury Romance is the city of Glastonbury.

While Powys in his autobiography, which he began in 1933, was to forego the portrayal of all women in a self-caricaturing strategy, the empathetically portrayed female figures - whether sensual girls, old maids, honorable women or brothel mothers - take up a large space in Glastonbury Romance and it is clear how he himself is can think into them.

The novel ends with a great tidal wave breaking over Glastonbury. Geard drowns in the flood, but Sam finds a new happy life.

History of origin

Powys was still living in the United States in 1929 . Until then, he had earned his living mainly from lecture tours on which he successfully introduced his literary idols Dostoevsky , Whitman , Homer , Goethe and Shakespeare to a mass audience. The novel Wolf Solent and his philosophical essay Culture as the Art of Living had just appeared and was selling well. He was to end the defense of sensuality in 1930. He was in the most productive phase of his work and at the beginning of his success as a writer.

On his regular summer trip to Europe, he visited Somerset in preparation for the novel, which he had only vaguely had in mind . In Stonehenge he prayed, “O Stonehenge, help me write a book about Glastonbury in a way that has not been written in any other place.” He also traveled with his brother Littleton to places in Norfolk that he loved Childhood remembered. The impressions of this trip served him as starting material for the beginning of Glastonbury Romance .

Powys immersed himself in the numerous adaptations of the Arthurian legend in order to internalize the myth. He read Thomas Malory's Le Morte Darthur several times. Likewise, the standard work on this saga by Sir John Rhys Studies in the Arthurian Legend from 1891.

Powys adopted the idea of ​​the Passion Play. As early as 1906, an open-air play was staged in Glastonbury with a history of the place from the Phoenician tin dealers to the Middle Ages. And the composer Rutland Boughton carried out a kind of “ Bayreuth Festival ” from 1914 to 1925 .

At the age of 57 on Easter Sunday April 20, 1930, Powys began work on the novel after moving from New York to his newly acquired Phudd Bottom house in remote, rural Hillsdale , Columbia County . He found support at work from his partner Phyllis Playter, who was 22 years his junior. On October 9, 1931, Powys completed the writing of the still unabridged mammoth work. But, as always, he had to make extensive cuts to the 2000-page manuscript with a heavy heart before it was published. On June 28, 1931, referring to a letter from his publishers from Simon & Schuster, he noted in his diary: "I write for the sake of joy & for the sake of shortening the ducats."

The novel was published on March 6, 1932 in the USA by Simon & Schuster and on June 30, 1933 in the United Kingdom by The Bodley Head , London. It was first published in German in 1995 by Carl Hanser Verlag .

reception

After the novel was published, the sales figures in the USA - which was just recovering from the global economic crisis - fell short of the expectations of the publisher and author. “Only 4000 copies sold. […] This is a serious blow to deal with where I secretly hoped for I don't know what incredible fame including the Nobel Prize & the accolade of my King & the applause of Europe & the translation of the book in all languages ​​- & most of all that it will be sold at the entrance to the ruins in Glastonbury! Well, I have to put up with the fact that it is a failure. "

One episode set in the cave of Wookey Hole was banned by the courts after it was first published.

Not only this: since the owner of the cave at Wookey Hole at the time felt portrayed and took legal action against the publication, a passage that was too sexually explicit had to be deleted in later editions. The Mayor of Glastonbury was equally disaffected. “This huge book of 1,174 pages is 10 shillings and 6 pence, and it's cheap for the price. Cheap and nasty. "

When his publisher Powys announced that a request for a film version of Glastonbury Romance had been requested, he refused in a letter dated June 20, 1933. It seemed blasphemy to him that these "... indescribably vulgar Hollywood people - lower than the lowest mob - could dare to touch Glastonbury or the Holy Grail ..." He would have none against a film adaptation of his novels Wolf Solent or Weymouth Beach Objected.

Powys never found a wide readership with Glastonbury Romance . However, numerous writers and literary critics were among Powys' admirers from the start. In the German-speaking area, for example, these were Hermann Hesse , Alfred Andersch , Hans Henny Jahnn , Karl Kerényi and Elias Canetti . In the Anglo-Saxon world he was taught by George Steiner , JB Priestley a . a. recommended. In her novel The Green Knight, Iris Murdoch lets a reader appear who fails to read the immoderate Glastonbury Romance to the end.

In the meantime, Glastonbury Romance and his Merlin novel Porius are recognized as monumental works of modernism and stand in a row with Ulysses by James Joyce , Robert Musil's The Man Without Qualities or Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time .

The German writer and critic Alban Nikolai Herbst calls the novel Die Dschungel on his weblog . Otherworld. one of "the most amazing literary world designs of our century."

expenditure

English version

German editions

Both editions are only available in second-hand bookshops .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ The diaries 1929–1939. Residenz Verlag, Salzburg and Vienna 1997, ISBN 3-7017-1040-6 , page 120.
  2. ↑ Quoted from a fictional interview with John Cowper Powys in the afterword to Glastonbury Romance , p. 1225.
  3. ^ The diaries 1929-1939. Page 39.
  4. ^ The diaries 1929-1939. Page 115.
  5. ^ The diaries 1929-1939. Page 162.
  6. ^ Afterword by Elmar Schenkel to Glastonbury Romance , page 1228.
  7. ^ The diaries 1929-1939. Page 183.
  8. ^ Afterword by Elmar Schenkel to Glastonbury Romance , p. 1229.
  9. ↑ The jungle. Otherworld. (Accessed February 6, 2013; PDF; 105 kB)