John Cowper Powys

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John Cowper Powys (ca.1930)

John Cowper Powys [ dʒɒn ˌkuːpɚ ˈpoʊɪs ] (born October 8, 1872 in Shirley , Derbyshire , † June 17, 1963 in Blaenau Ffestiniog , Wales ) was a Welsh poet and writer . He wrote poetry , essays , extensive novels and philosophical writings. Between 1915 and 1957 he published one of his extensive books almost every year. In his works he presented himself as an ironic skeptic who repeatedly questions his own worldview. Powys was an avowed polytheist and at the same time a staunch agnostic in search of poetic and non- spiritual meaning. Elke Heinemann calls him an "English Dostoevsky" and the "most unknown genius of the 20th century" .

life and work

Montacute, where Powys grew up

John Cowper Powys' father was a vicar in Derbyshire. His mother was a descendant of the poet William Cowper , to whom he owes his middle name. He was the eldest son of a large family of artists, with ten siblings alone. His paternal grandmother came from Switzerland. The maternal great-grandmother from the Hamburg Jewish family Livius. His two brothers Llewelyn Powys and Theodore Francis Powys were well-known writers of their time. Other of his siblings also embarked on an artistic career - his sister Gertrude was a painter and Philippa was also a poet. He grew up in the Somerset village of Montacute . This southern English landscape later formed the geographical background of his novels. Powys visited the boarding school Sherborne School and studied at Corpus Christi College (Cambridge) history . At the age of 24 he published his first collection of poems, Odes and Other Poems , which he himself described as "conventional and imitated" . Before he earned his living with literary lectures from the turn of the century, he taught as a teacher in Sussex . In 1896 he married Margarete Alice with whom he had a son. After the couple separated, however, he remained connected to her and supported her until her death in 1947. His son Littleton became an Anglican priest.

John Cowper Powys made extensive and successful lecture tours - first in England, then in continental Europe and finally in the USA , where he lived from 1904 to 1934. Every evening he slipped into the role of his literary idols Dostoevsky , Whitman , Homer , Goethe and Shakespeare in order to bring their works to a mass audience. Charlie Chaplin , whom he had seen filming in 1921, with his humorous and tragic gestures, was one of his great role models. In him he recognized his own ideal of complete individuality.

Powys has repeatedly participated in public debates - his discussions with GK Chesterton and GB Shaw are legendary . With Bertrand Russell he discussed “modern marriage” in front of an audience of 2,000. “We were all very fond of Mr. Russell, but disliked his arguments! He kept the subject on a humorous level. It wasn't really exciting. "

In the trial for alleged profanity of the novel Ulysses by James Joyce , he appeared - despite his dislike of the Irish writer - as a defense attorney. He showed great sympathy for the revolution in Spain and especially for Catalan anarchism . The anarchist and feminist Emma Goldmann mentions him in her autobiography with great appreciation and the writer Theodore Dreiser stood up for him. Simone de Beauvoir called his novel Wolf Solent " a revelation ".

His restless life was accompanied by health concerns - he repeatedly had problems with his stomach and a duodenal ulcer , which forced him to follow a strict diet but also stimulated his creativity. After Powys withdrew from the hustle and bustle of his lecture tours to Columbia County north of New York in 1929 , he wrote his most successful novels, also in Germany, within a very short time and at an advanced age: Wolf Solent , Glastonbury Romance and The Beach of Weymouth . His books are unusually extensive - he loathed short stories .

On June 1, 1929, on his annual trip to Europe, he began to write down a diary , which was intended for publication from the start and which also appeared posthumously in German. It covers the period up to 1939 and thus the most productive time of his life. In it, he is unusually open about his compulsive rituals , his secret sadism and his obsessive relationship with his illnesses. The original English title Petrushka and the Dancer. refers to Stravinsky's ballet or rather the name of the popular Russian Kaspers given by his partner, Phyllis Playter, 22 years his junior (whom he called TT ).

Powys lived in Blaenau Ffestiniog until his death

In August 1933 he began his 700-page autobiography, which he completed in May 1934. He himself wrote about the work in a letter to his sister Marian: “It follows a very peculiar principle: there will be no women in it - not even my mother. […] The book won't go into great detail on men or boys either, and whoever I mention in it will only be delighted with what I say. [...] It won't say much about myself either - except insofar as my experiences, sensations, thoughts, feelings, nuances, sins, vices, weaknesses, manias, conversions, books, places, images, scenes, environments for one species Faustian pilgrimage of the soul - or a kind of Goethean pilgrimage to the city of God - are suitable! […] However, the book […] will be amusing to read, not at all open and exhausting idealistic - you don't have to be afraid of that. "

After completing his autobiography, he returned to England with Phyllis Playter, where he only settled for a short time. In 1935 he moved to Corwen , Wales, where he was named bard in a druidic ceremony at the Eisteddfod in 1936 . He spent the last 9 years of his life up to his death in 1963 with his partner in Blaenau Ffestiniog. Its ashes were scattered on the sea off England's south coast.

Powys' novels Wolf Solent , A Glastonbury Romance and Porius are among the 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 . For Hermann Hesse , Wolf Solent was "an unruly chunk of genius" . And George Steiner saw in him a critic of “the technological mass consumer society who is prophetic in every respect” .

Awards

In 1957, Hans Henny Jahnn awarded him the plaque of the Hamburg Academy of the Arts as the only literary prize he has ever received.

Works

Autobiographical
  • Confessions of Two Brothers. Browne, London 1982, ISBN 0-86300-004-5 (reprint of the New York 1916 edition).
  • Autobiography. ("Autobiography.") Verlag P. Kirchheim, Munich 1992, ISBN 3-87410-020-0 .
  • The diaries 1929–1939. ("Petrushka and the Dancer. The Diaries of John Cowper Powys 1929-1939.") Residenz Verlag, Salzburg and Vienna 1997, ISBN 3-7017-1040-6 (Ed. Morine Krissdóttir; from the English by Henning Ahrens ; limited Edition of 1000 numbered copies).
Letters
  • Letters from John Cowper Powys to C. Benson Roberts. Village Press, London 1975.
  • Letters from John Cowper Powys to Glyn Hughes. Woolf Press, London 1994, ISBN 0-900821-79-5 .
  • Janet Fouli (Eds.): Letters of John Cowper Powys and Dorothy Richardson. Woolf Press, London 2008, ISBN 978-1-897967-27-0 .
  • Letters from John Cowper Powys to Louis Wilkinson 1935-1956. Macdonald, London 1958.
Poetry
  • Poems. Village Press, London 1975, ISBN 0-904247-76-7 (reprinted from London 1899 edition).
  • Wolf's-Bane. Rhymes. Village Press, London 1975 (reprint of the New York 1916 edition).
  • Mandragora. Poems. Village Press, London 1975, ISBN 0-904247-79-1 (reprint of the London 1917 edition).
  • Samphire. Village Press, London 1975, ISBN 0-904247-80-5 (reprint of the London 1922 edition).
  • Lucifer . A poem. Village Press, London 1974 (reprint of the London 1956 edition).
prose
  • Wood and Stone. A romance. Village Press, London 1974 (reprint of the London 1915 edition).
  • Rodmoor. A romance. Macdonald, London 1974, ISBN 0-356-04532-3 (reprint of the London 1916 edition).
  • The Complex Vision. Village Press, London 1975 (reprint of New York 1920 edition).
  • Ducdame. Faber & Faber, London 2009, ISBN 978-0-571-24214-6 (reprint of the New York 1925 edition).
  • Wolf Solent. ("Wolf Solent") Hanser Verlag, Munich 2003, ISBN 3-446-19817-2 (reprint of the Frankfurt am Main 1999 edition).
  • Glastonbury Romance . ("A Glastonbury Romance") Verlag Zweiausendeins, Frankfurt am Main 2000, ISBN 3-86150-258-5 (reprint of the edition, Munich 1998).
  • Weymouth Beach. (“Weymouth Sands”) Verlag Zweiausendeins, Frankfurt am Main 2001, ISBN 3-446-19776-1 (reprint of the Munich 1999 edition).
  • Owen Glendower. A historical novel. Walcot Books, Charlbury 2002, ISBN 0-9538442-0-X (reprint of New York 1940 edition).
  • Mortal Strife. Village Press, London 1974, ISBN 0-904247-37-6 (reprint of the London 1941 edition).
  • Porius. A novel. Overlook Duckworth, New York 2007, ISBN 978-1-58567-995-9 (reprinted from New York 1951 edition).
  • The inmates. Village Press, London 1974, ISBN 0-904247-49-X (reprint of the London 1952 edition).
  • Atlantis. Chivers Press, Bath 1973 (reprint of the London 1954 edition).
  • The Brazen Head. Picador Books, London 1978 (reprint of the London 1956 edition).
  • Up and out. A novel. Village Press, London 1974, ISBN 0-904247-28-7 (reprint of the New York 1957 edition; content: Up and out and The mountain of the moon ).
Nonfiction and philosophical writings
  • Suspended Judgments. Essays on books and sensations. Village Press, London 1975 (together with Llewelyn Powys ; news of the New York edition 1916).
  • Visions and Revisions. A book of literary devotions. Village Press, London 1974 (reprint of New York 1915 edition).
  • Psychoanalysis and Morality. Village PRess, London 1975, ISBN 0-904247-56-2 (reprinted from San Francisco 1923 edition).
  • The Religion of a Skeptic. Village Press, London 1975, ISBN 0-904247-57-0 (reprinted from London 1925 edition).
  • Culture as an art of living. ("The Meaning of Culture") Verlag Zweiausendeins, Frankfurt am Main 2001, ISBN 3-86150-403-0 (Nachdr, d, Ausg ,. Munich 1999).
  • Defense of sensuality. ("In Defense of Sensuality") Verlag Zweiausendeins, Frankfurt am Main 2001, ISBN 3-86150-354-9 .
  • Dorothy M. Richardson. Village Press, London 1974 (reprint of the London 1931 edition).
  • A Philosophy of Solitude. Village Press, London 1974 (reprint of the London 1933 edition).
  • The art of happiness. ("The Art of Happiness") Verlag Zweiausendeins, Frankfurt am Main 2002, ISBN 3-86150-355-7 .
  • Maiden Castle. Overlook Press, Woodstock, NY 2001, ISBN 1-58567-115-0 (reprinted from New York 1936 edition).
  • The philosophy of nonetheless. ("In Spite Of") Verlag Zweiausendeins, Frankfurt am Main 2001, ISBN 3-86150-402-2 .
  • Morwyn. The vengeance of god. Sphere Books, London 1977, ISBN 0-7221-6980-9 (reprint of the London 1937 edition).
  • The Pleasures of Literature. Village Press, London 1975 (formerly Enjoyment of literature ).
  • Dostoievsky . Village Press, London 1974. (Reprint of the London 1946 edition).
  • Rabelais . His life, the story told by him. Village Press, London 1974 (reprint of the New York 1947 edition).
  • The art of getting older. ("The Art of Growing Old") Verlag Zweiausendeins, Frankfurt am Main 2002, ISBN 3-86150-356-5 .
  • Homer and Aether. Macdonald, London 1959.
  • 100 best books. (“100 best books”) Ammann Verlag, Zurich 1986, ISBN 3-250-01061-8 (Ed. And transl. Werner Morlang ; with an essay by Elmar Schenkel and a conversation with Peter Bichsel ).

It remains to be seen whether the Roman Porius, which was published by Overlook-Press in summer 2007 for the first time in full and in its original version, will appear in German.

literature

  • Louis Marlow: Welsh ambassadors: Powys lives and letters. Chapman & Hall, London 1936. (Reprinted by Rota, London 1971, ISBN 0-85400-006-2 )
  • Henning Ahrens: John Cowper Powys' Elementalism. A philosophy of life . Vervuert Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1997, ISBN 3-89354-264-7 (plus dissertation, University of Kiel, 1995).
  • Joe Boulter (Ed.): Postmodern Powys. Essays on John Cowper Powys . Crescent Moon Books, Maidstone 2008, ISBN 978-1-86171-178-6 .
  • Harald W. Fawkner: Amorous life. John Cowper Powys and the manifastations of affectivity . Crescent Moon Books, Maidstone 2007, ISBN 978-1-86171-127-4 .
  • Belinda Humfrey (Ed.): Essays on John Cowper Powys . University of Wales Press, Cardiff 1972, ISBN 0-7083-0456-7 .
  • Elmar Schenkel : John Cowper Powys. Older than the stone, the land and the sea. Hanser Verlag, Munich 1995, ISBN 3-446-99210-3 .
  • Morine Krissdóttir: Descents of memory: the life of John Cowper Powys. Duckworth, New York et al. 2007, ISBN 978-1-58567-917-1 .

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Works by Elke Heinemann on dradio.de (accessed April 9, 2008)
  2. ↑ a b c d 100 Best Books. Ammann Verlag, Zurich 1986, ISBN 3-250-01061-8 .
  3. ↑ Elmar Schenkel : What has no language (Afterword to Glastonbury Romance )
  4. ^ The diaries 1929–1939. Residenz Verlag, Salzburg and Vienna 1997, ISBN 3-7017-1040-6 , p. 61.
  5. ^ The diaries 1929–1939. Introduction by Morine Krissdóttir.
  6. ↑ The Derbyshire Powys' - A Forgotten Literary Family on peakdistrictonline.co.uk ( accessed February 10, 2013)
  7. ↑ Elmar Schenkel: The masks of the sea. on www.faz.net (accessed on January 13, 2015)

Web links

Wikiquote: John Cowper Powys  - Quotes
personal data
SURNAME Powys, John Cowper
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Welsh poet and writer
DATE OF BIRTH October 8, 1872
PLACE OF BIRTH Shirley , Derbyshire
DATE OF DEATH 17th June 1963
Place of death Blaenau Ffestiniog , Wales