Suspended judgments: Essays on books and sensations

by John Cowper Powys

General Books publication 2009 Original publication 1916 Original G.A. Shaw French literature English literature Literary Criticism / General Literary Criticism / European / English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh Literary Criticism / European / French This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and there may be typos or missing text. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select from more than a million books for free. THE ART OF DISCRIMINATION THE world divides itself into people who can discriminate and people who cannot discriminate. This is the ultimate test of sensitiveness; and sensitiveness alone separates us and unites us. We all create, or have created for us by the fatality of our temperament, a unique and individual universe. It is only by bringing into light the most secret and subtle elements of this self- contained system of things that we can find out where our lonely orbits touch. Like all primordial aspects of life the situation is double-edged and contradictory. The further we emphasise and drag forth, out of their reluctant twilight, the lurking attractions and antipathies of our destiny, the nearer, at once, and the more obscure, we find ourselves growing, to those about us. And the wisdom of the difficult game we are called upon to play, lies in just this very antinomy, -- in just this very contradiction -- that to make ourselves better understood we have to emphasise our differences, and to touch the universe of our friend we have to travel away from him, on a curve of free sky. The cultivation of what in us is lonely andunique creates of necessity a perpetual series of shocks and jars. The unruffled nerves of the lower animals become enviable, and we fall into moods of malicious reaction and vindictive recoil. And yet, -- for Nature makes use even of what is named evil to pursu...

438 pages, Unknown Binding

First published January 1, 1916

About the author

Powys was born in Shirley, Derbyshire, where his father was vicar. His mother was descended from the poet William Cowper, hence his middle name. His two younger brothers, Llewelyn Powys and Theodore Francis Powys, also became well-known writers. Other brothers and sisters also became prominent in the arts.

John studied at Sherborne School and Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, and became a teacher and lecturer; as lecturer, he worked first in England, then in continental Europe and finally in the USA, where he lived in the years 1904-1934. While in the United States, his work was championed by author Theodore Dreiser. He engaged in public debate with Bertrand Russell and the philosopher and historian Will Durant: he was called for the defence in the first obscenity trial for the James Joyce novel, Ulysses, and was mentioned with approval in the autobiography of US feminist and anarchist, Emma Goldman.

He made his name as a poet and essayist, moving on to produce a series of acclaimed novels distinguished by their uniquely detailed and intensely sensual recreation of time, place and character. They also describe heightened states of awareness resulting from mystic revelation, or from the experience of extreme pleasure or pain. The best known of these distinctive novels are A Glastonbury Romance and Wolf Solent. He also wrote some works of philosophy and literary criticism, including a pioneering tribute to Dorothy Richardson.

Having returned to the UK, he lived in England for a brief time, then moved to Corwen in Wales, where he wrote historical romances (including two set in Wales) and magical fantasies. He later moved to Blaenau Ffestiniog, where he remained until his death in 1963.

Reviews

[Richard S · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's easy to say, and quite correct, as pointed out in a review of Suspended Judgements by the Yale Review, that this book is full of errors of fact, judgment and omission, and that this book is full of incredibly poor and even irresponsible criticism, which can even change from one page to the next. The introduction and conclusion of this book I found unreadable, possibly the worst thing I've ever read by this author. All of this is quite obvious.

And yet, Powys writes not as an academic, but as an artist, and with incredible insight, and frequent beauty, that this was a thoroughly enjoyable, entertaining and enlightening read. The essays on Montaigne, Maupassant, Emily Bronte and Henry James are the best I've ever read about these authors and this book made me want to go out and read everything that Remy de Gourmont ever wrote. And so frequently in his comments, very frequently, he hits the nail on the head, that it is worth the general meandering senseless disaster so much of this book consists of. Powys never holds back, in sweeping generalization, in deeply offensive social commentary, in overbearing and omnipresent personality, so that this book grips you in a way that few books do and more of this type should.

The book is actually more "sane" than Visions and Revisions, which is unfortunate, as it leaves Powys more vulnerable, but as the book goes on he becomes more lucid and more of his typical self. The book reads like, and way perhaps based upon, popular lectures that Powys gave to support himself most of his career.

There is not enough of this, certainly not in the world today, where the great writers and great classics are subject to such fine scrutiny that all of the life is taken out of them. Reading this book made me excited about reading! Who cares about "details"? If this book was assigned to high school students yes they would be incredibly misinformed on so many points, but they would reach for a volume of Maupassant with enthusiasm and be justly rewarded. From his essay on Verlaine:

"The things that pertain the deepest to humanity are not it's fierce fleshy passions, its feverish ambitions, its proud reasonings, its tumultuous hopes. They are the things that belong to the hours when these obsessive forces fade and ebb and sink away. They are the things that rise up out of the twilight-margins of sleep and death; the things that come to us on softly stepping feet, like child-mothers with their first-born in their arms; the things that have the white mists of dawn about them and the cool breath of evening around them; the things that hint at something beyond passion and beyond reason; the things that sound to us like the sound of bells heard through clear deep water; for the secret of human life is not in its actions or its voices our its clamorous desires, but in the interval between all these - when all these leave it for a moment at rest - and in the depths of the soul itself the music becomes audible, the music which is the silence of eternity."

Say what you will about the "appropriateness" of this paragraph, is this not, in fact, the "feeling" that Verlaine evokes? Doesn't it make you want to "reach for the Verlaine", like a bottle of fine wine?

Anyway, this book is still "early" JC Powys, and he is more famous for his novels than his books like this one, but this book is well worth reading for anyone who loves books or loves the authors he covers.

[Bryn Hammond · Rating 5 out of 5]

Cheating a little; I've only read the essay on Victor Hugo, in a Kindle bundle of Hugo's works with criticism. But the essay was fantastic. One great novelist on another. Or writers of romances, for he examines Hugo's major fiction under the name of romances, which is what John Cowper Powys wrote too. Can we salvage that name, romance? I've wanted to, and this essay sort of explains why we need to. We don't have a word.

[Amanda · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fantastic. Love his conversation on what romance is and how Emily Bronte nails it. You can feel his passion for Wuthering Heights seep out of the page. Great read and he covers a great bunch of authors.