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The Violet Apple & The Witch
Like The Haunted Woman & Sphinx, The Violet Apple opens as its protagonist receives an inheritance, tho not money in this case.
Anthony Kerr is a successful playwright, a fusion of G.B. Shaw & H.P. Lovecraft. He presents entertaining philosophical arguments to the public, but only by disguising his belief that humans are little better than insects in the face of vast, cosmic forces.
While Kerr is finishing the 1st act of a new play. A parcel arrives containing a family heirloom predating the Crusades: a glass snake containing a withered pip supposedly from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good & Evil. A visiting friend, Jim Lytham, accidentally breaks the ornament. Kerr pockets the seed.
Lytham's announces his engagement to Haidee Croyland. At the ensuing party, Kerr announces he too is to wed: Grace, Lytham's sister. Haidee unenthusiastically receives the news, either thru jealousy or because she's unsure of her feelings. She surreptitiously demands Kerr meet her by an old ruined tower the next day or she'll end her engagement to Lytham.
The meeting causes complications. On a morning walk, Lytham & Grace happen upon Haidee & Kerr. When they refuse to explain their rendezvous' purpose, Lytham & Grace start doubting their respective engagements. Complications escalate. Haidee can't decide whether her feelings are for Kerr & whether she ought attend to them. They're caught at other meetings. Lytham stops speaking to Kerr. There's talk of cancelling the weddings.
Meanwhile, Kerr has given the seed to Lytham's other sister, Virginia. She plants it. A tiny, withered tree grows remarkably quickly, producing two small, violet fruits. Affairs between Haidee, Kerr, Lytham & Grace come to crisis. Haidee, who has an impulsive personality reminiscent of Krag's, snatches one, eats it & leaves.
Kerr gets a letter from her afterwards, asking him to eat the remaining fruit & relate his sensations. He does, entering a state of profound insight. He realises his soul is written nakedly on his face (cf. Adam's realisation after eating the fruit) & that he can read others' true natures on their faces. His fiancé Grace appears banal & prosaic to him. Haidee alone has meaning for him.
He goes to her. She seems angelic to him, but doesn't reciprocate his feelings. Altho having felt similarly towards him upon eating the fruit 30 hours prior, now, not only have the convictions behind those earlier insights departed, but she's also lost all sense of beauty in the world.
Lytham turns up as Kerr kneels before Haidee & breaks off his engagement. Haidee persuades Kerr to leave. He does & cools down. Not only does he lose the conviction Haidee is divine, he also loses all interest in his art. He tries reconciling with Grace but fails.
Walking later he comes upon Haidee at a place where two trees form a cross—a place he recognises from a landscape painting he bought prior to the novel's beginning, & which impressed him then as expressing a part of his destiny. At 1st, the couple are dejected, seemingly resigned to the loss of their feelings for one another. Then Haidee says that, altho they might never recapture the intense feelings given by eating the violet apples, they might at least work towards it & "then it will be ours, not a free gift this time, but ours."
Anthony Kerr is a successful playwright, a fusion of G.B. Shaw & H.P. Lovecraft. He presents entertaining philosophical arguments to the public, but only by disguising his belief that humans are little better than insects in the face of vast, cosmic forces.
While Kerr is finishing the 1st act of a new play. A parcel arrives containing a family heirloom predating the Crusades: a glass snake containing a withered pip supposedly from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good & Evil. A visiting friend, Jim Lytham, accidentally breaks the ornament. Kerr pockets the seed.
Lytham's announces his engagement to Haidee Croyland. At the ensuing party, Kerr announces he too is to wed: Grace, Lytham's sister. Haidee unenthusiastically receives the news, either thru jealousy or because she's unsure of her feelings. She surreptitiously demands Kerr meet her by an old ruined tower the next day or she'll end her engagement to Lytham.
The meeting causes complications. On a morning walk, Lytham & Grace happen upon Haidee & Kerr. When they refuse to explain their rendezvous' purpose, Lytham & Grace start doubting their respective engagements. Complications escalate. Haidee can't decide whether her feelings are for Kerr & whether she ought attend to them. They're caught at other meetings. Lytham stops speaking to Kerr. There's talk of cancelling the weddings.
Meanwhile, Kerr has given the seed to Lytham's other sister, Virginia. She plants it. A tiny, withered tree grows remarkably quickly, producing two small, violet fruits. Affairs between Haidee, Kerr, Lytham & Grace come to crisis. Haidee, who has an impulsive personality reminiscent of Krag's, snatches one, eats it & leaves.
Kerr gets a letter from her afterwards, asking him to eat the remaining fruit & relate his sensations. He does, entering a state of profound insight. He realises his soul is written nakedly on his face (cf. Adam's realisation after eating the fruit) & that he can read others' true natures on their faces. His fiancé Grace appears banal & prosaic to him. Haidee alone has meaning for him.
He goes to her. She seems angelic to him, but doesn't reciprocate his feelings. Altho having felt similarly towards him upon eating the fruit 30 hours prior, now, not only have the convictions behind those earlier insights departed, but she's also lost all sense of beauty in the world.
Lytham turns up as Kerr kneels before Haidee & breaks off his engagement. Haidee persuades Kerr to leave. He does & cools down. Not only does he lose the conviction Haidee is divine, he also loses all interest in his art. He tries reconciling with Grace but fails.
Walking later he comes upon Haidee at a place where two trees form a cross—a place he recognises from a landscape painting he bought prior to the novel's beginning, & which impressed him then as expressing a part of his destiny. At 1st, the couple are dejected, seemingly resigned to the loss of their feelings for one another. Then Haidee says that, altho they might never recapture the intense feelings given by eating the violet apples, they might at least work towards it & "then it will be ours, not a free gift this time, but ours."
395 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1976
1 person is currently reading
137 people want to read
About the author
David Lindsay
36 books98 followersLibrarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name.
David Lindsay was a Scottish author now most famous for the philosophical science fiction novel A Voyage to Arcturus.
Lindsay was born into a middle-class Scottish Calvinist family who had moved to London, tho growing up he spent much time in Jedburgh, where his family was from. Altho awarded a university scholarship, he was forced by poverty to enter business, becoming a Lloyd's of London insurance clerk. He was very successful but, after serving in WWI, at age forty, he moved to Cornwall with his young wife, Jacqueline Silver, to become a full-time writer. He published A Voyage to Arcturus in 1920. It sold 596 copies before being remaindered. This extremely strange work was not obviously influenced by anyone, but further reading shows links with other Scottish fantasists (e.g., Geo. MacDonald). It was in its turn a central influence on C. S. Lewis's Out of the Silent Planet.
Lindsay attempted to write more commercially with his next work The Haunted Woman (1922), but this was barely more successful than Voyage. He continued writing novels, including the humorous potboiler The Adventures of Monsieur de Mailly, but after Devil's Tor in 1932 he found publication increasingly difficult and spent much time on his last work The Witch, published posthumously.
He and his wife opened a Brighton boarding house. They did not prosper and their marriage underwent considerable strain. The house was damaged by the first bomb to fall on Brighton in WWII. In his bath at the time, Lindsay never recovered from the shock. His death from infection caused by a tooth abscess was unrelated to the bomb.
A Voyage to Arcturus has been described as the major underground novel of the 20th century. The secret of Lindsay's apparent strangeness lies in his metaphysical assumptions. A gnostic, he viewed the "real" world as an illusion which must be rejected in order to perceive genuine truth. In The Haunted Woman, the two main characters discover a room which exists only some of the time. Together there they see more clearly and express themselves honestly. In The Violet Apple, the fruit is that eaten by Adam and Eve. The description of its effects is a startling, lyrical episode in a novel otherwise concerned with ordinary matters.
Lindsay's austere vision of reality may have been influenced by Scandinavian mythology. After being out of print for decades, his work has become increasingly available. He is now seen as being a major Scottish fantasist of the 20th century, the missing link between George Macdonald and modern writers such as Alasdair Gray who have also used surrealism and magic realism.
Arcturus was produced as a 35mm feature film by William J. Holloway in 1971. It was the first film funded by a National Endowment for the Arts and has recently been re-released.
Harold Bloom has also been interested, even obsessed, with Lindsay's life and career, going as far as to publish The Flight to Lucifer, which he thought of as a Bloomian misprision, an homage and deep revision of Arcturus,/i>. Bloom admits his late-comer imitation is overwhelmed by Lindsay's great original.
Bibliography:
A Voyage to Arcturus, 1920
The Haunted Woman, 1922
Sphinx, 1923
The Adventures of Monsieur de Mailly, 1926
Devil's Tor, 1932
The Violet Apple & The Witch, 1976
A Christmas Play, 2003
Further reading:
The Strange Genius of David Lindsay: An Appreciation by J. B. Pick, E. H. Visiak & Colin Wilson, 1970
The Life & Works of David Lindsay by Bernard Sellin, 1983
David Lindsay's Vision by David Power, 2005
David Lindsay was a Scottish author now most famous for the philosophical science fiction novel A Voyage to Arcturus.
Lindsay was born into a middle-class Scottish Calvinist family who had moved to London, tho growing up he spent much time in Jedburgh, where his family was from. Altho awarded a university scholarship, he was forced by poverty to enter business, becoming a Lloyd's of London insurance clerk. He was very successful but, after serving in WWI, at age forty, he moved to Cornwall with his young wife, Jacqueline Silver, to become a full-time writer. He published A Voyage to Arcturus in 1920. It sold 596 copies before being remaindered. This extremely strange work was not obviously influenced by anyone, but further reading shows links with other Scottish fantasists (e.g., Geo. MacDonald). It was in its turn a central influence on C. S. Lewis's Out of the Silent Planet.
Lindsay attempted to write more commercially with his next work The Haunted Woman (1922), but this was barely more successful than Voyage. He continued writing novels, including the humorous potboiler The Adventures of Monsieur de Mailly, but after Devil's Tor in 1932 he found publication increasingly difficult and spent much time on his last work The Witch, published posthumously.
He and his wife opened a Brighton boarding house. They did not prosper and their marriage underwent considerable strain. The house was damaged by the first bomb to fall on Brighton in WWII. In his bath at the time, Lindsay never recovered from the shock. His death from infection caused by a tooth abscess was unrelated to the bomb.
A Voyage to Arcturus has been described as the major underground novel of the 20th century. The secret of Lindsay's apparent strangeness lies in his metaphysical assumptions. A gnostic, he viewed the "real" world as an illusion which must be rejected in order to perceive genuine truth. In The Haunted Woman, the two main characters discover a room which exists only some of the time. Together there they see more clearly and express themselves honestly. In The Violet Apple, the fruit is that eaten by Adam and Eve. The description of its effects is a startling, lyrical episode in a novel otherwise concerned with ordinary matters.
Lindsay's austere vision of reality may have been influenced by Scandinavian mythology. After being out of print for decades, his work has become increasingly available. He is now seen as being a major Scottish fantasist of the 20th century, the missing link between George Macdonald and modern writers such as Alasdair Gray who have also used surrealism and magic realism.
Arcturus was produced as a 35mm feature film by William J. Holloway in 1971. It was the first film funded by a National Endowment for the Arts and has recently been re-released.
Harold Bloom has also been interested, even obsessed, with Lindsay's life and career, going as far as to publish The Flight to Lucifer, which he thought of as a Bloomian misprision, an homage and deep revision of Arcturus,/i>. Bloom admits his late-comer imitation is overwhelmed by Lindsay's great original.
Bibliography:
A Voyage to Arcturus, 1920
The Haunted Woman, 1922
Sphinx, 1923
The Adventures of Monsieur de Mailly, 1926
Devil's Tor, 1932
The Violet Apple & The Witch, 1976
A Christmas Play, 2003
Further reading:
The Strange Genius of David Lindsay: An Appreciation by J. B. Pick, E. H. Visiak & Colin Wilson, 1970
The Life & Works of David Lindsay by Bernard Sellin, 1983
David Lindsay's Vision by David Power, 2005
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
August 6, 2011
Graduating from seminary, I moved back to Chicago, settling into a lonely apartment in East Rogers Park while renewing old friendships. After a year, Mike and Tom Miley invited me to replace Tom Kosinski, another high school pal, who was headed for a year in rural France. Life improved.
Michael and I had become friends during the summer after high school, nine years previous, and had kept in contact despite my academic sojourns in Iowa and Manhattan and his travels through the West. Many of our acquaintances were like us in the sense of sharing a grave dissatisfaction with the way we and the human world were, but Michael was different. Some became political radicals. Others, overtly countercultural, even joined communes. Still others, mostly younger persons, became Jesus Freaks of one sort or another. Michael was sui generis. His turn to religion involved a turn from organized Christianity--Catholicism in his case--towards the experiential roots of, presumably, all religion.
Like myself, Michael had had some considerable experience with altered states of consciousness, both externally induced and spontaneous. Like myself, these experiences had raised questions, both epistemological and ontological, and suggested radically alternative, often better, ways of being. We were, and remain, vitally concerned with such matters.
The theme of most of David Lindsay's novels and stories suggests experiences like ours. Lindsay apparently had been vouchsafed what Christians call beatific vision, what the hellenistic Greeks called gnosis. It is one thing to be dissatisfied, to feel quotidian consciousness and behaviors to be wrong in important ways. Traditionally, in our culture, this is the sense of sin, of oneself and of the world being fallen. It is another thing, a blessing, to have had the experience of right mindfulness and of right behavior allied to it. Many sense this, the other, better side of being to the extent of recognizing it embodied in the various teachers of the enduring religions: Abraham, Moses, Elijah, Zoroaster, the Buddha, Mohammed, Jesus etc. A few, like Michael, like Lindsay, take on the mission of those figures themselves, attempting to spread the word, changing the world by changing consciousness.
Most, but not all (Arcturus is the exception), of Lindsay's stories occur in the ordinary world and represent more or less ordinary people. In these representations he is no great writer. All of his stories have one or more characters attain or at least glimpse reality in contrast to the everyday. In these matters one must credit him for at least trying to represent the Mystery and for persisting at it in unsuccessful book after unsuccessful book.
A common way of getting at what I've called "the Mystery" and at conveying the sense of it is by reference to the state of falling in love. Most everyone experiences that heightened state of consciousness, of care and of kindness in their lives. Some, indeed, become addicted to the pursuit of it as some become addicted to certain drugs or practices which produce such altered states of consciousness.
The Violet Apple, like The Haunted Woman, employs reference to human mating behaviors, to romance, engagement, marriage and their vicissitudes, to get at the essence of righteous, salvific love. Its sometimes rather heavy-handed references to the Garden of Eden, the Tree of Knowledge, the Serpent, the original parents, the fruit, the fall and the cross attempt, neither gracefully nor subtly, to remind the reader that this is allegory, that the common stations of human life have archetypal reference and meaning. Unlike most of his other books, this one has a mature ending in the sense of suggesting what one ought do if one can't enter the sacred mountain (Devil's Tor), the 9th century springtime (Haunted Woman), the Schopenhauerian Tower (Arcturus) and sustain the revelation. One works, mindful of the revelations now passed, as if one still had such a consciousness or, as Kant so dryly puts it, "in accord with such maxims as might be instantiated as universal law."
I read The Violet Apple during one of many trips to the cottage in Michigan with Michael, sitting together in the living room on a cool evening, Michael hovering just inches above the couch so as not to disturb me.
Michael and I had become friends during the summer after high school, nine years previous, and had kept in contact despite my academic sojourns in Iowa and Manhattan and his travels through the West. Many of our acquaintances were like us in the sense of sharing a grave dissatisfaction with the way we and the human world were, but Michael was different. Some became political radicals. Others, overtly countercultural, even joined communes. Still others, mostly younger persons, became Jesus Freaks of one sort or another. Michael was sui generis. His turn to religion involved a turn from organized Christianity--Catholicism in his case--towards the experiential roots of, presumably, all religion.
Like myself, Michael had had some considerable experience with altered states of consciousness, both externally induced and spontaneous. Like myself, these experiences had raised questions, both epistemological and ontological, and suggested radically alternative, often better, ways of being. We were, and remain, vitally concerned with such matters.
The theme of most of David Lindsay's novels and stories suggests experiences like ours. Lindsay apparently had been vouchsafed what Christians call beatific vision, what the hellenistic Greeks called gnosis. It is one thing to be dissatisfied, to feel quotidian consciousness and behaviors to be wrong in important ways. Traditionally, in our culture, this is the sense of sin, of oneself and of the world being fallen. It is another thing, a blessing, to have had the experience of right mindfulness and of right behavior allied to it. Many sense this, the other, better side of being to the extent of recognizing it embodied in the various teachers of the enduring religions: Abraham, Moses, Elijah, Zoroaster, the Buddha, Mohammed, Jesus etc. A few, like Michael, like Lindsay, take on the mission of those figures themselves, attempting to spread the word, changing the world by changing consciousness.
Most, but not all (Arcturus is the exception), of Lindsay's stories occur in the ordinary world and represent more or less ordinary people. In these representations he is no great writer. All of his stories have one or more characters attain or at least glimpse reality in contrast to the everyday. In these matters one must credit him for at least trying to represent the Mystery and for persisting at it in unsuccessful book after unsuccessful book.
A common way of getting at what I've called "the Mystery" and at conveying the sense of it is by reference to the state of falling in love. Most everyone experiences that heightened state of consciousness, of care and of kindness in their lives. Some, indeed, become addicted to the pursuit of it as some become addicted to certain drugs or practices which produce such altered states of consciousness.
The Violet Apple, like The Haunted Woman, employs reference to human mating behaviors, to romance, engagement, marriage and their vicissitudes, to get at the essence of righteous, salvific love. Its sometimes rather heavy-handed references to the Garden of Eden, the Tree of Knowledge, the Serpent, the original parents, the fruit, the fall and the cross attempt, neither gracefully nor subtly, to remind the reader that this is allegory, that the common stations of human life have archetypal reference and meaning. Unlike most of his other books, this one has a mature ending in the sense of suggesting what one ought do if one can't enter the sacred mountain (Devil's Tor), the 9th century springtime (Haunted Woman), the Schopenhauerian Tower (Arcturus) and sustain the revelation. One works, mindful of the revelations now passed, as if one still had such a consciousness or, as Kant so dryly puts it, "in accord with such maxims as might be instantiated as universal law."
I read The Violet Apple during one of many trips to the cottage in Michigan with Michael, sitting together in the living room on a cool evening, Michael hovering just inches above the couch so as not to disturb me.
April 29, 2010
The Violet Apple is a story of the character of Sphinx with more focus on redemptive love, though characteristically melancholy and tragic.
Unusually for Lindsay no-one dies. He uses the story of Eden for his background (the violet apple is grown from a surviving seed from the tree of knowledge from the garden of Eden).
It is, of course, 'about' everything.
The Witch is the best book ever nearly written. It is unfinished.
Dificult to find, worth the effort.
Unusually for Lindsay no-one dies. He uses the story of Eden for his background (the violet apple is grown from a surviving seed from the tree of knowledge from the garden of Eden).
It is, of course, 'about' everything.
The Witch is the best book ever nearly written. It is unfinished.
Dificult to find, worth the effort.
February 18, 2020
The Witch is required reading for Lindsay obsessives like myself. Outside of that, probably not so much. I know it's hard to come by, so without saying too much, I found the first 2/3rds or so to be his best writing (considering his reputation as a bad writer). Certainly a piece unlike anything else.
June 20, 2016
I only read The Violet Apple, not The Witch.
It was somewhat interesting as an idea, but ultimately disappointing.
It was somewhat interesting as an idea, but ultimately disappointing.
December 27, 2014
I read The Violet Apple some time ago (I have the UK edition, published in 1978 by Sidgwick & Jackson), so I bought this US edition solely to read The Witch. It is extraordinary, even by Lindsay's standards. Despite being unfinished - he never completed the final chapter - he wrote enough. It seems to bring Lindsay's work full circle, and I thought of A Voyage to Arcturus a lot while reading The Witch. It's almost as if he solved the 'problem' he had set himself in that first novel with this, his last. I know I will have to read The Witch again. It has not entirely left my thoughts since I finished it a few weeks ago. Great and strange, and really beyond being reviewable; it is a lifetime of philosophy and vision condensed down into 150 pages.
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October 14, 2014Reread after a long time...
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews