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John Cowper Powys-letters, 1937-54
Hardcover
Published January 1, 1974
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February 13, 2020
A collection of letters sent from JCP to Iorwerth C. Peate, a Welsh-language poet and scholar. Powys was living in Wales by this time - in a newly-built council house, no less, an incongruous image - and every letter touches on Welsh history and/or its language.
In his short introduction Peate writes: 'the reason for the publication of these letters is my feeling that Powys's identification with wales and his own Welshness have been generally ignored.' I do not think that is the case any longer, so perhaps Peate's efforts have been rewarded.
Of interest to me were Powys' comments on his own art, specifically his belief that he was not an artist, and that his style of writing comes entirely from his long stint as an itinerant lecturer. He refers to himself as a rhetor. Peate likewise notes in his introduction that the reader must forgive the wealth of idiosyncratic punctuation and italics which Powys uses, explaining that his friend liked to write as he spoke. I think this gets at something essential about JCP's work. It is startlingly original precisely because it is the free expression of an individual, insubordinate to any inherited notions of what makes writing good. I was put it mind of what Powys himself wrote of Sir Walter Scott in his One Hundred Best Books:
The large, easy, leisurely manner of Scott's writing, its digressiveness, its nonchalant carelessness, its indifference to artistic quality, has in some sort of way numbed and atrophied the interest in his work of those who have been caught up and waylaid by the modern spirit.'
Not to overstate the point. JCP was no fan of vers libre: 'The mature poet attains freedom: the novice of today starts free from scratch. No craft of scansion to be learnt before he plunges headlong into the spontaneities of derived eccentricity and deliquescent formlessness.' (This is Peate speaking, who JCP agreed with on this point).
He was working on his two great historical romances during the writing of these letters - Owen Glendower and Porius - though not much is information is given, aside from queries about certain niceties of period detail which Peate was an expert in. There was also his interminable work on the study of Rabelais, who Powys was determined to prove had rather a Welsh sensibility! We also learn that Powys only ever made money from two books in his life, namely The Meaning of Culture and Owen Glendower. Also that one of his brothers sold a Thomas Hardy manuscript and used the profits to buy and restore a church.
Overall, perhaps not an essential book. It provides some of the domestic detail so completely absent from the Autobiography, and gives a look into his study of the Welsh language, which he could read but was not confident enough to write in; otherwise it is for obsessives only, and those who by some strange luck belong to a University whose library possesses a copy!
In his short introduction Peate writes: 'the reason for the publication of these letters is my feeling that Powys's identification with wales and his own Welshness have been generally ignored.' I do not think that is the case any longer, so perhaps Peate's efforts have been rewarded.
Of interest to me were Powys' comments on his own art, specifically his belief that he was not an artist, and that his style of writing comes entirely from his long stint as an itinerant lecturer. He refers to himself as a rhetor. Peate likewise notes in his introduction that the reader must forgive the wealth of idiosyncratic punctuation and italics which Powys uses, explaining that his friend liked to write as he spoke. I think this gets at something essential about JCP's work. It is startlingly original precisely because it is the free expression of an individual, insubordinate to any inherited notions of what makes writing good. I was put it mind of what Powys himself wrote of Sir Walter Scott in his One Hundred Best Books:
The large, easy, leisurely manner of Scott's writing, its digressiveness, its nonchalant carelessness, its indifference to artistic quality, has in some sort of way numbed and atrophied the interest in his work of those who have been caught up and waylaid by the modern spirit.'
Not to overstate the point. JCP was no fan of vers libre: 'The mature poet attains freedom: the novice of today starts free from scratch. No craft of scansion to be learnt before he plunges headlong into the spontaneities of derived eccentricity and deliquescent formlessness.' (This is Peate speaking, who JCP agreed with on this point).
He was working on his two great historical romances during the writing of these letters - Owen Glendower and Porius - though not much is information is given, aside from queries about certain niceties of period detail which Peate was an expert in. There was also his interminable work on the study of Rabelais, who Powys was determined to prove had rather a Welsh sensibility! We also learn that Powys only ever made money from two books in his life, namely The Meaning of Culture and Owen Glendower. Also that one of his brothers sold a Thomas Hardy manuscript and used the profits to buy and restore a church.
Overall, perhaps not an essential book. It provides some of the domestic detail so completely absent from the Autobiography, and gives a look into his study of the Welsh language, which he could read but was not confident enough to write in; otherwise it is for obsessives only, and those who by some strange luck belong to a University whose library possesses a copy!
Displaying 1 of 1 review