" A Frenzy of Zanyism
Autobiography. By John Cowper Powys. (John Lane. 158.) THOSE people who consider Mr. John Cowper Powys to be a great man will welcome this revelation of his nature. Others may perhaps be bored, disgusted or even repelled by it. If a man is bored by a book, it is not much good trying to convince him that the book is interesting ; but if he professes disgust, it is sometimes worth while to try to persuade him out of it. This particular book, judged as an autobiography, is the reverse of negligible, for the author is energetic and outspoken and has succeeded in conveying some idea as to what sort of man he is. To call his habits of mind unsatisfactory is a much less useful proceeding than to try to understand their causes. With a little assistance from Freud and a little imagination, with some knowledge of Mr. Powys's heredity and various environments, it becomes possible to account for him to some extent, to understand his position in regard to the times and to the rest of mankind, to sympathize and even to recognize kinship (though it may be distant) with him, and to accept, instead of being irritated by, his " difference."
In the first dozen pages he uses expressions like " the ecstasy of the unbounded," " inscrutable ecstasy," " volcanic intensity of earth-feeling," " enjoyment of the cosmos," and " dark ecstasy after dark ecstasy." This at once gives us the impression that we have to deal with a person given to in- dulgence in cloudy rhapsody rather than to a struggle for exact forms, and as we read on this first impression is not belied. The explanation may be partly racial. Mr. Powys is inclined to think that there has seldom been a mortal soul— certainly no modern one—more obstinately Cymric than his own. He tells us that colour has always played a part in his life about twenty times greater than form. He tells us of his highly symptomatic dislike for the French language, and his antipathy to the dominant type of French imagination. He tells us that his family is extremely inartistic, and that be is the least artistic of its methbers" To the bottom of my soul I am no artist." He confesses that sometimes " a whole invisible galaxy of Christs, Merlins, Pythagorases, Laotzes, Goethes; Makes and Nietzsches whirl up about me " ; but, being invisible (though luminous), these figures must surely be a little hard to recognize. He says, convincingly enough :
" I have lashed myself up into such a frenzy of zanyiem that I feel as if I were making Jove to some eternal zanyishness in the heart of the cosmos."
Mr. Powys is always dragging in the cosmos. Perhaps that is partly why, after many years of lecturing (during which hd "often found it impossible to stop"), he has settled in America,' a part of the world which " exactly suits " hil " mediein& Man " character. It Must not be supposed that he flatteri himself.
" There is an unmistakable ninny-look or zany-look in my face." " Sub-human though I am . . . I am a regular Machiavel among Idiots."
" Am I that opprobrious thing, a ' polymorphous pervert ? Possibly I am."
Whatever Mr. Powys's nature, his education may be justly blamed for some of his difficulties. He believes that an Englishman's " mores," his " ethos," are formed at school. His own childhood was dominated by Fear. At his prepara; tory school and at Sherborne, where he was the more than eccentric " Powys Ma.", he was cruelly bullied, and even had to feign madness to save himself. He continually refers to his sadism, to his father as if to a demigod, and to his own peculiar idealization of women, and the measure of his dis- comfort may be gathered from the statement that, in the course of his odd reading, " the least reference to normal sex functions turned .my stomach." His book he describes is these terms " To a considerable extent . . . the history of the ' de-classing.' of a bourgeois-born- personality, and its fluctuating and wavering approach to the Communistic system of social justice: not however to the Communistic philosophy : for I feel that the deepest thing in life is the soul's individual struggle to reach an exultant peace in _relation to more cosmic forces than any social system, just or unjust,
can cope with or compass.'? • - •
As a " document " the book tells us something about our civilization and much about its effects on one individual. Re- markable for- atmosphere rather than outline, it. is at times :strikingly effective. And it calls up a wizardish figure, very distantly related to Dostoevsky and D. H. Lawrence, imagina- live, but almost completely without the abilities of an artist. WILLIAM PLO3IER.
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