The New Mythology of John Cowper Powys

This creation ofa single self he sees as consisting of two elements. The innermost ‘I am I’ within us, which he describes as a ‘clearcut, hard, resistant nucleus of consciousness’ like a ‘round polished, inviolable crystal’ 1° and a wide circumference of memories gathered round this inviolable crystal or pebble. But lest you should think that Powys is being carried away by his own imagery he adds: ‘This image-making in my imagination only means that in my own experience I am aware of a central core of inviolability. It does not mean that I am under any illustion that my ego, however selfish, actually resembles a hard, round pebble-stone’.1”

The lonely self, Powys thinks, should build his own philosophy of life detaching himself from all philosophical systems or scientific theories. He need not reject any of these and can always use any part of them that suits him but he should not be committed to any of them. For he sees that the theories of scientists are so quickly superseded and that the systems of philosophers give little help in actual living of life. And he believes that philosophy should above all be the love of wisdom in the actual living of life.

This life wisdom Powys found in the works of the great ‘imaginative, humorous, poetical masters™!® of literature such as Homer, Dostoievsky, Walt Whitman, Rabelais and Goethe. For they deal with matters which directly concern the human soul, things ‘that have, for centuries upon centuries . . . been associated with human pleasures, human sorrows, and the great recurrent dramatic moments of our lives’.1®

Powys wrote about these and many other great writers in Visions and Revisions and The Pleasures of Literature, in which his critique is not the dry intellectual literary criticism so often found, but he conveys to his reader his own glowing enthusiasm and devotion as well as his own particular discrimination.

In the preface to the original edition of Visions and Revisions, published in 1915, he expresses the point of view of his criticism thus: “Let it be quite plainly understood. It is impossible to respond to a great genius halfway. It is a case of all or nothing. If you lack the courage, or the variability, to go all the way with very different masters, and to let your constructive consistency take care of itself, you may become, perhaps, an admirable moralist; you will never be a clairvoyant critic’ .?°

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