The New Mythology of John Cowper Powys

powers for the imaginative self which defy the laws of nature. On the contrary, he affirms that though the power of man’s will is almost unlimited in its control over the motions of his own mind, it is limited in its control over outward events. In his own writings, Powys was indeed much more richly imaginative than most writers, and he could afford to be so without the risk of flying off into wild fantasies because his descriptions were always based on the most careful observations of the sensible world around him, and equally careful observation of the workings of the human soul. In the story to which I referred earlier, Powys shows Sam Dekker’s mind filled with notions taken from different mythologies which have come down to him from the unconscious of generations of the human race, but he also shows how these notions were suggested to him by the actual circumstances of his life at that time and by his intense perception of the natural life around him as he went on his walk.

Another good example from A Glastonbury Romance of Powys’ powers of observation comes when he refers to what he says one of his characters would simply have called ‘the smell of autumn.’ But this Powys says ‘was really composed of the dying of many large sycamore leaves, the emanations from certain rain-sodden, yellow toadstools, the faint fragrance of bowed-down ferns, the wholesome but very musky scent of herb Robert growing amid faded tangled masses of dog’s mercury and enchanter’s nightshade ... afew dark green shiny leaves of heart’s tongue ferns hanging over a muddy ledge... and near them the smooth roots of a beech tree covered with black oozy moisture,’?* and having pools of green black rain-water cupped within the folds that were nearest the trunk.

Powys is scornful of those nature lovers, who admire its beauty and go to the country for their recreation only. ‘No,’ he says, ‘a real Nature lover does not think primarily about the beauty of Nature; he thinks about her life.’2® And for him there is ‘an indescribable blending of his being, with the plough-land or meadow-land over which he walks.’*° He speaks, in The Meaning of Culture, of the superficial aspects of nature as being her reality. The ‘magic of the universe,’ he says, ‘always emanates from the surface and always returns to the surface. It is the breath, the

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