The New Mythology of John Cowper Powys

The great significance of Powys is that he actually did what he said. He was not preaching. Not only is the result of it there to be read in the many books he wrote, but he was true to it in his own personal life. Powys did not conceive it his duty to ‘make the world a better place’ but to enrich the living of individual human beings. The chief problem which the world is facing today is not only poverty in the material sense but poverty of spirit. At a time when mankind is more and more obsessed with the outer material world to the detriment of the inner human world and in which man’s inner experience is becoming frozen by intellectual abstraction and shallow catchwords, Powys gave freely of the wealth that welled out of his imagination. L

There has been some controversy as to which of the three most famous Powys brothers, Theodore, Llewellyn or John, was the greatest.

We have these words from Llewellyn:—

‘It is John alone of all of us who can be likened to the forked lightning, he alone has undisputed access to those deep, cool wells where the gods themselves let down their buckets.’

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