John Cowper Powys

John Cowper Powys [ ˌ ku ː dʒɒn pɚ poʊɪs ] ( born October 8, 1872 in Shirley, Derbyshire, † June 17, 1963 in Blaenau Ffestiniog, Wales ) was a Welsh poet and writer. He wrote poetry, essays, novels and extensive philosophical writings. Between 1915 and 1957 he published almost every year of his extensive books. He gave in his works as an ironic skeptic who makes himself his own ideology always in question. Powys was an avowed polytheist and at the same time a staunch agnostic in search of poetic and not spiritual sense. Elke Heinemann calls him a " British [n ] Dostoevsky " and the " most unknown genius of the 20th century".

Life and work

John Cowper Powys ' father was a vicar in Derbyshire. His mother was a descendant of the poet William Cowper, to whom he owes his middle name. He was the eldest son of a many-headed family of artists. His two brothers Llewelyn Powys and Theodore Francis Powys were famous writers of her time. Other of his siblings also taken an artistic career - his sister Gertrude was a painter and Philippa was also a poet. He spent his childhood in the village of Montacute in Somerset. This southern English countryside later formed the geographical background of his novels. Powys visited the boarding school Sherborne School and studied at Corpus Christi College (Cambridge) history. At age 24, he published Odes and Other Poems, a first collection of poems, which he himself described as " conventional and imitated ". Before he earned from the turn of the century with literary lectures his livelihood, he taught as a teacher in Sussex. In 1896 he married Margaret Alice with whom he had a son. After the separation of the couple, he remained her but also connected and supported her until her death in 1947. Littleton His son was an Anglican priest.

John Cowper Powys undertook extensive and successful lecture tours - first in England, then in continental Europe and most recently in the U.S., where he lived from 1904 to 1934. Every night he slipped into the role of his literary idols Dostoevsky, Whitman, Homer, Goethe and Shakespeare to a mass audience almost bring their works. He had observed in 1921 while filming Charlie Chaplin, with his humorous and tragic gesture was there one of his great idols. In it, he realized his own ideal of a complete individuality.

Powys took part in repeated public debates - legendary are his discussions with GK Chesterton and GB Shaw. With Bertrand Russell he discussed prior to 2000 listeners about " modern marriage". " We all very much liked Mr. Russell, but thought nothing of his arguments! He kept the issue on a humorous level. It was not really exciting. "

In the proceedings for alleged obscenity of the novel Ulysses by James Joyce, he joined - in spite of his dislike of the Irish writer - as a defender on. The anarchist and feminist Emma Goldman mentions him in her autobiography full recognition and the writer Theodore Dreiser stood up for him.

His restless life was accompanied by health worries - he always had problems with the stomach and a duodenal ulcer, which forced him to a strict diet but also represented a stimulus to his creativity. After Powys had retired in 1929 from the bustle of his lecture tours to Columbia County north of New York, he wrote there in no time and at an advanced age his most successful in Germany novels: Wolf Solent, Glastonbury Romance and Weymouth's beach. His books are unusually extensive - he detested short stories.

On 1 June 1929 he started on his annual tour of Europe with the transcript of a diary, which was intended from the beginning for the publishing and excerpts appeared posthumously in German language. It covers the period up to 1939 and therefore the most productive period of his life. Unusual open he devotes himself to his compulsive rituals, his secret sadism and his obsessive relationship towards his disease. The original English title Petrushka and the Dancer. refers to the ballet Stravinsky or the name of the popular Russian Kaspers to him by his partner, who had been 22 years younger Phyllis Playter ( called by him TT ).

In August 1933, he began his 700 -page autobiography, which he completed in May 1934. He himself wrote about the work in a letter to his sister Marian: " It follows a highly peculiar principle: it will occur no women in it - not even my mother. [ ... ] The book is also not deal in great detail with men or boys, and whom I mention therein, of what I will say, just be pleased. [ ... ] Also about myself is not very much stand in it - except in so far as my experiences, feelings, thoughts, feelings, nuances, sins, vice, weakness, mania, conversions, books, places, images, scenes, environments for a kind Faustian pilgrimage of the soul - or a kind of Goethean pilgrimage to the city of God - are! [ ... ] The book [ ... ] but will have to read amusing, do not spread and tiring idealistic - before you need have no fear. "

After completing his autobiography, he returned with Phyllis Playter to England, where, however, he settled for a short time. In 1935, he moved to Corwen in Wales, where he was in 1936 appointed to the Eisteddfod in a Druidic ceremony for bards. The last 9 years of his life until his death in 1963, he spent with his partner in Blaenau Ffestiniog. His ashes were scattered at sea off the south coast of England.

Powys ' major works Glastonbury Romance and Porius among the monumental works of modernism and stand in a row with the Ulysses of James Joyce, Robert Musil's The Man Without Qualities and Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time. For Hermann Hesse was Wolf Solent " a ungefügter chunks genius ". And George Steiner saw him as a critic " of technological mass consumer society, which is prophetic in every way ."

Works

• Confessions of Two Brothers. Browne, London 1982, ISBN 0-86300-004-5 ( Nachdr d ed New York 1916).
• Autobiography. ( " Autobiography. " ) Publisher P. Kirchheim, Munich 1992, ISBN 3-87410-020-0.
• The diaries from 1929 to 1939. ( ". . Petrushka and the Dancer The Diaries of John Cowper Powys 1929-1939 " ) Residenz Verlag, Salzburg and Vienna 1997, ISBN 3-7017-1040-6 (ed. Morine Krissdóttir, from the English by Henning Ahrens; Limited edition of 1000 numbered copies ).

• John Cowper Powys to Letters from C. Benson Roberts. Village Press, London 1975.
• John Cowper Powys to Letters from Glyn Hughes. Woolf Press, London 1994, ISBN 0-900821-79-5.
• Janet Fouli (ed.): John Cowper Powys and Letters of Dorothy Richardson. Woolf Press, London 2008, ISBN 978-1-89796-727-0.
• John Cowper Powys to Letters of Louis Wilkinson 1935-1956. Macdonald, London 1958.

• Poems. Village Press, London, 1975, ISBN 0-904247-76-7 ( Nachdr d ed London 1899).
• Wolf's - Bane. Rhymes. Village Press, London, 1975 ( Nachdr d ed New York 1916).
• Mandragora. Poems. Village Press, London, 1975, ISBN 0-904247-79-1 ( Nachdr d ed London 1917).
• Samphire. Village Press, London, 1975, ISBN 0-904247-80-5 ( Nachdr d ed London 1922).
• Lucifer. A poem. Village Press, London, 1974 ( Nachdr d ed London 1956).

• Wood and Stone. A romance. Village Press, London, 1974 ( Nachdr d ed London 1915).
• Rodmoor. A romance. Macdonald, London 1974, ISBN 0-356-04532-3 ( Nachdr d ed London 1916).
• The Complex Vision. Village Press, London, 1975 ( Nachdr d ed New York 1920).
• Ducdame. Faber & Faber, London 2009, ISBN 978-0-571-24214-6 ( Nachdr d ed New York 1925).
• Wolf Solent. ( "Wolf Solent " ) Hanser Verlag, Munich 2003, ISBN 3-446-19817-2 ( Nachdr d ed Frankfurt / M. 1999).
• Glastonbury Romance. ("A Glastonbury Romance " ) Publisher Zweitausendeins, Frankfurt / M. 2000, ISBN 3-86150-258-5 ( Nachdr d ed, Munich 1998).
• The beach at Weymouth. ( " Weymouth Sands " ) Publisher Zweitausendeins, Frankfurt / M. 2001, ISBN 3-446-19776-1 ( Nachdr d ed Munich 1999).
• Owen Glendower. A historical novel. Walcot Books, Charlbury 2002, ISBN 0-9538442 -0- X ( Nachdr d ed New York 1940).
• Mortal Strife. Village Press, London 1974, ISBN 0-904247-37-6 ( Nachdr d ed London 1941).
• Porius. A novel. Overlook Duckworth, New York 2007, ISBN 978-1-585-67995-9 ( Nachdr d ed New York 1951).
• The Inmates. Village Press, London 1974, ISBN 0-904247-49- X ( Nachdr d ed London 1952).
• Atlantis. Chivers Press, Bath, 1973 ( Nachdr d ed London 1954).
• The Brazen Head. Picador Books, London, 1978 ( Nachdr d ed London 1956).
• Up and Out. A novel. Village Press, London 1974, ISBN 0-904247-28-7 ( Nachdr d ed New York 1957; Content: Up and Out and The mountain of the moon ).

• Suspended Judgments. Essays on books and sensations. Village Press, London, 1975 ( together with Llewelyn Powys; Msg d ed New York 1916).
• Visions and Revisions. A book of literary devotions. Village Press, London, 1974 ( Nachdr d ed New York 1915).
• The Religion of a skeptic. Village Press, London, 1975, ISBN 0-904247-57-0 ( Nachdr d ed London 1925).
• Culture as a way of life. ( "The Meaning of Culture" ) Publisher Zweitausendeins, Frankfurt / M. 2001, ISBN 3-86150-403-0 ( Nachdr, d, outputs, . Munich 1999).
• The defense of sensuality. ( " In Defence of Sensuality " ) Publisher Zweitausendeins, Frankfurt / M. 2001, ISBN 3-86150-354-9.
• Dorothy M. Richardson. Village Press, London, 1974 ( Nachdr d ed London 1931).
• A Philosophy of Solitude. Village Press, London, 1974 ( Nachdr d ed London 1933).
• The art of happiness. ( "The Art of Happiness" ) Publisher Zweitausendeins, Frankfurt / M. 2002, ISBN 3-86150-355-7.
• Maiden Castle. Overlook Press, Woodstock, NY 2001, ISBN 1-585-67115-0 ( Nachdr d ed New York 1936).
• The philosophy of the Still. ("In Spite Of" ) Publisher Zweitausendeins, Frankfurt / M. 2001, ISBN 3-86150-402-2.
• Morwyn. The vengeance of god. Sphere Books, London 1977 ISBN 0-7221-6980-9 ( Nachdr d ed London 1937).
• The Pleasures of Literature. Village Press, London, 1975 ( former Title Enjoyment of literature ).
• Dostoievsky. Village Press, London 1974. ( Nachdr d ed London 1946).
• Rabelais. His life, the story told by him. Village Press, London, 1974 ( Nachdr d ed New York 1947).
• The art of getting older. ( "The Art of Growing Old " ) Publisher Zweitausendeins, Frankfurt / M. 2002, ISBN 3-86150-356-5.
• 100 best books. ( " 100 best books" ) Ammann Verlag, Zurich 1986, ISBN 3-250-01061-8 (ed. and translator's Werner Morlang, with an essay by Elmar leg and a conversation with Peter Bichsel ).

Whether the come out at the Overlook Press in the summer of 2007 for the first time in its entirety and in its original version Porius novel will be published in German is still open.