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0.02 SWEDENBORG REVIEW SPRING 2020 THIS ISSUE SPRING 2020 Front and back cover: Peter Cartwright, watercolours. From left: Untitled (1966); Untitled (1966) 03 | MOVEABLE LUSTHUS 27 | CARTOGRAPHY OF Iain Sinclair reflects on the shifting THE BRAIN traces of Swedenborg’s visionary legacy Dr David Lister re-examines his 2019 in this extract from an upcoming book. Summer Seminar series. 07 | BLAKE AND 28 | ESSAY ON AFTER LIFE SWEDENBORG IN James Wilson’s essay on Hirokazu Kore- PHILIP PULLMAN’S eda’s 1998 film After Life. HIS DARK MATERIALS Avery Curran examines Philip Pullman’s 32 | DON EMANUEL children’s book series His Dark The writer Michael Hampton considers 17 Materials and its relationship to Blake a stumbled-upon treasure, a copy of a and Swedenborg. Mexican comic book. 08 | THE CURIOUS 34 | THINGS HEARD HISTORY OF GOD AND SEEN AND COFFEE The Swedenborg Review’s Devin Zuber contemplates the relation round-up section of news and between mysticism, religion and coffee. forthcoming activities. 10 | D T SUZUKI 34 | LET US RECORD THE ATOMS Stephen McNeilly introduces a talk AS THEY FALL by D T Suzuki (1870-1966), given to 35 | PAT JOHNSON: TRIBUTE 02 the Swedenborg Society in 1912, and 36 | TUBE MAPS highlights a manuscript from the 37 | ANATOMY, ALCOHOL & THE SOUL Swedenborg collection. 37 | SWEDENBORG SCHOLARSHIP 37 | OUR LATE FAMILIARS 13 | PETER CARTWRIGHT 38 | SWEDENBORG RESIDENCY The artist, critic and writer Paul 38 | FRIENDS OF SWEDENBORG HOUSE O’Kane reviews a pop-up exhibition at 38 | INTERNSHIP REVIEW 19 Swedenborg House from 10-12 September 39 | BOOKSHOP 2019. 17 | SWEDENBORG 10 GARDENS An interview with Michelle Lindson about the work of the Friends of Tower Hamlets Cemetery Park in Swedenborg Gardens. 19 | SWEDENBORGS LUSTHUS Photographs of Swedenborg’s summerhouse by the artist Anonymous Bosch. 22 | THE SIBLYS Professor Susan Sommers, in an extract from her latest book The Siblys of London, delves into the history of two remarkable men on the esoteric fringes of Georgian London. 25 | SWEDENBORG’S LONDON James Wilson takes a look at the history and geography of Swedenborg Gardens in London, where Emanuel Swedenborg was PHOTOS © SWEDENBORG ARCHIVE, ANONYMOUS BOSCH, AVERY CURRAN SWEDENBORG REVIEW initially buried. SWEDENBORG REVIEW | SPRING 2020 BOOK PREVIEW The Moveable Lusthus A preview extract from an upcoming book on Swedenborg’s famous summerhouse. The writer Iain Sinclair reflects on the shifting traces of Swedenborg’s visionary legacy — IAIN SINCLAIR hen I was invited to consider St Ignatius, John Lewis (Swedenborg’s London Coming down the twisting, enclosed steps from Swedenborg’s summerhouse printer), Martin Luther, Moses, Isaac Newton, St Rosebery Avenue onto Warner Street and Cold Bath in Stockholm, the relocated Paul, William Penn, Alexander Pope, Samson, Sir Fields supports the conceit of emerging among a original along with the dupli- Hans Sloane. And Ulrika Eleonora who gave her set of houses, old and new, tilted alleys, cobbles, cates,W I chose to begin by going back to the parts name to the Swedish Church in Princes Square, mould cultures on granite, figures at a distance of London where the questing philosopher in black off Ratcliffe Highway, where the natural scientist mumbling into their devices (or tapping the was known to have lived, where he worked and and theologian was buried, decapitated, exhumed dead), all arranged to conspire with a vision of died. It was a question, perhaps, of picking one and eventually returned by gunboat to Uppsala. the city authored by Arthur Machen (lodged on thread of the golden string and winding it into a This is where I found myself, on dank November Gray’s Inn Road) and Peter Ackroyd (lunching ball. Voyages from Sweden to England, especially afternoons or May mornings alive with blossom with Moorcock in a favoured Italian restaurant the prophet’s first, were troublesome. But Sweden- and the petrol-perfumed optimism of the frantic on Clerkenwell Green in his days as literary editor borg always returned on favourable winds, mast city, mornings when disembodied voices could of The Spectator). Time, they reckon, eddies and creaking and straining, sails taut, puffed onwards be heard, faintly, unaccompanied, hymning flows, swirls in tight vortices. The sentimental no- by entities hidden in companionable clouds. angelic ascensions from the tower of St George- tion of acquiring a clearer understanding of past In the true summerhouse, at the western in-the-East. events and personalities by walking to the right end of Swedenborg’s garden on map reference is momentarily Hornsgatan, up against land be- justified. Swedenborg seems to longing to Ropemaker Nyman, have been most comfortable the bewigged seer retired from when he lodged close to the public life and his former duties now-buried Fleet River. as Assessor Extraordinary of the The mythologized inn of the Board of Mines. He engaged with April 1745 visitation has gone. 03 the illustrious dead, almost like a And the hunger with it. That fashionable dentist, and his wait- young man’s feverish compulsion ing room was always full. You to step ashore, make contact, can feel William Blake’s visitors engage, devour library dust and muscling out of the shadows in test the boundaries of the known. the Hercules Road cottage, cock- Swedenborg in motion. Sweden- sure cohabitants, never guests or borg shifting from rented room prevaricators. You can smell the to rented room, Cold Bath Fields hellfire, camphor, scorched hair to the Swedish enclave in Wap- and sealing wax, the hot animal ping. In later days, in Wellclose reek of purgatory’s ages. But Square, dressed in black velvet, Swedenborg’s study partners old-fashioned coat unbrushed, are more like clients. He is an The original lusthus in Skansen following a visit by the author in 2019. the prophet rose early and walked astral solicitor, judicious, quill the Thames reaches at first in hand, amending, adjusting his powdered Before Stockholm I made the rounds of London light. He lunched modestly, a dry biscuit and a wig, taking instruction. A dullish troop with not addresses touched by Swedenborg, what was left sip of wine, and retired early to his dream life, much to impart from the other side. As Sebald of them. I had in mind something of the notion sustaining a skein of earthly existence on regular wrote in Austerlitz: ‘We who are still alive are Juan Gómez Bárcena proposed in his novel The infusions of coffee. unreal in the eyes of the dead, that only oc- Sky Over Lima: This man starved for the truth of experience. casionally, in certain lights and atmospheric ‘I have said that a person’s manner of looking He ate alone and with a voracious appetite. There conditions, do we appear in their field of vision’.1 at a city reflects that person’s soul, but it is no less was a ‘blurring’ in his vision. ‘I saw the floor The Hornsgatan summerhouse, the wooden true that a house holds the spirit of the people covered with the nastiest crawling animals, like chalet with the shutters and conservatory turret who inhabit it’.2 snakes, frogs, and creatures of that kind . After like another miniature house set above the first, The lusthus, I hoped, would operate as a por- a while the prevailing darkness was quickly a coop for roosting spirits, was an acceptable trait, emerging from a dish of sluggish developing dispelled, and I saw a man sitting in the corner spirit trap. Here they came, in procession, a royal fluid, when I visited the removed original in of the room . I was quite frightened when he garden party of saints, philosophers, aristocrats, Skansen park and the replica in whatever was left spoke and said, ‘Don’t eat so much’. Again it grew politicians, pastors and Old Testament prophets: of the mystic’s garden on Hornsgatan. For some dark before my eyes, but just as quickly became Aaron and Abraham, Joseph Addison (editor of The time, on random travels, in unfamiliar one-night clear’. 3 Surely the strangest and most mundane Spectator), Anna (Empress of Russia), St Anthony rooms of transit, I photographed empty chairs. of instructions? But the figure reappeared at his of Padua, Aristotle, Cain (fratricide), Queen Chris- Which were never truly empty. And light fittings, bedside, to confirm the message. Feed on the tina (pre-Garbo), Esau (the hirsute), St Francis hanging bowls filled with a soup of unexplained revealed menu of the Bible. And chew every bite IMAGE © IAIN SINCLAIR Xavier, George II (Hanoverian King of England), illumination, a quantum of otherness. many times before swallowing. SWEDENBORG REVIEW | SPRING 2020 BOOK PREVIEW The atmosphere and defining smells changed with the A London plane tree, of character, mottled and peeling, centuries, Swedenborg’s lodgings became a woodyard. A yellow in this light, marks the ground where Swedenborg dim passage of heated glue pots and Swedish resin. And was interred. His legend is commemorated in white paint then the cut planks vanished too. I came up against, on on a black border: Emanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772), my last walk before leaving for Stockholm, an unreadable a Swedish theologian + Polymath, lodged nearby in frontage of private flats: a neutral screen that could have Wellclose Sq. He was buried here. Dry leaves, crisped and been anywhere in Europe. curling, like the burnt pages of a parchment diary, pile up Circling the site of the chophouse manifestation, I watched behind the black frame. through ornamental ironwork as seated hoodies did their All my earlier fictions were of Swedenborg coming ashore own staring at screens with the wrong sort of light. Their under sentence of death and exploring this ground, settling chairs slid across the floor as they solicited advice from other himself in the shade of a particular tree.