The Powys Review NUMBER FIFTEEN The Powys Review Editor Belinda Humfrey Reviews Editor Peter Miles Advisory Board Glen Cavaliero Ben Jones Ned Lukacher Correspondence, contributions, and books for review may be addressed to the Editor, Department of English, Saint David's University College, Lampeter, Dyfed, SA48 7ED. Copyright ©, The Editor The Powys Review is published with the financial support of the Welsh Arts Council. We are grateful to Mr Francis Powys and Laurence Pollinger Ltd., for permission to quote from the writings of John Cowper Powys and T. F. Powys, and to Mrs Evelyn Elwin for permission to quote from the writings of Llewelyn Powys. The Powys Review may be obtained from Booksellers for £2.50, or from Gomer Press, Llandysul, Dyfed, for £2.50 plus 60p postage. The Powys Review is printed by J. D. Lewis & Sons Ltd., Gomer Press, Llandysul, Dyfed. Enquiries about advertisement in The Powys Review should be made to James Dawson, 99 Corve Street, Ludlow, Shropshire. Tel. Ludlow (0584) 2274. Contents Editorial 1 Reviews Roland Mathias John Cowper Powys Burning Brambles: Selected Llewelyn Powys, Writer Poems 1944-1979 (from "Four Brothers", 1925) 11 EDWIN MORGAN 70 Ian Hughes J. Lawrence Mitchell T. F. Powys A Virgin with No Name: MARIUS BUNING 72 The Beginnings of Maiden Castle 14 C. Hentschel, ed. Susan Rands Powys to Eric the Red: The Maiden Castle: Symbol, Letters . to Sven-Eric Tackmark Theme and Personality 22 R. Blackmore, ed. Powys to Knight: The Letters Angela Blaen . .toG.R. Wilson Knight Maiden Castle and the MORINE KRISSDOTTIR 73 Celtic Calendar 32 Powys to Eric the Red GORAN BORG John Cowper Powys (tr.) LAURIE THOMPSON 75 The Magic of Detachment (1933) 35 Egotism and Impersonality (1934) 38 Anne Wilson Traditional Romance and Tale R. G. Felton: To J. C. Powys 41 MALDWYN MILLS 76 John Pilling David Goodway Autobiography and Imagination The Politics of Studies in Self-Scrutiny John Cowper Powys 42 ANDREW HASSAM 78 Jack V. Barbera Frances Spalding A Powys's Bridal Night and Vanessa Bell Stevie Smith 53 JUDITH COLLINS 79 C. A. Hankin, ed. Bryn Gunnell The Letters of John T. F. Powys in his Time 55 Middleton Murray to Katherine Mansfield Simon Barker H. P. COLLINS 81 Embroiderers of Tales Review-article: Anglo-Welsh Glen Cavaliero Poetry 1480-1980 Charles Williams, Poet of Theology Raymond Garlick & Roland MURRAY J. EVANS 84 Mathias, eds. 64 Bernard Oldsey, ed. Letter to the Editor: Dictionary of Literary Ichiro Hara: A Tribute 89 Biography, Volume 15: British Novelists, 1930-1959 Notes on Contributors 90 PETER MILES 86 The Powys Review Number Fifteen 1984/1985 Volume IViii Editorial The bracken that was uncurling on upright works by lecturers at the Powys Society stems in the ditches belonged to the year 1927, Conference, University of Exeter, this year; but to the old cottage woman it opened upon and the "Young Poet", Kenneth Hopkins, a world where death itself was forgotten. 'Tell who first visited Llewelyn in 1935, gave an him, tell him,' she cried with excitement, 'that invited Centenary Lecture at the Dorchester ye met Nancy Curtis in the halter-path, the County Museum. girl what used to run races for they star cakes —that will bring I back to the mind o'en.' The work of Llewelyn Powys, superb I asked for her blessing and hurried on. prose stylist, deserves wider and closer study How could I explain that she had given me a than it receives at present. We know of only message to a soldier who had been lying dead one postgraduate research thesis being in the dry soil of India already for half a written on him in the whole of Europe and century? America! (Please, inform us if we are Perhaps there is too much of the feel of some wrong.) The body of work provided by of Thomas Hardy's poetry about these last Llewelyn is substantial, filling some thirty sentences of Llewelyn's "Out of the Past", volumes. We still await eagerly Margaret an essay describing his experience of return Eaton's publication of her Bibliography of to his grandfather's, uncle's and father's Llewelyn's works which will direct us to Stalbridge in Earth Memories (1934), for scores of essays, etc., unknown except to a one to say that they display typical Llewelyn few scholars, and which perhaps will lead to Powys qualities. But they contain the sort of the publication of new collections of his compression of elegy and celebration, work. However, Malcolm Elwin long ago precise human sympathy and impersonal furnished us with a superb Life and Louis grasp of ultimate meanings, within an over- Wilkinson with Letters of Llewelyn. There all sense that all earthly life is holy, that is have been useful additions to these in the typical of Llewelyn's writings. related publications of the Ark Press and some biographical colourings-in by Kenneth 1984 is the centenary of the birth of Llew- Hopkins and Richard Graves. Perhaps from elyn Powys. Celebrations of Llewelyn's this year Llewelyn's readership (and so the birth (in contrast with those of John Cowper number of his literary critics) will increase, Powys's centenary twelve years earlier) have thanks to the ministry of the Redclif f e Press, been modest, as perhaps befits the artistic Bristol. Redcliffe have not only taken over character of Llewelyn's writings which, the distribution of those cheap, paperback despite his two novels, may be said to be pre- volumes of Llewelyn Powys provided by the dominantly sketches and essays. However, old Village Press (so that, for example, Skin the modest celebrations are at odds with the for Skin, that fine and brilliant work may be works' assertive character, their mighty bought for only £1.75) but they have pub- celebration and demonstration of the joys of lished several additional books, including natural life. To our sorrow, we have Earth Memories with an introduction by received no outstanding critical articles on Philip Larkin. Llewelyn's works for publication in the Review this year. In Number 14 we repub- This number of the Review is given largely lished an interesting but untypical small to discussion of John Cowper Powys's piece of his work, a short-story, and in this Maiden Castle (1937), the first of his novels number we fall back on one of the several completed in Wales (1935-6) but conceived, critical assessments by his finest general certainly begun, in Dorset during the year critic, John Cowper Powys. There have following Powys's final return from been celebratory lectures during the year: America to Britain in June 1934. John two interesting approaches were made to the Cowper returned to Britain at first to live 2 Editorial close to Llewelyn and his other brothers and Street, Dorchester, that is, the clash of male sisters in the neighbourhood of East and female personality and point of view. Chaldon and Dorchester. Llewelyn of (In this Review, Susan Rands directs us to course was to leave Britain for Switzerland this concern as a minutely and sensitively in December 1936, never to return before his worked-out element of Maiden Castle.) But death in 1939. 1934-5 was a strenuous time can we see any signs of the proximity of the for Llewelyn; he wrote vigorously but was "dying" but yet sunny Llewelyn in the also extremely ill, feared to be close to ideas,or views of life, of Maiden Castle! To death, especially in July-August 1934; and what extent should we be crying "duc- in addition he suffered the anxiety of the dame", or chasing will-o'-the-wisp, if we Dorchester court case against him (heard in were to find traces of theessential Llewelyn January 1935) which resulted from his Powys in his brother's novel? attempt (with friends) to prompt an investi- We hope that there will soon be published gation into a local girls' home after a girl, the uncut, authoritative text of Maiden not the first, had run away from it and its Castle, made possible by Ian Hughes's controllers. In the last Review (p. 21) A. editing. The publication of the original, Thomas Southwood suggested that the uncut text will make this ponderous, slow- claustrophobic and tense atmosphere and moving, dialectic novel even longer. How- clashes of nervous and divergent personal- ever, it will not only restore to us some of the ities in Maiden Castle reflect the situation of British and 1930s sense of place which Llewelyn's Chydyok (the ill man tended by Powys's American publisher cut and blur- several divergent and strong-minded red, but it will restore some of the balance of women) at the time of John Cowper's stay in the novel, or the exposition of contraries, Dorset. Thus, peripheral though they are which Powys put into it. For Maiden Castle, (and although illness in the novel is given to full of nervous tension, is the novel in which, Claudius Cask, a character quite unlike above the rest of his novels, Powys attempts Llewelyn), Maiden Castle has been seen to to explore and reveal opposite points of have links with Llewelyn. Dud No-man's view, political, social, psychic and sexual. securing of the circus-girl Wizzie's escape from her controllers is an action which uses Whereas the action of Maiden Castle is both John Cowper Powys's long obsession precisely physically located in place, that is with circus rings and also, as Kim Taplin in Dorchester, "town of water" (p. 9), bear- shows in The Powys Review, Number 3, ing the contrast of cluttered, modern rooms some ideas probably taken from Borrow's and the vast, windy ramparts of ancient Lavengro.