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The Powys Society Conference 2010
Conference DVD's
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The
Conference
“GRAIL VISIONS”
The Powys Society Annual Conference 2010
The Wessex Hotel, Street, Somerset
Friday 20th August to Sunday 22nd August
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THE 2010 CONFERENCE
An Overview
(November)
The Wessex Hotel, Street
(constructed in the 1970s to host boxing matches) may not be
picturesque or folkloric but it had many advantages. Bedrooms
were very comfortable, bathrooms had real baths, food was good,
the young Romanian staff obliging and helpful. There was a nice
small bar, a convenient shopping street and easy access to
Glastonbury. Useless to deny that the average age of the
Society is rising: many of us treat the conference as a holiday,
and we do like our comforts...
Two out of the four speakers were unknown quantities, at
opposite ends of the Glastonbury spectrum. On Friday evening
Chris Thomas introduced
Paul Weston,
who lives in Glastonbury, rightly referring to his encyclopedic
knowledge of the mythos and superlegends of the place.
PW's most recent
book is Avalonian Aeon: 'from Glastonbury Festival to
2012 – a personal occult odyssey' (others are Mysterium
Artorius and on Aleister Crowley). A Glastonbury Romance,
that 'astounding novel', is quoted on PW's website, with Louis
Wilkinson's description of JCP's transfixing power and the vital
force of his identity; also JCP's own statement of wanting to
express the special myth of this place where the ancient earth
goddess stirred her cauldron, the proto-Grail.
PW came to Powys originally through Colin Wilson. A special
interest for him is JCP's "Gnostic" view of a dual First Cause
containing both good and evil (connecting with the esoteric
supreme god Abraxas/ Abrasax, both God and Devil). His informal
talk mainly dealt with the chance discoveries and coincidences
that guided him to reading Glastonbury three times in a
year.... His favourite chapter is "Maundy Thursday", with its
scene of the feast at the Vicarage, Isaac Weatherwax's song, and
John Crow's moonlit walk up Wirral Hill and fatal encounter with
Mad Bet. On Saturday Paul led a group up this hill, via
Pomparlès Bridge over the river Brue (site of John Crow's
encounter with the dead cat, and his vision of Excalibur), and
on to the end of the ridge and the Holy Thorn (its ribbon
tributes decorously tidy), with Chalice Hill and the Tor ahead,
and the Abbey ruins below.
On Saturday morning,
Harald Fawkner
was not prepared to grant that AGR deals with the truly
supernatural at all. It is essentially naturalistic, about human
nature. Healing is natural, sympathy and pity are natural.
Religion is supernatural, but no experience in AGR deals
with the Soul – the "real thing" -- in the way that Wolf
Solent's life is affected by the suffering of the face on the
Waterloo steps. Mythology is not in itself supernatural, and
fantasy is fantasy. In the multicultural life of AGR, the
crisscrossed affectivity systems (Christianity included
with the rest) are natural forces, human sensations (including
visions). HF's chosen chapter was "Mark's Court". Geard,
whether as Merlin or as Christian, depends on his animal
magnetism: his "Christ have mercy" is a human cry.
In the next talk ("now for something completely different"),
Stephen Powys Marks
described his researches into the neatly written, tireless
Journals of his great-grandfather's great-grandmother, Caroline
Powys (1738 -1817), now preserved in the British Library. He
has written a good deal on this ancestress already, especially
in relation to Bath, where she spent much time and where Stephen
now lives; and the conventional everyday life of this capable,
observant, privileged woman gives a clear view of the social
life of the time – clearer perhaps in its freedom from
introspection and complex emotion, than the fiction of her
acquaintance Jane Austen. We heard Caroline (KK providing her
voice) suggesting that women might, if allowed to be instructed,
be as capable as men of understanding technical matters –
possibly more capable. We saw her marvelling at the efficiency
of naval displays (hundreds of seamen manning the rigging, at
lightning speed); noting the effects of an exceptionally hard
winter in 1776 (ice ten inches thick, beer and cream frozen);
and shedding tears at the departure to a far county of her
daughter and grandchildren.
Saturday evening saw a re-showing of the
screen test
for JCP's debate on marriage with Bertrand Russell in 1929.
Those of us who saw it last time, at Kingston Maurward (17 years
ago...) knew what to expect of JCP's surprising (indeed quite
disturbing) appearance and body language: gleaming gimlet eyes,
ferocious lower teeth, explosive delivery, hurling himself at
the microphone like a strong fish in a net (or maybe like his
lecturing performance, only with feet nailed to the floor). He
clearly disliked the experience, as indicated by his final
glares at the camera. If the Society can also acquire the
half-minute surviving from the actual debate (this is probably
what was shown on "News Reel") it will be interesting to see
whether he toned it down. Russell meanwhile, immobile in
tweeds, against JCP already in his father's dinner jacket),
delivered his argument for free love in measured monotone.
Africa was the setting for this year's "entertainment",
The Untold Privilege,
a script compiled by Louise de Bruin with Chris Wilkinson,
largely from letters between Will Powys and other members of the
family who visited or worked with him in Kenya. Llewelyn of
course went there for several years during WWI, chronicling the
challenging physical work, the wild landscape and threatening
animals, often dwelling on the cruel or pitiful elements of
colonial life. [see p.xx]
Theodore's son Theodore Cowper ("Dicky") came out in 1924, until
his devastating murder by tribesmen in 1931. Katie visited in
1933. Gerard Casey came to live there in 1938, with Mary
joining him in 1946 after they married. Will brought his family
to England in 1947, and Lucy returned with them for two years
(bringing family furniture and ornaments from Montacute).
Gertrude went there in 1949-50, and in 1957 Marian, crippled
with arthritis but undaunted. The readings ended with Mary's
diary describing the bells of Montacute church, tolling and
ringing a full peal for Will when he died in Africa in October
1978, aged ninety. A series of screened family photographs
accompanied the readings.
On Sunday,
Anthony O'Hear,
new to the Society, gave a packed, clearly argued and
far-reaching analysis of AGR as a piece of serious
mythologising. His starting point was the concept of "romance"
as quest and return, as in Wagner's Parsifal. AGR
shares with that opera some typical themes of Romance -- the
roles of chastity, renunciation, compassion, the hero as holy
fool (Sam Dekker) -- but, unlike Wagner's synthesising, with JCP
nothing is clear or straightforward. Weaving his myths into
modern life, sensitive to the variety of life forms, conceiving
luck and ill luck as magnetic forces, toying with his readers'
expectations, JCP's Grail – the purification of sensibility –
can be found anywhere and everywhere in the pantomime of life.
And Evans’ ‘crucifixion’, when in despairing solitude he has a
vision of the world as being nothing but pain and malice,
'would not then be as blasphemous as it might otherwise seem,
but rather an exemplification of the Aeschylean teaching, that
it is by affliction that we are schooled in things of the
divinity'.
At the
AGM,
tributes were paid to two sad losses to the Society. Glen
Cavaliero spoke of
Margaret Eaton,
a supportive member from the earliest days, whose book shops
were focal points of Powys studies. Charles Lock, a close friend
of
Richard Maxwell,
reflected the shock of such a sudden and premature cutting-off
of a friend and scholar.
Three
Honorary Memberships
were awarded, with grateful thanks and appreciation: to our
retiring Chairman, John Hodgson, who has overseen five
Conferences, to his predecessor Richard Graves, of the previous
four, and to Stephen Powys Marks, contributor and Publications
Manager over many years, Tim Hyman was welcomed as new Chairman.
Michael French, stepping down as Treasurer after seven years,
was thanked and applauded; John Dunn has agreed to take over
'for the time being'. Peter Foss (new vice-chair) was unable to
be present, owing to a conflicting celebration of the Battle of
Bosworth. Louise de Bruin will join the committee. Charles Lock
will take Richard Maxwell's place as Journal editor for
this year, and join the committee ex officio.
A Glastonbury
Quiz
saw us off on a light note. Who wore a bowler hat? A purple
bonnet? Who lived at The Elms? At Cardiff Villa? What Greek
philosopher was followed by Dr Fell? What book was Mr Evans
writing? What was the name of Ned Athling's newspaper? What was
JCP’s original title for A Glastonbury Romance?
Kate
Kavanagh
(November 2010)
See also:
Mary Simmonds
Christopher Uren
Geoffrey Winch
“GRAIL VISIONS”
This year the conference returns to the
West Country, and to Street only two miles from Glastonbury, and
suitably concentrates on what for many is John Cowper Powys’s
greatest novel, A Glastonbury Romance. Glastonbury is
certainly Powys’s most populous work:
“Why I have the whole life of a community on my hands; with
housewives, lawyers, doctors, chemists, innkeepers, procuresses,
clergymen, servants, old-maids, beggars, madmen, children, poets,
landowners, labourers, shop-keepers, an anarchist, dogs, cats, fish,
and an airplane pilot … There are no less than six major love
affairs, one murder, three births, two deaths and one raising from
the dead.”
Philosophically, the book is equally speculative and
wide-ranging, with its own home-made cosmology, the visions (or are
they “creative lies”?) of Johnny Geard and Sam Dekker, the sceptical
disenchantment of John Crow, and the scientific materialsm of his
industrialist cousin Philip. Its conclusion, “Never or Always”,
strikes the characteristic Powysian note of ambivalence. I do not
know what our speakers will say, but I suspect they will speak from
very different points of view. Paul Weston is learned in the
Arthurian myths of Glastonbury that Powys drew on deeply for his
book, and which inform it, often in veiled ways, at every step. Paul
will also lead us on a Saturday afternoon walk up Wirral Hill and to
many of the sites made vivid in the imaginative world of the novel. Anthony
O’Hear will bring an entirely different philosophical background
to the book. Harald Fawkner’s talk on “modes of regeneration”
suggests the many ways in which, as John Geard might have said, the
imagination “brings new life” to a Terre Gastée – the
“wasteland” of desolation that was known to the maediaeval
romancers, to T.S. Eliot, and to Powys himself. Eivor Lindstedt,
speaking about Myrddin Wyllt in Porius, will take forward the story
of Merlin, who is present in symbolic and allegorical form in
Glastonbury itself.
Other Powyses will also be present: Stephen Powys Marks
will talk about Caroline Powys (1738-1817), perhaps an exception
among the country-bound Powyses, for when not in London, she longed
to be in Bath. She was distantly related to Jane Austen, and her
journals, spanning 52 years, provide vivid glimpses of upper class
life in the late 18th and early 19th
centuries.
The Saturday evening entertainment produced by Chris
Wilkinson and Louise de Bruin will also provide insight
in to the lives of unjustly lesser-known Powyses. Katie (Philippa)
Powys, whose novel The Blackthorn Winter was recently
republished by the Sundial Press, is increasingly becoming
recognised as a writer to rank alongside her more famous brothers.
The startling landscapes of Kenya, where the youngest brother Will
settled and farmed, inspired Llewelyn Powys to write Ebony and
Ivory.
John Cowper Powys himself will also live and move and have
his being: there will be a chance to see again the Fox Movietone
screen test made in 1929, in which John Cowper prepares for his
debate with Bertrand Russell, “Is Modern Marriage a Failure?” This
extraordinary and arresting film, discovered by Antony Head, was
last shown at a society conference more than fifteen years ago.
Programme
Friday
20th
1600 Arrivals
1730 Informal reception; welcome by Chairman
1830 Dinner
2000 Paul Weston: “A Personal Approach to A Glastonbury
Romance”
Saturday 21st
0800 Breakfast
0930 Harald Fawkner: “Modes of Regeneration in A Glastonbury
Romance”
Eivor Lindstedt: “Myrddin
Wyllt in Porius: ‘The Protean Herdsman’"
followed by coffee
1115 Stephen Powys Marks “My
Great-Great-Great-Great-Grandmother Caroline Powys and Her Journals”
1300 Lunch
Afternoon: a walk up Wirral Hill, guided by Paul Weston
1900 Dinner
2000 Presentation of John Cowper Powys’s 1929 screen test for his
debate with Bertrand Russell, “Is Modern Marriage a Failure”
Entertainment devised by Chris Wilkinson and Louise de
Bruin, “The Untold Privilege: With Will in Africa”, the story,
largely recounted in letters of visits made by the Powys sisters to
their brother Will in Africa.
Featuring Richard Graves, Cicely Hill, John Hodgson, Timothy Hyman,
Kate Kavanagh, Patrick Kavanagh, Sonia Lewis, Pat Roberts.
Sunday 22nd
0800 Breakfast
0930 Anthony O’Hear: “A Philosophical Interpretation of
A Glastonbury Romance”
1100 AGM followed by a Powys Quiz
1300 Lunch
1500 End of conference and departure in afternoon
◊◊◊◊◊
The Venue
The
Wessex Hotel is a 2 star hotel at 15 High Street, Street. It is a
relatively modern purpose-built hotel. All rooms are en-suite and
have been recently refurbished. They have double-glazed windows,
free view television, coffee/tea making facilities and a hairdryer!
The hotel has a lift, a residents bar and ample car parking.
Our
lectures will take place in the Wessex Suite on the ground floor.
The bookroom will be on the first floor in the Mendip Suite. Our
meals will be taken in the Olive Tree restaurant adjacent to the
Wessex Suite.
Please return your completed conference registration
form as soon as possible.
◊◊◊◊◊
CONFERENCE PHOTOGRAPHS
With thanks to Kate
Kavanagh and Chris
Thomas
◊◊◊◊◊
Contact
Our Conference Organisers, Louise de Bruin (01258-817825) and
Anna Pawelko (email:
anna.pawelko@ntlworld.com),
will be happy to answer members' questions.
Above: Conference organisers Anna Pawelko and
Louise de Bruin
Further details about the venue can be found here:
www.wessexhotel.com
For anyone wishing to look up the site on
multimap,
the postcode is
BA16 0EF
If you are not yet a member you may like to consider
joining us.
◊◊◊◊◊
To visit the webpage
of last year's Conference (2009) please
click here.
For an impression of the 2007 Conference, please click
here
DVDs are available of presentations from previous Powys Society
Conferences
Conference DVD's
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