Lucifer, Keats and Paganism
JCP's long blank-verse poem
Lucifer (1905) in Keatsian style -- with a shared
ancestor in Milton -- is not much dwelt on in the context of
his life and works. Long-winded and literally old-fashioned
it may be, but it also has charm and vision, besides its
interest as a period piece. Like Keats's unfinished
Hyperion, its theme is the cyclic victory of one dynasty
of gods over another. It takes Paradise Lost into modern
times: Lucifer/ Satan, escaped from Hell or reincarnated,
now back in heroic form, is determined to overcome the
emaciated giant Jehovah, and remake the world. He seeks help
from Mother Earth, from Pan and his nymphs, from Bacchus and
his pards and from a useless Buddha, giving help and advice
in his turn to a condemned prisoner, a perplexed youth, and
a band of red-flag-wielding demonstrators. He emerges
godlike, powerful and alone.
Some of the most effective
moments are descriptions of scenery, chiefly very English
despite the supernatural events. A downland in high summer:
… Feathered
grasses threw
Shadows clear-cut as
lace-work, and the sky
From zenith to horizon held no
cloud.
O'er a wide plain the highway
passed; then rose
Abrupt and lost itself in the
blue haze
Of an high upland, bare of
hedge or tree.
Midway across the plain
stretched the broad road
Hedgeless on both sides, like
a level spear
Dividing the hot fields. Here
the sun blazed
Without a check and under him
the earth,
Beneath her flaming poppies
and bright corn,
Crack'd like a scoriac
desert. In this place
Dust round him, dust upon him,
the burnt grass
Dust-sown his seat, a dwarfed
and withered thorn
Propping him, Satan sat...
(Lucifer,
Village Press 1974, p.130)
A cathedral town -- Lucifer
was written on a visit to Norwich, JCP tells us:
Richly in horizontal beams the
sun
Fell on that city square.
Gables and towers
Burned fiery red, and motes of
golden dust
In archways, porticos and
cavernous doors
Like waves of wanton elves
glimmered and danced.
Few passed that way but felt
within their blood
The influence of the hour. A
touch more soft
Than music stole along the
ancient eaves
And blessed the pavement
underneath men's feet.
Slow on the golden heels of
afternoon
Up narrow streets long shadows
crept and laid
Fingers, like moth-wings, on
embattled walls,
On door-steps, ledges,
cornices and scrolls,
And double-gloom'd old
gateways' hieroglyphs.
Each open lattice as
escutcheon bore
The slant sun, gules. The air
was thick with dreams;
And Peace a visible presence
walked the town. (p.141-2)
JCP's book on Keats (written
c.1907) was in effect, like Lucifer, a manifesto for the
"New Paganism" -- for Hope and Joy and Youth against
repressive patriarchal religion and Victorian corsets. As
Cedric Hentschel says in his preface to Powys on Keats
(the selection published by Cecil Woolf, 1993), this was
entirely in the Edwardian spirit of rebellion against one's
parents. (D.H.Lawrence, similarly, in 1912 praises the
"Georgian" poets for their enjoyment of life, a breath of
fresh air after Hardy's gloom.) For JCP "Paganism" was a way
of life embracing the cult of sensation, empathy with all
creation including the inorganic universe, a robust sense of
humour and a balanced pessimism; and these elements endure
in his later philosophy.
John Cowper and Llewelyn were
both enthusiasts for Keats, and the notes of missionary zeal
in these early works of John Cowper still sound, more
confidently, in Llewelyn's rousing call.
What is it to be possessed by
the style of Keats…?
…It is above all, to acquire the power of enjoying
existence. Not merely of being happy or of being free from
pain, but of enjoying existence, such as the sudden
remembrance of a promised assignation brings to a lover. The
sunburnt, fragrant beat of these rhythmic pulses; the slow,
rich shore-moving roll of these oceanic tides, full of
moonbeams and pearls, fill us with a strange and wonderful
power. By absorbing this style, that is to say by drinking
the blood of this son of the Sun, we make our own the
greatest gift the gods have the strength to give us, or we
to give ourselves; the power of pressing so tightly between
our lips and fingers the grapes of Life, that the red juice
runs down our wrists and stains thedew and the grass — the
power of revelling so richly in Life's sweetness that we are
content, in sheer excess of joy, to spill the wine upon the
ground….
(Powys on Keats,
p.107)
And JCP's Satan encourages a
condemned criminal:
Unwish
Nothing. Thou might'st have
perished ere thy birth;
And fall'n on sleep before
thou wast awake.
Thou hast known youth's hot
flame. Earth's pleasant air
Hast breath'd, hast felt
through natural human veins
The great Sun's kiss. Thou
hast lived: is life to thee
A little thing? Is't nothing
to have known
Sorrow and pleasure and desire
and grief?
O youth, youth, youth, when
will ye learn that life,
Life only, only to live, is
worth all shocks,
All sorrows, all defeats!
(Lucifer,
p.127)
And from Llewelyn:
There is no wiser word than to
eat and to drink and to
be merry. No word that we hear spoken, no gesture we see
should be lost. In moments of profane
love we should be possessed by an ultimate rapture,
our spirits under their foolish bewitchment,
awake with gladness,
knowing the high fortune of so
tender, so savage, so
God-like an experience! The simplest actions should be
undertaken with a full
realization of their
significance, as uncommon opportunities
of natural piety never to come again. To pour
out water from a jug,
to break bread, to open a bottle
of wine, are lordly
offices…. No occasion of our lives but should have
its solace. It were wise for a man to spend long hours upon
his knees weeding a parcel of ground or smelling the mould.
We should even go to our garden jakes in a spirit of
gratitude that we can perform this just function of nature.
We should not so much as rest in the open country without a
prayer in our heart, a godless prayer sent out upon its
crooked way for the rich guerdon of simply being alive.
(Llewelyn Powys, Glory of
Life, 1934)
Kate Kavanagh
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