|
The official website of THE POWYS SOCIETY |
||||||||
|
Llewelyn Powys |
||||||||
| Home | About The Society | News and Events | Publishing News | 2010 Conference | ||||
| John Cowper Powys | T. F. Powys | Llewelyn Powys | The Powys Family | |||||
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|||
|
Powys Society Publication List Powys titles currently in print
|
Llewelyn Powys (1884-1939) 'A Philosophical Poet'
"No sight that the human eyes can look upon is more provocative of awe than is the night sky scattered thick with stars. But this silence made visible, this silence made audible, does not necessarily give rise to a religious mood. It may evoke a mood that neither requires nor postulates a God. On frosty January nights when I walk over the downs I feel myself to be passing through a lofty heathen temple, a temple without devil-affrighting steeple bells, without altars of stone or altars of wood. Constellation beyond constellation, the unaltering white splash of the Milky Way, and no sign of benison, no sign of bane, only the homely hedgerow shadows and the earth's resigned stillness outstretched under the unparticipating splendour of a physical absolute."
Llewelyn Powys was born in Dorchester, Dorset, spent his childhood at Montacute, Somerset, and as an adult lived for varying periods in Kenya, the United States, Dorset and Switzerland. His twenty-six books include a novel, Apples be Ripe, a biography, Henry Hudson, essays descriptive and polemical, memoirs and reminiscences. Of all the Powys brothers, Llewelyn was recognized as the most cheerful, the most at ease with existence: the only one for whom a title such as Glory of Life could hold not a shadow of the ironic. Llewelyn's epicurean philosophy is intimately related to the tuberculosis with which he struggled for thirty years.
Among Llewelyn's best books are Black Laughter, about life in Africa, Skin for Skin, a memoir of his first attack of tuberculosis and residence in a Swiss sanatorium, Impassioned Clay, a statement of his philosophical outlook, the essays collected in Earth Memories, Dorset Essays, Somerset Essays and Swiss Essays, and the fictionalized autobiography Love and Death. In their blend of the descriptive, the reminiscent, and the polemical, Llewelyn's best writings have retained both their urgency of appeal and their charm of evocation. Malcolm Elwin, his first biographer, described Llewelyn Powys as 'a philosophical poet relating the pleasures of his senses in the purest prose of his time'.
Llewelyn Powys in New York, 1928. Photo by Doris Ulmann (Courtesy of Stephen Powys Marks) The most recent Llewelyn Powys publications have been two volumes of Wessex Essays: Still Blue Beauty (2008) and Durdle Door to Dartmoor (2009); three booklets of diaries edited by Peter J. Foss, and the same author’s Bibliography of Llewelyn Powys (2007). All are currently in print. Due in 2010: A Struggle For Life. STINSFORD CHURCHYARD by Llewelyn Powysread by Chris Wilkinson (7 mins 41 secs)Please click on the icon below to hear Chris Wilkinson read an essay from Dorset Essays reprinted in Durdle Door to Dartmoor (The Sundial Press)[ Please allow a few seconds for buffering, depending on your connection speed]
|
|||||||
|
This website is © The Powys Society 2010. Permission must be asked before using any material from this site.
|
EARTH MEMORIES Llewelyn Powys |
A Powys Society Meeting |
IMPASSIONED CLAY Llewelyn Powys |
A BIBLIOGRAPHY OF LLEWELYN POWYS by Peter J. Foss |
||||
|
U.K. Registered Charity no. 801332 • ©2009 The Powys Society |
||||||||
%20-%20Copy.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
-small.jpg)
.jpg)
