#john cowper powys

[jacques-chap-book]

“Strange how few people make more than a casual cult of enjoying Nature. And yet the earth is actually and literally the mother of us all. One needs no strange spiritual faith to worship the earth.”

- John Cowper Powys (from ‘The Meaning of Culture’)

#john cowper powys

[entheognosis]

A bookshop is powder-magazine, a dynamite-shed, a drugstore of poisons, a bar of intoxicants, a den of opiates, an island of sirens.

John Cowper Powys

#john cowper powys

[uwmspeccoll]

It’s Fine Press Friday! 

This week we bring you, Lucifer, a poem by English philosopher, novelist, and poet, John Cowper Powys (1872-1963), with illustrated headers by Scottish wood engraver, illustrator, and painter, Agnes Miller Parker (1895-1980), and  published in London by Macdonald & Company in 1956 in an edition 560 copies signed by the author. The poem is written from the perspective of Lucifer himself as he contemplates his fall from Heaven which was caused by his own arrogance. 

Agnes Miller Parker created six small wood engravings as headers to each of the six parts of the poem. The impressive linework and the amount of narrative packed into these small prints speak to the artist’s great skill in the medium.  This book was made and printed in Great Britain by Purnell and Sons, and is quarter bound in blue leather with light-blue book cloth over boards and gold foil-stamped spine title and floral design on the front cover. 

Use this link for more Fine Press Friday posts.

Use this link for more Agnes Miller Parker posts.

Use this link for more posts with wood engravings!

– Teddy, Special Collections Graduate Intern.

#fine press friday #fine press fridays #wood engravings #wood engravers #women wood engravers #Agnes Miller Parker #john cowper powys #lucifer #Macdonald & Company #Purnell and Sons #fine press printing #fine press books #figurative art #Chapter headers #relief prints #book binding #poetry #english poetry #english poets #teddy

[au-jardin-de-mon-coeur]

L'art est une émotion,

pas une sensation.

John Cowper Powys

[hyperions-fate]

Hello. What are you reading these days? Throw in some good recent reads too if you like, and willing.

Salve! Thanks for the pleasantly non-scatalogical, non-racist ask. I've got a couple on the go at the moment (aka in a giant pile on my bedside table). Highlights are Jean d'Ormesson's The Glory of the Empire, John Cowper Powys's Wolf Solent, and a collection of translated poems by Apollinaire. In terms of what I've read over the past year, Victor Serge's Unforgiving Years, Tony Harrison's version of the Oresteia, and Julien Gracq's Chateau d'Argol have been among the best. Serge's novel especially is seared into my brain.

#anon #books

[queer-ragnelle]

hi, to upload the arthuriana retelling list .... what about Porius- A romance of the dark ages by John Cowper Powys? the protagonist isn't an arthuriana character but the setting is arthuriana and there are King Arthur, Merlin, Nimue etc

Hi anon!

Never read it before. But I consider that "Arthurian" enough to count. I've added it to the Retellings List. I'll also give you this direct link to the book, if you wanted it. Thanks!

#arthurian legend #arthurian legends #arthuriana #arthurian mythology #arthurian literature #ask #anonymous

[oviri7]

« Dostoïevski avait ce pouvoir particulièrement russe [...] de se ruer sur la souffrance, de trouver un plaisir mystique, incompréhensible aux Occidentaux que nous sommes, à la souffrance ».

John Cowper Powys

#littérature #Russie

[hungwy]

Urn Burial has been admired by Charles Lamb, Samuel Johnson, John Cowper Powys, James Joyce, Jorge Luis Borges, Derek Walcott, Herman Melville and George Saintsbury, who called it "the longest piece, perhaps, of absolutely sublime rhetoric to be found in the prose literature of the world", while Ralph Waldo Emerson said that it "smells in every word of the sepulchre".[2]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydriotaphia,_Urn_Burial

[jacques-chap-book]

“Every day that we allow ourselves to take things for granted, every day that we allow some little physical infirmity or worldly worry to come between us and our obstinate, indignant, defiant exultation, we are weakening our genius for life.”

- John Cowper Powys (from ‘The Meaning of Culture’ 1926)

#john cowper powys

[entheognosis]

Not the wretchedest man or woman but has a deep secretive mythology with which to wrestle with the material world and to overcome it and pass beyond it. Not the wretchedest human being but has his share in the creative energy that builds the world. We are all creators. We all create a mythological world of our own out of certain shapeless materials.

John Cowper Powys

#john cowper powys

[alphaman99]

Poetic Outlaws

"If by the time we're sixty we haven't learned what a knot of paradox and contradiction life is, and how exquisitely the good and the bad are mingled in every action we take, and what a compromising hostess Our Lady of Truth is, we haven't grown old to much purpose."

--John Cowper Powys

[zmkccommonplace]

We lavish our energy on plans to improve our condition but seldom concentrate on heightening our mental reaction to the moment as it passes.

John Cowper Powys

#john cowper powys #time

[mysteriis-moon666]

« Chaque jour où nous nous permettons de prendre les choses pour acquises, chaque jour où nous laissons une petite infirmité physique ou une inquiétude du monde s’interposer entre nous et notre exultation obstinée, indignée et provocante, nous affaiblissons notre génie de la vie. » John Cowper Powys

[aurevoirmonty]

« Produire un effort spirituel, produire un effort moral, produire un effort mental — tous ces efforts nous paraissent moins appréciables que le simple fait de nous laisser glisser et saisir au passage les misérables plaisirs et distractions que la société projette sur notre chemin. »

John Cowper Powys

[eurisko-bohemia]

"If by the time we're sixty we haven't learned what a knot of paradox and contradiction life is, and how exquisitely the good and the bad are mingled in every action we take, and what a compromising hostess Our Lady of Truth is, we haven't grown old to much purpose."

-John Cowper Powys

#japan #art #culture #kids #advertising #landscape #ohio #politics #expressionism

[oviri7]

« Le grégarisme absurde, incontrôlé de tant d'êtres humains qui se singent réciproquement, (...) s'admirent, se désirent, s'envient, rivalisent, se tourmentent les uns les autres, est l'expression d'un effort qui vise à se soustraire à cette solitude essentielle du soi. »

John Cowper Powys - Une philosophie de la solitude