from an old notebook

from the first pages of a Pukka Pad bought in Jamaica, 2001. My copy of John Cowper Powys’ Autobiography was given to me by Jacqueline Peltier

John o’Saturn meets Women from earth

(p206) Much of JCP’s Autobiography dances around the complex topic of his erotic preoccupations. If it were not complex, it would not occupy so  many pages, for one feels that he is trying to understand himself in the writing, perhaps to exorcise.

At a point in time—he was 60 when he wrote the book—he considers some of those manias & compulsions. He traces them like a thread through various phases in his life. We too are invited to share in his fascination and puzzlement.

We could admire Powys for his literary style alone. I am not impressed by the criticisms which some of his most ardent admirers have made of it. But it’s his probing which provides a reward when we read him and ultimately justifies any excess or eccentricity.

A recent bestseller in the anglophone world, Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus, deals with differences between the sexes and their attitudes to each other. Powys characteristically  takes no part in pseudo-objective judgments. He shamelessly contents himself with being the centre of his own universe. When it comes to the topic of women, his viewpoint is not Mars but Saturn.

a single paragraph (on p206 of the Bodley Head edition) is as good as any to convey his attitude.

He goes on to explain how is is repelled by “warm maternal lovingness” as being stifling and suffocating.

What does he mean by this confession? How are we to construe it? I believe it’s as much of a puzzle to him as to us, to understand. For he is not an analyst, not a reductionist. Not even touched by Freud. It’s his honest reporting of subjective states.

I believe he is noting a discrepancy between his ideal erotic object and any real woman he has come across. An ideal woman isn’t out there somewhere: they don’t exist on Planet Earth. On Earth there are only men and women.

“I suppose women are more like the elfin Sylphs, these fleeting elementals, than most men are. But I am not perfectly sure about this…

to be continued…