Porius: A Romance of the Dark Ages

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Porius: A Romance of the Dark Ages
First edition
AuthorJohn Cowper Powys
LanguageEnglish
GenreHistorical romance
PublisherMacdonald & Company, London
Publication date
1951
Publication placeUnited Kingdom
Preceded byOwen Glendower (1941) 
Followed byThe Inmates (1952) 

Porius: A Romance of the Dark Ages is a 1951

Myrddin (Merlin) as another major character. The invasion of Wales by the Saxons and the rise of the new religion of Christianity
are central themes. Due to the demands of publishers and a paper shortage in Britain, Powys was forced to excise more than 500 pages from the 1951 version. It wasn't until 2007 that the full novel, as Powys intended his magnum opus to be, was published both in Britain and America.

Background

medieval Wales, where he completed Maiden Castle (1936).[1] Edeirnion was nominally once a part of the Kingdom of Powys. This move to the land of his ancestors led Powys to writing the first of two historical novels set in this region of Wales, Owen Glendower, which was completed in 1939, published in the USA in 1941 and Britain in 1942.[note 2]

Caer Drewyn, Corwen, locally known as Mynydd-y-Gaer, the hill fort where Porius lives.

Then in 1940 he began a new novel set in contemporary Corwen[2] but soon gave it up, to start his "Romance of Corwen", Porius, subtitled "a Romance of the Dark Ages" in January 1942.[3] This, initially, was to have been about the Roman, stoic philosopher Boethius.[4] However, Boethius never even appears and it was not completed until seven years later, in February, 1949.[5] Between 1942 and 1951 Powys, however, published five non-fiction works: Mortal Strife (1942), The Art of Growing Old (1944), Dostoievsky (1946), Obstinate Cymric: Essays 1935–1947 (1947), and Rabelais (1948). Powys initially submitted Porius to Simon & Schuster his American publishers, publisher of all his previous major novels, from Wolf Solent (1929) to Owen Glendower (1941). But they rejected it as "indecypherable and overwritten".[6] He had also sent a typescript to his English publisher, The Bodley Head. They, however, "refused to consider it, unless it was reduced by one third".[7] This he did, reducing a typescript of 1589 pages to 999; however, Bodley Head made such "an insultingly small offer" that Powys rejected it. Finally Eric Harvey of Macdonald and Co. came to his rescue, but it was the abridged version that was published in 1951.[8] More recently two new editions of Porius have been published in the attempt to reach Powys's original intention, with the use of the original manuscripts. The first, edited by Wilbur T. Albrecht, was published in 1994 by the Colgate University Press.[9] This edition was, however, heavily criticized, and in 2007 Judith Bond and Morine Krissdóttir edited another version, published by Overlook Duckworth.[10]

Plot

The setting is the Kingdom of Edeyrnion in North Wales, where the indigenous Forest people have been ruled by the Brythonic Celts on behalf of Rome. Prince Einion, ruler of Edeyrnion, owes allegiance to the Emperor Arthur, who rules Britain for Rome. While historians tells us that Rome withdrew its army from Britain around 410 AD,[11] Roman influence is still strong in Powys's late 5th century. But in the autumn of 499 AD the Saxons, under their leader Colgrim, are advancing on Edeyrnion and the Forest people have joined with them against their Brythonic rulers.

The main plot follows the various experiences of Porius, the heir to the throne of Edeyrnion, the novel's eponymous protagonist, and his struggle to gain freedom from the influence of his parents. This in particular involves resolving his divided loyalties between Rome and the indigenous peoples of Wales. Porius himself not only has Roman, Brythonic, ancestors but an ancestor who was an aboriginal giant as well as relatives amongst the Forest people.[12] Porius gains maturity, and with it personal freedom, through a number of significant experiences, including especially this encounter with the aboriginal giants of Wales, as well as the profound influence of the magician, prophet, and possibly the god Chronos/Saturn, Myrddin, who reinforces the values, and develops on, the teachings of Porius's earlier teacher, the Christian heretic Pelagius. A major climax in the novel comes when Porius mates with the young giantess, he names Creiddylad, one of two surviving Cewri, or giants, the true aboriginals of Britain. This is immediately followed by the violent deaths of Creiddyladd and her father.

Gallo-Roman rump state), Odoacer (Germanic king of Italy), and (Julius) Nepos (nominally last Western Roman emperor, de facto ruler of Dalmatia
).

However, this novel goes beyond Porius's experience, at times focusing on other characters. This includes the highly significant scene involving Myrddin's magical transformation of the owl Blodeuwedd into a young girl. Another important episode occurs when Morfydd, and Euronwy, Porius's mother, unite "to aid the endangered House of Cunedda". This involves Morfydd "sacrificing her love for Rhun"[13] by agreeing to a political marriage with Porius, "in order to create harmony between the Roman and aboriginal peoples".[14] Then there is the scene which involves Brochvael, Morfydd's scholarly father, who represents classical Roman culture, confronting the aboriginal worlds of Sibylla and the Druids,[15] which dramatizes the novel's central political conflict in yet another way.

The novel's final climax comes with Porius's "rescue" of Myrddin from his entombment by the enchantress Nineue on the summit of

Age of Gold
.

At the end of the novel Ederynion remains free from Saxon domination, a freedom that it will retain and which will shape the subsequent history of the Welsh: "The new nation, the

Cymry, is to be born as a result of the Saxon invasion".[19]
And Porius himself has also gained the necessary personal freedom and maturity he that will need as the future ruler of Edeyrnion.

Characters

National Museum of Wales, in Cardiff
.
Arthurian legend, the mountain is linked to a legendary afanc (water monster) and the Tylwyth Teg
(fairies).

Romance

It is not surprising that Powys describes Porius as a

Taliessin, based on the possibly mythic Welsh poet of that name and the Henog, Powys's fictional author of the Mabinogion. The novel's eponymous protagonist Porius, is the son of Prince Einion, "reigning Prince of Edeyrnion [who is the] great-great-grandson of Cunedda", a Welsh king who lived in the 5th century AD.[note 4]

Themes

Porius is a bildungsroman concerned with "the sentimental education of" Porius,[42] and early in the novel we learn that Porius has reached "the first great turning point of his life".[43] Porius's education includes a wide variety of experience, but his encounters with Myrddin, Nineue, and the giantess Creiddylad have the profoundest influence on him. Yet Michael Ballin of Wilfrid Laurier University, comments that "The structural and thematic unity of the novel is obscured […] if we read it as mainly being the personal biography of its protagonist".[44] American Powys scholar Denis Lane goes as far as to suggest that there are "no less than half a dozen spokesmen" in Porius, and names Myrddin, Brochvael, Morfydd, Taliessin, and Einion, in addition to its eponymous hero.[45] This polyphony of voices creates an "intricate work" with "a welter of accessory action, little of which is trivial or unimportant" and its "loose narrative forms" are unified "when viewed in relation to the novel's theme".[46] C. A. Coates also notes, in John Cowper Powys in Search of a Landscape that "The novel contains more Powys-personae than any other", and adds Cadawg and the dead Pelagius to the list.[47]

What is important to these Powysian personae, and which provides one of the central organizing theme of Porius, is "the pluralist sensationalism that Powys has been attempting to describe for so long", Powys's "elementalism", what Porius calls cavoseniargizing.[48] American literary critic Denis Lane claims, that

Powys filled his "Romance of the Dark Ages", with a sense of elementalism far surpassing that of other novels. Every aspect of the novel is drawn with reference to the elemental world – human thought, speech, action, contemplation, are all viewed as coordinative with other parts of nature.[49]

Canadian literary scholar John Brebner, in his essay "The Anarchy of the Imagination", also concludes that "Porius is in many ways Powys's most comprehensive and successful statement of his life-vision".[50]

Equally important as Powys's concern with elementalism is his concern with individual freedom: "The central issue is the autonomy of individual human choice and vision over every creed and pressure from without",[51] Its "central message [is] voluntarism, [a concern with] the creative power of the imagination and [how] the human will [determines] the course of our evolution in the face of political and religious tyrannies".[52] Powys's "emphasis is upon individual rights [...] that permit a plurality of choice independent of moralistic constraints," and "the sanctity of the individual imagination".[53] Associated with these themes is Powys's favourable presentation of the ideas of the Christian heretic Pelagius, and his belief in free will and rejection of original sin, and the implied condemnation of Christianity's subsequent development into "an authoritarian system".[54]

Race and religion

Powys's presentation of Britain in 499 AD as a multi-racial society provides him with the opportunity to comment on themes related to the rise of

Druidism, and Judaism.[60] As well Porius is concerned with the idea of possible alternative histories that might have arisen from this significant transitional age, if a different religion than Christianity (or different version of Christianity) had triumphed.[61] In Mortal Strife, his wartime propaganda work of 1942, Powys suggests that the multi-racial mixture of contemporary Britains will help in the fight against the more racially pure Germans.[62]

In 499 AD, various ethnic cultures and their differing religious beliefs are involved in a conflict from which Christianity will eventually triumph. At this time, however, even within Christianity there is the conflict between the doctrines of Augustine of Hippo, along whose theological lines it subsequently developed, and the competing heresy of Pelagianism,[63] to which this novel's protagonist is an adherent: "Porius owes to Pelagius the imaginative impulse that liberates him by allowing him to use his imagination to create the future through the soul's inmost desire".[64] In Porius Powys suggests, through the protagonist's Pelagianism, an alternative to the authoritarian direction that, he believes, Christianity actually took.[54] Furthermore Porius soon after the novel opens comes under the influence of Myrddin: "a living, almost divine embodiment of the teaching of […] Pelagius."[65] At the end of the first half of the 20th century Powys was witnessing the demise of Christianity and the rise of the new religions of the 20th century.[66]

Porius and the 20th century

Porius takes place during the week of "October 18, to October 25, A.D. 499", a time Powys claims when "There appears to be an absolute blank, as far as documentary evidence goes, with regard to the history of Britain".

Yeatsian phrase calls 'appalling transition' ".[71] There was the clear possibility of another "Saxon" invasion when Powys began writing Porius in 1942.[72] In prefatory comments, probably written around 1949, at the time of the beginning of the Cold War
, Powys suggests that,

As we contemplate the historic background to ... the last year of the fifth century [sic], it is impossible not to think of the background of human life from which we watch the first half of the twentieth century dissolve into the second half. As the old gods were departing then, so the old gods are departing now. And as the future was dark with the terrifying possibilities of human disaster then, so, today, are we confronted by the possibility of catastrophic world events.[73]

Powys makes a similar comment in the "Argument" to Owen Glendower: "the period that formed the immediate background to […] this tale—1400–1416—saw the beginning of one of the most momentous and startling epochs of transition that the world has known".[74] Michael Ballin discusses how, in Porius, "the present is perceived through the spectacles of the past".[75] Likewise distinguished American literary scholar Jerome McGann, in his Times Literary Supplement review article "Marvels and wonders", describes the novel, as "a profound meditation on the twentieth century's abiding social sickness, and on fascism in particular, their emblematic form".[76]

Critical reputation

Some admirers of Powys have problems with Porius. Literary critic G. Wilson Knight, in his study of John Cowper Powys, The Saturnian Quest (1964), finds that "the detailed historical knowledge is so dense that it clogs the action" and sees a problem in the way the reader expects "historical excitement where the author has no intention of providing them".[77] For Harald Fawkner, a prolific writer on Powys from the Stockholm University, Sweden, although Powys is "one of the great mystic writers of all time", the "occult passages in Porius are more often inadvertent parodies of their counterparts in the major romances [...] they are no more mystical (and no more interesting) than an electrical bill".[78]

Canadian Charles Lock of the

magic realism will be in a better position to recognize […] Porius as a modern masterpiece".[80]

See also

John Cowper Powys:

Notes

  1. ^ Powys was an admirer of Thomas Hardy and these novels are set in Somerset and Dorset part of Hardy's mythical Wessex. Richard Maxwell describes these four novels "as remarkably successful with the reading public of his time". "Two Canons: On the Meaning of Powys's Relation to Scott and his Turn to Historical Fiction", Western Humanities Review, vol. LVII, no. 1, Spring 2003, p. 103.
  2. ^ Issued 24 January 1941 in the USA and 6 February 1942 in the UK (not published in 1940 and 1941 as shown in the texts). Dante Thomas, A Bibliography of the Principal Writings of John Cowper Powys, unpublished Ph.D thesis (State University of New York at Albany, 1971), pp. 54–6.
  3. ^ "Jerome McGann notes that "Powys was learned in Arthurian romance". "Marvels and Wonders: Powys, Porius and the attempt to revive romance in the age of modernism". Times Literary Supplement, December 1, 1995, p. 5.
  4. ^ Powys is writing a work of fiction and plays freely with dates. John Cowper Powys, "The Characters of the Novel". Porius (2007), p. 19.

References

  1. ^ Morine Krissdóttir, A Descents of Memory. New York: Overlook Duckworth, 2007, p. 323.
  2. ^ Descents of Memory, p. 350.
  3. ^ Descents of Memory, p. 351
  4. ^ Descents of Memory, p. 351.
  5. ^ Judith Bond and Morine Krissdóttir, "Editorial Notes" to Porius. New York: Overlook Duckworth, 2007, p. 11.
  6. ^ Michael Ballin, "A Certain Combination of Realism and Magic: Notes on the Publishing History of Porius". Powys Notes 7:2, Fall and Winter 1992, p.13.
  7. ^ "Editorial Notes" to Porius (2007), p. 11, and Morine Krissdóttir, Descents of Memory, pp. 388–92.
  8. ^ "Editorial Notes to Porius (2007), p. 12.
  9. ^ See Powys Notes vol. 10, no.1, Fall and Winter 1995
  10. ^ See for example, essays by Charles Lock and Richard Maxwell, in Powys Notes vol. 10, no.1, Fall and Winter 1995.
  11. ISBN 978-0-500-25189-8
    .
  12. ^ John Cowper Powys, " 'Preface' or anything you like to Porius ", The Powys Newsletter4, 1974–5. Colgate University Press, Hamilton, NY, pp. 10–11.
  13. ^ Michael Ballin, "Porius and the Comedy of the Grotesque". Powys Notes, vol.10, no.1, Fall and Winter 1995, p. 14.
  14. ^ Michael Ballin, "Porius and the Feminine", Powys Notes, vol.6, no.2, Fall, 1990, pp.6–7.
  15. ^ Michael Ballin, "Porius and the Comedy of the Grotesque", p. 14.
  16. ^ C. A. Coates, John Cowper Powys in Search of a Landscape. Totowa, NJ: Barnes and Noble, 1982, p. 154.
  17. ^ Cavaliero, John Cowper Powys: Novelist. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1973, p. 127. See also Descents of Memory, pp. 386–7.
  18. ^ The Powys Newsletter 4, p. 21.
  19. ^ Michael Ballin, "The Cauldron of Rebirth", p. 225.
  20. ^ John Cowper Powys. Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1973, p. 84.
  21. ^ Powys's capitals. Powys to Sea Eagle: The Letters of John Cowper Powys to Philippa Powys. London: Cecil Woolf, 1996, p. 211.
  22. ^ Porius (2007), p. 576. See W. J. Keith's John Cowper Powys: 'Porius', A Reader's Companion, in the external links below, p. 39, for details of the controversy surrounding this tombstone.
  23. ^ Porius (2007), p. 516.
  24. ^ a b "The Characters of the Book", p. 17.
  25. ^ See Tennyson's poem "Merlin and Vivien
  26. ^ "Cassiodorus" Archived 2013-02-16 at the Wayback Machine
  27. ^ "The Characters of the Book", p. 16. See also "Historic Background to the Year of Grace A.D. 499", Porius (2007), pp. 17–18.
  28. ^ The Fall of the Roman Empire Revisited: Sidonius Apollinaris and His Crisis of Identity
  29. ^ Ralph W. Mathisen, "Epistolography, Literary Circles and Family Ties in Late Roman Gaul" Transactions of the American Philological Association 111 (1981), pp. 95–109.
  30. ^ Porius (2007), fn p.20.
  31. ^ Patrick K. Ford, Ystoria Taliesin. Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1992, p. 3.
  32. ^ "Who is Taliesin", Celtic Studies Resources.
  33. ^ Patrick K. Ford, Ystoria Taliesin, p. 9.
  34. ^ "Who is Taliesin", Celtic Studies Resources.
  35. ^ "The Characters of the Book", p. 18.
  36. ^ Higham 2002, pp. 11–37, has a summary of the debate on this point.
  37. ^ Charles-Edwards 1991, p. 15; Sims-Williams 1991. Y Gododdin cannot be dated precisely: it describes 6th-century events and contains 9th- or 10th-century spelling, but the surviving copy is 13th-century.
  38. ^ Powys to Sea Eagle, p. 163.
  39. ^ Anon, The Mabinogion, translated by Sioned Davies. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008.
  40. ^ a b Christopher Bruce's Arthurian Name Dictionary: Creiddylad
  41. ^ See Richard Maxwell, "The Lie of the Land" in The Spirit of Powys: New Essays, pp. 207–8.
  42. ^ Kirkus Review, June 15th, 2007; [1] and "Archived copy" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 18 March 2014. Retrieved 17 March 2014.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link) "Awe-Inspiring Hideousness", Porius, by John Cowper Powys, reviewed by Nicholas Birns. Hyperion, Volume V, issue 2, November 2010
  43. ^ Michael Ballin, "John Cowper Powys's Porius and the Dialectic of History". The Powys Review 19, 1986, p.27.
  44. ^ "Porius and the Cauldron of Rebirth", in In the Spirit of Powys: New Essays, ed. Alan Lane. Cranbury, NJ: Associated Universities Press, 1990, pp. 214–35
  45. ^ "Elementalism in John Cowper Powys's Porius, p. 387.
  46. ^ Denis Lane, "Elementalism in John Cowper Powys's Porius", pp. 383–4. Re the idea of a polyphony of narrative points-of-view see Charles Lock, "Polyphonic Powys: Dostoevsky, Bakhtin, and A Glastonbury Romance". University of Toronto Quarterly, vol. 35, no. 3, Spring 1986, pp. 261–281.
  47. ^ pp. 139–140. See also Ballin "Porius and the Feminine", p. 5.
  48. ^ C. A, Coates, p. 140.
  49. ^ p. 390 and "it represents the clearest fictive rendering of his elemental creed", p. 382.
  50. ^ In Essays on John Cowper Powys, ed. Belinda Humfrey. Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1972, p. 274.
  51. ^ Glen Cavaliero, John Cowper Powys: Novelist, p. 120.
  52. ^ Denis Lane, "Elementalism in Porius", p. 382.
  53. ^ Denis Lane, p.384.
  54. ^ a b Denis Lane, p. 385.
  55. ^ a b Wilson Knight, Saturnian Quest. London: Methuen, 1964, p. 77.
  56. ^ Michael Ballin, "Porius and the Cauldron of Rebirth", p. 234. See also Ballin's, "John Cowper Powys's Porius and the Dialectic of History", p. 24.
  57. ^ John Cowper Powys, "'Preface' or anything you like to Porius", p. 9.
  58. ^ Porius (2007), p. 110.
  59. ^ "Preface on anything you like to Porius, pp. 10–11.
  60. ^ G. Wilson Knight, Saturnian Quest, p. 77.
  61. ^ Michael Ballin, " Porius and the Dialectic of History", pp. 28–29.
  62. ^ John Cowper Powys, Mortal Strife (1942) (London: Village Press, 1974), e.g., pp. 11, 13, 14, 237.
  63. ISBN 978-0-664-22810-1
    .
  64. ^ Michael Ballin, "John Cowper Powys's Porius and the Dialectic of History", p. 29.
  65. ^ Denis Lane, p. 395.
  66. ^ John Cowper Powys, "Historical Background", Porius (2007), p. 18.
  67. ^ a b "Historic Background to the Year of Grace A.D. 499", Porius (2007), p. 17.
  68. ISBN 978-0-500-25189-8
    .
  69. ^ Helena Hamerow, Rural Settlements and Society in Anglo-Saxon England. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012.
  70. ^ Powys Digital History Project: [2].
  71. ^ Michael Ballin, "Porius and the Dialectic of History", p. 24.
  72. ^ Michael Ballin, "Porius and the Cauldron of Rebirth", p. 217.
  73. ^ "Historic Background to the Year of Grace A.D. 499", p. 18.
  74. ^ Owen Glendower. New York: Simon & Schuster, [1941], p. x.
  75. ^ "Porius and the Cauldron of Rebirth", in In the Spirit of Powys: New Essays, ed. Denis Lane. Cranbury, NJ: Associated University Presses, 1990, p. 216.
  76. ^ Jerome McGann, p. 5.
  77. ^ p. 77.
  78. ^ "Porius and Exteriority", Powys Notes, vol.10, no.1, 1995, pp. 28, 38.
  79. ^ "On the New Porius" , p. 40.
  80. Alice in Wonderland in "An Irresistible Long-winded Bore", The Atlantic Monthly, August 2000. Volume 286, No. 2, pp. 88–91: [3]
    .

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