Sunday, February 05, 2023

BOOK: Lionel Johnson, "Incurable"

Incurable: The Haunted Writings of Lionel Johnson, the Decadent Era's Dark Angel. Edited by Nina Antonia. London: Strange Attractor Press, 2018. 9781907222627. vi + 208 pp.

I'm not sure where and when I first heard of Lionel Johnson; he was a minor poet active in the 1880s and 1890s, so I must have encountered him in some book or another connected to my interest in fin-de-siècle literature. I vaguely thought of him as a decadent, though I now see that he wasn't really decadent in terms of the contents of his poems, only by association with other noted writers of the decadent school. At any rate, I think he deserves to be better known than he is, and the present volume is a very nice introduction to him; it contains a selection of about a hundred pages of Johnson's poems, as well as a few prose pieces.

The book starts with a 50-page biography of Johnson by the editor, Nina Antonia, with a great deal of interesting information about his work, the cultural background of the time, the literary circles in which he moved, other authors he was associated with, and so on, drawing upon an impressive number of memoirs, biographies and the like, as well as on Johnson's own poems. If there's any complaint I have about this part of the book, it's that it struck me as being written in a slightly too self-consciously literary style; but then you might say that that is precisely the style in which the biography of such a poet *should* be written. Another downside is that when the biography cites some book, it only gives the title and not the page number.

In any case, since I had known almost nothing about Johnson before reading this book, nearly everything here was new to me. Johnson comes across as almost a stereotypical 1890s poet; short and slender, reclusive and in some ways ascetic, but also fond of absinthe (p. 20) and of drink in general, and not too long for this sordid world, for which he was in any case too sensitive and ethereal. For a part of his career, he supported himself by contributing to magazines and newspapers (p. 23; a collection of his essays and critical writings, Post Liminium, appeared in 1912; I wonder if it might give us a glimpse at a very different side of Johnson than his collections of poetry). He was friends with Francis Russell (p. 3; Bertrand Russell's brother), W. B. Yeats, Ernest Dowson (p. 13), and with Alfred Douglas (p. 8), whom he introduced to Oscar Wilde (p. 26) — it's like a who's-who of the British fin de siècle. His career was cut short by alcoholism, and he died at the age of only 35.

A curious episode: at one point, late in life, Johnson claimed that the apartment he then lived in was haunted, and eventually moved out of it on that account. Subsequently two journalists spent a night there and reported that doors were mysteriously opening and closing by themselves, and bird footprints appeared on the floor (pp. 47–8; “one of the last great supernatural mysteries of the Victorian age”).

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Although most of the book consists of poems, there are also three short prose pieces. The first of these, Incurable, also gives the book its title; it is a short story of a poet who despairs of ever writing any really good poetry, and decides to commit suicide by drowning. A fine sonnet comes to his mind in his final moments — very romantic. However, just as he is about to do the deed, he trips and falls into the river by accident, and finds himself desperately swimming to the opposite bank; a friend who has heard his cries comes to pick him up by boat. I wonder if Johnson meant us to see a little of himself in the protagonist; wasn't his alcoholism in a way also a protracted form of suicide? Anyway, I really liked the story, especially the relatively happy ending, with the unfortunate poet seemingly finding a new zest for life. It is much easier to want to commit suicide, than to actually commit it.

The Cultured Faun is a short but quite funny satirical essay in mockery of the sort of affected, decadent dandies and poseurs that we stereotypically associate with the 1890s. The essay was written in 1891, when it seems this stereotype was already fully developed.

Lastly there's On the Appreciation of Trifles, which struck me as being at least half serious. Johnson argues that “the real pleasure of life consists in the little details, the scarce-considered trifles of every day” (p. 69), and defends them against those who oppose them either for reasons of economy or of philistinism.

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But the main part of the book, of course, is a selection of Johnson's poetry. Here are a few poems I liked:

Light! For the Stars are Pale (p. 83): a nice if somewhat gloomy sonnet. The poet describes our lives as “passing from night to night”: “Darkling we dwindle deathward, and our dying sight/ Strains back to pierce the living gloom; ere night be done/ We pass from night to night”; but he has optimism for the future, though I'm not sure why: “our sons shall see the light,/ Children of us shall laugh to welcome the free sun”.

Incense (pp. 88–90): the fragrance of certain flowers awakens the poet's memories: “Since now these fragrant memories/ Live, lives not also she, their soul of fire?” I don't *really* like poems about flowers, and the sentiments here might be slightly conventional, but the language of the poem is really beautiful and decorative.

Magic (pp. 92–5): the poem is told from the perspective of a magician (“my feet hasten through a faery field”, “my name is grown a popular scorn”), who contrasts his work with that of “logicians” and scientists; he defends his choice to toil in solitude in search of “everlasting verity”. But the final part of the poem seems to be written from the perspective of the fairies, who find that the world of magic is over: “the King of night is dead:/ [. . .] Our world is done:/ For all the witchery of the world is fled,/ And lost all wanton wisdom long since won.” It is not hard to imagine that in defending the magician, Johnson is really defending himself as a poet, and concluding with regret that the more modern the world becomes, the less space it has for the kind of poetry he liked.

Celtic Speech (p. 99): a nice short poem about the beauty of the Celtic languages, in Ireland and Scotland, with a nod to the recently deceased Cornish. He compares them to music; “The speech, that wakes the soul in withered faces,/ And wakes remembrance of great things gone by.” Johnson himself doesn't seem to have had much Celtic ancestry, except perhaps for a distant family connection to Wales (p. 9); but he was influenced by W. B. Yeats, and felt more Celtic than he actually was (for a time he even “feigned a purring Irish brogue”, p. 20).

Nihilism (p. 101): a beautiful but sad poem in which the poet is looking forward to the calm of death. “Soft and long gloom! The pausing from all thought!/ My life, I cannot taste: the eternal tomb/ Brings me the peace, which life has never brought./”

Mystic and Cavalier (pp. 102–3): narrated by the mystic, the poem contrasts his life with that of his friend the cavalier: “Yours are the victories of light: your feet/ Rest from good toil, where rest is brave and sweet./ But after warfare in a mourning gloom,/ I rest in clouds of doom.” Frankly, his mysticism doesn't seem to have borne much fruit; the poem is full of mists and clouds, and the mystic seems to be hoping that his death (“The end is set:/ Though the end be not yet”) will clear things up a little. I guess we can hardly doubt that the mystic is a stand-in for Johnson's own experiences as a poet.

Winchester (pp. 104–9): a longish poem in praise of his secondary school, Winchester College. He admires the beauty of its setting, its long history (and makes allusion to a number of former students who went on to greatness, but most of their names weren't really familiar to me and I wished the editor had added notes about them), and clearly has fond memories of his own time there: “Hast thou not in all to me/ Mother, more than mother, been?/ [. . .] Music is the thought of thee;/ Fragrance, all thy memory./ [. . .] Prouder name I have not wist!/ With the name of Wykehamist./” (That last name is derived from William of Wykeham, who founded the school in 1382.) Naturally, when reading a poem like this, I couldn't help comparing the poet's experiences to my own. I have reasonably fond memories of my secondary school days, but it would never occur to me to praise the school in such extravagant terms, and overall I am not fond of schools, or of education in general, or of any sort of institutions that try to tell people what to do and what not to do. So it's a bit hard for me to relate to Johnson's sentiments here, but I am at any rate happy for him that he had such a good time there.

Gwynedd (pp. 112–17): another longish poem full of Celtic enthusiasm, this time of the Welsh variety. Johnson writes ‘we’ when referring to the Welsh, and says rather optimistically: “Our sister lands are they, one people we,/ Cornwall desolate, Brittany desolate,/ And Wales: to us is granted to be great:/ Because as winds and seas and flames are free,/ We too have freedom full, as wild and rare./ [. . .] Born of wild land, children of mountains, we/ Fear neither running earth, nor stormy sea:/” etc.

A Cornish Night (pp. 118–22): a poem from the perspective of a widowed woman, addressing a group of aerial spirits. She wishes they could take her along, or give her some news of the otherworld; but they make no reply, of course, and the poem sounds such a steady note of high-pitched grief that I couldn't help feeling rather weary of it by the time I reached the end.

Beyond (p. 126): a nice short poem addressed to a dead friend; “Oh, is it you are dead, or I?/ Both! both dead, since we are asunder”.

Lines to a Lady Upon Her Third Birthday (pp. 133–6): the poet praises the ability of children to access an imaginary world: “Wilt thou not teach us, how to make/ Worlds of delight from things of nought,/ Or fetched from faery land, and wrought/ With flowers and lovely imageries?/ Pity us! for such wisdom dies:/ Pity thyself! youth flies, youth flies./” A nice poem, though perhaps three years is a bit early to start lamenting one's fading youth :)

The Age of a Dream and The Church of a Dream (pp. 139–40): two melancholy sonnets that appear to have been inspired by visions of ruined medieval churches.

In honorem Doriani creatorisque eius (“In Honour of Dorian and His Creator”; pp. 141–2): a Latin poem in praise of Wilde in what seem to be lively, short lines; fortunately an English translation is included, though in prose.

Vinum Daemonum (pp. 146–7): this poem is in English, despite its title. It is narrated by the drink itself, which is presented as a powerful, alluring, demoniac force. Johnson knew that his alcoholism was ruining his life, but was unable to resist it.

Ireland (pp. 151–61): a long, solemn, patriotic poem with many allusions to Ireland's history, mythology, her long struggle for freedom, with fervent prayers for a favourable outcome of the latter. I am at any rate glad that things ended up working out relatively well for the Irish, even if I can't say that I found this poem exactly an exciting read; no doubt these things moved Johnson and his contemporaries in a way that they can't move me; but above all, I envy them for living in an age when this kind of simple, honest patriotism was still possible, when it was still possible for one to be fond of one's people and one's country (or, to be fair, in Johnson's case, another people and another country, for he was not really Irish). Alas, globalisation and multiculturalism have taken all that away from us now.

The Dark Angel (pp. 162–4): a poem addressing the titular Dark Angel, who assails the poet's mind with unclean thoughts, passions and desires: “Because of thee, no thought, no thing,/ Abides for me undesecrate:/ [. . .] Nor will thine envious heart allow/ Delight untortured by desire./ [. . .] Thou art the whisper in the gloom,/ The hinting tone, the haunting laugh:” etc. etc. But the poet is defiant, and determined not to allow himself to be led into damnation. It is a lovely poem, but I could't help feeling (1) from the perspective of a non-religious reader like me, the poet seems to be simply blaming the devil for what are really perfectly natural thoughts arising within his own mind, and (2) the devil comes across as rather more badass and alluring than the poet perhaps intended (but then the same has often been said of Paradise Lost).

Satanas (pp. 166–7): another Latin poem, also with an English prose translation. “He who rules over souls,/ Of whom Heaven is plundered;/ He who speaks good with ill intention,/ Corrupting the heart with sweetness./ [. . .] Death is the purpose of his life. [. . .] As vice glisters the more,/ So the soul is tarnished more;/ And the heart withers at last,/ Through delicious sins.” Again one is not quite sure if this is really all that effective as propaganda *against* the devil :]

Dedication to Samuel Smith (p. 169), inscribed in a copy of Yeats' The Celtic Twilight, which couldn't wish for a better recommendation: “Better than book of mine could be/ Is this, where all enchantments blend,/ This book of Celtic phantasy,/ Made by the faeries and my friend.”

Ash Wednesday (p. 177): a nice short poem in memory of his friend and fellow poet, Ernest Dowson. “The visible vehement earth remains to me;/ The visionary quiet land holds thee:/ But what shall separate such friends as we?/” (Incidentally, there's another, unrelated, poem with the same title, on p. 149.)

Sancta silvarum (pp. 179–80): a charming little poem in which the poet admires a group of deer passing through the forest; “Under the forest airs,/ A life of grace is theirs:/ Courtly their look; they seem/ Things of a dream./” Actually Sancta silvarum is a cycle of four poems, of which only the third one is included here. I took a look at the others in the 1917 Poetical Works (pp. 70–4), and particularly liked the first one, in which the poet admires the “ancient forest” in nearly religious terms: “A consecrated stillness, old and holy;/ Commanding us to hail with homage/ Powers, that we see not, hid in beauty;/ A majesty immeasurable; a glorious/ Conclave of angels:” etc.

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At the end of the book there's a section of “Ephemera” containing miscellaneous interesting things. There's a poem by Ernest Dowson, Extreme Unction, dedicated to Johnson. The wikipedia tells us that “one of the effects of the sacrament is to absolve the recipient of any sins not previously absolved through the sacrament of penance” — very convenient! I guess the topic was important to both Dowson and Johson, since both were converts to catholicism; but from the perspective of a non-believer like me, the concept of extreme unction makes catholicism look even sillier than it is, as if a larp where people play at being magicians had somehow gone extremely out of hand.

There's an interesting letter by Johnson to his American friend and fellow catholic, Louise Imogen Guiney, who was planning to have a mass sung for the recently deceased Aubrey Beardsley and asked Johnson, who had been his friend, for an account of him (pp. 42–3). I particularly liked the fact that Johnson in no way criticized the supposed immorality of Beardsley's art, which the more conventional part of the public had so much to complain about; “despite all wantonness of youthful genius, and all the morbidity of disease, his truest self was on the spiritual side of things, and his conversion was true to that self.” (P. 187.)

Lastly there's an essay on Johnson by Louise Imogen Guiney, evidently written soon after his death. It's partly about his life and personality, but mostly about his work. I liked this observation from p. 202: “He was a tower of wholesomeness in the decadence which his short life spanned.” She makes a good point there. To my mind, if someone was a poet in the 1890s, if he associated with Wilde and Beardsley and Dowson and Alfred Douglas and so on and so on — why, of course he was a decadent; how could anyone be any more of a decadent than that? But then, having now read some of Johnson's poetry, I can't help admitting that this sort of decadence-by-association seems like a very shallow way of defining it. His obvious fondness for his friends and his school, his ardent and enthusiastic Celtic patriotism, the deep and sincere catholic faith that pervades so many of his poems — all this is the very opposite of decadence; if you wanted to summarize it in a word, ‘wholesome’ would do better than ‘decadent’.

Errors

There are deplorably many errors in the text of Johnson's poems in this book; this is all the more regrettable since these errors generally don't occur in the early editions from the late 19th or early 20th century (scans of which are available on archive.org). In other words, these errors are simply due to carelessness in preparing the text of the present edition. Here are the ones I've noticed:

• In the text of Gwynedd on p. 115, about three lines' worth of text, “as nature's own [. . .] stormy sea:/ Even” is repeated twice, though in the second copy “ruining earth” is replaced by “running earth”. If we look at e.g. Johnson's Poems (London: Elkin Mathews, 1895), p. 25, we see that this passage appears only once there (with “ruining earth”).

• An error in the text of Ireland (p. 151): “And vexed with agony's bright joy's retreat” should have “agony” instead of “agony's” (see the 1897 ed., p. 1), and there should be a stanza break after that line. Another stanza break is missing before “Sweet Mother!” on p. 155 (1897, p. 4).

• In the same poem, we find “for the yet burn” (p. 154), which should of course be “thee” (1897, p. 3).

• On the same page, “The Prince of Peace love” should be “loves” (1897, p. 3).

• On p. 160, “they little Child” should be “thy” (1897, p. 8).

• On p. 171, there's “leftist” which should be “leftest” (1897, p. 25).

• On p. 170 there's “C.S.S.R.” where the 1897 ed. (p. 24) has “C.SS.R.”, which seems better; it is a reference to the Redemptorists (Congregatio Sanctissimi Redemptoris; the wikipedia, with the typical modern horror of full-stops, abbreviates it CSsR).

• On p. 177 we have “In Memorium” and a redundant comma after “quia”, neither of which errors is present e.g. in the 1912 ed. (Some Poems of Lionel Johnson, p. 64).

• “Sancta Silverum” (p. 179) should be “Sancta Silvarum” (Poems (1895), p. 60).

ToRead:

A number of interesting books are mentioned in the introduction:

  • Katharine Tynan: Memories (1924). A quote from it appears here on p. 3. She was an Irish writer and poet.
  • Rupert Croft-Cooke: Bosie (1963) and The Unrecorded Life of Oscar Wilde (1972). Mentioned here on p. 16; Croft-Cooke “was a later-in-life friend of Lord Alfred Douglas”.
  • Iain Fletcher (ed.): The Complete Poems of Lionel Johnson (London: The Unicorn Press, 1953; xlv + 395 pp.). Mentioned here on p. 17; seems to be the closest we have to a collected edition of Johnson's poems. There is also a revised second edition (New York and London: Garland Publishing, 1982, lxxvi + 381 pp.).
  • Lord Alfred Douglas: The Autobiography (Martin Secker, 1913). Mentioned here on p. 17; one of several autobiographical works he wrote.
  • Lord Alfred Douglas: The City of the Soul (1899). A collection of poems, initially published anonymously; it “did well until an emboldened Douglas put his name to a subsequent edition, thus ensuring a down-turn in sales, such was his infamy” (p. 45).
  • Norman Alford: The Rhymers' Club (1994). Mentioned here on p. 21. The Rhymers' Club was a group of poets founded by Yeats; Johnson also attended some of their meetings, and his work appeared in the anthologies that they produced in the early 1890s.
  • Richard Le Gallienne: The Romantic '90s (1925). Mentioned here on p. 22, with an anecdote where Johnson introduced Le Gallienne to absinthe. Le Gallienne outlived the 1890s by some half a century, and kept on writing; his wikipedia page contains a long list of his works, several of which sound interesting.
  • Murray Pittock (ed.): The Selected Letters of Lionel Johnson (Tregara Press, 1988). Mentioned here on p. 26. Not that I'm really interested in reading Johnson's letters, but I can't help wondering why ‘selected’ and not ‘collected’ — that just means that someone else will have to produce another edition at some point in the future :)
  • Francis Douglas and Percy Colson: Oscar Wilde and the Black Douglas (1949). Mentioned here on p. 27; Francis was the grandson of the 9th Marquess of Queensberry, the man whose persecution of Wilde led to the latter's ruin.
  • Caspar Wintermans: Lord Alfred Douglas: A Poet's Life and His Finest Work (Peter Owen, 2007). A biography, mentioned here on p. 30. Wintermans' wikipedia page lists several other publications of his about Wilde and Douglas.
  • Brian Reade: Sexual Heretics: Male Homosexuality in English Literature from 1850 to 1900 (1970). Mentioned here on pp. 33–4.
  • John Francis Bloxam: The Priest and the Acolyte. A short story which “brought The Chameleon [a college magazine edited by Alfred Douglas, of which only one issue appeared] into disrepute” (p. 35). It is described here as a “heinous tale of a priest who ravishes a fourteen-year-old and then encourages the boy to die with him”. Sounds like edgy students being edgy is hardly a new phenomenon :P
  • Edgar Jepson: Memories of a Victorian (1933). Mentioned here on p. 40. Apparently he also wrote a sequel, Memories of an Edwardian and Neo-Georgian (1937).
  • William Archer: Poets of the Younger Generaton (1902). The book contains a selection of poems from about 30-odd poets, interlaced with biographical and critical remarks by Archer. Among the poets included are Laurence Binyon, Bliss Carman, A. E. Housman, Rudyard Kipling, Richard Le Gallienne, George Santayana, Arthur Symons and W. B. Yeats. Archer's book is mentioned here on p. 41 for not including Johnson: “[h]is indefinite status was made official by his omission from a major study, Living Poets of the Younger Generation, by William Archer”. But perhaps we shouldn't make too much of this omission; Archer explains in his preface (p. 3) that he “regretfully omitted” some poets “for no better reason than that their work does not happen to chime with my idiosyncrasy.” He included only poets whose work he enjoyed: “I am quite willing to believe that in some of these cases the fault, the limitation, is on my side; but this belief has not induced me to affect a warmth I do not feel.”
  • Iain Fletcher: Decadence and the 1890s (Edward Arnold, 1979). Mentioned here on p. 51, though everyone else on the internet seems to call him Ian rather than Iain.

Incidentally, it turns out that a number of Johnson's books are available on archive.org:

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