John Dunn

On grapenut-trees

Monday, 23 May 2022 at 11:27

On grapenut-trees

Dr John Dunn 2022.

As I continue my break from the usual elements of the website whilst I travel in northern France, I have again found a little time to add another excerpt (see below) from Roy Campbell’s exceptional epic poem about the Spanish Civil War, Flowering Rifle.

When I have a little thinking time, I will add a few notes and thoughts to the extract, as I have done on previous occasions (see most recent blogs and Flowering Rifle in the ‘Thought Pieces’ section of my website).

John Dunn ©

They’ve backed no cause from Greenland to Australia
But petered out for fear of worse mischance.
For still the “Southern Stranger “ of their theme,
My “Southern Gestures Modify” their dream—
And well may they beware: for from her chain
A “Southern Gesture” liberated Spain.
For where they doze in faint Utopian steam
Among their vicious languors and their lilies
My Hand will pepper them with Southern chillies
Whenever I can spare it from my team,
As these found out, these gutless weary-willies
Who but that I had called this dance of wowsers
Would still be hiking in their sawn-off trousers
Or climbing grapenut-trees in some green lane—
But that I gave the rendezvous in Spain,
And came to greet them, shouting from my mule,
“Woodley! Old Woodley! Welcome Home to School!”
One votive goat, had they but spared my kraal
Would have been worth this batch, their kit, and all,
Who had not even the guts to run away
When their red paradise behind them lay
And not a single man to bar their way—
Inviting them with all its charms untold,
The New Jerusalem, the Age of Gold,
Where loving comrades howl for gory tripes
And pay their services with shots and swipes.

Merry hummed the wheel

Saturday, 21 May 2022 at 22:18

Roy Campbell

Yesterday I posted another short extract (see below) from Roy Campbell’s great epic poem about the Spanish Civil War, Flowering Rifle.This evening I’ve had a few moments to add a few supporting notes to Campbell’s lines, though I must admit that the humming wheel and clashing shears perplexes me. Nevertheless, please find below my efforts. In time these recently read pieces will be added to my other thoughts on Flowering Rifle which can be found in the ‘Thought pieces’.

Dr John Dunn 2022.

Merry hummed the wheel

The Knight of La Mancha is Don Quixote, and honest heroism.

“Charlies" refers to the leftist products of the “Charlie-factories of Cam or Isis” mentioned earlier in the poem.

The Charlies are caught on the lance of true and honest heroism.

Skein of Atropos - that one of the three Fates who cuts the tangled web of life. So happy were the Fates to hear a prophesy that was not marked by the contemptible timidity of the Charlies.

At first “So merry hummed the wheel and clashed the shears” which I think means that life goes on? the wheel of fortune turns? the agricultural calendar turns over? (sheep shearing?). In short, at first, there was nothing to worry the “Materialists and wowsers”, when the republican cause they supported“in blood and arson towered alone”. The metaphor recalls the siege of the Toledo Alcázar in the early stages of the war, the towering fortress that witnessed atrocities committed by republican forces against the men, women and children trapped inside.

Yet even whilst the leftists had their way in the early stages of the war, Campbell stuck to his predictions in defiance of the pundits “those paladins of failure!”i.e. those heroic champions, defenders and advocates of noble causes! For noble causes read fashionable causes and faddist causes, typical in the Bloomsbury and political establishment circles of the 1930s.

John Dunn ©

For I foretold La Mancha’s Knight would prance
With Charlie like a cockroach on his lance
Which I was called Romantic to believe:
Around the Fates to play at pitch and toss
Like kittens with the skein of Atropos
My devil-daring prophesies had leave;
So happy were the Fates at last to weave
A prophesy that wasn’t pusillanimous,
And when they saw my program, were unanimous
I’d come a tedious chapter to relieve:
So merry hummed the wheel and clashed the shears
Was never such a miracle for years
Materialists and wowsers to aggrieve:
For when our cause was scarce a handsbreath grown
And theirs in blood and arson towered alone
And Absolute from Portugal to France,
With flawless certitude I flung defiance
At all our pundits, bards, and men of Science,
Who’ve always viewed my gasconades askance,
Since well they know, those paladins of failure!

Materialists and wowsers to aggrieve

Friday, 20 May 2022 at 22:08

Roy Campbell by Augustus John

Materialists and wowsers to aggrieve

Dr John Dunn 2022.

I continue my break with the website as I do a little travelling in northern France. However, it is a time to catch up with my reading of Roy Campbell’s great epic poem about the Spanish Civil War and more, as I add a few more extracts from the gigantic work.

The following lines continue those just published on the blog of this website. Previous extracts can be found in ‘Thought pieces’. In the next few days or so, I will add notes and explanations.

John Dunn ©

For I foretold La Mancha’s Knight would prance
With Charlie like a cockroach on his lance
Which I was called Romantic to believe:
Around the Fates to play at pitch and toss
Like kittens with the skein of Atropos
My devil-daring prophesies had leave;
So happy were the Fates at last to weave
A prophesy that wasn’t pusillanimous,
And when they saw my program, were unanimous
I’d come a tedious chapter to relieve:
So merry hummed the wheel and clashed the shears
Was never such a miracle for years
Materialists and wowsers to aggrieve:
For when our cause was scarce a handsbreath grown
And theirs in blood and arson towered alone
And Absolute from Portugal to France,
With flawless certitude I flung defiance
At all our pundits, bards, and men of Science,
Who’ve always viewed my gasconades askance,
Since well they know, those paladins of failure!

Oily sleeze

Thursday, 19 May 2022 at 20:27

Roy Campbell 1901-1957

I now add notes and commentary to the extract posted yesterday (see below) from Roy Campbell’s Flowering Rifle, his great epic poem about the Spanish Civil War and much much more.

Oily sleeze

Dr John Dunn 2022.

Robert Southey was the political radical turned poet laureate. He epitomised the unscrupulous Bolshevizing (Bolshevik and Yiddisher being as one to Campbell) i.e. courting of establishment favour by the leftist lackeys whom Campbell suffered in his own Bloomsbury years.

Henna-tressed is about being as radical as your hair-do; in other words, Campbell's critique of shallow, showy and fashionable establishment leftism.

To water down the vodka is to water down your apparent Bolshevism, i.e. install insipid and shallow politics.

Baksheesh,a form of bribery common to Asia, is symbolic of Britain’s culture of conformism in which lick-spittle cronyism is the way to win honour, as a film of oily sleeze covers everything.

One might act like the Bloomsbury Set “radicals” Campbell derides, but only if you could say noto life, wish you hadn't been born and renounce all that's worth believing in.

In contrast, Campbell argues that honour must be won with honour.

Tupper is a reference to Martin Farquhar Tupper, composer of moralising verse that passed for poetry. Given the context, there may be a secondary reference to sheep tupping.

But no defrocked scoutmaster (here standing for Bloomsbury perversion) would get away with moralising doggerel to win the honours he (Campbell) has upon his chest.

With some weary resignation, Campbell accepts frankly that he will never be recognised for his true worth as a poet, because it would take the impossible; i.e. British poets would have to reject the foredoomed causes espoused by the leftist political establishment.

John Dunn ©

And when I Bolshevize for Royal Favour
Among her modern Southeys, henna-tressed,
By watering down the Vodka like the rest,
May my right hand lose cunning, flinch, and waver,
Salaaming there for baksheesh with their best,
Who’ll call you honest, daring, fearless, bold,
For blacking boots and doing what you’re told,
If only you unclench that “no” to life
And wish your Father hadn’t took a wife,
If only you renounce all Faith and Vision
Foresentencing your manhood to derision.
For King’s Gold Medals when I strive to please
Their winning will require a sterner test,
No defrocked Scoutmaster could Tupper these
That jingle with the Cross upon my chest:
When Britain and her poets stand for causes
That aren’t foredoomed by foul subhuman crime
They’ll change their present sanctions to applauses
And own me for the prophet of my time,
Since the whole trouble with the other chaps is
Whatever cause they flunkey for collapses
However well it flourished at the time:

Extract from Flowering Rifle

Wednesday, 18 May 2022 at 20:12

Extract from Flowering Rifle

Dr John Dunn 2022.

I'm taking a break from writing, the website and my other run-of-the-mill activities, choosing instead to do a little travelling.

So, whilst out on the road, I'll catch up with my reading of Roy Campbell's great epic poem about the Spanish Civil War, Flowering Rifle.

I'll certainly be adding a few lines to the 'Thought piece' reading, see here.I'll work on an explanation of the lines added from the poem sometime later. For now here is another extract for your delectation and education.

John Dunn ©

And when I Bolshevize for Royal Favour
Among her modern Southeys, henna-tressed,
By watering down the Vodka like the rest,
May my right hand lose cunning, flinch, and waver,
Salaaming there for baksheesh with their best,
Who’ll call you honest, daring, fearless, bold,
For blacking boots and doing what you’re told,
If only you unclench that “no” to life
And wish your Father hadn’t took a wife,
If only you renounce all Faith and Vision
Foresentencing your manhood to derision.
For King’s Gold Medals when I strive to please
Their winning will require a sterner test,
No defrocked Scoutmaster could Tupper these
That jingle with the Cross upon my chest:
When Britain and her poets stand for causes
That aren’t foredoomed by foul subhuman crime
They’ll change their present sanctions to applauses
And own me for the prophet of my time,
Since the whole trouble with the other chaps is
Whatever cause they flunkey for collapses
However well it flourished at the time:

What went before; but a small sample

Tuesday, 17 May 2022 at 21:27

Anton Bruckner: a precursor

What went before; but a small sample

Dr John Dunn 2022.

A small blog transferred to the Archive, but an important one, and one that could do with further development and expansion. It gives a taste of the precursors.

It is about the catalysts to the awakening, variously this might be described as the beginning, or my awakening.

But these alone were not the light, but rather witnesses to the light. They contributed to bringing about what was to come, but as glimmers they were portents of the future.

Portents yes, important yes, but before the beginning, which is the critical point. In my own mythological terms each existed in the realm of Ananke, the cosmos of 1 =0. (see One nothing)

Precursors

“They were precursors to the light, not the light, but each bore witness of that light.”

John Dunn ©

Devoid of Love

Monday, 16 May 2022 at 19:54

Blake's Urizen. 'And Urizen cast the net of debt over all.'

Devoid of Love

Dr John Dunn 2022.

The fall into the objectified world needs a symbolic expression; that expression was the fallen angel, the fall of Satan.

Satan fell and dragged the people of the world along with him into the sub-human existence of Beulah. Beulah? Symbolic of dumb contentment.

This is the symbolism explored in the first of two blogs to be archived today, Devoid of Love. In the second archived blog, Contentment, the distinction between symbol and reality becomes blurred. There are those who lead the dumb masses into blind contentment. There are those whose only longing is ‘just to be happy’. Are there children of the fallen angel? Well there are those who hide amongst the innocents and feed off the innocents.

Devoid of Love

“Satan fell into the objectivised world, to become god of this world, and Adam and Eve and their issue worshipped Satan as the god Urizen, the demiurge, a distant Jehovah, the 'self-deluded and anxious' shaper of pre-existent matter.”

“And the children of Satan led men and women into Beulah with the promise of happiness to come, into the land of false innocence,that is innocence devoid of Love, from which arises the constant and nauseating refrain… ‘we just want to be happy…, we just want to be happy…’”

Contentment

“The children of Satan led the innocents out of themselves with the promise of happiness to come …into Beulah. “We just want to be happy…, we just want to be happy…”, the innocents droned on and on.”

“And the children of Satan led them into debt, and with this came the objectivisation of past and future; the future extracted from the present and the cost of the past born by the present.”