The Archaic Anarchism of Herbert Read

Image result for graham sutherland red landscape

'Red Landscape' by Graham Sutherland (1942)
I’ve been picking my way through Herbert Read’s poetry and flicking through his only novel, The Green Child (1935). As I have found with John Cowper Powys, I feel a sort of magnetism towards not just his work but the totality of his craft, his ideas, him as a person. Despite the imperfections of his poetry and prose (his non-fiction writing I have yet to read), there is an underlying set of ideas, images and a sense of character I can connect with. His Vitalist philosophy, his dislike of culture being separated and elevated from society, but also the many contradictions of his personality place him in a lineage of anarchist thinkers/artists (same thing) particular to the British Isles.

Whilst in many senses a Cosmopolitan, helping to bring Surrealism to Britain from continental Europe, there is also apparent in his work a deep adoration of locality. The plot of The Green Child sees its protagonist, Olivero, return to his home village in England after faking his assassination as president of the fictional South American republic of Roncador. This return is framed as significant as he finds the stream that crosses the village flowing backwards; returning to its source. His homecoming is, in a way, a confrontation with his very self, something he couldn’t achieve playing president in Roncador, as he states shortly before his assassination, “Try as I would, I could not solve my personal problem in social terms” (Read, 1969: 119).

Similarly, his poem ‘Moon’s Farm’ (1951), originally broadcast on radio, sees a traveller returning to his homeland. Whilst the landscape has undergone great changes throughout modernity, its genius loci remains

“But what happened to the trees?
    there was even a stunted orchard
All gone.
All signs of human habitation
    rubbed off the landscape.
And yet
    there is still something. I still feel
        the spirit of the place.”

(Read, 1955: 37-38)

Consisting mainly of a philosophical dialogue between three voices, working through subjects such as life, modernity and meaning, they conclude that

It is when we look into the abyss of nothingness
    infinite nothingness
that we lose courage
    and die swearing
        or die praying.
Yes: men should hold on to tangible things.
Stay with me in these hills and glens
where the birds cry lovingly to their young
    and the waters are never silent.

(Read, 1955: 74-75)

Origins play an important role in Read’s work, they are the foundation of his Vitalist philosophy. At the Origin is something that transcends and overshadows all of the time that follows, a spirit which encapsulates all of life, of which imagination and creativity is an essential part. His high valuation of creativity, especially in the individual, serves as a justification for his Anarchist politics. However, as demonstrated above, this transcendental quality is tempered by a reverence of “tangible things”, giving his philosophy a materialist underpinning.

This strange combination of reverence for the local and particular, animated by some abstract universal force, is there in Powys’ work too; consider the enthralling, yet utterly bamboozling, first line of A Glastonbury Romance (1933)

“At the striking of noon on a certain fifth of March, there occurred within a causal radius of Brandon railway station and yet beyond the deepest pools of emptiness between the uttermost stellar systems one of those infinitesimal ripples in the creative silence of the First Cause which always occur when an exceptional stir of heightened consciousness agitates any living organism in this astronomical universe.” (Powys, 1975: 21)

The local and tangible serves as a sort of anchor and source of meaning to humans who can too easily gaze into the sublime terror of the abyss. There is an underlying pessimism here in this recourse to place and locality, the relinquishment of the modernist project of transcendence. This is a small-c conservative Anarchism (side note: Read identified as a conservative in his youth), which values the wisdom of the past whilst also looking towards the future. It draws inspiration from the archaic and the anthropological (as well as paying close attention to developments in psychology), but also seeking to achieve some sort of social progress in the dismantling of hierarchical structures.  

Personally, I don’t completely align myself with these views, they are products of their time, informed by and contributing to intellectual discussions long since forgotten. However, I do think there is a lot of value in Read’s and Powys’ work which is relevant to discussions we are having today. I will outline, specifically, exactly what I find valuable in later posts.


Books Mentioned:

 Powys, J. C. (1975) A Glastonbury Romance, Picador.

 Read, H. (1955) Moon's Farm and other poems, Faber.

 Read, H. (1969) The Green Child, Penguin. 




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