In spite of Mr.
Crowley’s
disdain
of correct
metre
and
his
occasional
lapses in
grammar,
pages of praise
could
be
written
on
his
work,
backed
by
quotations
from it.
J. E. PATTERSON.
THE NEW AGE says:
What is this wonderful
abstraction we call the British public?
Before Mafeking night we knew quite well what it was.
The female part of it was Mrs.
Grundy, the well-known old lady in white cotton
stockin
, elastic-side
boots, stuffy
petticoats,
and a grim determination
to give everyone
a bit of her mind.
The male
gart
of it was an idealistic
old gentleman of prolific habits with a
thetic
faith in the
ritish constitution,
and a habit of locking up the house at ten o’c ock every weekday
and at half-past
nine on Sunday.
This British Androgyne has vanished,
and
we are
ruled
instead
by
a protean
monster
whom
we
worship
under
the
name of Public
Opinion.
Every class has its own opinion, for are we not a free country?
London has
its “ Liza of Lambeth
” set, its Marie Corelli set, its Arthur Wing Pinero set, its Geo
e
Bernard
Shaw
set, its Sir William
Crooks
set, its Royal smart set, its Lord
Kelvin
set, its individual pleuure
seekers,
its
perverts,
its literary,
artistic,
religious,
and
philosophical
specialists.
It is a hydra-headed
monster, this London Opinion, but we
should not be at all surprised
to see an almost unparalleled
event, namely,
everyone
of those
hydra-heads
moving
with
a single
purpose,
and
that
the denunciation
of
Mr. Aleister Crowley and all his works.
Now
this
would be
a remarkable
achievement
for
a
young
gentleman
who only
left Cambridge
quite a few years ago.
It requires
a certain amount of serious
urpose
to stir Public Opinion into active opposition,
and the only
(iuestion
is, has Mr.
rowley
aserious
purpose?
Our first instinctive
feeling
is that “
t is damned
clever,
but it
won’t do.
'
hat is succeeded by the certainty
that “ It is raving
madness ”;
and
a
final judgment
that the young
man
is a remarkable
product of an unremarkable
age.
The writing is not sane;
but we have long ago outworn
the illusion that sanity is a
symptom of cleverness.
Still,
the writer
has the serious
fault
common to Browning
and Shaw:
he is incapable
of a clear, straightforward
statement.
We all have met
the old lady who, in trying
to recount some personal adventures,
wanders off into the
biographies
of everyone
mentioned,
and eventually
forgets
to tell us the point of her
sto
.
We sufier from this in Mr. Shaw’s plays and in Browning’s “ Sordello."
Are we
willing to suffer from it in order to discover the secret of Mr. Crowley’s
mind?
Is the
game worth
the candle?
The
time of year being August and the weather inclement,
we are inclined
to think it possibly
may be.
Now is the appointed
season, so let
us
hasten to study the world of Mr. Crowley before the rush of our own lives reabsorbs us.
Our principal objection
to Mr. Crowley’s
style is that it is redundant.
For instance,
the organs of
eneration
are always
cropping
up in unexpected
places, such as in Mr.
Crowley’s
brain—which is said
to
be
pregnant—and
in Rosa Mundi's heart—which
contains
a symbol sadly out of place anatomically.
All this reminds us of the ways of
little bo s; but surely Mr. Crowley might
suppress
these symptoms
of the extreme
youth 0
the virile spirit, and discipline
his imagination
with a study of the se
rate
functions of the separate organs of the body.
We are quite aware that
the
old
allacy
that sex is the source of all the passion of the human race supports Mr. Crowley and
his laudatory critic Captain Fuller in their tendency to use sexual imagery in excess;
but
surely the fallacy
has been exploded.
We have all read Weininger, who demonstrates
that alarge proportion
of the human race have no special
sex characteristics;
that the
absolutely
female woman or virile man can hardly
be said to exist at all;
but that the
border
line between
the physiological
symptoms
of sex
is becoming
less
marked
in
each generation.
There is a force of dominance
universally
manifest,
but that force is
exercised by every living creature;
it impenetrales
the kingdoms
of the sea and
land
and air;
and
sex
is only a small
part of its purpose.
However, Mr.
Crowley has
chosen to focus his attention
on sex,
and Captain
Fuller has dutifully followed
him in
144 pages.
On the whole,
we think Mr. Crowley may be congratulated.
He man
es
to describe
the utmost
excess
of desire when
a rejected
lover
possesses
and
fin-Sly
IO