The Higher Self in Christopher Brennan's Poems: Esotericism, Romanticism, Symbolism (Aries)

330 Pages·2006·2.43 MB·English

by  Katherine Barnes

The Higher Self in
Christopher Brennan’s Poems
Aries Book Series
Texts and Studies in Western Esotericism
Editor
ff
Wouter J. Hanegraa
Editorial Board
Jean-Pierre Brach
Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke
Advisory Board
ff
Roland Edigho er – Antoine Faivre
Olav Hammer – Andreas Kilcher
Arthur McCalla – Monika Neugebauer-Wölk
Marco Pasi – Mark Sedgwick – Jan Snoek
Michael Stausberg – Kocku von Stuckrad
György Szo˝nyi – Garry Trompf
VOLUME 2
The Higher Self in
Christopher Brennan’s Poems
Esotericism, Romanticism, Symbolism
by
Katherine Barnes
BRILL
LEIDEN • BOSTON
2006
Cover photograph: Portrait of Christopher John Brennan.
National Library of Australia vn 3579900.
This book is printed on acid-free paper.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A C.I.P. record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.
ISSN 1871-1405
ISBN-10 90 04 15221 0
ISBN-13 978 90 04 15221 2
© Copyright 2006 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands.
Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill Academic
Publishers, Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, and VSP.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means,
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior
written permission from the publisher.
Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted
by Brill provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to
The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910,
Danvers, MA 01923, USA.
Fees are subject to change.
printed in the netherlands
Dedicated to the memory of Dymphna Clark

CONTENTS
Acknowledgements ...................................................................... vii
Abbreviations .............................................................................. ix
Introduction ................................................................................ 1
Chapter One Divinity and the Self ........................................ 17
Introduction ............................................................................ 17
Looking for a Human Divinity .............................................. 22
“Twilights of the gods and the folk” .................................... 34
Esoteric Wisdom .................................................................... 41
“My hidden country” ............................................................ 47
Chapter Two Mirror and Abyss ............................................ 53
Brennan, Yeats and Boehme.................................................. 53
The Argument to the Lilith Sequence .................................. 57
“The watch at midnight”........................................................ 74
“The plumes of night, unfurl’d” and the Inner “Abyss” ...... 78
Chapter Three Art and Silence .............................................. 97
The Romantic View of Imagination .................................... 97
Five Short Pieces: From “The trees that thro’ the
tuneful morn had made” .................................................. 103
“O thou that achest, pulse o’ the unwed vast” ...................... 109
“Thick sleep, with error of the tangled wood” .................... 119
“Terrible, if he will not have me else”.................................. 121
“She is the night: all horror is of her”.................................. 128
Chapter Four Brennan’s Theory of ‘Moods’ ........................ 131
Stimmung and Gemüth in German Pre-Romanticism
and Romanticism ................................................................ 131
Concept of Moods in Early Yeats ........................................ 136
Les Dieux Antiques .................................................................... 142
‘Moods’ in Brennan’s Early Prose ........................................ 159
viii contents
Chapter Five “Red autumn in Valvins”.................................. 165
Introduction ............................................................................ 165
The ‘Passion’ of the Poet ...................................................... 167
Transposition .......................................................................... 181
‘Musicality’ in the Elegy ........................................................ 190
“Was Mallarmé a Great Poet?” ............................................ 194
Chapter Six Two Preludes and a Liminary .......................... 197
Introduction ............................................................................ 197
“MDCCCXCIII: a prelude” ................................................ 198
The Liminary .......................................................................... 205
“O yon, when Holda leaves her hill” .................................. 223
Chapter Seven The Assimilation of our Inmost Passion
to the Tetralogy of the Year ................................................ 229
A Secular Liturgy .................................................................. 229
“Towards the Source” ............................................................ 233
“Secreta Silvarum” .................................................................. 242
Interludes .................................................................................. 245
“Autumn: the year breathes dully” and “The grand
cortège of glory”.................................................................... 247
The symbol of the rose .......................................................... 248
“1908” ...................................................................................... 259
Conclusion .................................................................................. 269
Appendix One Table of Contents for Poems ........................ 273
Appendix Two Sources of Brennan’s Lilith:
T.K. Cheyne and Isaiah ........................................................ 279
Appendix Three Relevant Works from Brennan’s Library .... 281
Appendix Four Relevant Works Held by the Public
Library of NSW 1895–1909 .................................................. 285
Bibliography ................................................................................ 287
Index .......................................................................................... 303
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I am grateful to HarperCollins Publishers Australia for permission
to quote from Brennan’s unpublished prose.
When I had just begun working on the PhD thesis out of which
this book arose, Stephen Prickett suggested I read several books that
he thought might prove useful. He was right, and I am grateful to
him for his suggestions. One of the books he suggested was Kant’s
Critique of Pure Reason. Another was Joachim of Fiore and the Myth of
the Eternal Evangel in the Nineteenth Century, by Marjorie Reeves and
Warwick Gould. This book showed me a way of writing about lit-
erature in its historical context that I found I wanted to emulate.
Later Stephen suggested another book, The Literary Absolute, by Philippe
Lacoue-Labarthe and Jean-Luc Nancy. Although Brennan himself
would have disagreed with some of the conclusions of this book, I
found it exciting, and I am particularly indebted to the Topical
Index to the Fragments which forms the appendix, for there I found
a list of references to the term Gemüt in the writings of Friedrich
Schlegel and Novalis that proved very useful. Another book whose
influence I would like to acknowledge with gratitude is Bertrand
Marchal’s La Religion de Mallarmé.
Staff at a number of libraries in Australia and overseas have been
immensely helpful in my research for this book. Many thanks are
due to staff at the Menzies, Chifley and Hancock Libraries at the
Australian National University; the National Library of Australia;
the Mitchell Library and State Library of NSW; the Campbell
Theosophical Research Library, Sydney; the Library of St John’s
College, Cambridge; and the J.R. Ritman Library, Amsterdam.
I would like to acknowledge the assistance of colleagues at the
Australian Defence Force Academy campus of the University of NSW:
Bruce Bennett, Susan Cowan and Paul Eggert; and at the ANU:
Robert Barnes, Livio Dobrez and Iain McCalman. Special thanks to
Warwick Gould, Wouter Hanegraaff and Rosemary Lloyd for their
advice and support. Thank you to Robin Marsden for giving me
access to her unpublished research and to Jane Williams-Hogan,
Eberhard Zwinck and my brother, Hugh Crago, for their advice.
Thank you to Diana Brown for her careful editing of the manuscript.