„Tod und Liebe! In diesen beiden allein lag die letzte Würde des Lebens.“
— John Cowper Powys
Wolf Solent, 1929, aus dem Englischen übersetzt von Richard Hoffmann, Rowohlt Verlag, Reinbek bei Hamburg 1994, ISBN 3-499-40091 X, S. 684
Zitate von John Cowper Powys
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John Cowper Powys
Geburtstag: 8. Oktober 1872
Todesdatum: 17. Juni 1963
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John Cowper Powys [dʒɒn ˌkuːpɚ ˈpoʊɪs] war ein walisischer Dichter und Schriftsteller. Er verfasste Lyrik, Essays, umfangreiche Romane sowie philosophische Schriften. Zwischen 1915 und 1957 veröffentlichte er beinahe jedes Jahr eines seiner umfangreichen Bücher. Er gab sich in seinen Werken als ironischer Skeptiker, der selbst die eigene Weltanschauung immer wieder in Frage stellt. Powys war bekennender Polytheist und zugleich überzeugter Agnostiker auf der Suche nach poetischem und nicht spirituellem Sinn. Elke Heinemann nennt ihn einen „englische[n] Dostojewski“ und das „unbekannteste Genie des 20. Jahrhunderts“.
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„Die ganze astronomische Welt ist nur ein Phantom, verglichen mit den Kreisen in Kreisen, den Träumen in Träumen der unbekannten Realität.“
— John Cowper Powys
Wolf Solent, 1929, aus dem Englischen übersetzt von Richard Hoffmann, Rowohlt Verlag, Reinbek bei Hamburg 1994, ISBN 3-499-40091 X, S. 686
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„Wenn ich mich des Lebens, so dachte er, nicht mit absolut kindlichem Versinken in seine einfachsten Elemente freuen kann, wäre es ebensogut, wenn ich nicht geboren wäre.“
— John Cowper Powys
Wolf Solent, 1929, aus dem Englischen übersetzt von Richard Hoffmann, Rowohlt Verlag, Reinbek bei Hamburg 1994, ISBN 3-499-40091 X, S. 693
„Die ergreifenden Szenen in fast jedermanns Leben sind meist solche, die von niemand bemerkt und von der fraglichen Person völlig außer acht gelassen werden.“
— John Cowper Powys
A Glastonbury Romance, London 1933, Carl Hanser Verlag München, Wien für Zweitausendeins, 1995, aus dem Englischen von Klaus Pemsel, ISBN 3-86150-258-5, S. 925
„The eternal conflict between love and malice is the eternal contest between life and death. And this contest is what the complex vision reveals, as it moves from darkness to darkness.“
— John Cowper Powys
Context: This swallowing up of life in nothingness, this obliteration of life by nothingness is what the emotion of malice ultimately desires. The eternal conflict between love and malice is the eternal contest between life and death. And this contest is what the complex vision reveals, as it moves from darkness to darkness.
Chapter I
„Even the most purely rational minds who find the universe in "pure thought" are driven against their rational will to visualize this "pure thought" and to give it body and form and shape and movement.“
— John Cowper Powys
Context: One of the curious psychological facts, in connection with the various ways in which various minds function, is the fact that when in these days we seek to visualize, in some pictorial manner, our ultimate view of life, the images which are called up are geometrical or chemical rather than anthropomorphic. It is probable that even the most rational and logical among us as soon as he begins to philosophize at all is compelled by the necessity of things to form in the mind some vague pictorial representation answering to his conception of the universe.
Most minds see the universe of their mental conception as something quite different from the actual stellar universe upon which we all gaze. Even the most purely rational minds who find the universe in "pure thought" are driven against their rational will to visualize this "pure thought" and to give it body and form and shape and movement.
Chapter I
„We are all creators. We all create a mythological world of our own out of certain shapeless materials.“
— John Cowper Powys
Context: Not the wretchedest man or woman but has a deep secretive mythology with which to wrestle with the material world and to overcome it and pass beyond it. Not the wretchedest human being but has his share in the creative energy that builds the world. We are all creators. We all create a mythological world of our own out of certain shapeless materials.
p. 222
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„Love, in spite of all rational knowledge to the contrary, is always in the mood of believing in miracles.“
— John Cowper Powys
Context: The influence of friendship upon culture differs from that of love, in that it assumes the basic idiosyncrasies of personal taste to be unalterable. Love, in spite of all rational knowledge to the contrary, is always in the mood of believing in miracles.
p. 170
„We philosophize for the same reason that we move and speak and laugh and eat and love. In other words, we philosophize because man is a philosophical animal.… We may be as sceptical as we please. Our very scepticism is the confession of an implicit philosophy.“
— John Cowper Powys
Context: My answer to the question "Why do we philosophize?" is as follows. We philosophize for the same reason that we move and speak and laugh and eat and love. In other words, we philosophize because man is a philosophical animal.… We may be as sceptical as we please. Our very scepticism is the confession of an implicit philosophy.
Chapter I
„It is strange how few people make more than a casual cult of enjoying Nature.“
— John Cowper Powys, A Glastonbury Romance
Context: It is strange how few people make more than a casual cult of enjoying Nature. And yet the earth is actually and literally the mother of us all. One needs no strange spiritual faith to worship the earth.
p. 178
„They are at least proof of the inalienable part played, in the functioning of our complex vision, by sensation as an organ of research. But they have a further interest. They are an illuminating revelation of the inherent character and personal bias of the individual soul who is philosophizing. I suppose to a great many minds what we call "the universe" presents itself as a colossal circle, without any circumference, filled with an innumerable number of material objects floating in some thin attenuated ether. I suppose the centre of this circle with no circumference is generally assumed to be the "self" or "soul" of the person projecting this particular image.“
— John Cowper Powys
Chapter I
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„One always feels that a merely educated man holds his philosophical views as if they were so many pennies in his pocket. They are separate from his life. Whereas with a cultured man there is no gap or lacuna between his opinions and his life. Both are dominated by the same organic, inevitable fatality. They are what he is.“
— John Cowper Powys
p. 19
„If by the time we're sixty we haven't learned what a knot of paradox and contradiction life is, and how exquisitely the good and the bad are mingled in every action we take, and what a compromising hostess Our Lady of Truth is, we haven't grown old to much purpose.“
— John Cowper Powys
The Art of Growing Old (1944), p. 13 <!-- London: Jonathan Cape -->
„No refining of one's taste in matters of art or literature, no sharpening of one's powers of insight in matters of science or psychology, can ever take the place of one's sensitiveness to the life of the earth. This is the beginning and the end of a person's true education.“
— John Cowper Powys
p. 175
