You can buy Jonathan Bowden’s Reactionary Modernism here.

2,271 words

Part 8 of 8

Edited by Greg Johnson and Peter Jacobi

In 1995, Jonathan Bowden self-published his Collected Works in 6 volumes (London: Avant-Garde, 1995), edited by Jürgen Schwartz, one of Bowden’s pen names. The six volumes comprise 27 distinct books, 12 of which had been previously published. Altogether, the Collected Works contain more than 2,600 pages of rare early Bowden.

Onslaught is the third book in volume 2. It had not been previously published. We will publish it online in 8 installments. The titles are editorial.

Like many of the Collected Works volumes, Onslaught covers a wide range of political and cultural topics, interspersed with fictional narratives that may be loosely based on real people and events.

Eventually, a fully annotated version of Onslaught will appear at the Jonathan Bowden Archive. It will then be followed by similar editions of the rest of the Collected Works, plus a couple more early volumes that were not included. — Greg Johnson

Richard Verrall, as we have already said, was concerned with metaphors of the flesh—with images of decay, corpulence, and glabrous inadequacy. In a sense his work, an antedated version of Günther’s Racial Science,[1] was an ideological synonym for the flesh, for the fetishization of the flesh in Francis Bacon’s work. For instance, if we take Bacon’s Triptych of 1967 which was inspired by T. S. Eliot’s poem Sweeney Agonistes then we see a redundancy of the flesh; its corporeal transparency. All of which compares somewhat—in its concern with ligature and tissue—with what came to be called Gothic and perpendicular architecture. When this was a sentiment which had once been lofty, aerial, and refined, but which had become crabbed, isolated, and shut-in upon itself. If you like, it represented the cornices, upturned stone slabs, and crenellated battlements of Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast Trilogy, an immense satire, a fantasy about nothing in particular. When Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast was similar in tone and form to J. R. R. Tolkein’s The Lord of the Rings—a product of the Oxford Circle which was known as the Inkies [Inklings], somewhat childishly, and which contained Charles Williams and C. S. Lewis. All of these works were particularly Anglo-Saxon, heavily Teutonic, whilst remaining mythological, and they all retained a certain sense of mystery, a concern with the spectral and disembodied. If you like, this type of fiction, whether fantastical or not, was Gothic in the extreme, and in a sense it resembled a situation where The Charterhouse of Parma met Lord Dunsany (if not Arthur Machen). Although the febrile essence which this literature has—its outré quality—is more to do with the macabre, with its essentially psychological interest in the black arts, when these are forms of derangement and joy. As a result, all of this literature resembles the secret history of a mad aristocratic family, of the one member of the family who is shut up in a paneled room (in a manner which is reminiscent of Jean Rhys’ attempt to tell the story of Mrs. Rochester from the other side). In short, it is a world of hidden recesses, curtained booths, inaccessible tabernacles, and secret, winding passages—all of the elements in the Aedificium of Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose, a novel which catapulted an obscure post-structuralist academic to international stardom, even if many American publishers declined the book because of its Latin tags. As a result, we can say that Gothic literature is a form of negative romanticism; it is a dark, purblind counterpoint to romanticism itself. Ultimately the Gothic sensibility is a form of straightened romanticism, a romanticism for those who know that their own creed has failed. Hence we can see that the concern with Horror—with defilement, the corpse and the vampire red in tooth and claw—is a romantic gesture of the flesh turned sour. As a consequence it is a form of soured romanticism; it is a phenomenon where the psyche slips its moorings and trawls out into the darker recesses of the spirit. If you like, it is an existential dash as a result of an absence of courage—a certain bravura—a majesty of ill-adjustment, where form and essence are not the same thing. Ultimately it is a romantic’s daydream turned sour—the flip-side of ecstasy—a dark, reverberating chasm in the soul; a premonition of chaos, a glorification of the cadaver and the rotting of the flesh. If you like, it is a form of depression; a clinical exercise in the misuse of will, a form of introverted romanticism and solipsistic regard. All of which is to say that in certain forms of existentialism—which is a soured romanticism at best (as in Sartre’s thought) the subject identifies itself through its concern with its difference from the object rather than its identification with—its capture by—the object, in relation to which it enters a state of mystification. We might say, therefore, that Gothic romanticism, horror, and the macabre are all examples of romanticism’s “bad faith”; its concern with nothingness, emptiness, death, evil, and despair—when evil is the foreknowledge which men have over the absence of death.

You can order Jonathan Bowden’s The Cultured Thug here.

Indeed we might say that one of the strongest strands in literature, in creativity generally, is its concern with the dark side, with depression, with what Carl Jung called “the shadow.” It is as if a large part of literature is animated by a spirit of darkness and despair, when one considers the work of Swinburne, Poe, Gaston Bachelard, Maurice Blanchot, Montherlant, Sade, Bataille, Lovecraft, Ambrose Bierce, D’Annunzio, Radcliffe, Beckett, M. R. James, Genet, and many others. (A useful source for this material is Mario Praz’s The Romantic Agony.) Although my own position is slightly different, I must confess, in that I believe in a form of despair which is so complete that it remains optimistic in its futility. In a sense I believe in a form of depression which is so acute as to make optimism possible, at least optimism in relation to the understanding of death. As a result, if one despairs so much then I believe that it is possible to live relatively cheerfully, amidst the nature of one’s despair. In a sense it is an existential test—it is an exercise in probing the depths of despair to the degree that one comes to terms with it effectively. As a consequence, I believe that one can face despair, futility—the nature of one’s own death so fully—as to be capable of living in relation to it. In short, one can fight and live without faith, as Montherlant put it, in order to have a faith amidst meaninglessness and despair. In a sense, therefore, if I am creative at all, then I am only creative in relation to the dark side, in relation to a morphology of death and destruction. When one remembers that destruction is always a creative act—the beginning of other possibilities. As Robert Heinrich Leilli[2] once remarked about my work, “it is profoundly morbid”; strong, sinuous and terrifying—basically enraptured by the darker side, the strength of the dark side. Hence we see its debt to ugliness as a concept—especially when you can stare at the Gorgon’s head and not be turned to stone.

On a lighter note, however, the romanticism of a family like the Sitwells was a form of dandyism, an attempt at living out a baroque fantasy at the beginning of the twentieth century. As a result, Sitwellism—as its devotees call it—is rich, crisp, tart, even a trifle astringent, and it is a type of literary passion which expresses itself in an overdone and highfaluting manner. We might say, therefore, that the Sitwell’s literary tradition—whether we are considering Osbert, Edith, Sacheverell, or even Sir George—is orotund, a trifle overdone, rather like eating too much stilton cheese at one go and feeling sick afterwards. Yet the whole point of the Sitwell’s cult—its grandeur, folly, and “white elephant stall” status—is its eccentricity, its fullness, and the fact that it represents the slightly over-stuffed quality of English life. If you like, they were baroque simpletons, architects in the grand manner, replete with bones, hidden corridors, secret passageways, and guttering torches—together with jazz trombones, caramel wafers—general ritziness—and colored paper hats. As an Oxford don once remarked to Sacheverell, who went down without bothering to take a degree, “you write like Ouida, young man” and Sacheverell replied, witheringly: “that is exactly what I intended.”

The only aristocrat who is known to me personally, however, is Lord Svelte-Flame, the heir to Tollington house and a property in Wales, although the banks foreclosed on the family in the 1880s—hence his lordship’s deep distaste for the banks and banking in general and his adoption of Ultra-Rightwing “Catholic” Socialist views in relation to high finance. Nevertheless, his lordship lives in a form of faded aristocratic splendor, the genteel untidiness and decrepitude of the once very rich. In a sense his flat off Dorset Square in West London, which is just up from the commercial bustle of Baker Street and Marylebone, is an affirmation of the old verities. As a result, it is serving a form of disinterested contempt in relation to New Money, to new things and new ways of buying them. If you like, therefore, the whole flat is a retrospective rejoinder—an annunciation of old deeds and old money, if not old blood—against the shock of the new, against what the American futurologist Alvin Toffler called “future shock.” Indeed the whole flat is a lacuna, an oasis of calm in central London, and even the noise of the outside streets, traffic thundering up the thoroughfares and so on, hardly seems to disturb it. It is as if the heavy, hanging drapes and the stillness of the atmosphere, its stagnant expectancy, keeps everything at bay. We might say, therefore, that the whole flat is punctuated by an immense stillness, a waiting for change—in a manner which is reminiscent of those thirteen minutes between the sirens and the dropping of the bombs, according to the Government’s Protect and Survive booklets. Nevertheless the flat is full of various bric-a-brac, books from the London Library, an exclusive lending library, piled up in various windows, together with drapes, heraldic images, and large, heavy portraits. These are portraits which are painted in oils—rich and dark—and which hang on the walls and in various recesses, all of them framed in ornate frames made of gold. Nor is the gold rolled, pressed, or sprayed—it is the genuine article, the raw nine carat material, which has that unreflective luster to prove it—a quality which is burnished and dun-colored, almost excremental, the feature of fine gilt.

You can buy Jonathan Bowden’s Western Civilization Bites Back here.

Lord Svelte-Flame himself is tall and lank, a wearied and yet lively figure, who looks considerably older than his fifty-one years would suggest. Moreover, Lord Svelte-Flame is intensely proud of his family’s genealogy and traditions, hence his sponsorship of the Manorial Society and other hereditary organizations. In relation to his own genealogy, of course, Lord Svelte-Flame is descended from a host of mediaeval Kings, such as Ethelred the Unready, and is ultimately descended, genetically at any rate, from the Emperor Charlemagne. While in demeanor his lordship is shy, nervous, psychologically acute and slightly shambolic, with a very lively (if personally attuned) form of humor—you have to get on his wavelength in order to understand it. His wife, on the other hand, is apparently a schizophrenic who has been institutionalized, although Svelte-Flame has not at present divorced her, as such things are “not done.” Yet there is more than a suspicion that his wife’s family palmed off a mentally defective wife on him in order to gain access to the name, if not the estates which went with it. Apparently his wife was drugged up to the eyeballs most of the time with very powerful substances which ultimately had no effect, as they do not in 50% of all cases. (Although the drugs concerned can have very powerful after-effects, such as weight gain, hair loss, sterility, liver and kidney damage, and ultimately Parkinson’s disease.)

Whereas his Lordship’s most accomplished métier is as a host, in particular at various dinner parties which are given either at his flat or at an exclusive restaurant like Simpsons in the Strand Establishments where the roast beef is brought around in enormous cauldrons made of solid silver, with flames licking gently at the underside of this device in order to keep the meat warm. While continental waiters—mostly German, Hungarian, or Austrian—flit between the tables dressed in livery and gold cufflinks. (The waiter who attended us, for instance, was the spitting image of the extremely rightwing German writer Ernst Jünger.) During these festive occasions—as the golden glow from the chandeliers catches the wine in its glasses—Lord Svelte-Flame sits back, earnestly puffing on a cigarette and analyzing those around him. Before he bursts into a peel of laughter at some witticism—his front teeth, which are grey and ashen, extended in a grin—as he looks up and down the table with a Dickensian twinkle, an impish roguery playing around his brow.

Notes

[1] [Perhaps Hans F. K. Günther, Racial Elements of European History (London: Methuen, 1927).]

[2] [Leilli—a pseudonym?—provided a blurb for Bowden’s Collected Works but is otherwise unknown to the present editors.]