of the Collected Letters
of John Cowper Powys
The Letters of John Cowper Powys
to Sven-Erik Täckmark
During the past two decades the fame of John Cowper Powys as a letter-writer has acquired new dimensions. One of his few personal links with Continental Europe in later life was 'Eric the Red' (Sven-Erik Täckmark) his Swedish devotee, whose translation of Wolf Solent appeared in the 1980s. The letters Powys wrote to this 'kindest of Vikings' betray their author's inveterate blend of quirkiness and profundity. They are enlivened by characteristic scribbled drawings and enriched with his usual literary allusions.
Now published for the first time, these letters reveal, above all, the humanity of a writer whose philosophy, like Hesse's, has a universal appeal and thus exercised a formative influence in Scandinavia no less than in Britain and America. 'God bless you Eric the Red - who ever you are & who knows but you may not be a Troll? and who ever God is & who knows but He may not be the King of Trolls?'
In his Swedish friend John Cowper Powys sensed 'deep-northern' mysteries congenial to his own Celtic imagination. He had also found a Scandinavian Jude the Obscure who triumphed over early hardships and who, finding inspiration in the Powysian philosophy, repaid the debt by interpreting the works of the Master to his own countrymen.
ISBN 0-900821-50-7 £19.95
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