Dezember 1984 in Paris, wo ich damals lebte, Rue de la Tombe-Issoire 37, ein paar Meter über den Katakomben und am Ort, wo laut mittelalterlicher Legende der Grabhügel des erschlagenen Riesen Isoré lag. Wir hatten gerade die Ossip-Mandelstam-Gesamtausgabe geplant und besprochen. Egon Ammann und Marie-Luise Flammersfeld sassen auf meinem bizarren Steinzeit-Sofa wie auf einem fliegenden Teppich. Wir glühten. Es war spät, ich schlug einen nächtlichen Spaziergang durch Paris vor. Wir sahen das Haus, wo Verlaine starb, und Baudelaires Haschisch-Klub auf der Ile Saint-Louis. Eine kleine verrückte Wallfahrt, befeuert vom gemeinsamen Projekt, das den russisch-jüdischen Dichter endlich sichtbar machen sollte, dessen zehn Bände samt meiner Mandelstam-Biografie wir tatsächlich – trotz allen materiellen Engpässen – verwirklicht sehen durften.

St. Andrew, Winterborne Tomson by John Lamper

In 1931, A R Powys, the brother of the novelist John Cowper Powys began a restoration. The work soon ran into financial problems, but was rescued when some of Thomas Hardy’s letters to the Society of Protection of Ancient Buildings were sold.

Jag läser John Cowper Powys A Glastonbury romance medan King Crimsoms A Lark’s tongue in aspic rullar i bakgrunden. Boken läste jag för första gången för många år sedan och jag föll som en sten. Vid den tiden läste jag emellanåt Jakobs stege, en tidskrift som gavs ut av René Coeckelberghs förlag. I nummer 1980:3 fanns en artikel om John Cowper Powys av Ingemar Algulin. Därefter började jag läsa A Glastonbury romance, en tegelsten på 1120 sidor. Anledningen till att jag nu återigen plockat ut den ur bokhyllan (inte första gången sedan första gången) var att jag i förra veckan upptäckte att Powys bok Porius kommit ut i en, enligt förlaget, slutgiltig version. Därefter sökte jag på nätet och fann att det för endast ett par år sedan skrivits en svensk doktorsavhandling om just A Glastonbury romance och Porius. Av Eivor Lundstedt, Lunds universitet, 2004. Den beställde jag prompt, vi får se vart det leder oss.

Just nu bara detta: Då, när jag läste denna bok för första gången, antecknade jag vissa sidnummer på försättsbladet. Jag letar fram en av dessa sidor och läser detta:

”Every human creature is a terror to every other human creature. Human minds are like unknown planets, encountering and colliding. Every one of them contains jagged precipices, splintered rockpeaks, ghastly crevasses, smouldering volcanoes, scorched and scorching deserts, blistering sands, evil dungeons from behind whose barred windows mad and terrible faces peer out. Every pair of human eyes is a custom-house gate into a completely foreign port; a port whose palaces and slums, whose insane asylums and hospitals, whose market-places and sacred shrines, represent the terrifying and the menacing as well as the promising and the pleasure-giving!” (395f.)

John Cowper Powys. He was an extremely prolific writer, yet he started late. (Which is something I can see myself aspiring to.) I’ve heard him described as a writer of tragic grandeur and everyday comedy, of sexual perversion, and lots of cups of tea. (I guess more cups of teas are consumed in his books than by Irish road workers. And I’ve seen how many pots they’ve brewed.)

His books are large. His subjects even larger: Welsh myth, vivisection, pornography, magic, the nature of evil, Nietzsche’s philosophy, and communism. He was also considered the English degenerate. And he had a horror of “fucking” but depended on enemas for bad gastric trouble. And he liked girls of the demimonde, and prostitutes, and slim young women in men’s clothing.

Which all makes him extremely interesting and bordering on an obsession for me. I’m like that. I weevil some author out of the woodwork and then I get to munch on all the grubs until the only thing standing is the chair I sit in, lonely and forlorn without me.

Half my love for reading is discovering writers that are over-looked by the literary mainstream. I feel like an archaeologist who has suddenly uncovered, say, the femur of a new animal or the fossil of some invertebrate that turns out to have had a huge impact on evolution. Maybe I’m a little disturbed. But then the sluggish blood of the mundane is set flowing again like a river in spate and all the flotsam is washed to the bank and it’s damn refreshing. Life, that is.

Some reviewer had this to say about Powys: “The realm of John Cowper Powys is dangerous.” Now that’s my kind of writer.

And what about towns that think they’re cities? What I’m saying is that these so-called cities should be regulated to the fifth division. True I lead a rural life — and like it that way — but when I want to go to a city I want to go to a City! None of these namby-pamby places masquerading as cities but without the vibe. I want a city to have bookstores where the owners can tell you what book you want to read even before you’ve uttered a word. I don’t want chain book stores where the cashier says, “Oh, John Cowper Powys, wasn’t he the prime ministrant of London?”

And I want funky and underground coffee houses with a seat against the wall where you can observe and drink in flagrante instead of one single café where you ask if the place is connected and they reply, “Yes, my dad knows the bank manager so I got a deal on the place.”

Or music stores where every decibel of sound is collected into a arena of audio delight. A music store with every conceivable band and some not even yet formed. Not some dinky music store where the owner smirks at your purchase and says, “Edwyn Collins’ new one, huh? I have the Aberdeenian’s fist band Orange Pulp if you’re interested.” To which I will reply. “Thanks, but the Glasgow kid’s early band Orange Juice is already on my iPod.”

Did you know that Woody Allen was once asked did he consider sex dirty. And he replied, yes, if it’s done properly.

Condemned by the Synod of Carthage in about 418.