Pantheistical mysticism of Algernon Henry Blackwood
03:20Pantheistical mysticism of Algernon Henry Blackwood
Algernon
Henry Blackwood is the English writer, the author of mystical prose. By the way
his poems were appreciated by Howard Philips Lovecraft.
From an
early ages Blackwood was fond of esoteric doctrines, theosophy, yoga and an
occultism that of course has found reflection in his creativity. Also since
youth unquenchable thirst of communication with the Nature wakes up in him.
Young Blackwood travels around the different countries and goes hiking. In 20
years he goes to a marathon campaign on the mountains of Switzerland and
Northern Italy which he will compare to a participle later in respect of
familiarizing with the Nature giving true spiritual food. Later his article
"Thoughts of the Nature" will be published in the theosophy magazine
"Lucifer".
In 1898 in Canada
Blackwood takes part in Indian hunting for an elk and personally kills a giant
elk. Later he regrets the act and begins to be negative to hunting just for fun.
It is interesting that the same changes have happened also with participating
in this hunting Elline Prins-Speser, the friend Blackwood's wife who became the
foundress of Women's league animals protection and veterinary clinic. Communication
with Indians will develop into the well-known story "Wendigo" about
ancient blood-thirsty spirit. Blackwood painfully endured approach of a
mechanistic urbanistic era that breaks link of the person with the Nature. He
was attracted by the woods, mountains, small quiet towns, and in such places as
New York, Blackwood actually began to go crazy.
On the whole
Blackwood’s stories and novels are talented but quite usual literature of
horrors and mysticism very popular in the beginning of the 20th century. But first
of all we are interested in those works in which the natural soul of the writer
is expressed. It is possible to distinguish two of them. First is the story
"The Person Who Was Loved by Trees" entering the collection
"Sir's Garden" and the novel "Centaur".
In
"The person who was loved by trees" Blackwood tells surprising at
first sight story of physical and spiritual dissolution of the person in a
forest thicket. But if we’ll understand symbolism, then it is obvious that we
see an image of return to the Nature to the wood in which our ancestors lived
and died. At the same time there is the line of the wife of the main character
which doesn't share hobby of the husband for trees at all and as the true
Christian judges long visits by the husband of the wood almost considering
natural powers as essence demons. He thinks that each tree is individually - it
is able to speak and even to move.
In
"Centaur" we see similar symbolism - the main hero - traveler O.Melly,
meets two people who awake his sleeping natural archetypes. He suddenly
understands that these strangers not people of today's era and those beings who
have arisen once as physical shapes of thought processes of the Earth. Those
who haven't been separated from her as waves from the ocean and those whom the
people who have left Mother-Earth began to call gods, demons and spirits. The
hero understands that Earth is the living being that everything is generated by
her mental energy around. Moreover it turns out that all planets in Space also
have consciousness and perhaps they also are the angels described in religions.
The novel is imbued and saturated pagan pantheistical meanings and images to a
limit.
"His
heart always lived in the Golden Age of youth of Earth - and at last came back
home... It was cleared inside merging with simple greatness, beauty and a charm
of the young world. And gradually flooding underground passes and cellars,
these hidden cells of bases of the personality, like inflow there arrived
forces. Filling the chamber behind chamber, dissolving walls and overlappings,
steadily destroys baffles, they silently rose above and above, allowing all
moods and disagreements of the personality to reconcile with each other and to
be alloyed together, doing it is more clear to themselves and allowing to
understand Earth as mother. Having seen itself integral, he realized the
divinity...
And
properties of all Earth consisted in it without effort. An ancient legend of
the person as the microcosm containing in itself Earth macrocosm when the
nature appears as the character and interpretation of its internal state became
clear. It absorbed force and nobility of trees, wind force, the unruly
fast-leaky rivers ran in ignorant fatigue legs and thoughts were decorated with
itself by a charm of colors, wavy softness of herbs, serenity of steppes and
the open sky. Pramir spoke in blood, and heart admired gold blossoming of
spring" ("Centaur").
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