poems

[IrishCanadian]

WOW, he wrote poetry! I was browsing the author list for some light reading and found out that Huxley wrote poems. So I'm probably makeing a fool of myself to all of you who knew that. But its wonderful poetry. I can't believe its not more famous! I can really really relate to what he says in his poems.

DARKNESS by Aldous Huxley

My close-walled soul has never known
That innermost darkness, dazzling sight,
Like the blind point, whence the visions spring
In the core of the gazer's chrysolite…
The mystic darkness that laps God's throne
In a splendour beyond imagining,
So passing bright.

But the many twisted darknesses
That range the city to and fro,
In aimless subtlety pass and part
And ebb and glutinously flow;
Darkness of lust and avarice,
Of the crippled body and the crooked heart…
These darknesses I know.

[TodHackett]

...Huxley published this poem.

I think of it as the Savage's suicide note.

"The Ideal Found Wanting"

I'm sick of clownery and owlglass tricks...
God damn the lot of you-- I hate you all!
The same, night after night,
From sweating gallery to powdered stall,
Your gazes fix in flux an idiot mean--
The Apteryx you worship is no victory, you call
On old stupidity-- God made to crawl
For tempting with world-wisdom's narcotics.

I'll knock a window in my prison, see--
The sunset bleeds along the roofs, comes night,
Dark blue and clam, like music dying out
Is it escape? No! The laugh's turned on me--
I kicked at cardboard, gaped at red limelight,
You laughed, and cheered my latest knockabout.

[Logos]

Huxley is generally under-rated as far as I'm concerned :D

[TodHackett]

Back at UW I cleaned out the "Huxley criticism" shelves in Odegaard Library... always something new!

[carpenoctem]

Yes, and his introduction intro poetry came with "The Burning Wheel" (1916), a magnificent poem. His volumes of poetry are: The Burning Wheel (1916), "The Defeat of Youth and Other Poems" (1918), "Leda" (1920), "The Cicadas and Other Poems" (1931). His style is unique and the complete fusion of all his attributes, including even the physical deprivation due to semi-blindness, comes in the physical deprivation due to semi-blindness, comes in the powerful poem "The Cicadas", probably at its best.