Criterion Miscellany - No 16. Ambush, Herbert Read, Faber & Faber
First Blood
Snow falling all night: in the morning the world will be white. The earth will be covered with a nice new coat of paint, to hide the scars and pockmarks. For the earth is in a bad way-a battered old scarecrow, blackened, ragged, her fingers and toes all splintered. Oh such a mess!
Sanctuary Wood: the god of this sacred place is Moloch, and he is a very fierce old god, and people say that to seek sanctuary in his arms is to say goodbye to your beloved's. His sanctuary a wood, a dark gloomy glade, full of caves and ditches. If you wait till daylight you will find that the trees have no branches, but are whiskered with splinters. Tatterdemalio... (From: Anarchy Archives.) ECLOGUES
This is the ninth book issued by the Beaumont Press and the fifth printed by hand 30 copies have been printed on Japanese vellum signed by the author and artist and numbered i to 30 50 copies on cartridge paper numbered 31 to 80 and 120 copies on hand-made paper numbered 81 to 200
ECLOGUES
A BOOK OF POEMS
HERBERT READ
CONTENTS
THE MEDITATION OF A LOVER I can just see the distant trees ... 9
WOODLANDS Pine needles cover the silent ground: . 10
PASTURELANDS We scurry over the pastures . . . 11
THE POND Shrill green weeds . . . . . 12
THE ORCHARD Grotesque patterns of blue-gray mold . 1 3
APRIL To the fresh wet fields . . , . 14
THE WOODMAN His russet coat and gleamin... (From: Anarchy Archives.) In Volume Two of Anarchism: A Documentary History of Libertarian Ideas, subtitled The Emergence of the New Anarchism (1939–1977), I document the remarkable resurgence of anarchist ideas and action following the tragic defeat of the Spanish anarchists in the Spanish Revolution and Civil War, and the mass carnage of the Second World War. Below, I have collected additional writings from many of the people who were responsible for that resurgence. Herbert Read, Marie Louise Berneri, Paul Goodman, David Wieck, Daniel Guerin, Alex Comfort, George Woodcock and the Noir et Rouge group in France were among those who made anarchism relevant again, despite its critics’ attempts to consign it to the dustbin of history.
Volume Two of ... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) The origins of the existentialist movement are usually traced back to Kierkegaard, whose main philosophical works appeared between 1838 and 1855. As these were written in Danish, they did not immediately get into general circulation. Various selections made by Barthold were published in Germany between 1873 and the end of the nineteenth century, but the first complete German translation of his works only appeared between 1909 and 1923, and the Anglo-American translation began as late as 1936. However, there is no excuse for making Kierkegaard the founder of existentialism. It is true that he gave the movement a specifically Christian twist, but all the main ideas were already present in the philosophy of Schelling, and one should remember t... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) FREEDOM IS IT A CRIME?
The Strange Case of the Tree Anarchists Jailed at the Old Bailey, April 1945
Two Speeches by HERBERT READ
FORWARD by E. SILVERMAN
FREEDOM PRESS DEFENSE COMMITTEE
2d.
First Published by
The Freedom Press Defense
Committee,
17, St. George Street, London, W.1.
June, 1945
And printed by
Express Printers, London.
The Publishers have asked me to write a foreword to this pamphlet. As an individual who cares about freedom of speech and freedom of the press I accept with pleasure the opportunity to say a word to the public.
Three decent, useful and respectable citizens, who Mr. Justice Birkett said were of the highest character and who he was quite prepared to believe... (From: Anarchy Archives.) William Godwin
[Herbert Read MS from University of Victoria]
In the history of English poetry, no name is more secure than that of Shelley: he ranks with the greatest -- with Spenser, Shakespear, Milton and Wordsworth, and the years only add to the depth of our appreciation of his genius. But Shelley's name is indisociably linked with another name -- the name of a man to whom he owed not only his philosopy of life, but even his personal happiness, for he ran away with the philosopher's daughter. This philosopher was William Godwin, and in his day no man was more famous. His fame rested on one book, though he wrote many others, and this book, Political Justice, was not only what we would now call a "best-seller", but, if we take account of... (From: Anarchy Archives.) From Meet Kropotkin. The Salvation Series No. 1. Bombay: The Libertarian Book House, n.d.
KROPOTKIN - THE MASTER
by HERBERT READ.
PRINCE PETER ALEXEIVICH KROPOTKIN was born at Moscow on the 9th December, 1842 (o. s.). His father, Prince Alexei Petrovich Kropotkin, is described by Kropotkin as "a typical officer of the time of Nicholas I", but he seems to have been an easy-going parent, content to leave his son's education to his French tutor until it was time to send him off to a military academy. Kropotkin's mother was the youngest daughter of the commander of a Cossack army corps, General Sulima, and a woman of great refinement and sensibility, qualities which her son must have inherited, for she died before s... (From: Anarchy Archives.) Naked Warriors
Herbert Read, London: Art & Letters, 1919.
PREFACE
I would like to speak for a generation to following effect:
We, who in manhood's dawn have been compelled to care not a damn for life or death, now care less still for the convention of glory and the intellectual apologies for what can never be to us other than a riot of ghastliness and horror, of inhumanity and negation. May we, therefore, for the sake of life itself, be resolved to live with a cleaner and more direct realization of natural values. May we be unafraid of our frank emotions, and may we maintain a callous indifference to falsely-artistic prettifying of life. Then, as the reflex of such beauty where hitherto it has had no absolute existence.... (From: Anarchy Archives.) It has been the fashion, especially among orthodox Marxists, to hold in contempt any theory of politics which did not justify itself in action, and this emphasis on action has often led to a confusion of means and ends — the means too often overshadowing the ends and becoming a substitute for them. The dictatorship of the proletariat, for example, at first put forward as a means towards the classless society, becomes stabilized in Russia as the sovereignty of a new class.
Anarchism does not confuse means and ends, theory and practice. As a theory it relies on reason alone, and if the conception of society which it thus arrives at seems utopian and even chimerical, it does not matter, for what is established by right reasoning c... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) Herbert Read, (1940). The Philosophy of Anarchism. London: Freedom Press.
The Philosophy of Anarchism.
By
Herbert Read
FREEDOM PRESS
First published September 1940 by Freedom Press. 27, Red Lion Street. London, W.C.1, Second Impression, June 1941 Third Impression, December 1941 Fourth Impression, July 1942 Fifth Impression, February 1943 Sixth Impression, December 1944. Seventh Impression, November 1947. All rights reserved. Printed in Great Britain by Express Printers, London.
Ts'ui Chii said to Lao Tzu, "You say there must be no government. But it there is no government, how are men's hearts to be improved?" "The last thing you should do," said Lao Tzu, "is to tamper with men's hearts. The heart of... (From: Anarchy Archives.) Essays in Literary Criticism
Homo est quodammodo omnia. [Man is somehow everything.]
—ST. THOMAS AQUINAS
Faber and Gwyer
-iii-
First published in mcmxxvi by Faber and Gwyer Limited 24 Russell Square London. Made and printed in Great Britain by the Chiswick Press: Charles Whittingham & Griggs (Printers) Limited Tooks Court Chancery Lane London
-iv-
CONTENTS
THE ATTRIBUTES OF CRITICISM 1
THE NATURE OF METAPHYSICAL POETRY 31
PURE POETRY 59
THE FUTURE OF POETRY 67
PSYCHO-ANALYSIS AND CRITICISM 83
THE DISCIPLES OF DIDEROT 107
THE DEFINITION OF COMEDY 127
THE DIALOGUE 139
CHARLOTTE AND EMILY Brontë 159
TOBIAS SMOLLETT 187
THE MODERN NOVEL (CURSORY NOTES) (From: Anarchy Archives.) In the history of English poetry, no name is more secure than that of Shelley: he ranks with the greatest — with Spenser, Shakespeare, Milton and Wordsworth, and the years only add to the depth of our appreciation of his genius. But Shelley’s name is indissociably linked with another name — the name of a man to whom he owed not only his philosophy of life, but even his personal happiness, for he ran away with the philosopher’s daughter. This philosopher was William Godwin, and in his day no man was more famous. His fame rested on one book, though he wrote many others, and this book, Political Justice, was not only what we would now call a “best-seller”, but, if we take account of the effect it had, a poli... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
