John Cowper Powys Championship Page - #7 "What John and Mary really did was to make love like vicious children"

This is a sample of J.C. Powys’ natural world--it is that surrounding nonhuman electricity that becomes aware of human comings and goings.  It is just a small example of what glues me to his literature, what binds me to his mythology. 

“What John and Mary really did was to make love like vicious children; and this was due to the fact that they were both very nervous and very excitable but not in the faintest degree tempted to the usual gestures of excessive human passion.  The rationalism of analytic logic has divided erotic emotion into fixed conventional types, popular opinion offering one set of categories, fashionable psychology offering another.  As a matter of fact, each new encounter of two amorists creates a unique universe.  No existing generalisation, whether of the wise or of the unwise, covers or ever will cover a tenth part of its thrilling phenomena.  In one respect this love-making by Dye’s Hole was the most childlike that the spot had ever witnessed; in another it was the most cerebral.  The nervous excitement manifested by these two was so free from traditional sentimentality and normal passion, so dominated by a certain cold-blooded and elemental lechery, that something in the fibrous interstices of the old tree against which they leaned was aroused by it and responded to it.”

(The edition cited is A Glastonbury Romance, Woodstock, N.Y.: The Overlook Press, 1987, pp. 70-71)

Above views of the River Wissey, mentioned in A Glastonbury Romance, and the surrounding area for the "...certain cold-blooded and elemental lechery..." of John and Mary's lovemaking.

Foulden Bridge as mentioned on p.68.

I'd like to direct your attention to the Literary Norfolk website, in which JCPowys is mentioned.  The writer of the site or the entry had this to say:

"Another superb description of the river is to be found in John Cowper Powys' novel A Glastonbury Romance (1932). The novel, which is widely regarded as Powys' best book begins in Norfolk....  The book explores Arthurian grail legends. However, in one of the early chapters John takes a trip down the river with his cousin Mary....  The writing is of extraordinary quality."

For the section on the River Wissey click here.
For the section on Northwold (Norfolk) click here.