Aleister Crowley in America

by Tobias Churton

  Crowley knows perfectly well he is treading on corns, that deification of the hero is endemic to American culture, in the Greek sense, and that the people generally don’t like criticism at all. It goes, he observes, against the universal American discovery that positive thinking with a strong inoculation of mindless optimism can bring in the bucks, and that this superstition, or confidence trick played on the superficial self, though practically valid at times, passes for faith. What Crowley is getting at is that American culture displayed to him a fundamental problem with scale and proportion and that this had something to do with the daunting expanses of the continent: Go West, young man!—and you just keep going. George Washington is a “big” hero, so his statue must be trans-Olympian as though assumed like Elijah, Constantine, or the Catholic Virgin to the invisible heavens, whereas back on earth, “superiority” is despised in the name of the demos. Somehow, Nature, the vast continent, had hit the pride and sensorium of the British and European migrant, and with it went all the talk about “conquering Nature”: an impossible, indeed undesirable, objective for anyone living off Her indulgence. As Nature is the first mirror of the artistic soul, Crowley had a profound point to make. Americans might own the land, but they had not inwardly possessed it, or been possessed by it. Proof of purchase came with paper, or bullets. The so-called redskins had learned to accommodate the Great Spirit and see its maternal presence in the land, while European Catholics and Protestants imported their God, in books, and tried to project it, making every solitary grave on the prairie look rather mean, melancholy, and out of place: reality could very soon look like despair on earth; best move on. Thus Arizona doubles for Palestine, and every migrant is a Moses subduing the Amalekites. Destiny, precisely, was not manifest, but imposed. What one feels Crowley was getting at was that American art lacked the necessary historical development through enlightened paganism that characterized European artistic sensitivity, whose Renaissance finery made the “plain Protestant” of the Plains wince.

  Crowley notes a persistent didacticism in American poetry, the singing, even parroting of learned ideas, beliefs or guaranteed-not-to-break “great thoughts,” whereas, Crowley declares, “In Art a man’s views count for nothing. It is a curious paradox that a man can only write if he is so white-hot over something that his work pours through him, not from him; and yet it is not of the least importance what that something is. . . . What does it matter whether anyone is right? If he does right, it will last.”

  Nevertheless, Crowley can well appreciate Whitman’s confrontation with scale for its own sake and how he mirrors, not so much Nature herself, but American cultural characteristics.

  From the philosophical, and even more from the human view, Whitman is an artist supreme in so far as he mirrors the spirit of his time and country. He has the childish petulance and bombast and enthusiasm, the gross, naked lust and the ultra-refined delicacy, the essential rough vigor, the hurry, the conceit, the egoism, the astounding incompetence and the still more astounding capacity, the Jingoism, even the cant, of the American-as-he-is-in-himself, the Yank an sich. I find meaning even in the strings of names; I understand how, in a country so new and generous, the mere crying of the names of things fills the soul with ecstasy—the ecstasy of poetry. Whitman says “lint, bandages, iodo-form” as the Greeks said “Thalassa! Thalassa!” [“The Sea! The Sea!”] and thereby conjures a vision of all the heroism and suffering of the War of Secession.

  Crowley looks forward to the day when the American creates rather than acquires his Culture. “We must not,” he writes, “expect his literature to follow our lines. His literature is to come. We shall know when it does—it will be stupendous, it will be gigantic and elemental beyond all experience. It will keep our rules. It can only come with a settlement of some of the main social and political problems; but when it does, we shall, I believe, clearly recognize Walt Whitman as the fountain and origin of it all. . . . Whitman is America. He is the real thing, the spirit of the new continent made word. Not the voice of imported culture, or any other thing inessential. He is raw, untutored, tameless, crude, the America of the War. I have lived on the prairie myself [in Mexico], and I recognize the note.”

  Poe and Whitman engage Crowley’s admiration. Mark Twain he regards as not a great artist, be he ever so popular; “Longfellow is merely the polite professor; he has little learning, even for an undergraduate, and he has never penetrated a single mu into the varnish of any drawing-room idea. Smooth, shallow optimism, a faith even more frock-coated and silk-hatted than Tennyson’s, a style absolutely wooden.” Henry James was still alive when Crowley was writing. Crowley has recognized his genius. “Henry James, good or bad, is too important and too sub judice to discuss in this brief appreciation of the literary stars that spangle Old Glory.” Crowley was of course familiar with the author of The Last of the Mohicans. “Another well-known writer in England is James Fenimore Cooper. He, again, succeeded chiefly by the novelty of his themes; his method is stilted, and after all he is only boyhood’s friend. That I still like him only proves—what everybody knows—that I have never grown up.”

  In vain does cheeky Crowley seek originality in American art; why, he exclaims, even the national anthem “My Country ’Tis of Thee!” is sung to the tune of “God save the King” (this was before the adoption of “The Star Spangled Banner” in 1931)!

  And why is it? Why is it that with everything in favor of new birth, of “variation,” we find so very little born? Consider the astounding avidity with which the American swallows every kind of idea, the rage for literature, the subsidizing of Art, the passion for music. Consider even the new blood that pours into the States to the tune of two millions a year from every art-producing country in Europe: and wonder grows, and grows.

  Americans say that the immigrants are the scum of Europe. Perhaps, but they beat the native out of most of his money and power in no time. Isn’t there a touching song about the “poor exile of Erin” who in a fortnight became “Alderman Mike inthrojuicing a bill”?

  There is, firstly, the question of a critical faculty. This is clearly infantine in nearly all Americans. A Man will determine to study philosophy. To whom does he go? To Kant? To Hume? To Aristotle? Dear me, no! He is quite happy with Fra Elbertus [Elbert Hubbard b. 1856],*55 with his sham Kelmscott Press [Hubbard led an American version of Englishman William Morris’s Arts and Crafts Movement: the Roycrofters] and his platitudes, or with Swami Vivekananda, that burliest of Babus. It never strikes him to defer to the Upanishads, from which Vivekananda derived all that is of value in his work. . . . As a matter of fact, I have sometimes met Americans whose native good sense made them finely appreciative of good work. But they are too often “put off their game” by the comments of “cultured” posers, usually of that Press which has discovered that “woman is the market,” and thought it best to write down to the assumed level of woman’s intellect.

  Now, as Wilde urged, criticism is the foundation of creation; at least, it is the negative side of creation. And so, with no power of selection from the enormous mass of material at his disposal, he is entirely incompetent to do much more than copy the people he admires.

  Crowley wonders what may be adduced from the effects of climate on the American psyche and observes that New York, for example, shares its latitude with Madrid “and can be a great dea’ [sic] hotter than Madrid.” While nature urges behavior akin to the Madrileños, “the Puritan conscience is in absolute antipathy to the lazily, lazily, drowsily, drowsily frame of mind. So the people ‘get a move on’ and restlessly rage throughout the day—and get nothing done. ‘Festina lente’ and ‘More haste, less speed’ ought to be painted up at every street corner in New York.”

  Crowley has gazed in awe at the continent’s epic size, lyrical detail, dramatic motion, and wonders if the cause of artistic weakness has been the absence of a settled order of things, where there is no standard acquiesced in for centuries. “In Europe,” he observes, “the overturning of the dynasties has us
ually been the signal for an outburst of every kind of art. Here, however, there is in a sense nothing to overturn. People drift from Methodism to Zionism through Theosophy, Christian Science, and Nut-foodism, without a single wavelet over their mental gunwale. If you tell a man that black is white, he gets thoughtful, and says: ‘Yes, stranger, I guess that is so.’” If that doesn’t explain things, Crowley is tempted to fall back on the platitude that America is a “very young country. It is true: there is so much to do that no one has time to reflect. Poetry is born in the stillness of the soul; boredom is one of its chief stimuli. The commercialism of the country is too rampant.”

  Looking briefly to the future, Crowley envisions greatness to come.

  No doubt, when immigration stops, when the negro problem, and the Japanese problem, and the labor problem, and the political problem, and all the rest of the problems are solved, when a class arises which has time to reflect upon life instead of living it, American art will lead the world.

  Until then, the theme is likely to continue to overwhelm the artist. Whitman alone has risen to the height of destiny; and Whitman was baulked by his own mind. He was Being without Form, as Poe was Form without Being; and creation is the marriage of these twain.

  Well, there was a reaction!—much of it predictable.

  The Chicago Daily Tribune of November 23, 1913, simply listed some of Crowley’s most provocative statements, believing them to stand as self-condemning by themselves. “‘I am cursed with a public school and university education,’ says Mr. Crowley, ‘although luckily I was born with enough native sense to shirk the soulless ritual of it so far as might be, and its bad influence has been corrected by years of wandering in the wilds.’ The ‘curse’ was lifted. Mr. Harrison and the English Review may wish that it had stuck.”

  The State newspaper, published in South Carolina’s capital, Columbia, on December 7, 1913, tried to look on the bright side but was unsure whether the opinion of the unknown Aleister Crowley was to be accorded respect.

  ALEISTER CROWLEY HAS LITTLE GOOD TO SAY OF AMERICAN ART BUT LOOKS AHEAD

  London, Nov. 19. What do you know about Aleister Crowley? Ever heard of him before? Neither had I until I found an article by him on “Art in America” in the current English Review, cheek by jowl with one by Israel Zangwill on “The Militant Suffragettes.” Since then I have looked Crowley up in Who’s Who, but without finding him so much as mentioned therein, and all that I know about him now, apart from the fact that he doesn’t consider that America has produced any art or that Americans have any real culture is (and this I read in the Times) that he was the ringleader of those who removed the coverings that the French authorities caused to be placed over Jacob Epstein’s now famous memorial to Oscar Wilde in Père Lachaise cemetery the other night, without, apparently, getting any thanks for so doing from the sculptor thereof. [Crowley had removed the brass butterfly attached by Paris city authorities to the genitals of the figure on Epstein’s Wilde monument as a gesture of artistic freedom.]

  However, since he is welcomed to the pages of the periodical which publishes Masefield, Hewlett, and, incidentally, John Heiston, one supposes that Aleister Crowley must have some standing in the literary world, though it is worth noting that the editor of the English Review is careful to remark that Crowley’s opinions are not necessarily those of the periodical. The fact is that Crowley is the superior person in excelsis, yet this article on “Art in America” contains some thought and its author reveals a wider reading of American literature than most natives can claim. He says, too, that he has lived on the prairie, and he glories in the grandeur of American scenery.

  . . . Even this writer, however, is hopeful of America, and his article is not wholly a “roast.” “The Himalayas,” he remarks, “are too big for any one to sing, and America is all Himalayas of one kind or another.”

  Fig. 8.2. Walter Duranty (1884–1957)

  On January 30, 1914, residents of Baltimore, Maryland, opened copies of the Sun to a review that fired off with a list of inflammatory quotations, under the headline “NO AMERICAN ART,” SAYS AN IRISH CRITIC. It is interesting that Crowley was still identified in America as a son of Erin as well as “Poet, Mountain Climber, Buddhist—Man Who Smashed Oscar Wilde’s Monument” and the instigator of the following literary outrages. “The boasted inventions of the Americans do not exist; what they invent is notions based on the discoveries of others.” “The only bright spot in American literature is humor. Of course, humor is the most perishable of commodities.” “The only American sculptor I know is a Lithuanian living in Paris.”*56

  The paper reported that a New York Times correspondent in Paris had cornered Crowley “in his den” and taken him to task over some of the details. The correspondent was probably Walter Duranty (1884–1957), sometime lover of Crowley’s who visited him during his and Victor Neuburg’s experimental sex-magick invocations of the gods Mercury and Jupiter in January and February 1914.

  The Sun reproduced snippets of Crowley’s responses to questions put to him in Paris.

  About music—“I have never heard of Nevin or Herbert.”

  About “My Country, ’Tis of Thee”—“Well, it has the same tune as ‘God Save the King’” (therefore, of course, it is a parody).

  About inventions—“Fulton only adapted a principle already discovered. The Wrights are following the lines laid out by others. Morse only improved the telegraphic system.”

  About Medicine—“I was not aware the Sir Bertram Dawson, the King’s physician, had said that he had to go to America to learn surgery and that the Mayo brothers, of Rochester, Minnesota, were the finest surgeons in the world.”

  “When I wrote of sculpture I had forgotten about Macmonnies.”

  “I was not aware that Jenny Lind was born in Sweden.” [Crowley had stated hers was the greatest voice in America.]

  A Many-Sided Genius

  But Crowley himself was found a very interesting personality. Parisians say of him: “He’s a mountain climber: holds a lot of records in the Himalayas and Mexico.” “He’s a well-known Buddhist: has been to Tibet and got initiated into all their mysteries.” “He’s a leading Freemason and past master Rosicrucian.” “He’s a worker of magic: holds séances and raises devils.” “He’s the man who mutilated Oscar Wilde’s monument at Père Lachaise.”

  Aleister Crowley is, in fact, a poet—the most prolific poet of the present day, the Times correspondent finds. He has produced a vast quantity of poetry, all of it strange, much of it wonderful, parts of it horrible, and none of it popular. In appearance he is a thick-set man of about 40, with a strong, square head, and a high forehead. His skull is shaved bald.

  He lives in a studio in Paris, a high, bright room, decorated with magic squares, a big bronze butterfly, ice-axes and alpine-stocks, futurist paintings, old English engravings and images of pagan gods.

  Hates England, Likes America

  He says he is an Irishman and hates England worse than poison. “I would rather be a dog than an Englishman,” he cried vehemently, and he has never ceased to lash the bitterest pen in Europe the country that has refused to recognize his genius.

  For America he expresses the highest admiration and affection, in spite of his harsh criticisms. He once visited the country and wrote a fervid “Hymn to the American People” as he crossed the Rockies on Independence Day, 1901.*57

  Fig. 8.3. Aleister Crowley circa 1910–1913

  Crowley’s expressed disgust with much that he experienced in England, socially and politically, would a) make it easier for him to appear as an anti-British renegade for espionage purposes in World War I, and b) further prejudice those convinced that Crowley was a traitor to his country during that period. This evidential ambiguity then leaves open the question of what motivated him to arrive in New York at the end of October 1914, after the start of the war, giving his nationality as Irish, of English residency. Had a personal “ideal” identity simply become habitual, or was it part of a deliberate cover fo
r purposes undisclosed?

  A remarkable letter from Crowley to his O.T.O. (Ordo Templi Orientis) treasurer George Macnie Cowie of November 20, 1913, puts a completely fresh slant on Crowley’s “Irish” identity. He begins by telling Cowie that he is “going to see Larkin tonight.” Here is a rare piece of evidence that Crowley, at least on this occasion, was concerned with political developments in Ireland, for James Larkin (1876–1947) was a socialist organizer of trades unions in Ireland, who in the summer and autumn of 1913 had instigated a watershed event in the history of Irish labor relations, the Dublin Lockout. After organizing the Sligo Dock Strike, Larkin attempted to get nonunionized workers of the Dublin United Tramway Company to join the Irish Transport and General Workers Union (ITGWU), against the will of company chairman and newspaper proprietor, William Martin Murphy. There were protracted lockouts, firings, sympathy strikes, wage cuts, newspaper condemnation of the workers and union leaders, and vicious police beatings of those who came to hear Larkin speak. The Catholic Church in Dublin refused to assist strikers’ hungry families. In November, amid protest from British trades unionists and socialist sympathizers, Larkin was charged with sedition and arrested, but the Liberal government had second thoughts. Released on November 13, Larkin came to London to address the Parliamentary Committee of the Trades Union Congress, while the socialist Daily Herald organized an evening meeting at the Albert Hall for November 20, of which Larkin was principal speaker. This meeting Crowley apparently attended. After the lockout finally ended in early 1914, Larkin—who declared that he did not recognize English rule in Ireland—went to New York and took further radical steps, joining the socialist-anarchist I.W.W. (Industrial Workers of the World). In 1917 he advocated the Bolshevik revolution.