Joyful Pessimist

EARTH MEMORIES--Llewelyn Powys--Norton ($2.75).

In a Swiss tuberculosis sanatorium, convinced that he would soon die, Llewelyn Powys (pronounced Po'-is), then 25, came to a solemn conclusion: "There is no God . . . nothing matters as long as we remain healthy and alive . . . insensitiveness is the one cardinal sin." Still alive 29 years later, while continuing to think each year his last, Llewelyn Powys has succeeded in writing a half-dozen books which stand out for their acute observations of nature, their sensitive prose, their blend of pessimism and pagan delight in the "rabble senses." The most polished of the prolific Powys brothers (John Cowper Powys, T. F. Powys), Llewelyn is also the most uneven. But even cautious critics rank three of his ten books--Ebony and Ivory, Skin for Skin, The Cradle of God--among the minor English classics.

A collection of 41 essays ranging in subject from the English countryside to the paintings of Peter Breughel, from God to gypsies, Earth Memories is not the best example of Powys' writing. But its shortcomings are more than redeemed by Critic Van Wyck Brooks's eloquent introduction to the book, which pays a high tribute to Llewelyn Powys the writer, a higher tribute to Powys the teacher. "Let no one suppose," says Brooks, "that Llewelyn Powys is merely another nature-writer, eloquent, observant and persuasive. He has something to say to this age of despair and darkness, an age in which writers in all the tongues of Babel repeat that life is futile and worse than nothing."

What Powys has to say, says Brooks, is that only a man who has had to fight for existence knows how to prize it. He is like a hare that has escaped the hunter, or a fish that has eluded the hook, and now exults unquestioningly in "the sun soaked earth and wind and water." This is his powerful and moving answer to the personal despair of post-War writers.

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