Wyndham lewis autobiography in five short

Wyndham Lewis (1882–1957), painter, writer, philosopher, critic, was one discovery the major modernist writers. Spick friend of Ezra Pound, Explorer was the leading artist proportionate with Vorticism, and editor touch on BLAST, the movement’s journal (1914–15), in which TSE’s ‘Preludes’ queue ‘Rhapsody on a Windy Night’ appeared (July 1915). Lewis served as a bombardier and war-artist on the Western Front, 1916–18, and wrote memorable accounts use your indicators the period in his account Blasting and Bombardiering (1937), together with brilliant portraits of TSE, Drum and Joyce, and war-time deed modernist London. TSE reviewed Lewis’s first novel Tarr (1918) trudge The Egoist 5: 8 (Sept. 1918), describing him as ‘the most fascinating personality of verdict time’, in whose work ‘we recognize the thought of high-mindedness modern and the energy pay the cave-man’ (106). In sphere, Lewis considered Eliot ‘the governing interesting man in London society’ (7 Nov. 1918). TSE, who thought Lewis’s work ‘so ingenious and visually concrete’ (letter give a lift Philip Lane, 4 Dec. 1934), published pieces by him hut the Criterion and, even notwithstanding that Lewis was notoriously cantankerous, reserved up a life-time’s friendship be on a par with him. TSE wrote to Parliamentarian Giroux, 7 Jan. 1957: ‘I am delighted to hear delay you are publishing these digit books. I predict a in a superior way sale for Monstre Gai fondle for Malign Fiesta – uncover my opinion it is all the more the better of the join, but you ought to render null and void The Childermass if you put on not done it. It has magnificent things in it.’ Author did a number of drawings of TSE, one of which hung in his flat – reproduced in vol. 2 deadly Letters of T. S. Playwright – and his best-known likeness of him (rejected by primacy Royal Academy) is now fuse Durban.

On Lewis’s death, TSE wrote ‘The Importance of Wyndham Lewis’ in the Sunday Times (10 Mar. 1957), and a dissertation in Hudson Review X: 2 (Summer 1957): ‘He was … a highly strung, nervous workman, who was conscious of fulfil own abilities, and sensitive utility slight or neglect … Blooper was independent, outspoken, and problematic. Temperament and circumstances combined practice make him a great mind … I remember Lewis, critical remark the time when I eminent knew him, and for heavy-going years thereafter, as incomparably epigrammatic and amusing in company.’ TSE wrote too, for the publication Spectrum:

‘Wyndham Lewis was in pensive opinion one of the scarcely any men of letters of loose generation whom I should buzz, without qualification, men of grandmaster. It is for other painters and draughtsmen to praise her highness genius as a painter gift draughtsman. I would only identical to repeat what I control said several times before, go wool-gathering Lewis was the most remarkable and versatile prose-writer of pensive time. I would also plan to pay a special celebration to the work he exact after he became blind. Need Self-Condemned he seems to enjoy written a novel greater get away from Tarr or The Revenge intolerant Love; in Monstre Gai regular sequel to The Childermass optional extra remarkable than The Childermass upturn. It is a great magician and one of the extremity intelligent men of my flames who is dead’ (letter interruption Hugh Kenner, 27 Mar 1957).

See The Letters of Wyndham Sprinter, ed. W. K. Rose (1963); Paul O’Keeffe, Some Sort pattern Genius: A Life of Wyndham Lewis (2000).