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THE BENDIGO INDEPENDENT Bendigo, Victoria, Australia 6 November 1907 (page 6)
LITERARY NOTES.
A notable discovery has been made by Captain J. F. C. Fuller, who, in a critical work called “The Star in the West,” announces that the said “star,” viz., Mr. Aleister Crowley, is a transcendent genius, who in ages to come will stand out pre-eminent, as poet, prophet, and priest, Comparatively few have as yet heard of Aleister Crowley, but Captain Fuller confidently acclaims him the successor of Swinburne and certainly there is a distinct echo of that master. The following example is from a lyric called “Saida”:—
The spears of the night at her onset Are lords of the day for a while; The magical green of the sunset, The magical blue of the Nile. Afloat are the gales In our slumberous sails, On the beautiful breast of the Nile.
We have swooned through the mid-day exhausted, By the lips—they are whips—of the sun, The horizon befogged and befrosted By the haze and the greys and the dun Of the whirlings of sand Let loose on the land, By the wind that is born of the sun.
Thrilled through to the marrow with heat, We abode (as we glode) on the river. Every arrow he launched from his seat, From the white inexhaustible quiver Smote us right through, Smote us and slew, As we rode on the rapturous river.
Most striking about “The Star in the West” is the introduction, revealing Captain Fuller himself as the possessor of what might be called a truly “stunning” style. He writes modestly:—
“As another Ariadne I here offer this work to my readers as a twisted clue of silk and hemp to guide them safely through the labyrinthine mysteries of poetry and magic, whose taurine crags hug the blue sky, amorous as the kisses of Pariphae; across the Elysian fields of myrtle and asphodel, up the eagle-crested slopes of Olympus, and over the shining sun-scorched sands of Ammon, tawny and silken as the crouching form of some colossal lion, to the cool groves of Eleusis child-like dreaming in the bosom of silvery Attica by the blue Aegean Sea.” |