THE ROANOKE WORLD NEWS

Roanoke, Virginia, USA

31 July 1923

(page 12)

Current Literary News and Reviews

Literary Notes

The current issue of The Reviewer contains an essay on James Branch Cabell by Aleister Crowley which sets forth in a manner it seems hardly equaled before what Cabell’s work has been, how he has accomplished it, what it means, and how it surpasses other works of its character. The following are extracts from it:

“We have had Homer and others to combine the affairs of gods and men in a single epos: we have had Balzac and others to combine the affairs of various families. But Cabell has done far more than either of these types of artist. He has taken the ideal forces of the Universe and shown their relations with mankind over a period of many centuries, from the legendary demigods of Poletesme to the inhabitants of present-day Virginia. He has set no limit to his canvas; and while every detail is exact and brilliant, it retains its proper subordination to the complete idea.

“ . . . . He has done exactly what the Buddha did long since; he has investigated the Universe in detail) and as a whole, and he has come to the same conclusion. ‘Everything is sorrow.” But, like Buddha once more, he has failed to perceive that Sorrow itself is an illusion. Nothing is worth having, nothing is worth keeping, nothing is worth trying for; true, but only in part. Every being must come ultimately to nothing, for there is nothing for it to attain. Every curve is closed. Every equation must cancel out to zero. Yet every being has only to rid itself of desire, to follow out its own natural course withoutt hankering after false ideals; so soon as it learns how to do this, sorrow disappears. . . .

“In Cabell’s technique there are two principal features of exceptional interest. One is the insidious introduction of rhythmical, riming and antistrophic forms. . . .

“The other is the employment of repetitions. . . . ”