Image: David Gascoyne’s notebook - British Library
“David Gascoyne spent the years just before World War II in Paris, where he became friendly with Salvador Dalí, Max Ernst, André Breton, Paul Éluard and Pierre Jean Jouve. His poetry of this period was published in Poems 1937-1942 (1943) with illustrations by the artist Graham Sutherland.
His poem Requiem, dedicated to the future victims of war, was written to be set to music by his friend Priaulx Rainier. Her Requiem was premiered in 1956. She died on Gascoyne’s 70th birthday, 10 October 1986.
He returned to France after the war and lived there on and off until the mid 1960s. His work from the 1950s appeared in A Vagrant and Other Poems (1950), and Night Thoughts (1956). Interestingly, this later work had moved away from surrealism towards a more metaphysical and religious poetry. After suffering a mental breakdown, Gascoyne returned to England and spent the rest of his life on the Isle of Wight. He appears to have written little from that point on. Publication continued due to various ‘rediscoveries’ of his works, with a number of collections and selections of his work from Oxford University Press, Enitharmon and other imprints. Two books of his journals were returned to him after having been lost for some time and were published in two separate hardbacks by Alan Clodd at Enitharmon Press. When a third book was found, a new collection including the additional material was edited by Lucien Jenkins for Skoob Books Publishing. For the latter edition David Gascoyne himself provided what he called a ‘postface’, one of the most extended pieces of writing from his later years.
It was in Whitecroft Hospital on the Isle of Wight that Gascoyne met his wife, Judy Lewis, in a remarkable coincidence. Judy explains:
- One of my favourite poems was called September Sun. I read it one afternoon and one of the patients came up to me afterwards and said ‘I wrote that’, I put my hand on his shoulder and said ‘Of course you did, dear’. Then of course when I got to know him I realised he had.
They married in 1975. David Gascoyne died on 25 November 2001 at the age of 85.” (Wiki)
September Sun: 1947
Magnificent strong sun! In these last days
So prodigally generous of pristine light
That’s wasted only man’s sight who will not see
And by self-darkened spirits from whose night
Can rise no longer orison or praise
Let us consume in fire unfed like yours
And may the quickened gold within me come
To mintage in due season, and not be
Transmitted to no better end than dumb
And self-sufficient usury. These days and years
May bring the sudden call to harvesting,
When in the fields man’s labours only yield
Glitter and husks, then with an angrier sun may He
Who first with His gold seed the sightless field
of Chaos planted, all our trash to cinders bring.
(Source)
