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Ducdame
Ducdame was John Cowper Powys' fourth novel published in 1925. It is set in Dorset. The protagonist, Rook Ashover (a wonderfully Powysian name) is an introverted young squire with a to go on loving his mistress, Netta Page, or, make a respectable marriage and produce an heir. Of his early novels (pre- Wolf Solent) this one is often considered to be the most carefully constructed and best organized. Like them all it contains a gallery of rich, complex characters and glorious writing.
468 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1925
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117 people want to read
About the author
John Cowper Powys
177 books174 followersPowys was born in Shirley, Derbyshire, where his father was vicar. His mother was descended from the poet William Cowper, hence his middle name. His two younger brothers, Llewelyn Powys and Theodore Francis Powys, also became well-known writers. Other brothers and sisters also became prominent in the arts.
John studied at Sherborne School and Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, and became a teacher and lecturer; as lecturer, he worked first in England, then in continental Europe and finally in the USA, where he lived in the years 1904-1934. While in the United States, his work was championed by author Theodore Dreiser. He engaged in public debate with Bertrand Russell and the philosopher and historian Will Durant: he was called for the defence in the first obscenity trial for the James Joyce novel, Ulysses, and was mentioned with approval in the autobiography of US feminist and anarchist, Emma Goldman.
He made his name as a poet and essayist, moving on to produce a series of acclaimed novels distinguished by their uniquely detailed and intensely sensual recreation of time, place and character. They also describe heightened states of awareness resulting from mystic revelation, or from the experience of extreme pleasure or pain. The best known of these distinctive novels are A Glastonbury Romance and Wolf Solent. He also wrote some works of philosophy and literary criticism, including a pioneering tribute to Dorothy Richardson.
Having returned to the UK, he lived in England for a brief time, then moved to Corwen in Wales, where he wrote historical romances (including two set in Wales) and magical fantasies. He later moved to Blaenau Ffestiniog, where he remained until his death in 1963.
John studied at Sherborne School and Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, and became a teacher and lecturer; as lecturer, he worked first in England, then in continental Europe and finally in the USA, where he lived in the years 1904-1934. While in the United States, his work was championed by author Theodore Dreiser. He engaged in public debate with Bertrand Russell and the philosopher and historian Will Durant: he was called for the defence in the first obscenity trial for the James Joyce novel, Ulysses, and was mentioned with approval in the autobiography of US feminist and anarchist, Emma Goldman.
He made his name as a poet and essayist, moving on to produce a series of acclaimed novels distinguished by their uniquely detailed and intensely sensual recreation of time, place and character. They also describe heightened states of awareness resulting from mystic revelation, or from the experience of extreme pleasure or pain. The best known of these distinctive novels are A Glastonbury Romance and Wolf Solent. He also wrote some works of philosophy and literary criticism, including a pioneering tribute to Dorothy Richardson.
Having returned to the UK, he lived in England for a brief time, then moved to Corwen in Wales, where he wrote historical romances (including two set in Wales) and magical fantasies. He later moved to Blaenau Ffestiniog, where he remained until his death in 1963.
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
May 8, 2017
Ducdame has some of the best nature descriptions I've come across of the Somerset countryside, conveying a powerful sense of dark, vegetable heaviness, at times like a combination of Thomas Hardy and Edgar Allen Poe. JC Powys has a tremendous descriptive vocabulary and knowledge of plants, how they look, when they bloom, and can spend pages talking about the countryside, in this book almost invariably soggy and gloomy. His characters, however, except for some isolated moments, suffer from such deficiencies as to make them not only unrealistic, but with few redeeming qualities. The main character of Rook is so dour and confused, and irrational, that it is pretty much impossible to care for him, and not much more for the others. Only the character of Rook's brother Lexis comes across as both believable and sane, and the picnic with Rook and Lexis is clearly the highlight of the book and perhaps its only good dramatic scene.
That being said, as this is still early Powys, and the last novel before his great "Wolf Solent"; one sees early versions of later characters for the first time. The parson Hastings, writing a book that is driving him insane, clearly is the first model for later variations of the disturbed characters of JC Powys' later novels, and some of the deformed or mentally deficient show up again in books as late as his "Porius".
I felt that the book was worse than his first two titles, "Wood and Stone" and "Rodmoor"; the descriptions of nature were about as the same as Wood and Stone and the characters far less believable. It was reviewed unfavorably at the time by William Faulkner and Katherine Anne Porter (the fact that they reviewed it at all came as a surprise), but others liked it. It seems like the book is at "rock bottom" of the JC Powys opus in some respects, that he's really immersing himself in the darkness. The book does not seem to be written at all to be popular, it almost reads like JC Powys is trying to draw the reader in with the nature scenes and then repel him with his characters. However, these nature scenes are so strikingly good that I strongly recommend the novel to JC Powys fans who like that aspect of his writing. I'm not sure I can recommend it to others, unless perhaps you like Hardy or want to get a stronger sense of real Somerset nature-beauty. More than anything, it made me want to take a walk in the woods, hopefully without meeting any of these characters along the way.
That being said, as this is still early Powys, and the last novel before his great "Wolf Solent"; one sees early versions of later characters for the first time. The parson Hastings, writing a book that is driving him insane, clearly is the first model for later variations of the disturbed characters of JC Powys' later novels, and some of the deformed or mentally deficient show up again in books as late as his "Porius".
I felt that the book was worse than his first two titles, "Wood and Stone" and "Rodmoor"; the descriptions of nature were about as the same as Wood and Stone and the characters far less believable. It was reviewed unfavorably at the time by William Faulkner and Katherine Anne Porter (the fact that they reviewed it at all came as a surprise), but others liked it. It seems like the book is at "rock bottom" of the JC Powys opus in some respects, that he's really immersing himself in the darkness. The book does not seem to be written at all to be popular, it almost reads like JC Powys is trying to draw the reader in with the nature scenes and then repel him with his characters. However, these nature scenes are so strikingly good that I strongly recommend the novel to JC Powys fans who like that aspect of his writing. I'm not sure I can recommend it to others, unless perhaps you like Hardy or want to get a stronger sense of real Somerset nature-beauty. More than anything, it made me want to take a walk in the woods, hopefully without meeting any of these characters along the way.
May 13, 2016
Thus it goes:
If it do come to pass
That any man turn ass,
Leaving his wealth and ease
A stubborn will to please,
Ducdame, ducdame, ducdame.
Here shall he see
Gross fools as he,
An if he will come to me.
Amiens: What’s that “ducdame?”
Jaques: ’Tis a Greek invocation, to call fools into a circle. (Act II, Scene VI, As You Like It)
I had to look it up myself—Ducdame—it’s a nonsense word, which goes well with the novel, a lot of nonsense goes on, yet in the nonsense there is sense. I’m always spellbound by Powys. His writing style, the sense of place, and details that are part of the texture and flavor of his world as he’s envisioned it. Yet Ducdame is a bit laughable—the extremes of what these people do to themselves and to each other—it’s a soap opera. Seriously, it’s right up there with the nonsense on East Enders and their fucking crazy ass weekly dramas. The Squire Ashover and family are just a bunch of inbred white trash, only with property, money, and a noble name that’s been around for generations. Listen, every town has that one family that’s been around for generations, not all of them are from money, some of them are dirt poor, and being around for generations doesn’t make you any more special than the guy who showed up for the first time last week. Honestly, there are some gene pools that should dry up.
Rook isn’t very noble, he’s human. Powys makes sure this is understood. The man is tormented by the conflict of what he has to do and what he wants to do—he so hates the “script” that he is being forced into—hijacked by family legacy. Rook is bedeviled by the weight of ancestors—ancestor worship—marriage, the production of the valued male heir. He doesn’t want to do what his mother expects him to do (marry his cousin Ann and make babies.) He wants to fool around with Hasting’s wife, Nell, and he’s smitten with his mistress, Netta—and obsessing about her after she leaves. Rook Ashover hasn’t really grown up, he’d rather die than become a slave to the expectations of his place as the Squire of Ashover. He wants to make the rounds with the pretty girls, hang out with his brother, Lexie, and wile away his days in quiet reflection without responsibilities nagging him. It’s a comedy and a tragedy—the blend is subtle and if you’re inattentive, it can be disconcerting and confusing—Rook is confused, so why not me. It is a soap opera—it is what it is—and life can be absurd and sincere at the same time, it’s maddening.
Powys always has the odds and ends people for local color, the old hag, the deformed twins, bastard children of Rook’s father, and then Binnory, the idiot boy, and bastard children who are relations—Mrs Ashover is a treat, and the old Corporal the bastard son of Rook’s father’s father was awesome (yes, there seemed to be a family trend of bastards), and the extreme in his handling of the attempted disposal of Netta. (Wow, that was intense.) And then there’s the obsessive Hastings and his mysterious book—I’m sure Powys inserted his personal experience in this man’s raving—there’s nothing more disconcerting or misunderstood than a writer obsessed with finishing a book…
Whew!
I have a sense that this book is one in which Powys was still finding himself as a writer, and from what I’ve read about its literary history, it was not much liked by the critics of the time (apparently Faulkner didn’t think much of it.) Yet, in spite of its milling and muddling around, it has gems throughout, pages are dog-eared, and some are revisited here...
Some of the most significant encounters in the world occur between two persons one of whom is asleep or dead… (Page 1)
It ceased to be a mere satellite of the earth, a mere mirror of an invisible sun. It became a round illuminated lake that drew him toward it, that drew him into it. The blue-black sky around it became a sloping, slippery shore, that held no ledge, no crevice, to which he could cling; nothing to break the swift, fatal final slide into that magnetic gulf! (Page 7)
The gate leading from the orchard to the sloping hill called Battlefield was a gate heavy on its latch. But it was a gate that Mrs. Ashover had manipulated as a young bride fifty years before and she was not to be daunted by it now. She rubbed her forefinger thoughtfully up and down its gray lichen-grown bar. The sun was warm around her, a slanting autumn sun, and it fell pleasantly on the ancient gate and on the rough yellow patches of lichen which filled the crevices of that half-century-old plank. A piece of woodwork exposed to all the elements is a very different thing from a piece of woodwork protected in a barn or a church. Its life is five times as intense; its experiences five times acute. That top bar by the time this particular afternoon sun reached it must have been, if vividness of experience were allowed to count, older than Dürer’s famous Madonna in Nuremberg. (Page 34)
Before that day was over there was a distinct alteration in the drab colourlessness of the weather. Little by little the puddles in the roads turned into cat’s-ice. A faint film of solidification formed over the ponds at the meadow corners. Hieroglyphic patterns made themselves visible in the mud of secluded lanes. Wrinkled crisscross imprints appeared on the top of the new molehills, imprints made by lighter touches than the feet of mice or birds or the trail of worm or snail.
Dead leaves that had lain softly one upon another in the mouths of old enmossed fox holes or under clumps of fungi at the edge of woods were now soldered together, as if by tinkling metal, with a thin filigree of crisp white substance. The wet vapour distillations clinging to the yellow reeds down by the ditches began to transform themselves into minute icicles. Birds that had reassumed their natural thinness fluffed out their feathers again as they hopped about searching for sheltered roosting places. In every direction there were tiny rustlings and tightenings and crackings as the crust of the planet yielded to the windless constriction, crisp and crystalline, of a gathering hoar frost. (Page 136)
(My copy of Ducdame is a first edition, 1925 Doubleday, Page & Company, given to me by my Fred last Christmas...it's beautiful! I love the old books.)
If it do come to pass
That any man turn ass,
Leaving his wealth and ease
A stubborn will to please,
Ducdame, ducdame, ducdame.
Here shall he see
Gross fools as he,
An if he will come to me.
Amiens: What’s that “ducdame?”
Jaques: ’Tis a Greek invocation, to call fools into a circle. (Act II, Scene VI, As You Like It)
I had to look it up myself—Ducdame—it’s a nonsense word, which goes well with the novel, a lot of nonsense goes on, yet in the nonsense there is sense. I’m always spellbound by Powys. His writing style, the sense of place, and details that are part of the texture and flavor of his world as he’s envisioned it. Yet Ducdame is a bit laughable—the extremes of what these people do to themselves and to each other—it’s a soap opera. Seriously, it’s right up there with the nonsense on East Enders and their fucking crazy ass weekly dramas. The Squire Ashover and family are just a bunch of inbred white trash, only with property, money, and a noble name that’s been around for generations. Listen, every town has that one family that’s been around for generations, not all of them are from money, some of them are dirt poor, and being around for generations doesn’t make you any more special than the guy who showed up for the first time last week. Honestly, there are some gene pools that should dry up.
Rook isn’t very noble, he’s human. Powys makes sure this is understood. The man is tormented by the conflict of what he has to do and what he wants to do—he so hates the “script” that he is being forced into—hijacked by family legacy. Rook is bedeviled by the weight of ancestors—ancestor worship—marriage, the production of the valued male heir. He doesn’t want to do what his mother expects him to do (marry his cousin Ann and make babies.) He wants to fool around with Hasting’s wife, Nell, and he’s smitten with his mistress, Netta—and obsessing about her after she leaves. Rook Ashover hasn’t really grown up, he’d rather die than become a slave to the expectations of his place as the Squire of Ashover. He wants to make the rounds with the pretty girls, hang out with his brother, Lexie, and wile away his days in quiet reflection without responsibilities nagging him. It’s a comedy and a tragedy—the blend is subtle and if you’re inattentive, it can be disconcerting and confusing—Rook is confused, so why not me. It is a soap opera—it is what it is—and life can be absurd and sincere at the same time, it’s maddening.
Powys always has the odds and ends people for local color, the old hag, the deformed twins, bastard children of Rook’s father, and then Binnory, the idiot boy, and bastard children who are relations—Mrs Ashover is a treat, and the old Corporal the bastard son of Rook’s father’s father was awesome (yes, there seemed to be a family trend of bastards), and the extreme in his handling of the attempted disposal of Netta. (Wow, that was intense.) And then there’s the obsessive Hastings and his mysterious book—I’m sure Powys inserted his personal experience in this man’s raving—there’s nothing more disconcerting or misunderstood than a writer obsessed with finishing a book…
Whew!
I have a sense that this book is one in which Powys was still finding himself as a writer, and from what I’ve read about its literary history, it was not much liked by the critics of the time (apparently Faulkner didn’t think much of it.) Yet, in spite of its milling and muddling around, it has gems throughout, pages are dog-eared, and some are revisited here...
Some of the most significant encounters in the world occur between two persons one of whom is asleep or dead… (Page 1)
It ceased to be a mere satellite of the earth, a mere mirror of an invisible sun. It became a round illuminated lake that drew him toward it, that drew him into it. The blue-black sky around it became a sloping, slippery shore, that held no ledge, no crevice, to which he could cling; nothing to break the swift, fatal final slide into that magnetic gulf! (Page 7)
The gate leading from the orchard to the sloping hill called Battlefield was a gate heavy on its latch. But it was a gate that Mrs. Ashover had manipulated as a young bride fifty years before and she was not to be daunted by it now. She rubbed her forefinger thoughtfully up and down its gray lichen-grown bar. The sun was warm around her, a slanting autumn sun, and it fell pleasantly on the ancient gate and on the rough yellow patches of lichen which filled the crevices of that half-century-old plank. A piece of woodwork exposed to all the elements is a very different thing from a piece of woodwork protected in a barn or a church. Its life is five times as intense; its experiences five times acute. That top bar by the time this particular afternoon sun reached it must have been, if vividness of experience were allowed to count, older than Dürer’s famous Madonna in Nuremberg. (Page 34)
Before that day was over there was a distinct alteration in the drab colourlessness of the weather. Little by little the puddles in the roads turned into cat’s-ice. A faint film of solidification formed over the ponds at the meadow corners. Hieroglyphic patterns made themselves visible in the mud of secluded lanes. Wrinkled crisscross imprints appeared on the top of the new molehills, imprints made by lighter touches than the feet of mice or birds or the trail of worm or snail.
Dead leaves that had lain softly one upon another in the mouths of old enmossed fox holes or under clumps of fungi at the edge of woods were now soldered together, as if by tinkling metal, with a thin filigree of crisp white substance. The wet vapour distillations clinging to the yellow reeds down by the ditches began to transform themselves into minute icicles. Birds that had reassumed their natural thinness fluffed out their feathers again as they hopped about searching for sheltered roosting places. In every direction there were tiny rustlings and tightenings and crackings as the crust of the planet yielded to the windless constriction, crisp and crystalline, of a gathering hoar frost. (Page 136)
(My copy of Ducdame is a first edition, 1925 Doubleday, Page & Company, given to me by my Fred last Christmas...it's beautiful! I love the old books.)
January 17, 2012
A chronicle of malice, privilege, madness and love, set against a wild natural background. Not a million miles distant from Powys' first novel Wood and Stone, but starting to show the mythic and slightly crazed spiritual quality that is the hallmark of later works like A Glastonbury Romance.
July 28, 2017
Excellent early work - but already showing all the characteristics of his more famous novels. Full of great characters.
October 11, 2018
A great, glorious, eloquent, measured, Gothic romance, soaked in Shakespeare and on a Wagnerian scale.
January 11, 2019
I was expecting something *more* is all I can say.
Some peaks of stylistic bravery, some hooking parts, but for the rest... not enough to keep me focused or hungry for more.
Some peaks of stylistic bravery, some hooking parts, but for the rest... not enough to keep me focused or hungry for more.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews