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The Human Age #3
Malign Fiesta
The third novel in Lewis' Human Age series takes us straight to Dante's Inferno. And, indeed, if we don't realise this, both Lewis and the denizens of Hell point this out to us. Indeed, Satan (or Sammael, as he prefers to be known) and his assistants make several references to Dante, pointing out that they have created a Lake of Blood (but with red paint, rather than real blood) as well as having tortures akin to those described in Dante, such as a Paolo and Francesca cell. However, this novel is not the English public school novel of the first two books but is full of quite brutal violence. The novel starts as Pullman and Sattersthwaite accompany the Bailiff on a journey at the speed of light from the Third City, where they had been in the previous book, to Matapolis, one of the cities of Hell. Lewis brings us a conclusion, with the inevitable battle between Heaven and Hell.
Though this is the last book published by Lewis in this series, a planned fourth book "The Trial of Man" was to have been set in Dante's Paradise.
Though this is the last book published by Lewis in this series, a planned fourth book "The Trial of Man" was to have been set in Dante's Paradise.
- GenresFiction
Paperback
First published January 1, 1955
73 people want to read
About the author
Wyndham Lewis
118 books161 followers(Percy) Wyndham Lewis (1882-1957) was a novelist, painter, essayist, polemicist and one of the truly dynamic forces of the early 20th century and a central figure in the history of modernism. He was the founder of Vorticism, the only original movement in 20th century English painting. His Vorticist paintings from 1913 are the first abstract works produced in England, and influenced the development of Suprematism in Russia. Tarr (published in 1918), initiated his career as a satirical novelist, earning the praise of his contemporaries: "the most distinguished living novelist" (T.S. Eliot), "the only English writer who can be compared to Dostoevsky" (Ezra Pound).
After serving as an artillery officer and official war artist during the First World War, Lewis was unable to revive the avant-garde spirit of Vorticism, though he attempted to do so in a pamphlet advocating the modernisation of London architecture in 1919: The Caliph's Design Architects! Where is your Vortex? Exhibitions of his incisive figurative drawings, cutting-edge abstractions and satirical paintings were not an economic success, and in the early 1920s he devoted himself to study of political theory, anthropology, philosophy and aesthetics, becoming a regular reader in the British Museum Reading Room. The resulting books, such as The Art of Being Ruled (1926), Time and Western Man (1927), The Lion and the Fox: The Role of the Hero in the Plays of Shakespeare (1927) and Paleface: The Philosophy of the Melting-Pot (1929) created a reputation for him as one of the most important - if wayward - of contemporary thinkers.
The satirical The Apes of God (1930) damaged his standing by its attacks on Bloomsbury and other prominent figures in the arts, and the 1931 Hitler, which argued that in contemporary 'emergency conditions' Hitler might provide the best way forward in Germany damaged it yet further. Isolated and largely ignored, and persisting in advocacy of "appeasement," Lewis continued to produce some of his greatest masterpieces of painting and fiction during the remainder of the 1930s, culminating in the great portraits of his wife (1937), T. S. Eliot (1938) and Ezra Pound (1939), and the 1937 novel The Revenge for Love. After visiting Berlin in 1937 he produced books attacking Hitler and anti-semitism but decided to leave England for North America on the outbreak of war, hoping to support himself with portrait-painting. The difficult years he spent there before his return in 1945 are reflected in the 1954 novel, Self Condemned. Lewis went blind in 1951, from the effects of a pituitary tumor. He continued writing fiction and criticism, to renewed acclaim, until his death. He lived to see his visual work honored by a retrospective exhibition at London's Tate Gallery in 1956, and to hear the BBC broadcast dramatisations of his earlier novels and his fantastic trilogy of novels up-dating Dante's Inferno, The Human Age.
After serving as an artillery officer and official war artist during the First World War, Lewis was unable to revive the avant-garde spirit of Vorticism, though he attempted to do so in a pamphlet advocating the modernisation of London architecture in 1919: The Caliph's Design Architects! Where is your Vortex? Exhibitions of his incisive figurative drawings, cutting-edge abstractions and satirical paintings were not an economic success, and in the early 1920s he devoted himself to study of political theory, anthropology, philosophy and aesthetics, becoming a regular reader in the British Museum Reading Room. The resulting books, such as The Art of Being Ruled (1926), Time and Western Man (1927), The Lion and the Fox: The Role of the Hero in the Plays of Shakespeare (1927) and Paleface: The Philosophy of the Melting-Pot (1929) created a reputation for him as one of the most important - if wayward - of contemporary thinkers.
The satirical The Apes of God (1930) damaged his standing by its attacks on Bloomsbury and other prominent figures in the arts, and the 1931 Hitler, which argued that in contemporary 'emergency conditions' Hitler might provide the best way forward in Germany damaged it yet further. Isolated and largely ignored, and persisting in advocacy of "appeasement," Lewis continued to produce some of his greatest masterpieces of painting and fiction during the remainder of the 1930s, culminating in the great portraits of his wife (1937), T. S. Eliot (1938) and Ezra Pound (1939), and the 1937 novel The Revenge for Love. After visiting Berlin in 1937 he produced books attacking Hitler and anti-semitism but decided to leave England for North America on the outbreak of war, hoping to support himself with portrait-painting. The difficult years he spent there before his return in 1945 are reflected in the 1954 novel, Self Condemned. Lewis went blind in 1951, from the effects of a pituitary tumor. He continued writing fiction and criticism, to renewed acclaim, until his death. He lived to see his visual work honored by a retrospective exhibition at London's Tate Gallery in 1956, and to hear the BBC broadcast dramatisations of his earlier novels and his fantastic trilogy of novels up-dating Dante's Inferno, The Human Age.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
January 24, 2024
I'll say that overall while I am very happy that I decided to read this series, I would not really recommend it to many. I enjoyed much up it and understood little. There were so many moments of pure brilliance, but whatever occult genius Lewis may posses is over my head far more than over notably "difficult" authors. This one shows Pullman and Satty's decent into Hell and their assistance to the Devil to bring about the Human Age. It's a satire on all visions of hell told in the past and on society at the time. But that's really all I can say because as I said, it's really just over my head what Lewis was doing with this one. Fun, funny, and just wtf.
May 1, 2023
Wyndham Lewis’s ‘Malign Fiesta’, which I have just finished, might well be my favourite book ever; I certainly value it over ‘Ulysses’ and ‘The Waste Land’, and ‘The Brothers Karamazov’ is about the only thing that comes close to it in my mind. The premise: James Pullman, a self-insert for Lewis, supervises the most alluring and terrifying presentation of the Devil, Sammael, in solving an angelic population crisis -building a heavenly town of half-angels on the outskirts of a modernist Dis, itself comprised of such horrific resorts as ‘Punishment Hospital B’. Combine the blackmetal of Bursum and Deafheaven with the imagery of Francis Bacon and you have some idea of the style.
Worse (and better yet) is Lewis’s polemic on the demonic nature of man. This is a book I think he could only have written because of the sympathy for 20th century dictators he went on, unlike Ezra Pound, to painfully repudiate. James Joyce’s humanly appreciable liberalism makes him incapable of such proximity to hellfire. And, paradoxically, this means Lewis’s partiality to Catholicism blossoms in reaction to damnation. From the seeds of Pullman’s prayers, Lewis would go on to write ‘The Red Priest’ -a novel about an extreme Communist Minister who effectively accumulates left and right into a unified principle of schizophrenic energy -a Mishima religion of Pagan passion bound up in a heretical dedication to rite.
‘Malign Fiesta’, however, is capable of exactly the metaphysical exegesis of which such a realist novel is not. ‘Perhaps, when the Cinema is wholly three-dimensional, projecting giant figures existing in our own dimension, the resultant persons may resemble a little bit, he reflected, these vast creatures he was looking at. But where the projectors were, and what was the nature of the hidden figures working them, was another matter.’ Even with all our technological gains since 1955, when this book was published, there is no better device for depicting these figures than the fiery word. On Lewis’s behalf, it has even made me a preacher in this review section.
Worse (and better yet) is Lewis’s polemic on the demonic nature of man. This is a book I think he could only have written because of the sympathy for 20th century dictators he went on, unlike Ezra Pound, to painfully repudiate. James Joyce’s humanly appreciable liberalism makes him incapable of such proximity to hellfire. And, paradoxically, this means Lewis’s partiality to Catholicism blossoms in reaction to damnation. From the seeds of Pullman’s prayers, Lewis would go on to write ‘The Red Priest’ -a novel about an extreme Communist Minister who effectively accumulates left and right into a unified principle of schizophrenic energy -a Mishima religion of Pagan passion bound up in a heretical dedication to rite.
‘Malign Fiesta’, however, is capable of exactly the metaphysical exegesis of which such a realist novel is not. ‘Perhaps, when the Cinema is wholly three-dimensional, projecting giant figures existing in our own dimension, the resultant persons may resemble a little bit, he reflected, these vast creatures he was looking at. But where the projectors were, and what was the nature of the hidden figures working them, was another matter.’ Even with all our technological gains since 1955, when this book was published, there is no better device for depicting these figures than the fiery word. On Lewis’s behalf, it has even made me a preacher in this review section.
November 12, 2024
The prose style flags a little from monstre gai, and in terms of ideas it is a little too reliant on its intended completion by the never to be written fourth volume to totally satisfy me
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews