I picked up this very nice copy of it yesterday. Riso printed cover, nothing on the back. Very clean. I read the first page or so drunk at the taco bell and it was compelling
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Beyond mere cynicism or satire, though, is Lewis' suggestion that there is a guided structure to the avant-garde arts.
The Apes of God is the "story" of Horace Zagreus, a "
bronzed albino" magician/artist/con man who with charisma and seduction utilizes young male, aspiring yet largely talentless artists to do his bidding. This involves the obscure manipulation and direction of the "Apes of God" -- the faux-artist denizens of the Bloomsbury bohemia -- and through them the general development of the arts.
Whether or not Lewis actually believed that this was occurring -- and there is good reason to think that he did -- it is pretty obvious that McLuhan was convinced of this. As Theall writes:
McLuhan's correspondence and his interpretation of Eric Voeglin demonstrate that he interpreted Lewis' "freemasonry of the arts" quite literally as being a direct allegorical symbol suggesting there were important social groups directly guided by magi, such as the contemporary magus, Aleister Crowley.
Theall suggests that Horace Zagreus is partly modeled on Aleister Crowley, and this is likely true. In
The Apes of God many characters have obvious, though not exact, resemblances to actual figures that Lewis knew. The scribbler "Split Man," Julius Ratner, for instance, has undeniable similarities to Joyce. Lewis samples Ratner's writing as a parody of Joyce's style:
Let's be pals Alec, he had wanted to say, taking him by the arm and leading him to the embrasure of the window, from which could be seen the boa-constrictor of the black river. Let's be real pals. A factory. Two freemasons. A cloud threatened the tail of the serpent. A little child picked a forget-me-not. She lifted a chalice. It was there. Epiphany. There were three distinct vibrations.
A clearer match to Zagreus, though, and a person who was much closer to Lewis than Crowley, is Ezra Pound. Pound, like Zagreus, was a charming bigger-than-life eccentric in bohemian circles whose tireless literary and editorial efforts made him an extremely connected and influential figure. Like Zagreus, Pound also sought out and mentored younger literary apprentices. One such "disciple" was Ernest Hemingway, who writes of Pound's significant influence on him as a writer in Hemingway's own memoir of his bohemian days in Paris,
A Moveable Feast.
"To tell you the truth, Hem," Ezra said, "I've never read the Rooshians."
It was a straight answer and Ezra had never given me any other kind verbally, but I felt very bad because here was the man I liked and trusted the most as a critic then, the man who believed in the mot juste - the one and only correct word to use - the man who had taught me to distrust adjectives as I would later learn to distrust certain people in certain situations; and I wanted his opinion on a man who almost never used the mot juste and yet had made his people come alive at times, as almost no one else did.
"Keep to the French," Ezra said. "You've plenty to learn there."
"I know it," I said. "I've plenty to learn everywhere."
It is extremely doubtful that Hemingway had even a bit of the fawning dependence on Pound that Zagreus inspired and expected of his young acolytes in
The Apes of God, but it could be that this, although exaggerated in his novel, was how this relationship between writers appeared to Lewis.
A deeper connection of Ezra Pound to Horace Zagreus, however, gets to the very heart of the weirdness and goes some of the way to explain why "the freemasonry of the arts" is
in fact a form of Freemasonry.
In Pound's 1922
calendar of the new era, published anonymously in
The Little Review literary magazine, "Horus" and "Zagreus" are featured prominently. In the calendar, the year was said to have turned upon Horus, and Zagreus -- the form of the god Dionysus worshiped in the Eleusinian Mysteries -- is also the name of the Feast at
the end of the calendar year, October 30th, which is also Pound's birthday. Zagreus is Pound and Pound is Zagreus.
Lewis may have known of the importance Pound placed in these gods -- as Crowley did also -- and there is a good chance that he was also aware of the utmost reverence and aspiration Pound had for a renewed Eleusis. And the link between Lewis' own work and Eleusis may be stronger still.