Wyndham Lewis' Political Writings

Abstract

Wyndham Lewis needs some introduction to the ordinary reader. He was a contemporary (to say that he was a friend might be to attribute to him a relationship he seldom, if ever, enjoyed with anyone) of men like Eliot, Pound and Joyce. With Pound he was co-editor of a journal called Blast. His influence rose to its zenith in 1930 with the publication of The Apes of God, an attack on dilettantism in art, particularly dilettantism as it displayed itself in the Bloomsbury Group.

Lewis' ideas on art are integrally related to his ideas on other subjects. Like Lawrence, he was a philosopher at heart; in both men the tendency to rant and preach obscures a deeply-meditated philosophical system and a thorough knowledge of nineteenth century thinkers like Carlyle and Arnold. Lewis' philosophy informs his political thought too, as we shall see.