ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses an Introduction to the Lyrics of John Cowper Powys. Powys's ruling that the homicidal alone must be excluded remains doubtfully satisfying: if the teaching is sound there should be no limits, provided that the little drama remain secret. Powys's masturbatory doctrine crowns a long tradition of revolutionary challenge from the Renaissance down. Two main Renaissance myths, the Faust myth and the Don Juan myth, challenge taboos theological and sexual respectively. Powys's masturbatory teaching need not be limited to physical release. Powys's great hero, Rabelais, was himself a priest. When Powys says that during solitary indulgence we shall know that our true self is not really involved, he speaks a half-truth, or more, of considerable importance. Powys's imagination dwells on a bisexual figure corresponding to 'the dreams of all the great perverse artists'; of some 'Saturnian' sex unknown on earth except by approximations.
