ABSTRACT
The epilogue speculates over Ward’s decision to abandon the woodcut novel relatively early in his career in favor of illustrating children’s books and producing individual prints. This turn may appear to signal a move away from the engaged cultural politics he practiced in the 1930s, but actually continues Ward’s ongoing commitment to social justice and progressive causes in his choice of subject matter. During the 1970s, he also worked on Dance of the Hours, his final, fragmentary wordless novel, which was published posthumously in 2001. While stylistically different, Dance of the Hours has the virtue of offering a retrospective on Ward’s pictorial novels of the 1930s. It recalls the Faustian allegory of Gods’ Man, the blinkered science of Madman’s Drum, the industrialism of Wild Pilgrimage, the dream-vision of Prelude to a Million Years, the obstetrics of Song Without Words, the military and religious symbolism of Hymn for the Night and the disorientation and temporal relativism of Vertigo. A chilling image of the Devil recalls the famous portrait of Death at the end of Gods’ Man and serves as an eloquent self-portrait, reminding us of the great psychic crises of Ward’s life.
