Incurable: The Haunted Writings of Lionel Johnson, the Decadent Era's Dark Angel

Composer of decidedly otherworldly poems hampered by clichés and archaisms, an imbiber of absinthe and eau de cologne, smoker of opium and hashish, and rumored student of the occult, dead at the early age of 35, the result of his self-destructive excesses, Lionel Johnson is the epitome of the poet maudit, fin de siècle era poet. Alternately described by his more earthly contemporaries as an ethereal, diminutive "spiritual waif" (he stood at just over 150 cm) who "adored the unreal" (George Santayana), Johnson is an ultimately tragic figure undone by his fragility and his unfulfilled desire to rank among the greatest of English poets.Indeed, Johnson is exactly the type of poet that could only exist in the Decadent era of late 19th century England, and by today's standards he strikes one as an horribly--almost perversely, given his personal eccentricities and affectations--pretentious poet, his legacy burdened by his poetry's slavish adherence to the literary fashions of his day, the era of art for art's sake exemplified by the Yellow Book (1894-1897), a literary periodical to which he contributed. Johnson's poems are comprised almost exclusively of ornate meditations on nature and dreams, gloomy elegies, and turgid odes to England. Flowery adjectives, fragrances, colors, winds, clouds, glades, dells, stars, shadows, Grecian and Christian imagery, royalty, melancholy, and mortality proliferate.Despite these limitations, the visionary and musical qualities of Johnson's poetry may nevertheless be of interest the modern reader. In this new collection, Incurable: The Haunted Writings of Lionel Johnson, the Decadent Era's Dark Angel, editor Nina Antonia heroically attempts to rescue Johnson from his current, somewhat obscure position as a minor poet most notable for his influence on the early work of the much superior poet W.B. Yeats--Johnson's cousin was the novelist Olivia Shakespear, Yeats' mistress--and his association with more renowned literary figures such as Oscar Wilde; Johnson, a repressed homosexual, moved among the then-emerging homosexual subculture in London, and most scholars agree that his sonnet "Destroyer of a Soul" (1892), recounts the torrid love affair between Wilde (the destroyer) and Alfred Lord Douglas (the soul), whom Johnson had introduced to Wilde.This handsome volume from the always excellent Strange Attractor Press includes a lengthy, authoritative introduction by Antonia, providing insightful biographical and critical contexts. Also included are three brief, representative essays by Johnson, evidencing his distinct aesthetics, a handful of photographs, previously unpublished letters and reviews. Incurable is a compact, accessible, and welcome introduction to the work of this minor, yet distinctive, poet. -- Eric Hoffman, Fortean Times

Finally a good book about Lionel Johnson! It is so interesting and he is lifted up to the man and poet he deserves to be, and not only as a note about being the man who presented Lord Alfred Douglas to Oscar Wilde.