‘An Engraving’: T. H. Parry-Williams, Necromancy, Unknowing

Author: Damian Walford Davies

Published: 2015

ISBN: 978-1-907029-19-6

Publisher: Canolfan Uwchefrydiau Cymreig a Cheltaidd Prifysgol Cymru

Format: Paperback, 22 pp.

Taking as its subject the layered anxieties of T. H. Parry-Williams’s 1935 essay, ‘Bwrn’ (burden, weight on the mind), this lecture unpicks the complex strata of knowledge and unknowing that gather round a distressful engraving (hanging in a shop window) of three cowled figures that the writer cannot exorcize. Bringing Parry-Williams into a complex relationship with William Blake and artist Henry Fuseli, the lecture reflects on pathological acts of looking and reading, offering a bold new diagnosis of Parry-Williams’s neurotic worlds.