Page "Roy Campbell (poet)" Paragraph 31

According to Joseph Pearce, As with so much of Campbell's satire, The Georgiad's invective is too vindictive.

It is all too often spoiled by spite.

This underlying weakness has obscured the more serious points its author sought to make.

Embedded between the attacks on Bertrand Russell, Marie Stopes, Vita Sackville-West, Virginia Woolf and a host of other Bloomsbury's and Georgians are classically refined objections to the prevailing philosophy of scepticism, mounted like pearls of wisdom in the basest of metal.

" Nor knew the Greeks, save in the laughing page, The philosophic emblem of our age ."...

The " damp philosophy " of the modern world, as espoused by the archetypical modern poet, was responsible for the prevailing pessimism and disillusionment of the post-war world.

In preaching such a philosophy, which was " the fountain source of all his woes ", the poet's " damp philosophy " left him " damp in spirit ".

Nihilism was self-negating.

It was the philosophy of the self-inflicted wound.

In the rejection of post-war pessimism and its nihilistic ramifications ... Campbell was uniting himself with others, such as T. S.

Eliot and Evelyn Waugh, who were similarly seeking glimmers of philosophical light amidst the prevailing gloom.

In his case, as in theirs, the philosophical search would lead him to orthodox Christianity.