A Personal Encounter with DWM

My first encounter with David Myatt was in The Classics Bookshop, in Oxford, on a particularly hot and humid day in Summer as the decade of the 1980's moved toward its end. Those who frequented that now much-missed bookshop will remember the cabinet by the door containing Greek and Roman antiquities for sale and the stairs that led to the rather cluttered upper floor. It was among that clutter that I, literally, bumped into Mr Myatt - or, rather, where he bumped into me. He was bending down (although squatting would be a more correct a description) perusing those lower shelves at right angles to the window that overlooked Turl Street, which selves contained works by Sophocles and Aeschylus. He - seemingly oblivious to everything but the book in his hand - rose just as I was trying to pass by, and almost knocked me over.

He apologized, very politely, three times and - chosen book tucked his left arm and leaning on his rather incongruous (considering the weather) umbrella - smiled at me before inviting me to join him for afternoon tea at The Randolph. My initial impression was of a charming, if eccentric, well-spoken academic (the umbrella; the tweed cap; the round gold-rimmed spectacles; the corduroy trousers; the houndstooth check cotton shirt; the copy of Oedipus Tyrannous under his arm; the bushy ginger beard) who, perhaps, enjoyed cricket, or some other outdoor activity or sport favored by the English (the tanned face, arms and hands). Somewhat surprised by the invitation, but also intrigued (those green eyes; the interest in Greek literature) I agreed, and we spent that late afternoon, in The Randolph, being very English and rather formal, and the early evening walking by the Isis being rather less formal. He suggested Dinner - which I declined - then a concert in one of the Colleges the next day, which I accepted, for we had discovered not only a mutual interest in Classical Greek Literature but also a mutual love of the music of Johann Sebastian Bach, Brahms and Mozart.

Thus began our friendship. During the next few days I learnt of his divorce, the year before; his eccentric (or perhaps foolhardy) and recent journey by bicycle from Cairo to Bahariya; his time in a monastery; his childhood in Africa; his life and home in the English county of Shropshire; his friend who was a Fellow of an Oxford College. Not once, then, or in the next few months, did he mention politics or show any interest in the subject - and, years later, I concluded that he then, at that time and until the death of his second wife (whom he married a year after our meeting) really did not have any enthusiasm for or even further interest in such matters. Neither did he mention, or show any interest in, the Occult. His main enthusiasms in those years seemed to be music, Greek literature, and poetry, and he appeared to be as an overgrown, boyish, student, perhaps - or a romantic charming eccentric bohemian - who often seemed rather out of place, and ill at ease, in the modern world of cities, traffic congestion, popular music, and nine-to-five work. Being then still "of independent means" (as he once described himself to me) he was not bound by many of the restrictions which seemed to often blight the daily lives of many people, and it was - I admit - often delightful to be with him because of this. After a week, he returned to his rural life, as I returned to my life in the sequestered Oxford that had been my adopted home for ten years, and is still my home, and the place where we would, subsequently, regularly meet on his frequent visits there.

Was the David Myatt I then knew and still know the "real" Myatt? Or was - is - that but one facet of a multi-faceted, intriguing, character? A man whose favorite films included and include Goodbye Mr Chips (with Robert Donat), The Cruel Sea, and Howard's End, and whose favorite works of fiction were almost all by Charles Dickens? Or was - is - the "real" Myatt the hardened hate-filled political fanatic, the manipulative Trickster, the subversive Grandmaster of an Occult Order, that many of his opponents believe him to be? Certainly, his outward life over the past three and half decades has been varied, and interesting - Nazi fanatic and activist; founder and leader of several extremist political organizations; imprisonment, twice, for violence; alleged founder and leader of a sinister Occult organization; convert to Islam and supporter of Islamist Jihad; author of numerous subversive tracts; poet; translator; Christian monk; farm worker, country gentleman of independent means who traveled First Class and stayed at the best Hotels, manual laborer, vagabond, and Nurse - a variation, a diverse living, which belies the recent belittling claims made about him, mostly anonymously, by those who do not know him personally.

My personal view is that what I term his "outward excursions" are sometimes a kind of rather boyish game for him, and at other times a manifestation of his restless but only occasional search for experiences and answers; that his real self is the man, the poet, I met then and still know; the man happiest walking alone or in the company of a loved one in the English countryside; the man who enjoys working outdoors; who loves to sit in Winter by a coal or wood fire reading out aloud the works of Dickens; the man moved to tears by some romantic film, or some beautiful piece of Classical music; and that the conundrum of contradiction of such "outward" things with such different "inner" things, is only an apparent contradiction. For the truth seems to me, now, that there has been, for him, a long and slow journey, and an even slower learning; a learning expressed in his recent poetry and letters, in such words of his as these:

So many tears
Since the breeze is only this breeze,
Her laugh only her laugh
And I - only what-was
Where Seagulls call, a tide
Returns
While Sun makes pearls with waves
And a blue a so-small Cumulus cloud
Does not break until my horizon

(One Seaside Inn One Day One Late October)

"Perhaps I have strayed too far: too far from being the being who was, who should be, who should have been, me; too far through too many hopes, too much emotion, too many dreams and expectations; too much desire which sent me questing to build so many personae for myself that at times I seemed to leave the world behind. Too many lives, lived: or perhaps in truth too many abstractions by which I strived to shape, constrain, contain my life...

But now, now there is a reaching out - a great reaching out to the very life of Life: out toward the very being of the Cosmos embracing as this does and has done and will do all the myriad nexions on all the worlds world after world orbiting star after star, my problems, my life, but one pulse, one infinitesimal pulse on the complex matrix which is but one finite expression of the divine if often sad music of existence." Over One Year Beyond

Thus it seems to me that he has – despite, or perhaps because of – his many and varied peregrinations, his Promethean and Occult quest(1), returned to his true inner self which he revealed to me at and in the months following our first meeting, a truth which Myatt himself seems to be well aware of, given his recent poems and published letters(2) and the quote from his favorite poet which he has appended to a recently updated (and, at the time of writing, still unpublished) version of Part Three of his Autobiographical Notes:

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.

DWM's Selected Favorite Music:

JS Bach:
             Aria: Erbame Dich (St Matthew Passion) [counter-tenor]
             Cantata: Aria - Ich habe genug BWV 82
             Cantata: Vergnügte Ruh, beliebte Seelenlust BWV 170
             Cantata: Gott hat alles wohlgemacht BWV 35
             Cantata: Widerstehe doch der Sünde BWV 54
             Art of Fugue
             Sonatas for Flute and Violin (BWV 1030-1035)
             Violin Concerto in D minor BWV 1052

Purcell: When I Am Laid in Earth (sung by a young Alfred Deller)
             Music For A While (sung by a young Alfred Deller)

Gregorian Chant: Iste Confessor (Sarum Office)

Josquin Desprez: Kyrie from Missa L'homme Arme

Chant Byzantin: L'Apostikhon de l'Office de Mercredi Saint (Prière de Marie-Madeleine)

John Dunstable: Preco preheminencie

Thomas Tallis: Miserere Nostri

Allegri: Miserere mei, Deus

Brahms: Fourth Symphony

Piano: Opus 76, Opus 116-119

Chopin: Etudes, Opus 25

William Byrd: Ave Verum Corpus

Joseph Haydn: Late String Quartets

Mozart: Symphonies 39, 40, 41

Aria (K505) Ch'io mi scordi di te Non temer amato bene Air

Vaughan Williams: Third Symphony

Favorite Films:

Howards End (with Antony Hopkins)
Out of Africa (with Robert Redford)
Shadowlands (with Antony Hopkins)
Apollo 13
Kagemusha
Ran (Akira Kurosawa)
Little Women (with Susan Sarandon)
Ghandi (with Ben Kingsley)
A Passage to India
Hobson's Choice (with John Mills)
Doctor Zhivago (with Omar Sharif)
Goodbye Mr Chips (with Robert Donat)
The Cruel Sea (with Jack Hawkins)
The Hunger (with Catherine Deneuve)
The Wicker Man (with Edward Woodward)
The Message (with Anthony Quinn)
Shawshank Redemption

Favorite TV Series:

Inspector Morse
Brideshead Revisited (with Anthony Andrews)
Babylon 5
Star Trek: Voyager
Star Trek: The Next Generation
Lewis
Lark Rise to Candleford
Without a Trace (with Anthony LaPaglia)
The Great War (BBC documentary)
Imam Ali (directed by Davoud Mirbagheri)
Pride and Prejudice (with Jennifer Ehle)
Bleak House (with Charles Dance)
Jeeves and Wooster (with Hugh Laurie)
Upstairs, Downstairs (with Gordon Jackson)

Favorite Fiction:

Charles Dickens: Bleak House
Charles Dickens: Oliver Twist
Charles Dickens: Nicholas Nickleby
Flora Thompson: Lark Rise to Candleford

1 It is my personal opinion that Myatt has been, throughout his life, seeking answers to the most important questions that we, as individuals, can ask, and that in the course of this seeking he has sought involvement in many diverse experiences, and in what he, and others, call “Ways of Life”, which ways of life, for him, included the Occult and specifically the Left Handed (or “Sinister”) Path. It is also my personal view that Myatt – because of his own personality, his own nature, and his intelligence (and sometimes arrogant disdain for the answers of others) – has constructed not only his own somewhat unique Occult way, but also his own philosophy, which philosophy he has called The Numinous Way.

2 And also in a various other items, such as the anonymous item attributed to a certain “A.L.” which appeared a while ago on a certain Occult Blog:

“To strive, to dream, to quest, to exceed expectations. To move easily, gracefully, from the Light to the Dark, from Dark to Light, until one exists between yet beyond both, treating them (and yourself) for the imposters they (and you) are.”