Template:Short description Template:EngvarB Template:Use dmy dates Template:Infobox person Victor Benjamin Neuburg (6 May 1883 – 31 May 1940) was an English poet and writer. An intimate associate of Aleister Crowley, he wrote on the subject of occultism, including Theosophy and Thelema. He edited "The Poet's Corner" column in the Sunday Referee, and also published the early works of Dylan Thomas and Pamela Hansford Johnson.
Early lifeEdit
Neuburg was born into and raised in an upper middle-class Jewish family in Islington.<ref>Template:Harvp: "The two first met in the spring of 1908. Neuburg was 25, seven years Crowley's junior. He had been raised in an upper middle-class Jewish family in London."</ref>Template:Sfnp His father, Carl Neuburg, who had been born in 1857 in Plzeň, Bohemia, and was a commission agent based in Vienna, abandoned the family shortly after his son's birth. Victor was brought up by his mother, Jeanette Neuburg, née Jacobs (1855–1939), and his maternal aunts. He was educated at the City of London School and Trinity College, Cambridge,Template:Sfnp where he studied medieval and modern languages.Template:Sfnp
Relationship with Aleister CrowleyEdit
Template:Overquotation Template:Thelema When he was 25, in around 1906, Neuburg came in contact with Crowley, also a poet, who had read some of Neuburg's pieces in the Agnostic Journal. Crowley's description of him was:
Crowley initiated Neuburg into his magical Order, the A∴A∴, in which he took the magical name "Frater Omnia Vincam". Crowley also began an extended sentimental and sexual relationship with Neuburg. In 1909 Crowley took Neuburg to Algiers, and they set off into the desert, where they performed a series of occult rituals based on the Enochian system of Doctor John Dee, later chronicled in The Vision and the Voice.Template:Sfnp In the midst of these rituals Crowley put the ideas of sex and magick together, and performed his first sex magick ritual. Neuburg's anthology of poems The Triumph of Pan (1910) dates from shortly after these events and shows the distinct influence of Crowley:Template:Sfnp
Crowley was highly impressed by Neuburg's poetic ability:
Back in London, Neuburg showed potential as a dancer, so Crowley gave him a leading role in his proto-performance art pieces Rites of Eleusis. Neuburg also pursued a doomed relationship with the actress Ione de Forest, who committed suicide shortly after their break-up.Template:Sfnp
In 1913 Crowley and Neuburg again joined forces in a sexual ritual magic operation known as "the Paris Working". According to one of Crowley's biographers, Lawrence Sutin, Crowley subsequently used anti-Semitic epithets to bully Neuburg,<ref>Template:Harvp: "Crowley leveled numerous brutal verbal attacks on Neuburg's family and Jewish ancestry."</ref> and compared Neuburg to a dromedary.<ref name="Piffle"/> This spurred Neuburg to break with Crowley some time in 1914, describing the slurs as "ostrobogulous piffle", inventing the word 'ostrobogulous' for the occasion.<ref name="Piffle">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>Template:Sfnp
The Vine PressEdit
From 1916 Neuburg served in the British Army.Template:Sfnp After the end of the First World War he moved to Steyning in Sussex, where he ran a small press, the Vine Press.Template:Sfnp In 1920 he published a collection of ballads and other verse under the title Lillygay.Template:Sfnp Many of these were adapted from earlier ballad collections.Template:Sfnp In 1923 Peter Warlock set five of these verses to music under the same title.Template:Sfnp
"The Poet's Corner" and Dylan ThomasEdit
From 1933 onwards Neuburg edited a section called "The Poet's Corner" in a British newspaper, the Sunday Referee.Template:Sfnp Here he encouraged new talent by awarding weekly prizes of half a guinea for the best poem.<ref name="Texas Quarterly">Template:Cite book</ref>Template:Sfnp One first prize was awarded to the then-unknown Dylan Thomas,<ref name="Texas Quarterly"/>Template:Sfnp and the publisher of the Sunday Referee sponsoredTemplate:Sfnp Neuburg's publication of Thomas's first book, 18 Poems.Template:Sfnp
Another poet who contributed to the column was Pamela Hansford Johnson, and for many months, Johnson and Thomas seemed to alternate as winners of first prize.<ref name="Texas Quarterly"/> In 1937, Jean Overton Fuller submitted a poem to "The Poets' Corner" and was drawn into Neuburg's circle, eventually becoming his biographer.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>
Personal lifeEdit
Neuburg married Kathleen Rose Goddard in 1921,Template:Sfnp but the marriage eventually broke up. They had a son, Victor Edward NeuburgTemplate:Sfnp (1924–1996), who became a writer on English literature.Template:Sfnp
Neuburg later started a relationship with Runia Tharpe, and moved to Swiss Cottage, London, to live with her.Template:Sfnp
DeathEdit
Victor Benjamin Neuburg died from tuberculosis on 30 May 1940.Template:Sfnp Dylan Thomas declared on hearing of Neuburg's death:
Selected publicationsEdit
- The Green Garland (1908)
- The Triumph of Pan (1910)
- Lillygay: An Anthology of Anonymous Poems (1920)
- Swift Wings: Songs in Sussex (1921)
- Songs of the Groves (1921)
- Larkspur: A Lyric Garland (1922)
See alsoEdit
ReferencesEdit
Works citedEdit
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