| Victor Benjamin Neuburg | |
|---|---|
| Born | 6 May 1883 Islington, London, England |
| Died | 30 May 1940 London, England |
Victor Benjamin Neuburg (6 May 1883 - 30 May 1940) was an English poet and writer. He also wrote on the subjects of theosophy and occultism. He was an associate of Aleister Crowley and the publisher of the early works of Pamela Hansford Johnson and Dylan Thomas.
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Neuburg was born at Islington into and raised in an upper middle-class Jewish family.[1][2] His father, Carl Neuburg (b. 1857 in Pilsen, Bohemia), a commission agent from Vienna, abandoned the family shortly after his birth. He 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,[2] where he read medieval and modern languages.[3]
Around 1906 at Cambridge, at the age of twenty five, 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:
He was an agnostic, a vegetarian, a mystic, a Tolstoyan, and several other things all at once. He endevoured to express his spiritual state by wearing the green star of Esperanto, though he could not speak the language; by refusing to wear a hat, even in London, to wash, and to wear trousers. Whenever addressed, he wriggled convulsively, and his lips, which were three times too large for him, and had been put on hastily as an afterthought, emitted the most extraordinary laugh that had ever come my way; to these advantages he united those of being extraordinarily well read, over flowing with exquisitely subtle humour, and being one of the best natured people that ever trod this planet.[3]
Crowley initiated Neuburg into his magical Order, the A∴A∴, wherein he took the magical name of "Frater Omnia Vincam." Crowley also began a long-lasting sentimental relationship with Neuburg. In 1909 Crowley took Neuburg to Algiers, and they set off into the North African 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.[4] In the midst of these, Crowley put the ideas of sex and magick together and performed his first "sex magick" ritual. Neuburg's poetry anthology The Triumph of Pan (1910) dates from shortly after this period and shows a distinct influence from Crowley:
Sweet Wizard, in whose footsteps I have trod
Unto the shrine of the most obscene god,
So steep the pathway is, I may not know,
Until I reach the summit where I go.
Crowley was highly impressed by Neuburg's poetic ability:
...in the next few years he produced some of the finest poetry of which the English language can boast. He had an extraordinary delicacy of rhythm, an unrivalled sense of perception, a purity and intensity of passion second to none, and a remarkable command of the English language.[3]
Back in London, Neuburg showed potential as a dancer, leading to Crowley giving 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 breakup.[5] In 1913 Crowley and Neuburg again joined forces in a sexual ritual magic operation known as "the Paris Working." Neuburg appears to have broken with Crowley some time in 1914, before Crowley left on an extended tour of the United States. Supposedly, Neuburg suffered a nervous breakdown. The cause of Neuberg's breakdown is not known, but according to one of Crowley's biographers, Lawrence Sutin, Crowley used racial epithets to bully Neuburg: "Crowley leveled numerous brutal verbal attacks on Neuburg's family and Jewish ancestry...".[6] In 1930 Crowley would still write about Neuburg:
A sausage-lipped songster of Steyning
Was solemnly bent on attaining
But he broke all the rules
About managing tools
And so broke down in the training.
From 1916 to 1919 Neuburg served in the army in World War I, and then lived in Steyning, Sussex, where he ran a small press, the Vine Press. In 1920 he published a collection of ballads and other verse under the title Lillygay. Many of these were actually from earlier ballad collections, though it seems Neuburg was unaware of this. Some of the poems were his own. In 1923 Peter Warlock set five of these verses to music, with the same title, Lillygay.
In 1933 Neuburg edited a section called The Poet's Corner in the British newspaper the Sunday Referee. This encouraged new talent by awarding weekly prizes. A group of talented young writers and poets grew up around Neuburg. He gave an award to a then-unknown poet named Dylan Thomas. As a result of Neuburg's enthusiasm, the publisher of the Sunday Referee sponsored the first book of poems by Dylan Thomas, titled 18 Poems. The first publication is now a prized collector's item.
He married Kathleen Rose Goddard in 1921, but the marriage eventually broke up. They had a son, Victor Edward Neuburg (1924–1996), who became a writer on English literature. Neuburg would later start a relationship with Runia Tharpe, moving to live with her in Swiss Cottage, London.[5]
In 1937 Jean Overton Fuller submitted a poem to The Poet’s Corner and was drawn into Neuburg's circle, eventually becoming his biographer.[7]
Victor Benjamin Neuburg died from tuberculosis on May 30, 1940. Dylan Thomas declared on hearing of Neuburg’s death:
Vicky encouraged me as no one else has done ...He possessed many kinds of genius, and not the least was his genius for drawing to himself, by his wisdom, graveness, great humour and innocence, a feeling of trust and love, that won’t ever be forgotten.
His books include 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), and Larkspur, a Lyric Garland (1922).