Two New Studies of Owen Barfield
Owen Barfield is still not recognized in the way that he deserves to be. The reasons for that were a common theme of Barfield’s own lectures and writings. In these, he referred to many aspects of his thought as violating the now instinctive and largely unconscious “taboo” of materialism and atheism in the twentieth-century academia and broader culture. Jeffrey Hipolito’s two monographs dedicated to Barfield, published in the same year, give hope that things will be different in the twenty-first century.
Both of these books have an ambition to introduce a general reader to Barfield’s work in a comprehensive manner. Hipolito decided to discuss Barfield the philosopher and Barfield the writer separately. There was no such separation in Barfield’s own thinking and writing, but there is good reason to separate them. The monograph, Owen Barfield’s Poetic Philosophy: Meaning and Imagination, offers the most comprehensive discussion of Barfield’s philosophy, carefully discussing his main and best-known works—Poetic Diction and Saving the Appearances—but also his lesser known papers, such as later collections of his essays or his “Burgeon Trilogy” (That Ever Diverse Pair, Worlds Apart, and Unancestral Voice).
What is very useful in Hipolito’s book is that he places Barfield’s thought in a broader philosophical context; not only in the context of his most obvious sources of inspiration (Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Rudolf Steiner, German Romanticism, and Idealism) but also of other authors, such as Søren Kierkegaard, Martin Heidegger, Jean-Paul Sartre, or Ernst Cassirer. Even a reader scarcely familiar with Barfield will gain a general view of his place within the twentieth-century philosophy and in the preceding philosophical tradition.
The second book, Owen Barfield’s Poetry, Drama, and Fiction: Riders on Pegasus, is focused on Barfield’s literary output, which he consistently worked on during his long life. What should be appreciated about this book is that it places Barfield in the context of both the English poetic tradition of the nineteenth century and of contemporary and modernist poetry, drama, and prose (most prominently, T. S. Eliot). The literary scholarship is solid, but the book seems to be addressed to those who are already familiar with Barfield’s literary writings. The reason is fairly simple: it is much easier to introduce someone to the ideas of a philosopher than to the writings of a poet or a novelist whom he hasn’t read. Hipolito succeeds in showing that Barfield’s writings emerged out of a deep interest in contemporary literature as well as wanting to encourage audiences to read his works—some of which have only been published recently (such as the 2020 verse collection entitled The Tower) or are only available as a manuscript (e.g., the early novel English People).
The two monographs certainly establish Hipolito as an eminent Barfield scholar who sets the stage for the twenty-first century reception of “the First and Last Inkling.” His philosophical, poetic, contemplative, and mystical thought is indispensable for those who want to go beyond the present spiritual and cultural crisis of the West towards a broader, integrative vision of reality and our place in it.
Mateusz Stróżyński is a classicist, philosopher, psychologist, and practicing psychoanalytic psychotherapist. He's professor at Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań, Poland, and an active member of the Cambridge Centre for the Study of Platonism. In his academic work, he's interested in spiritual exercises and contemplation in the Platonic tradition (Plotinus, St Augustine, medieval mysticism, Romanticism). He has published: Adam Mickiewicz, Metaphysical Poems (Brill: Paderborn, 2023), and Plotinus on the Contemplation of the Intelligible World: Faces of Being and Mirrors of Intellect (Cambridge: University Press, 2024).