The Voyage from Metropolitan Rationalism: Malcolm Lowry's Socialism and In Ballast to the White Sea

Abstract

"The aim of this article is to show how Lowry’s modernist and romantic sensibilities evolved in response to the existential crises of capitalism and fascism in the mid-1930s and to the intellectual challenges of Marxism that accompanied them. Focusing on the extant draft of In Ballast, the article shows how Lowry uses his characters to interrogate each other’s political and philosophical positions, particularly the limits of Marxist subjectivity, inclining the main protagonist toward an outlook that is sharply distinguished from the economic determinism of the Auden group. Although Lowry’s 1930s politics converged in certain respects with the nascent anarchosocialism of Herbert Read and fellow members of what would become the New Romantic movement, they soon became obscured by his decision to abandon In Ballast and to de-emphasize political themes after the war. The rediscovery of the manuscript shows the lasting influence of this period upon Lowry as the confirmation of an organic and spiritual, as opposed to a mechanistic and materialist, view of the world."