According to Robin Skelton's intro to Penguin's _Poetry of the Forties_
Henry Treece founded the "New Apocalypse" school; his requirements of
prophecy & incantation are quoted, as is the scathing 1950 look back ("nine
years later") by John Heath-Stubbs (a writer I hold in some affection),
mentioning Robert Melville, G.S.Fraser, Nicholas Moore & J.F.Hendry as the
chief culprits. John Bayliss also seems to have been at least an Apoc, if
not a Lyptic. I find W.S.Graham's 1949 "Men sign the sea" fairly, well,
para-Lyptic (like Thomas):
Men sign the sea,
Maintained on memory's emerald over the drowned.
This that the sea moves through drives through the land
Twin to their cry.
George Barker is pretty hot:
I see
The wringing of the hands of all the world,
I hear your long lingering of disillusion.
Favour the viper, heaven, with one vision
etc, sort of Apoca-Neo-Morris-cum-Arnold-cum-Auden-lyptic.
But New Apocalypse was definitely long over before the post 1955 change in
Graham's style.
The origin of "snell" is obviously althochdeutsch "snel", meaning
(according to Kluge's etym.dict.) "brave, lively, forceful", and in Old
Saxon "fresh, valiant, brave", becoming "bitter" in Scots, just as "kühn" =
"keen" became "bitter", both words having to do with the ancient Germanic
concepts of battle. There's an Italian "snello", "fast or cheerful".
Martin
