JEPHTHAH

New York: Gordon Press, 1974. Book. Fine. Hardcover. 1st Edition. HB - 1st. Print (Limited to 200 Copies) - FINE (Gold Gilt on Red Boards) / No DJ as issued - "During the whole summer, the weather got steadily worse and my health took the same course. I found myself obliged to leave the camp and go to London to see doctors. I took rooms in an hotel in London, attended to the necessary medical treatment and spent my time writing poetry. The play Jephthah was my principal work at this period. It shows a certain advance in bigness of conception; and has this notable merit, that I began to realize the possibility of objective treatment of a theme. Previous to this, my lyrics had been more or less successful expressions of the ego; and I had made few attempts to draw characters who were not more than Freudian wish phantasms - I mean by this that they were either projections of myself as I fancied myself or aspired to be; otherwise, images of women that I desired to love. When I say "to Love", I doubt whether the verb meant anything more than "to find myself through". But in Jephthah, weak as the play is, I was really taking an interest in other people. The characters are not wholly corrupted by self-portraiture, I suck to the Hebrew legend accurately enough, merely introducing a certain amount of Cabbalistic knowledge." - The Confessions of Aleister Crowley. New York, NY. Hill and Wang, 1969. Page 165..