BOOKS
91
And as an example of what happens to Gregory's larger symbol--personal
survival-as it is reiterated in all its variations, certain minor symbols,
5pecific images, also too often repeated, lose their freshness, lose finally all
significance. "Darkness" and "bitter" are two words, to select the chief
offenders, that may be found on nearly every page of these poems and,
abstractions to begin with, by such frequent use their meaning crumbles
into a darkness that is dark indeed. "Bitter the thinking man who sees
the careful millionaire.... " "The bitter hours into seasons pass ... "
"The dying echoes of a bitter year ... " "Wake with thy song, time–
darkened waters .. " "hands, lips, and eyes in love, in darkness burn .. ,"
"0 my America, in me discover thy face in darkness.... "
But this malady, which also attacks Gregory's historical and literary
references, goes deeper than a simple matter of craftsmanship, is really,
of course, the author's own malady. Emotional uncertainty, emotional
confusion, are names I believe applicable to it, ·emotional collisions that
occur within him whenever he considers the society of today and, more
specifically, feels wrapped in the growing heat of class war. For Gregory
has, in this poem and on many other occasions, declared and shown himself
in complete accord with the Communist analysis of society and its program.
But, in spite of this intellectual certainty, his emotions remain divided,
even though, as is likely, he is well aware-again intellectually--of this
fact. Yet it is necessary to come to grips with every confusion, it is im–
possible to dwell upon, to exploit, these doubts however inevitable they
are, inane to linger too long and-as Gregory does here-a bit too lovingly
above the grave of the system which is, spiritually at least, thoroughly de–
ceased. What, after all, was the corpse-a friend, or an enemy?
KENNETH FEARING
ARAGON AS A NOVELIST
LES
CLOCHES DE BALE,
par Louis Aragon.... Paris. Deno:il et
Steele.
1934.
In his latest novel, Louis Aragon has done at least four outstanding
things.
In the first place, he has given us a devastatingly mordant picture–
such a one, it may be, as only he was in a position to paint- of late-nine–
teenth and early-twentieth-century society and the self-destrurtive forces
in that society, down to 1912 (the date of the International Socialist
Congress at Basle), or about two years before the World War. It is a
picture that graphically and movingly explains the French bourgeois civil–
ization of today, a civilization which, coming down from Dreyfus to
Stavisky, made possible the events of the Sixth of February, 1934. (One
is not sure, indeed, that the Sixth of February-the
"jour
de
Nvrier"–
has not been Aragon's emotional starting-point here). In any event,
Les
cloches de Bale
is the all-sufficing answer to the old boys who would tell
us that "the foundations then were at least solid," etc., etc. This latter
