it is so simple, so plausible: "the science of living together."
It seems to come directly from a dictionary of eighteenth
century rationalism; and from that phrase we see a roomful
of men talking
reasonably
with one another. When we read:
"where living together has become difficult and painful, the
writer turns to the science of living together," the room in
which the discussion is taking place seems filled with fresh
air and morning light. I wonder what a New York or Chi-
cago politician would think of it, I wonder how a civil war
Dubliner would respond to any definition of that kind. Day
Lewis's essay recalls the atmosphere of Shelley's notes and
letters; its last statement,
"Evolution Is the dance, revolu-
tions are the steps," might well have been written by Shelley,
had he read Darwin and then studied with his usual dili-
gence
Das Kapital.
It so happens that Day Lewis is not unwise in stressing
the evolutionary elements in dialectical materialism.
His
English audience will recall almost subconsciously the name
of Marx as Darwin's contemporary;
they will remember
that Marx walked the streets of London and that today
one may visit his grave in Hampstead,
that sober, not un-
pleasant Victorian neighborhood of stone-front nouses and
green back gardens.
The essay, however, tends to over-simplify the entire prob-
lem of revolutionary,
writing;
and here one reads such
truisms as: "Any good poem, simply because every good
poem is a true statement of the poet's feelings, is bound to
be of value: it gives us insight into the state of mind of a
larger or smaller group of people." One has the unquiet con-
viction that a spokesman is
talking down
to his audience,
assuming as he does so, that all poetry is so widely unread
that no one remembers its primary definitions.
Perhaps the role of spokesman has not been completely
fortunate for Day Lewis's welfare, particularly in America,
where his prose and verse have been bound together in two
single volumes. It makes him appear a shade too eager to
explain away difficult passages in his own verse; he is made
to seem always on the defensive, hastily writing both prose
and verse against the speed of time and change. "Noah and
the Waters" is the least successful poem Day Lewis has
written in five years. To see the masses of people as a flood
rising to wipe clean the ruins of a dead civilization is sym-
bolism with a vengeance-vengeance
that is inanimate and
inexact to the very edges of pathetic fallacy. One knows
only too well what is about to happen, and when the voices
from the flood call out, "Waters of the world unite," the
worst has happened even beyond our usual expectations.
The trouble with the poem is its irrefutable logic, a logic
of a kind that entered Victorian poetry and destroyed it;
it is too good (and I suspect too simple) to be true.
"A Time To Dance" is a far better poem (though best of
all are those short lyrics, "The Conflict" and "In Two
Worlds");
here there is airplane flight and satire of the
world below; it is not until the latter half of the poem that
the lines sag into inept parody and false jazz rhythms. And
here at last I am reminded again of Shelley. I am not saying
this in dispraise of Shelley's best work or in dispraise of all
his political poems, some of which will remain among the
best in revolutionary literature.
Shelley at his worst, how-
ever, stepped out into the thin mid-air of prophecy; his logic
was correct, yet the poetry itself had become intangible,
unreal. Something of the same defeat seems to endanger Day
Lewis's longer poems. It is not enough to say that some of the
passages within them are carelessly written,
and other pas-
sages excellently phrased; the danger lies deeper than that.
Poetic logic is the logic of human emotion; should th60 poet
travel too far beyond the range of his experience, his way
is lost, his images lose force and his vitality
IS
dissipated.
It is better for Day Lewis to remember that he inhabits
(as he knows well) two worlds. Let the confidence that he
has gained extend his courage in making a further record of:
The priest asking for silence the soldier asking for trouble:
the politician for ten per cent; the traitor for a kiss;
the 10fJer for a steel whip; the teacher for instructions.
HORACE GREGORY
BREAK THE HEART'S ANGER,
by Paul Engle.
Doubleday, Doran.
$2.50.
Break the Heart's Anger
has some of the faults of
Amer-
ican Song;
but Paul Engle has a better theme this time; we
can see that he has been places and has seen things. I respect
and wish to praise a young poet whose courage sends him
so swiftly in the revolutionary direction. It is also necessary
to try to say what it is that hinders him, with the most ar-
.dent will in the world toward magnificent utterance,
from
writing the poem he set out to write. I can see shadows of
that great poem on nearly every page; I have marked' my
review copy and re-read passages for two weeks in an attempt
to get at the bottom of its very great lack. Here are some of
the difficulties:
First of all, there are too many abstract words in the
poetic passages. There are too many favorite words repeated
as stop-gaps, when the great passage begins to run thin. Part
of this is inevitable; Engle has corne out of America for good,
and he writes not only of this planet, but of the universe.
Pretty hard to keep that up for long, or to say anything very
explicit or very passionate or very human about the cosmos.
But Engle tries over and over:
Now in the running body of le.an space
Hangs the world like an enormous heart
Beating through arteries of light the pulse
Of day and dark, that is the p~lse of man •••
Next, together with the favorite words is a repetition of
clusters of sound and' beats to the line, and this, with the
abstract words, builds up an effect of great monotony. The
lines scan mechanically-when read with the sense accent,
they lose their rhythm. This is never so in a good poet.
Engle is too fond of the word
dream
and
dreaming-all
fair
and desirable things of the future are associated with dream,
so that the word is constantly getting into a line for that
reason, and also for the sake of sound, with other humming,
M-like words. We cease to respond. The stimulus is too
simple.
On the memory and the dribblings of a dream.
And spent it in a dime store of mad dreams, etc.
Now we corne to the concrete passages. They are bitter-
in lingo. For instance:
America, bastard child from all the world
Born, yet p,'lrentless, hard scrapper beating
Your lone way out from a child into a man,
I t is not strange you were cocky, forever carried
A chip on your shoulder, boastc,d the length of the earth
You are one tough baby, hard as nails, swaggering
The streets with chin stuck out an,d a grin, shouting,
Take a pokc at that, kid, if you're looking for trouble,
I'm half mountain lion, half Te),'as steer,
With a ,dash of rattlesnake and horned toad, taking
Easily in one jump an.d a yell the land
MAY,
193
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