emotion, but not shock, not anger, came up slowly
into the lad's broad, down bent face. He paused, still
holding the other down, and for a full instant leaned
over him. Then firmly took the little man's arm and
removed his hand; released his hold and rose:
No word passed between them. Tony got up and
dusted off his pants. As he bent over, Swede reached
out and took from Tony's breast pocket the pack
of cigarettes he kept there. Swede took a cigarette
and returned the pack to Tony, who drew a match
and went and struck it on the edge of the baggage
cart and gave Swede a light and lit one for himself.
Then they stood leaning against the cart, smoking
and looking out at the sunny river until the truck
came from the camp.
Poem
remember now there were others before this
now when the unwanted hours rise up
and the sun rises red in unknown quarters
and the constellations change places
and cloudless thunder erases the furrows
and moonlight stains and the stars grow hot
though the air is foetid conscripted fathers
with the black bloat of your dead faces
though men wander idling out of factories
where turbine and hand are both freezing
and the air clears at last above the chimneys
though mattresses curtain the windows
and every hour hears the snarl of explosion
yet one shall rise up alone saying
"I am one out of many I have heard
voices high in the air crying out commands
seen men's bodies burst into torches
seen faun and maiden die in the night air raids
heard the watchwords exchanged in alleys
felt hate speed the blood stream and fear curl the nerves
I know too the last heavy maggot
and know the trapped vertigo of impotence
I have travelled prone and unwilling
in the dense processions through the shaken streets
shall we hang thus by taut navel strings
to this corrupt placenta till we're flyblown
till our skulls are cracked by crow and kite
and our members become the business of ants
our teeth the collection of magpies?"
they shall rise up heroes there will be many
none will prevail against them at last
they go saying each "I am one of many"
their hands empty save for history
they die at bridges bridgegates and drawbridges
remember there were others before
the sepulchres are full at ford and bridgehead
there will be children with flowers there
and flower gardens and flower cities there
and lambs and golden eyed lions there
and people remembering in the future
KENNETH REXROTH
PARTISAN
REVIEW
A
Season in
Heaven*
PHILIP RAHV
IT IS only natural that T. S. Eliot, who has been
sufficiently publicised as the fugleman of literary re-
action, should have written a verse drama asserting
his belief in death and man's utter wretchedness.
Eliot has long held the view that this is what any
"really serious belief in life" must come to. Where
the surprise came in-most
unpleasantly for the left
critics-was
in the fact that Eliot spoke his message
of darkness in the unmistakable accents of a major
poem. The critics had decided that Eliot's godliness
had done for him, and here he was flying in the face
of their stigmas.
To say that great art has a way of making even
the death-rattle sound like the rattle of tambourines
is all too easy, and withal quite useless. Caught short
by the contradiction between their habitual simplici-
ties and Eliot's performance,
several of the left cri-
tics declared the play to be fascist, and hence, by im-
plication, beyond the pale of analysis and interpre-
tation. By itself such procedure is ludicrous enough,
but here it is doubly so. The conflict the play por-
trays is between Church and State, the spiritual and
temporal
orders,
the spirit and the flesh; and this
conflict is so pointed as to pillory all profane aspira-
tion and power. If classic Christianity be fascism,
then Christ becomes the prototype of Hitler and
every priest a storm-trooper.
By the same token, in
stressing another aspect of Christian doctrine,
one
can make out a case for Christ as the prototype of
Marx. And, indeed, a horde of humanitarian gents
are quite adept at this game.
It is true, of course, that of late Eliot has been
steering close to fascism in his general attitude to
the problems of our time. But that by no means sig-
nifies that his poetry, existing and potential,
is auto-
matically suffused with the fascist spirit. Every work
of art, no matter how sure we are of its origin, must
be examined anew. There is always the possibility
of creative contradictions,
on which the dialectic
feeds. The danger lies in the excess of confidence
with which we tend to identify the
apparent
idea of
a work with the work as written, its intention with
its actual meaning, and finally its individual quality
with the quality of its creator's complete works.
In criticism, as 'in science, exactness of observation
and statement
is indispensable.
Without it, even if
our general principles are right, we somehow man-
• Murder in the Cathedral,
by T. S. Eliot. Harcourt, Brace. $1.25.
Bury the Dead,
by Irwin Shaw. Random House. $1.00.
II
