60
PARTISAN REVIEW
THE TOWER BEYOND POLITICS
SUCH COUNSELS YOU GAVE TO ME
&
OTHER POEMS.
By
Robinson Jeffers. Random House. $2.50.
This latest volume of Jeffers can hardly be called "disappointing."
For disappointment implies expectations, and these only the most in-
veterate Jeffers enthusiasts can still cherish. The decline which set in
after
Cawdor
(1928) had already reached serious proportion~ with
T
hurso' s Landing
in 1932. But
T hurso
was really excellent compared to
Jeffers' more recent work. There is something grotesque and pathetic in
these recent volumes, like the return to the stage of some long-retired
actress. The mannerisms, the gestures, the intonations of the cracked
voice are just recognizable enough to be cruel caricature. Here in these
poems are the same rolling, surflike lines, the same grandiose metaphors
developed at Homeric length, the same stark, cruel, perverse human
beings, the same noble landscape, which once were so enchanting. But
each of these elements is a little out of focus. The verse still thunders, but
confu~edly and at times even prosily; the Homeric similes smell of the
lamp; the people are perverse to the point of insanity; and the land-
scape, like many noble things, is a bit dull. It is not that Jeffers has
changed, but rather precisely that he hasn't changed. His poetic values
and his technical devices have persisted with remarkably little change
(i.e., development) since he published
Roan Stallion
in 1925. But such
things apparently don't keep well on ice. This poetry gives off an odor
of decay, faint but unmistakeable.
Jeffers' failure to develop poetically is parallel to his political
development-or rather, lack of it. From the beginning of his career he
has constantly expressed a high contempt for humanity, hence for society,
hence for politics. As political issues have grown more crucial even in
the lives of poets, Jeffers has protested ever more violently against this
encroachment. In the shorter poems of this volume he seems to be
obsessed with politics. His contempt for political prophets is expressed in
the most prophetic language. The same rigidity and intellectual limita-
tions which have prevented his poetiql development have acted to make
of him a self-appointed anti-political Messiah iterating hi&."message" the
more insistently as its sterility becomes the more evident. It is a curious
illustration of the impossibility of the modern writer's escaping his social
responsibilities.
DWIGHT MACDONALD
