88
PARTISAN REVIEW
she lundled it like a palette of washes: grey for Mrs. Swithin's readings
in the
Outline of History;
green and azure for "the view" (which is "so
sad" because "it'll be there when we're not") ; pink splashes for Mrs.
Manresa, "nothing like so grown up as you are."
The audience does not understand the pageant very well. It is even
impossible at times to catch the words sung by the villagers as they pass
in and out among the trees. "Scenes from English history" is about all
anyone can make of it: "Merry England"-at the thought Mrs. Manresa
"clapped energetically." Though one lady inquires, "Why leave out the
Army if it's history?"
The pageant itself, put on in a way that often reminded me of Ger·
trude Stein's
Four Saints,
parodies the great periods in English literature.
Miss LaTrobe, author and director, hovers off stage, straining to see the
flame of vision lighted by these august memories.
Of
course, the play
is
a failure. There are a few who wonder about its "message;" others to
whom the affair is simply an annual event-these talk about the weather.
Miss LaTrobe cannot hold them together, for it is as "scraps and ;rag·
ments" that they see themselves when the actors turn mirrors on them at
the close of the play. But "there is death, death, death, when illusion
fails." So the phonograph in the bushes creaks its
leitmotif: Dispersed
are we, Dispersed are we,
while the aeroplanes pass overhead.
In our day, the historical pageant has taken on a new, ominous sig·
nificance, as the rulers of the present seek to give power and content to
their acts by dressing them in the costumes of the past.
Between the Acts
is a genuine poem, witty, skeptical and laden with sorrow, on a theme
chosen with genius.
HAROLD RoSENBERG
AWAKE! AND OTHER POEMS.
By
W. R. Rodgers. London: Seeker
&
Warburg. 5
Sj.
W.
R. Rodgers is a young Irish poet whose work has appeared
in
English magazines and, recently, in PARTISAN REVIEW. His English pulr
lishers tell us that the entire first edition of the present book was "de·
stroyed by enemy action." And this seems an appropriate misfortune, for
Rodgers' verse
is
wholly Crisis·begotten and wholly catastrophic in feel·
ing. Indeed both technically and in spirit he carries on the kind of poetry
written by Auden, Spender and Lewis about 1934: the violent alliterative
effects, startling juxtapositions, insistent concreteness, warnings, exhorta·
tions, pictures of disaster in the present, dreams of future peace
and
delight. In imitating the older poets, however, Rodgers necessarily carica·
tures them; and much of his work so far is spoiled by extravagance, auto–
matic brilliance, and lack of personality. Yet his very considerable
talent
is always appearing in some well executed and freshly inspired detail:
There in the hard light
Dark birds, pink-footed, dab
and
pick
Among the addery roots
and
arrow'' stones
.. .
F. W.
DuPEE
