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PARTISAN REVIEW
than insight, more logic as to its claims on our attention than illumination
of its nature. What can he mean, for example, by the "myth of love"?
Properly analyzed, are not all myths concerned with love-the formaliza·
tion of man's relations to his various objects of love? Or does he refer
only to "romantic" love? And to use a phrase like "the myth of tragedy"
is enough to addle the brain
if
one knows, as no one knows better than
Mr. Wheelwright, that tragedy is based on myth-indeed,
is
myth. Despite
this confusion as to the actual thing that he defends so brilliantly against
the semanticists and logical positivists, his paper is the most ambitious
and ·far-reaching of the four; it lays the ground-work for the rest.
Cleanth Brooks develops the notion that the language of poetry is a
language of paradox. This makes possible some high-powered but not
always convincing exegetical operations on Wordsworth and Donne. But–
to such a thesis one must object on two counts:
(l)
Words like "paradox"
and "analogy" refer to logical propositions and therefore belong to the
realm of intellectual discourse and not to that of the imagination; they
throw the road wide open to the Philistines. (2) Not all poets, despite
Mr. Brooks' understandable admiration for Donne, do actually rely very
much on paradox. (Isn't it time for someone to say a decent word for
Blake and Keats-or even Shakespeare?)
I.
A.
Richards adds little to
his previous discussions of "the interaction of words"; his is a set piece,
and a very fine set piece. It is interesting also in that it reveals how much
more respect he is now paying to the insights of classic philosophy. But
Donne, once again Donne, is the prime exemplar. And what is there to say
of Wallace Stevens' Report on the State of the Unive1 se except that it
demonstrates conclusively that poetry has all along been his proper
medium. For Mr. Stevens states much more neatly and bitterly in his verse
the conflict that has racked him all these years-a conflict between the
imagination and something that he calls "reality." What precisely he
means by reality is never certain; perhaps he should be recommended to
read Mr. Wheelwright, who is excellent on the subject. Surely Mr. Stevens
is among our half-dozen best poets. But he is also the only poet in history
perhaps who has made of the distrust of the imagination the theme and
subject of poetry. Indeed, there trembles through all four of these essays
the sense that it is somehow necessary to make an honest woman out of
poetry.
WILLIAM TROY
Canibales Politicos. By Julian Gorkin. Quetzal, Mexico City. Pesos: 3.50
A Donde Va Francia 7 By Marceau Pivert. Publicaciones Panamericanas,
Mexico City. Pesos: 3.00
Hitler Contra Stalin. By Victor Serge. Quetzal, Mexico City. Pesos: 2.50
From Mexico, where they now live as political refugees, three leading
left-wing fighters weigh the causes and consequences of three major epi·
