268
PARTISAN REVIEW
the sentence-rhythm, and also on the
vocabulary in its phonetic aspects. Her
sentences read as pure prose have a dis–
tinctive cadence that is missing in the
parody. One might say (and get his ears
slapped down) that her metrical patterns
are like a Christmas tree upon which she
hangs the tinsel-ropes of sentences; the
tree has its own intricate pattern, and so
does each rope, and it matters a great
deal at just what points one is in contact
with the other, but the two are quite dis·
tinct entities and exist separately. And
Mr. Jarrell's tinsel-ropes are entirely dif·
ferent from Miss Moore's; maybe she
would know why.
To state the question briefly: Why, on
the basis of internal evidence chiefly
phonetic and linguistic, can this
opus
be
confidently assigned to another hand?
Perhaps Miss Moore would like to scru·
tinize her own
Clauselgesetze
in the same
fashion as Zielinski did Cicero's.
URBANA,
0.
Sirs:
MYRON
H.
BROOMELL
I cannot comment on Mr. Jarrell, for
though a parody helps by making light
of what was meant seriously, I don't see
that I would help by taking seriously
something that was meant lightly. But I
am willing to set down the following
helps to composition, by which privately
I am trying rather rigorously to be
guided:
1. Break long sentences with depend·
ent clauses, into separate sentences.
2. Where possible, avoid expanded ex–
planation subordinated by hyphens.
3. The doubled meaning or punning
force of unconscious useful ambiguity that
poetry inevitably has, must not be allowed
to become equivocation.
4. Any form of conscious or unrectified
obscurity is bad.
'
BROOKLYN,
N.Y.
MARIANNE MooRE
ANTI-ORWELL
Sirs:
Orwell has gone too far. I have been
intending to write a note of slight dissent
from certain of his statements for some
time now, but after his reply to Nicholson
I feel that his position as PR's English
Correspondent is decidedly an error.
So there is no international solidarity
of the working class because Stalin can't
rally the German workers behind "the
Socialist Fatherland." And to be anti·
war in England is to be pro-Hitler be–
cause Stalin doesn't want one to be anti·
war. I submit that this is a curious note
for a regular contributor to PR to be
sounding. Perhaps Mr. Orwell is leading
a double life and his
Daily Worker
per·
sonality got short-circuited with his PR
one? Or did the statement in his letter
of a few issues ago to the effect that he
now wished Stalin well mean that all is
forgiven? In any case Mr. Orwell's criti·
cal reputation, if any, would be more
secure now had he
not
been given an op·
portunity to reply to Nicholson's charges.
Incidentally, the thesis that Lenin was
pro-German in the First World War,
while given much publicity in the hour·
geois press, is rather startling coming
from a Marxist. The dog returns to his
father's vomit?
HOLLEY
R
CANTINE, JR.
BEARSVILLE,
N. Y.
In the interests of simple accuracy, we
must point out that Mr. Orwell, so far as
we know, is aeither a contributor to the
Daily Worker
nor a Marxist.-Eo.
ON VICTOR MARGUERITTE
Sirs:
Victor Margueritte died this Match in
France at the age of 76. I don't know
whether he still lived in that decrepit lit·
tie apartment on the Boulevard de Cour–
celles where I used to visit him in the
months just before the fall of France. Old
and blind and extremely emaciated, he
had a remarkable nobility of feature-the
type of old French officer of the last cen·
tury-and of character. His mind was
still restless and curious. We had long
conversations on the Moscow Trials, on
the strange moral debility of the French
intelligentsia, and on the war, which be
hated in a romantic way (being the son
of the general who, in '70, commanded
the charge of the cuirassiers ·at Reischof·
fen). A writer of social novels that en·
joyed an easy popularity,
(Prostituee, lA
Garconne)
he had once exploited, with a
talent for the common touch, his know).
edge of Paris, the public's taste for scan·
dal, and also a certain left·wing morality.
When old age, death, straightened cir·
cumstances, and blindness overwhelmed
him, he revealed a kind of stoici$m-
