428
PARTISAN REVIEW
the girl, notices the sign on her mother's gate as he slips upstairs:
BE
AWARE OF THE DOG; sometimes his irony is a little blatant, as when,
leaving her, after this touching scene, he says to himself: "I'll make it up
to her. I'll take her to Riverview," Riverview being the Coney Island of
Chicago.
But one cannot so easily quote the good writing, which is textural
and
dramatic. Algren does not, I think, achieve
eith~r
the consistent irony of
Brecht in
A Penny for
the
Poor,
or the revealing cynicism of Celine
in
Journey to
the
End
of
the
Niglu.
These authors have a point of view
informed by significant ideas and by a width of perception which nothing
in Algren suggests. Both Brecht and Celine have a vision of the forces of
evil which comes closer to their ultimate causes and is thus more terrifying
because of the unmistakable implication of universal guilt. But Algren
is, in any case, a better writer than this hook is a novel, and one can only
hope he will extend his range of insight and tighten his form.
GERTRUDE
BucKMAN
CONFOUND THE WISEGUY
Confound the Wise.
By
Nicolas Calas. Arrow Editions. $3.50.
Nicolas Calas is a young Greek poet who, a few years ago, confounded
the French with his
Foyers
d'Incendie.
Now, in New York, he brings forth
a hook which to the superficial reader would seem to he about Poetry,
Portuguese baroque, Sadism (In Praise of) and the general business of
being a desperate character in these distracted times. But "viewed from a
subjective angle" (I am quoting from the Introduction)
"Confound
till
Wise
is a series of essays on intention in art." This exalted young man
is
strangely enamoured of the Fiihrer-prinzip; his theory of intention
is
really a programmatic statement which may he gathered into the word
Command!
The first poem, he tells us, was the "pure sexual cry" of man
in search of his mate. "Language itself would not exist if it did not express
the wish to command which is the prerequisite to the act of conquering."
Hence the denunciation of Ahden, who has addressed himself to reminis–
cence and regret. Calas ends one chapter on a Rimhaldian chant:
A savior is needed
He shall he a poet!
The subjective angle is useful, for without it one can make no unity
of this disorderly, erudite, brilliant and (by reason of its constant and
mechanized brilliance) extremely boring hook. Thus the whole absurd
attack on memory, which has the effect of a vigorous refutation of the
moon, is to he understood pragmatically: Stop trying to remember! You
were a fool to forget in the first place! And thus science ("experience can
prove only what we want it to prove"), art ("art in literature has nearly
always been linked with the effort more than with the result"), the past
("Let
us probe history with every instrument that exaltation can bring us.
• • • History is true only when it is poetic!")-all become functions of
