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PARTISAN REVIEW
us, but according merely to their announced programs and more ex·
travagant statements-which is just the way they so often classified
each other!
And I wish that Mr. Kazin had brought into his book more of the
historical spirit of those social critics whom he deplores. One enjoys
his volume for its insights into single authors or groups of authors
rather than for any continuous clarification of the literary situation in
America. The strong impression of continuity and synthesis which the
book gives forth seems to originate chiefly in the all-enveloping energy
of
M1·.
Kazin's approach. And one is left at the end with a number of
queries, including some rather leading ones: whether for example literary
nationalism, even our own relatively innocent literary nationalism,
is
an adequate basis for significant literature in our time, as Mr. Kazin's
concluding chapter seems to imply. Indeed
On Native Grounds
is
a
triumph not so much of fundamental historical penetration as of great
good sense and good will. It is written in a generous spirit which, I
take it, Mr. Kazin conceives to be appropriate to the America that
has
always been celebrated by writers in the Jeffersonian line and that
is
being celebrated today in connection with the War. But his shrewd and
responsible critical faculty works to keep him from the radiant mysticism
of many literary Jeffersonians. And thus he has attained a kind of
temperamental adjustment by virtue of which he, at least, need not feel
himself a fugitive.
F.
w.
DUPEE
Yeats and His Ireland
W. B. Yeats, 1865-1939. By Joseph Hone. The Macmillan Company. $6.00.
The official biographer of Yeats-long-lived, multiple-careered man
of genius-had a task on his hands requiring more than ordinary
tact
and skill. Joseph Hone has skirted the larger controversial questions
while managing to state them more or less openly. Persons involved
are
still alive; the smoke screens the poet was fond of creating still distort,
if they do not actually hide, certain crucial instances. Yeats was, among
other things, a consummate actor; of this fact his biographer is
quite
aware. Hone sometimes dryly pierces through an ambiguity of one sort
or another, in a casual footnote. This remarkably full record cannot
fail to
be
a corrective to those either muddled or starry-eyed on
the
subjects of Ireland, Yeats, or the Celtic Revival. To the informed and
detached student it should
be
a stimulant.
Yeats' "Autobiography" covers his early life rather fully, but breab
off after the death of Synge. Formerly, the middle and later years
had
to
be
pieced together from scattered notes, prefaces and essays. Now
even the early years are filled in with new material. More light is thrown
on "the aristocratic and critical Nationalism" Yeats learned from O'Leary;
on Maude Gonne; on Yeats' struggles to free Irish literature from
the
