466
PARTISAN REVIEW
time, meanwhile undogmatically and sceptically accommodating them–
selves to the current religions; both, with a cosmopolitan sense of the
community of man, were deeply sensitive to the pain of living and were
consequently humane; both united
autarkeJ
self-reliance, with humility
and submission to necessity, and found the terms of freedom in that very
necessity; both accepted a radical, almost pantheistic, optimism, together
with a recognition that individual experience is full of evil. This sort of
stoicism has a range of austerity different from the liturgical austerity
of Eliot, and it is a little disturbing to find Auden's Oratorio carried
along by a liturgical austerity. Necessary, understandable, profound as
Auden's turn to the Word may be, one ponders whether the sacrifice of
the previous stoicism or its subordination is not a serious loss for everyone
but Auden himself. Critics used to worry about Auden's audience-who
they were. Because of our modern situation, our being double in our–
selves, Auden's stoicism spoke meaningfully to a large number of us, as the
present book may not.
This is not to depreciate the sharp insight of the new book or to
deny its amazing virtuosity, its daring comedy. The waggish casuistry
of Herod or the thesis of Antonio, immedicable resistant Evil and Ego,
show how Auden can extend traditional implications for his own uses.
Never has Auden's prose been so weighted, so allusive, so poetic, with
astonishing reverberations of James, Meredith, and the metappysicals
like Browne. Caliban's discourse should take its place beside the essays
by James on fiction and by Meredith on comedy; it alone would justify
the volume. In the ensuing Oratorio Auden surely executes his Kier–
kegaard-like leap into the Timeless, that ascent of the Glassy Mountain
offering no foothold to logic. The question is whether his appropriation
of the Word can redeem our Time Being from insignificance.
WYLIE SYPHER
THE PITFALLS OF HISTORY
BAsic HISTORY
OF
THE UNITED STATES.
By Charles A. and Mary R.
Beard. The New Home, Library.
$.69.
T
HIS Is a sad book and a disappointing one. The disappointment comes
from its authors' failure to transcend the limitations of the liberal–
progressive point of view; the sadness because it illustrates in microcosm
the tragic shortcomings of the progressive tradition in the great crises of
1941-17 and 1937-41.
The Beards wish to understand why the American people within
the past three decades were pressed unenthusiastically into two great
