264
PARTISAN REVIEW
primitivist "mysteries," there is here no space to analyze the pattern of
elementary words and repetition of simple thoughts ever varying by
which the poet achieves his characteristic effect of earnest urgency. But
I feel I must question his manner of putting long speeches into the
mouth of God the Father. Obviously Peguy would not venture to do so
unless he were writing with full faith and without reservation. But this
is not enough. It is necessary also, to dare so much, not to be consciously
daring at all, but to be swept beyond oneself like the prophets. Let me
give a crude example: Peguy has God praise the perfect piety of Saint
Louis; but not only the reader knows, but the Dreyfusard poet himself
knows, that Louis IX did many unjust and fanatical things; how does
God the Father not know it? But if "God" is conceived as a character
restricted for the purposes of the poem, then all seriousness is flung
away and the poem is reduced to the artificial naivete of
The Green
Pastures--certainly
not Peguy's intention. But any mere poem, when the
lips are not touched by a coal of fire, is written with the consciousness
of a limited viewpoint; therefore, etc.
The translation of Anne and Julian Green is earnest and generally
adequate; but rather persistently it softens and relaxes the French, a
grave loss in a style at once so quiet and so urgent.
PAuL GooDMAN
NATURALISM TODAY
NATURALISM AND THE HuMAN SPIRIT.
Edited by Yervant H. Krikorian.
Columbia University Press. $4.50.
I
T IS unnecessary, I suppose, to repeat the inevitable criticisms of any
collection of essays on the score of selection, arrangement and differ–
ence in quality of the contributions-though the present volume see-ms
particularly to invite these strictures. Readers interested in such criticisms
may regard them as made.
The essays are of two types: those dealing with the nature of
naturalism and its impact in the modern world, and those providing a
naturalistic treatment of certain controversial subject matters. In the
first category are papers by Dewey, Hook and Larrabee on the social
import of naturalism and the opposition to it; Schneider, Dennes and
Costello on concepts and categories of naturalism; and a very illuminating
epilogue by Randall.
The Dewey-Hook social analysis of anti-naturalism appeared in
thi~
journal in the "failure of nerve" series. In the present context their posi–
tion is given added substance by Larrabee's historical survey of Amer–
ican naturalism, which is shown to be rooted in concern with the solu·
tion of concrete social and technological problems, solutions provided
only by the scientific enterprise. The effects of anti-naturalism are re·
actionary, as Dewey and Hook insist, both in directing attention away
