82
PARTISAN REVIEW
Thomas has been called, not plausibly, a surrealist, and surrealism
has affected the detail of some of Carrera Andrade's poems. But Andre
Breton is an exclusive and dogmatic surrealist, that is, an
idiot.
I intend
nothing invidious, merely that on principle he still sends
his
mind next
door whenever he sits down to work. His new book, according to the
irresistible jacket, is in "the classic tradition of the Surrealists ... morally
steadfast," and shows I think his usual modesty and resource:
My wife with the sex of a mining-placer and of a platypus
My wife wit h a sex of seaweed and ancient sweetmeat
It is true that the glory of the French is lacking
in
this
translation I
quote (and
chacun
a
son fout)
; but French or English this helplessly
recalls the worst poet not contemporary I ever read, poor Thomas Purney,
Newgate's chaplain, the baby-talk pastoralist, whom a heartless scholar
once tried to revive:
or
Why may'nt we Men, yquoth the youngling MEY,
And why may'nt we grasp them? Us graspen they!
The dabling DEW fell all emong;
Her buding Breasts so fair and young;
Her buding Breasts, that bloomie grew,
Soft shrinked at the dabling DEW.
(These are real quotations from the actual printed books.)
M. Breton has more ability than Purney- the
momie d'ibis
section of
Fata Morgana
is the best thing in his book-but I doubt if he will last
two centuries as Purney at least nominally has done. They have more
than tastelessness
in
common.
·
The worst contribution of literary surrealism, the senseless iteration,
Seiior Carrera Andrade easily avoids because he has always a subject in
hand and can't waste time like a true surrealist. His quiet, graceful, af–
fecting poems were among the most impressive in H. R. Hays's
Twelve
Spanish-American Poets,
and the larger selection now published deserves
better attention than my semi-Spanish can give
it.
He is said to be
Ecuador's leading poet, and
is
as good as the late John Peale Bishop's
excellent introduction says he is. This book and Breton's are printed
in the way foreign poetry should be, original and close translation facing.
I wish some well-fed or even hungry publisher would do the same for
Corbiere, a large and acute selection of Goethe's poems, and other works;
Michael Hamburger's Hoelderlin (Nicholson and Watson, 1943) should
be reprinted in this country.
H.D.'s
The Flowering of the Rod
is the conclusion of a three-volume
poem or poems written in London during the war. Three volumes, but
