320
PARTISAN REVIEW
the speculative essays on the problem of historical knowledge that have
appeared in the United States since George Bancroft first put history
en rapport
with God-including, by the way, the nonsense that Adams
himself wrote on this subject.
Richard Hofstadter
POETRY CHRONICLE
THE ODYSSEY: A MODERN SEQUEL. By Nikos Klllllnnllkis. Trllnsillted
by Kimon Frillr. Simon lind Schuster. $10.
THE COUNTRY OF A THOUSAND YEARS OF PEACE, lind Other
Poems. By Jllmes Merril l. Alfred A. Knopf. $3.95.
THE NIGHT OF THE HAMMER. By Ned O'Gormlln. Hllrcourt, Brllce.
$3.75.
SELECTED POEMS, 1928-1958. By Stllnley Kunin. Little Brown lind
Compllny. $3.75.
The unusually warm reception that has been given Mr.
Kimon Friar's translation of
The Odyssey
by Nikos Kazantzakis to–
gether with Kazantzakis's reputation abroad, predisposes one to expect
a major poem. It is certainly an important poem; but just as indubitably,
it is an eccentric one. And despite its earnest philosophical intentions–
probably, indeed, because of them-it often seems more Victorian than
contemporary. We are given the spiritual anguish and quest of modern
man, but there are qualities in the poem that make it difficult to think
of anyone more nearly contemporary than Arthur Hugh Clough. Clough,
one recalls, often questioned if man's highest visions, including God,
were
Nothing more, nothing less,
Than a peculiar conformation,
Constitution, and condition
Of the brain and of the belly?
Odysseus is prepared to come forward on nearly any page to cor-
roborate Clough's worst fears:
((1 know that God
is
earless, eyeless, and heartless too,
a brainless Demon Worm that crawls on earth and hopes
in anguish and in secret that we'll give him soul,
