324
PARTISAN REVIEW
amusing week of rainy evenings working out parallels between the alle–
gorical patterns of
The Odyssey
and
Mar,di,
but of course the similarity
between them
is
of no importance except as it underscores certain limi–
tations inherent in this kind of multiflorous allegorizing. What we have
in both cases is an allegorical narrative of exotic surface in which in–
cidents and characters are crowded into a tapestry of almost Spenserian
profusion, The trouble is (whether we are speaking of
Mardi, the Faerie
Queene,
or Kazantzakis) that this kind of multiplicity of "significant"
detail, although it may be arranged according to a meticulously planned
design, never moves towards any realized symbolic concentration of
effect. Its rewards stay in the story, and it is bound to seem richer to
those who prefer medieval romances than to those who prefer Dante.
The eccentric quality I have referred to is perhaps even more
vividly present in the local imagery than in the narrative episodes. Here
are two representative images:
. ..
moon-browed Helen swaying like a swan,
her pregnant form upheld by her old nurses
gen~lty,
her holy belly swollen, a mature ant-mother
who packed unnumbered swarms within her egg fille,d loins.
Once more the long days 'rose sand-spattered on the earth,
rough scaly crocCAdiles slid through the tepid 'Waters,
strong snakes coiled in spasmodic twists
an~ flick,~d
th,eir tongues
while their small glittering eyes flushed sweetly like a girl's.
It is as if Baudelaire and Osa Johnson were collaborating) on a revision
of Tennyson's imagery. The effect is occasionally strikingly original,
frequently disconcerting:
A warm wind blew, white orchids steamed
on the dark women's crinkly hair, fat widows
danc~d
and bore about their necks their husbands' whitened
skulls~
and then the bride snake,d in like a wiM hunted beast
to spy the land, lust-laden, painted to the gills,
her stout and buxom body smeared with gleaming grease.
An old witch doctor slunk about the ,growling, groom
then threw upon his shaggy back a wediding robe
close-woven, scaled with yellow-gold canary wings,
and the roused :bridegroom rushed through the rank sweating dark
to grab the shiny bulky flesh of his fat bride.
The imagery in the poem sometimes evokes a strange archaic world
