326
PARTISAN REVIEW
of ominous color; more often, as here, it merely lends support to the
theatrical. The chief risk of theatricality is vulgarity, and
The Odyssey
does not always escape that danger. The thing to remember about the
poetry in its English version is that it begins with Tennyson (which
is
a good starting point for a poem like this) :
The Evening Star had vanished
in
the sea like flame,
and honeysuckle tangled
in
th~
hair of night,
burst, till the curled locks
in
the courtyard s:melled of musk.
Working out from this native base, Mr. Friar has been able to give
us a translation filled with many memorable passages and scenes among
some less memorable ones. It was a prodigious task to have undertaken,
and Mr. Friar's performance is sustained and often vivid. All the same,
I wish Odysseus didn't sometimes sound like a Mississippi River flat–
boatman boasting:
The man of seven souls then sang a Cretan verse:
«Hey I'm the lightning's only son, and the snow's /grandson;
I cast the lightning when I wish, or I fling the snow'"
Turning now to a dozen volumes of poetry that have appeared
during the past two months, one is left with the sense, usual on such
occasions, of a good deal of disciplined and informed craftsmanship, a
good deal of integrity, and a small library of lifeless verse. But it is
not the dullness that saddens one; it is rather because the verse is often
so good. It's like standing over the body of Adam, beautifully sculptured
in clay, and knowing that God has decided not to breathe life into the
competent frame. This time, however, there is an unusual consolation,
for
The Country of a Thousand Years of Peace
by Mr. James Merrill
not only answers all the technical requirements of good poetry, the frame
has come to life.
It is always a little difficult to discover the subject of a poet who is
not content with writing set pieces, whose poems are genuine explora–
tions and testings of experience. His subject is not his titles, and it is
what he ends with, not where he begins. To crudely formulate for a
moment, Mr. Merrill's subject is essentially metaphysical: it is concerned
with the divisiveness of the world, and the recognition, painfully ar–
rived at, of a state of soul, a condition of human separateness, that results
from it.
As
this would. not seem to be the ostensible subject of anyone
poem here, one must work one's way towards it slowly, and the logical
