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tellectually exacting, but whose work is interesting and intelligible to
amateurs, acts as both scientist and humanist. As such he has begum to
take over the role abandoned by the philosopher and the critic.
Hughes, himself, is such a historian. R. H. Tawney was a famous
one. The most recent example I know is Peter Gay whose studies of the
Enlightenment are a more powerful defense of the party of humanity
and a more devastating critique of the hocus pocus of authoritarianism,
political or religious, than we expect from contemporary philosophers
and critics.
Incidentally, nothing in these essays has any relation to the mystical
balderdash of the Preface contributed by Ruth Nanda Anshen, the editor
of the series,
World Perspectives,
of which this is apparently Volume 32.
Miss Anshen tells us that "History is to be understood as concerned not
only with the life of man on this planet but as including also such cosmic
influences as interpenetrate our human world." H. Stuart Hughes, I am
glad to report, shows us nothing of these influences.
Richard Schlatter
THE PASSION OF OUR LADY
OUR LADY OF THE FLOWERS. By Jeon Genet: tronsloted by Bernord
Frechtmon. Grove Press. $6.50.
This first English translation of
Notre-Dame des Fleurs
(Genet's first novel, written in 1942, in Fresnes Prison) is prefaced
by a sizeable extract from Jean-Paul Sartre's
Saint-Genet, C.omedien et
Martyr,*
a long, brilliant, extravagant analysis that makes extraordinary
claims for Genet. Attaching this preface was no doubt a piece of astute
publishing: for many readers, Sartre on Genet will be considerably more
interesting than Genet himself. Sartre's vocabulary, his "existential
psychoanalysis," it often seems, are alone able to do justice to Genet's
creation, and for no one can a reading of
Saint-Genet
fail to "con–
taminate" a reading of
Our Lady.
But this is reason enough to try to free
the novel from Sartre's allegory.
The genesis and initial situation of
Our Lady of the Flowers
is
*
Which has also recently been translated.
