PARTISAN R EV IEW
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Dickens's vision of London, the first step in English literature toward
thwarting our urban disconnections. "As we stand and look back at a
Dickens novel," he writes in a brilliant chapter, "the general movement
we remember -- the characteristic movement -- is a hurrying seem–
ingly random passing of men and ·women, each
hea~d
in some fixed
phrase, seen in some fixed expression: a way of seeing men and women
that belongs to the street. There is at first an absence of ordinary con–
nection and development. . . . But then as the action develops, unknown
and unacknowledged relationships, profound and decisive connections,
definite and committing recognitions and avowals are as it were forced
into consciousness. These are the real and inevitable relationships and
connections, the necessary recognitions and avowals of any human
society. But they are of a kind that are obscured, complicated, mystified,
by the sheer rush and noise and miscellaneity of this new and complex
social order." Classical visions of the disordered city, according to
Williams, whether in Juvenal or in Revelation, are seen from above; what
is new in the modern consciousness is the inner view of the city, the
perspective from within the wasteland upon its democratic despair, its
meaninglessness and exploitation. Dickens's buried community, slowly
excavated by the energy of his plots, begins the city's swing toward its
MANDELSTAM
CLARENCE BROWN
Here is as_complete a story as is ever likely to be told about the early
years of the great Russian poet who died in a labor camp in 1938.
Professor Brown writes engagingly and sensitively of the boy and the
emerging poet in the intellectual world of pre-revolutionary St.
Petersburg. He quotes the poetry in Russian and in English trans–
lation, supplying full and thoughtful criticism.
" ... blazes a trail over new territory ... knowledgeable, closely
reasoned, highly intelligent, well written." --
St. Louis Post–
Dispatch
"Clarence Brown produces a wealth of material which is bound
to correct past errors in the interpretation of Mandelstam and facili–
tate further exegesis." --
The New Republic
Illustrated with 14 photographs.
$13.95
Cambridge University Press
32 East 57th Street New York, N.Y_ 10022
