478
PARTISAN REVIEW
even though as he points out himself, all known revolutionaries have carried
the poisons they wish to eject from the social bloodstream? Why superflu–
ous? Because, says Enzensberger, opponents of the system must "operate
at the limits of legality and constantly transgress the limits in both direc–
tions." Sounds very dialectical but what does it mean? Not much more, I
suspect, than his charming
aper;u:
"Shon-term hopes are futile. Long-term
resignation is suicidal. ' ,
Yet Hans Magnus Enzensberger's values and commitments are ones
that, broadly, I too would endorse. I suppose, then, that my irritation with
him has in it an element of fratricide, and of guilt too. I know how easily
one can begin an essay, as he does, by knocking Orwell's pessimism as
"undialectical," how stylishly one can conclude it with a flourish, as he
does, about deepening contradictions. I know, too, how impossibly difficult
it is to write an essay half as true to life as anyone of Orwell's.
DAVIDCAUTE
TAKING THE LANGUAGE OUT FOR A WALK
SELF-PORTRAIT IN A CONVEX MIRROR.
By
John Ashbery. Viking Press.
$5.95.
When Frost conceived his famous description of the poem's goal
as "a momentary stay against confusion," I'm sure he never imagined it
would be invoked to describe the work of a poet so different in habit and
mind as John Ashbery, a poet usually associated with Stevens, the man who
in Frost's opinion wrote about "bric-a-brac." But the proof is there,
throughout Ashbery's work, but never more clearly and movingly than in
his latest book,
Se/fPortrait in a Convex Mirror.
"City Morning" from that
book should help show what I mean:
NOTE:
It
is not our policy to review books by writers associated with the magazine, but this
review was accepted before the appointment ofJohn Ashbery as our poetry editor.
