BOOKS
169
Though
In and
Out
is readable verse ("it may look like free verse,
but is not"), the rewards of such "rigged recognition" are unfortunately
far between. In Book One, the young, self-consciously intellectual Hine
"falls." In Book Two, seeking sublimation, he spends five weeks washing
dishes and sleeping on a cot in a Montreal soup-kitchen. Taken with the
ascetic life, in Book Three Hine travels Stateside in hopes of resisting the
flesh in a New England priory. Book Four, the finale, brings Hine back
to reality and the
Froliche Wissenschaft.
It is in Book Three, "Sweet Saviour Priory," that a sense of what
was at stake in Hine's infatuation with Rome emerges. The Abbe ques–
tions him:
"What made
you enter the Church? As a Catholic
born, of a Catholic country,
I ask myself what irresistible
magnet attracts the unfaithful?"
I
temporized solemnly, "God
only knows! The mysterious promptings
of grace? or of guilt? Curiosity?"
Abbe Clement, who had shown
himself somewhat inquisitive also
rebuked me for this: "Curiosity
took the first bite of the fruit
of the knowledge of evil and good.
Curiosity opened that box
where Pandora discovered the ills
of mankind. Curiosity questions
and cheapens each gift. Intellectual
pride - intellectual greed -
intellectual lust: curiosity
spoils its environment" . ..
Only as his poem approaches page two hundred does Hine begin to
give his massive intellect any kind of workout - but he has populated the
world of
In
an.d
Out
with characters barely able to think for themselves
(most of the time he condescends - especially to women, even to his
lovers). No one "in" the poem is as smart and witty as the narrator, and
nowhere is the narrator forced to be smart about the problems the poem
confronts - he just dazes along, propelled by a formalist notion of piety
and grace. Presumably Hine wanted to maintain a certain distance from
the concerns of his poem and hoped that formal accomplishment and
