Acts of Faith
Totem. By Harold Stovin. (Methuen. 68.) World Without Faith. By John Beevers. (Hamish Hamilton. 78. 6d.) Epilogue. A Critical Summary. Edited by Laura Riding. (Constable. 7s. 6d.) , MR. DAvm GASCOYNE'S survey of surrealism (to use the word which he and the New Oxford Dictionary curiously prefer to the more plausible superrealism) is not a critical work but a compact chronicle designed, and admirably suited, for the
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'reader in need of an introductory handbook to the subject. Mr. Gascoyne begins his survey by summarising the origins of modern surrealism in the work of de Sade, Rimbaud, Baude- laire, de Lautreamont, Alfred Jarry, and proceeds through a discussion of that violently expressive form of intellectual nihilism known as Dadaism to a very adequate epitome of the aims and achievements of the surrealists from the assumption of leadership of the group by Andre Breton in 1922 down to developments made within the last few months. Mr. Gascoyne's reverence is as impressive as his industry. There is significance for him in everything which the surrealists have thought or done. He admires their collages, made by pasting together unrelated scraps from photographs, newspaper cuttings, or any other object which whim selects ; he affirms that an " important contribution " to experiment was made by Salvador Dali's " paranoiac method of criticism "—a method which enabled that ingenious man to " discover " a painting by Picasso in what was in point of fact a picture- postcard of an African village ; he sees nothing inconsistent in the coy overtures which the surrealists made to—of all creeds—Communism. He translates their poems himself. To the Dadaists, on the other hand, he refers with the rather wistful disapprobation which is the normal attitude of the devout towards heretics who were once notable for orthodox zeal. Some of his readers will regret this discrimination. The Dadaists were futile certainly, but they were also amusing and their existence was justified by the anecdotes which they inspired. Mr. Gascoyne, no doubt apprehensive of a frivolous interest being taken even in them, has printed only a relatively small selection, but this account, by Hans Arp, of the founda- tion of Dada, typical and expressive of that curious cult, is worth a dozen pages of dull description : " I affirm that Tristan Tzars, discovered the word Dada on the 8th of February, 1916, at 6 o'clock in the evening ; I was there with my twelve children when Tzars pronounced for the first time this word, which aroused a legitimate enthusiasm in all of us. This took place at the Terrace Cafe in Zurich, and I had a roll of bread up my left nostril. I am persuaded that only imbeciles and Spanish professors can be interested in dates. What interests us is the dada spirit, and we were all dada before Dada began. . . ." Mr. Stovin's subject is not a single cult but a number of groups—the various youth organisations operating in this country—in which he detects certain common characteristics. Unlike Mr. Gascoyne, Mr. Stovin is out not to defend, much less to convert, but to attack. He has noted an increase in the public's concern for Youth in recent years, and he holds that the organisations formed to meet the presumed needs of Youth, by introducing some semi-abstract aim such as Fellowship or Fitness instead of focussing on some specifically social purpose, encourage forms of tribal behaviour which are destructive of individuality and inimical to individual develop- ments. He attacks such institutions as the Boy Scouts, Toe H, and the Group Movement, in which he discerns " a reversion to the primitive method : a substitution of myth for constitution—a thing not compact of logic and reflection but crass with mass emotion " ; and the meetings of these bodies are compared with primitive totem festivals which were designed to demonstrate the solidarity of their com- munities. Mr. Stovin's attack is acute, amusing and academic. There is no doubt that his hits outnumber his misses, but unlike the anthropologists whose methods he attempts to adopt he has not actively mixed with the people on whom he is reporting, and his book appears to be based merely on written evidence. Moreover Mr. Stovin offers Communism as a nostrum. If anything is to be condemned merely because it bears traces of totemism, there is no form of social activity which provides such extensive opportunity for condemnation as the creed which Mr. Stovin prescribes as a cure for the hopeless diffusion of social energies from which we are alleged to suffer. Mr. Beevers' book is another plea for individualism in a world which, according to him, is " being damned by ideolo- gies." Impetuous and pretentious in its thought, slipshod in style, frequently vulgar in expression, and, like Mr. Stovin's book, tinged with an innocent belief in the regenerating faculties of Communism, it reduces itself in the end—after a jaunty dismissal of almost every political and artistic creed inviting assent today—to a wistful declaration of faith in the importance of personal happiness :
" Why (enquires Mr. Beevers) am I writing this book ? Because I am happy—which is the best and only justifiable reason for writing or doing anything."
It is gratifying, no doubt, to know that Mr. Beevers is at peace with his circumstances. But when he tells us how to make Hitler, Mussolini and Mr. de Valera happy, his views will become worth serious consideration. Epilogue, the product of a group headed by Miss Laura Riding and Mr. Robert Graves, is the first of a series of half- yearly volumes whose object is bravely but enigmatically defined as being " to fix critical truths "—on both general end literary topics. The matter of the first number is not particularly notable (the Romantic Poets, modern Germany, and the conception of God form the main subjects of dis- cussion) and calls for comment less than its method. Epilogue is not to be merely a collection of contributions by independent authors, but the product of a group working in collaboration. Consequently if one of the contributors seems unable to make his own points, the editor (or someone else) intervenes
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with assistance in the form of supplementary footnotes. Mr. James Reeves, writing on " The Romantic Habit in English Poets," seems to have disturbed the editor's tranquillity most and is helped out with a substantial footnote on two out of every three pages ; and even Mr. Robert Graves, the Associate Editor, receives extensive assistance from the mme source. With a reprehensible lack of gallantry Mr. Reeves and Mr. Graves have left Miss Riding to write her compositions on " Poems and Poets " and " Picture-Making " by herself.
DEREK VERSCLIOYLE. DEREK VERSCLIOYLE.
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