Botteghe Oscure XL (Rome, 1953. 10s. 6d.)
THIS is not the best issue of a review which has rightly achieved a high international reputation. It contains too much writing which is merely esoteric and too purpose- fully refined, and exhibits a kind of avant- gardistne which wastes a good deal of time in chasing its tail. Too little of the writing is really vital—informed with some kind of essential truth ; and we have too much froth and foam. The French section is par- ticularly poor ; it contains oracular exposi- tions on various subjects which are neither poetry nor prose and which leave the reader more dazed than convinced ; and it con- tains so-called poems, in fact passages of the most involved and cryptic prose, which could be read backward or forward with equal profit. Surely there are limits even to free verse ! English poetry, on the contrary, even with the asset of a stressed language, keeps steadily to metre, and with adyantage. I particularly welcome McCaig, Tom Scott's rendering of Villon's ballad in Lallans, Archi- bald MacLeish's contribution, which contains passages of moving beauty, and Chapman Mortimer's very intriguing short story. But why in the American section, devote over a hundred pages to a play on Agamemnon whose scanty merits clearly belie the pre- eminence which the number of pages implies? Happily the urbane prose of Carlo Levi and Umberto Saba, the freshness of the Italian poetry, with the excellent rendering of Lowell's poem at the end of the book, restore peace to the mind and bring hope
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