Literary Jumble Sale
WITH its present number, Bottegbe Oscure (edited by Marguerite Caetani; Hamish Hamilton, 15s.), which was founded in Rome just after the war, celebrates its tenth anniversary. Its name is the name of the street in Rome from which it is edited. Both the General of the Jesuits and the secretary of the Italian Communist Party live in the same street. Botteghe Oscure, however, pos- sesses neither the discipline of the one nor the sense of dedication of the other. It also lacks the ordered freedom and the sustained beauty which
arc not the concern of its neighbours. •
This is a pity, because the idea is an excellent one; a literary magazine in three languages, Italian, English and French. The present number is the first to have a German section; future num- bers will contain a Spanish one. But whenever serious men, men serious about expressing their real feelings in their own language, mention Botteghe Oscure a joke seems somehow always to get into the conversation. Even the most bitter political opponents of that great editor, Mr. Cyril Connolly, never spoke about Horizon like that. Of course, during the last ten years, in almost any one of the bi-annual numbers there has been sonic exciting and'even some first-rate writing. It was in Botteghe\Oscure that many people must first have read the poems of Rent Char. Theodore Roethke and W. S. Graham were frequent con- tributers, Ignazio Silone an occasional one. The Present number contains a beautiful poem by Bernard Kops. But on the whole Botteghe Oscure has been rather like a jumble sale in a village Church. For one thing that is good, there are dozens which are useless.
PAUL POTTS
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