Orpheus. Vol. 2. (John Lehmann. 12s. 6d.)
THE new volume of Mr. Lehmann's ambitious "symposium of the arts " contains interesting articles on Edward FitzGerald and on the Greek peasant artist Theophilos (1866-1934), the first by William Plomer, the second by Ronald Crichton. Mr. Plomer has worked carefully on the FitzGerald material to produce his agreeable, illuminating paper, which .he delivered as a lecture at the Aldeburgh Festival last year. Mr. Michael Benthall contributes a thoughtful article on " Shakespeare in the Theatre " (one is glad to note that it contains en passant a critical comment on that absurdly overrated production Oklahoma). Short stories by those two good writers, Denton Welch and William Sansom, prove disappointing. Miss Edith Sitwell endeavours to explain why she conceives of morning light as " creaking " and cold light as "whining," and of a certain sky as " hairy," and so on—a useful glossary ; she also reminds us that in 1940 she wrote of " the nineteen hundred and forty nails upon the Cross." Mr. Lehmann in a foreword charges headlong at a Russian critic who suggested that, in Volume I of this miscel- lany, Orpheus with his lute made—" gilded nuts." But it would have been better to leave the Russian alone ; first, because the general conception of Orpheus is stimulating, refreshing, and needs no defence against the Soviet ; secondly, because amid much that is spontaneous and universal, there is here a good deal that is strained and esoteric.
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