OOKS OF THE DAY
A Guide to Modern Poets
uden and After. By Francis Scarfe. (Routledge. 8s. 6d.) it Sc.ARFE has many excellent qualifications as a guide to con- emporary poets and poetry. He is a poet ; he is an enthusiast for try and, until he went into the Army, he was lecturer in rench literature at Glasgow University, which makes him more ware of contemporary literary tendencies in Europe than the more nsularly read.
Apart from some general essays on poetry in wartime, and on r. Scarfe's own relation to poetry, this book is made up of some ten ain essays on individual contemporary poets. They are of varying interest and importance' but all proceed from a thorough varying of the poet. "I have been at pains," Mr. Scarfe says, "to buy and read thoroughly, as far as possible, the entire printed works of each author on whom I have written an essay. This meant natur- ally arriving at very different conclusions about them than could have been gained merely from study of their work in reviews." I italicise this last sentence because it seems to me an important point. The reviews that print poetry with any show of willingness and sense of discrimination are rare, and it is misleading to estimate a poet's quality by such odd verses. Only by reading the occasional volumes of collected poems in which longer and \ more ambitious works may appear, is it possible to come to any reasonably sound, personal judgement. Mr. Scarfe's conscientious reading and spontaneous enthusiasm for his subject do not make him unexacting. He is shrewd, and, on the whole, sound in his criticism ; generous, sympathetic and dis- criminating in his praise ; his quotations are plentiful, and apt to is theme. His style is lively and cursed neither by cant nor humbug. If only he would stick to the poets and their poetry, and leave out such general and fruitless discussion as that prefacing e essay on Auden, in which he distinguishes the " great " from e "important " poets! Blake, Donne and Auden are allowed mportance, but not greatness. In its context, I think this is rguable, but words such as " great " and " important " depend so much on individual interpretation that it seems to me a rather seless distinction. In this same essay on Auden, Mr. Scarfe has one of his rare moods of pomposity in his tragic reactions to the ballad John Honeyman, " who invented an explosive and was obliged to sell it to a foreign power, the result being that he and his family were wiped out by his own invention." Mr. Scarfe comments: "Here Auden laughs loudly, and we arc also invited to laugh. But e reflect : the szruggle for education by John Honeyman, far from being ridiculous, is pathetic. . . . And the fact that scientific talent should be wasted in creating engines of destruction is no laughing matter. . . . No, this is a poem over which one laughs and cries ice." Surely, Mr. Scarfe, Mr. Auden would agree with you? Surely, it was for that very reason Mr. Auden wrote his poem? Elsewhere in this book Mr Scarfe asks for more satire in poetry. I think he misses what already exists. He is very contradictory, too, n his estimate-of Auden's dramatic talent and originality. On Page a t he says, concluding a passage in which he compares Auden with Eliot, "nor has Auden done anything in the drama which, 0 my mind, Eliot has not done." This seems rather unjust, until we find, on page 26: " Far from underestimating Auden's ability as a playwright, I would say that Auden is the only young riter today who has the makings of a first-class dramatist." Mr. Scarfe's political comments are maddeningly unrealistic. Upbraiding Auden for complacent acceptance of "capitalist emocracy," he says, " Is there not such a possibility, not so emote, as a socialist democracy, in which we could expect the er to have as much liberty as other citizens, but not more? " e ordinary citizen has a totally different standard of freedom, and does not want the poet's sort, which would seem to him ex- tremely uncomfortable and disruptive of his usual pleasures. Such loose phrases abound. They sound well but mean nothing. In a manifesto which appeared recent m under many distinguished signa- tures, including one of the poets he writes on, the chief point was "equal sacrifice for all." If that means anything, it means finding the man who has suffered and sacrificed most, and then all doing likewise. I presume this is not what was meant. But Mr. Scarfe akes a timely reaffirmation of the debt owed to Auden by most
ntemporary writers who have profited from Auden's experiments
and original methods, and gives a very just estimate of the main qualities of his contribution to modern poetry. Some of the analyses of passages of poetry are interesting and ingenious. Stephen Spender is valued here as a lyrical poet of genuine sensibility rather than as an intellectual and " political " poet: " one feels the emotional impact of his poems before the intellectual impact." In the essay on Prokosch Mr. Scarfe reveals much unclear thinking. He criticises him for failing to write poetry " bearing directly on social matters." But what poet has or could or would want to? Indirectl y, yes—because all great poets are essentially and inevitably of their age—but directly only if they are the most conscious aspirants for a cheap and immediate notoriety. Again, in praising Prokosch's "ode," earlier called "one of the best emotional statements of the 'thirties," he says it is " unpolitical and unsocial in the broadest sense, but otherwise a brilliant defence of cultural and humanitarian values." How it can be both these, and what the " broadest sense " of " unsocial " is I do not know. There are interesting essays on Julian Symons and Kenneth Allott, and two of the best essays in the book deal with George Barker and Dylan Thomas. The essays on Surrealism in contemporary literature and on the group of young and promising writers calling themselves
ry
" The Apocalypse " bring the survey very much up to date. This is a timely book, and it is especially welcome from a writer of catholic taste and genuine enthusiasm who may, one hopes, con- vince a rather indifferent public of the richness, variety and promise of contemporary poetry. Anyone, by the way, who is disappointed not to find Eliot in the list of contents may be reassured. He steals much of Auden's essay and most of MacNeice's.
SHEILA SHANNON.
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