SPECTATOR COMPETITION No, 205 Report by Edward Blishen
At the thirtieth direct translation of "La Belle Dane" into Augustan English I turned pale. Surely the joke lay in showing our poets straining at themes uncongenial or unlikely: or viewing them with a shock- ingly different eye. Pope would have made urbane fun of a subject so barbarous: an embarrassed Wordsworth would have inter- mitted his crusade for the colloquial and forthright. In a very large entry the comic shock was lacking. The Eliots were stuffed with schoolroom French and all the Lan- Mots were Sweeneys: but only A. M. Sayers took a convincingly unsympathetic view of the theme. I had hoped the Law- rences might add an albatross to that wonderful peppery zoo: but (though Eric Swainson came unprintably close, and 1. Burke, too benign, had caught the Law- rentian rhythm) it was all shrillness without poetry. The Hardys, I thought, missed their chance: they failed to give the kick of amusement that should have come from a transposing of Browning's major. boisterous key into Hardy's minor, rueful one. Byron, bless him, obliged his surprisingly tiny imitators to be light-hearted.
I recommend thirty shillings each to Kenneth S. Kitchin and A. M. Sayers, and £1 each to R. S. Stanier and Leslie Johnson. Runners-up were R. Kennard Davis, Hilda Cooke, W. S., D. L. L. Clarke, David Rintoul, Pithecus, 1. Burke and R. A. Moulding,
PRIZES Tempting her to break the vow And to perish 'as predicted. Tennyson would h rd:y know That the death was self-inflicted.
Dead, she reached the waterfront Under Camelot 's walls and towers, Thereby giving Holman' Hunt Scope for his pictorial powers.
(R. S. sTANIFR)
Previous page
