VERSE

Press, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22467, 30 July 1938, Page 18

VERSE

* TWO GERMAN LYRIC POETS Later Poems. By Rainer Maria Rilke. The Hogarth Press. 277 pp. (10s Od net.) Holdcrlin’s Verse. By David Gascoyne. J. M. Dent and Sons Ltd. 48 pp. (5s net.) Bull-Terrier Doggerel. By P. W. Hogarth. A. Walker and Son Ltd. 28 pp. Squire Speaks. A Play for Radio. By R. A. K. Mason. The Caxton Press. 6 pp. Two volumes of Rilke’s poems, “Requiem” and “Sonnets to Orpheus,” have already been reviewed on this page. The present collection is more considerable in number and quality; the admirable translator, J. B. Leishman, is the same; and, as before, he has added biographical and literary comments which, for the poor scholar or the baffled reader, make some dark or startling places less strange. But the furious intensity of Rilke, his remarkablecompression of thought, and his mystical cries are still difficult enough. No reader will catch ail he conveys: but every reader will be thrilled or amazed or left speculating Rilke wrote these poems between 1912 and 1922. and many of them show the anguish of his experiences at the beginning of the war, (He died in 1926.) How great a poet he is we cannot yet know; his passion. sincerity, and insight are plain enough; so is his gift of showing the relations between the world and man’s spirit. The English # verseform is unhelpful to any estimation of his rhythms. In “Later Poems the verses that give the readiest indication of his mind and character are the group called “Night,” allegorical pieces about the powers of evil that beset man. There is a splendid tribute to the early Romantic poet. Holderlin. The last lines of “The Spirit Ariel” give some hint of Rilke’s curious insight.

And there I left it? Now he terrifies me this man who’s once more duke. —The way he draws the wire into his head, and hangs himself , , , beside the other puppets, and henceforth asks mercy of the play! . . • What epilogue of achieved mastery! Putting off, standing there . with only one’s own strength: which is most faint.”

“He was one of the most thoroughgoing of romantics, because he went mad.” That sentence is an opinion of Mr Gascoyne and a fact about the German poet Holderlin, 1770-1843. Holderlin loved in vain and lost his senses in 1801, and for the last 30 years of his life was under restraint. He spent his life in frenzied grief, frenzied piano-playing, and the writing of frenzied verse. Mr Gascoyne likens him to Blake and Coleridge, more still to Rimbaud. His impassioned fragments about love and death and frustrated longings were, when decipherable, moving and startling. The young Romantics waited upon him in awed admiration. Mr Gascoyne has rendered into English a score of extracts from Holderlin; he has not worried about verbal accuracy but has, recognisably, conveyed the furious energy and wild grief of his original. Better still are four poems by the translator which give the moods of the mad poet. In the catalogue Rilke and Mr Hogarth are poets, but the latter would be the last to esteem himself a poet. His rhymes are about dogs and extol the matchless courage, strength, and endurance of the bullterrier They speak of pedigrees, breeding, and old customs. The lines and rhymes are as blunt and vigorous as the dog they celebrate. Every dog-owner should read “Show Dog’s Doom.” Where men keep dogs for their own pleasure and glory, some robust measures like Mr Hogarth’s may be required to show the whole duty of man to animals. Much admiration is due to “Squire Speaks,” a dramatic scene in some kind of free, blank verse. In about 150 lines and with one speaker, Mr Mason represents a whole social state, a feudal community, two vivid characters, and a strange situation. The play ends with a shock, and, for full measure, there are a score of good satirical hits, the “Manchester Guardian” being shot at twice. The 8.8. C. might admire the radio-act-ing properties of “Squire Speaks." but they would never produce it.