Stray Leaves from Book World

Timaru Herald, Volume CXLVI, Issue 21362, 3 June 1939, Page 12

Stray Leaves from Book World

INTERESTING NEWS AND NOTES

In reviewing “I Knock at the Door,” the autobiography of the Irish dramatist, Sean O’Casey, Oliver St. John Gogarty wrote:—“Should a dramatist unlock his heart? The answer is, No. Nor anyone else for that matter. There is a decorum of Life which has to be observed, because within its bounds most of the world moves. To that onethird of the world’s population which is in China decorum is religion. And though I like to imagine and to seek for my friends supercharged people, men and women so crammed with Life that they outsoar its mediocrities, I know only too well that there are others which compose the greater part of the earth’s population who hardly live at all. Thus, below the surface, life becomes blurred, while above it it tends to disappear in ecstasy. In medio stat virtus. I only accept that when I cannot help it. Had Shakespeare unlocked his heart we would have had an autobiography in which he would have told us his grudge against the Queen, why he never praised her with one melodious tear, why he ran off to Scotland and came back full of honours from the throne of James. He might even have confessed to a little disagreement with the dagger-men who were the shadows of our gunmen from those days, for he lived on the edge of the law, he had to consort with “harlotry players” and to take the risk which arose from his status of vagabond of having his corpse handed over to the medicos. There are some parts of this capable and terrible book which should have been buried full fathoms five or deeper. I am not thinking (for they affect me little) of what must be passages of insufferable poignancy to others, but I have in mind the parts where the dramatist merges into the lyricist at the cost of the dramatic mask. These are passages where the tremendous odds against which O’Casey, blind almost from birth and for the twelve years or so covered in this book, had to contend. And yet where could that knowledge of life to the bone which the O’Casey plays show have come from unless from experiences such as these so powerfully and painfully set down in this volume? When you cast your mind back over the dramatists of the ages the law that seems to rule them is that they all learned in sorrow, and as often as not in poverty, what they taught in song. The serenest among them accepted Life; they did not gird at it. It would seem that O’Casey has, after all the unsurpassable hilarity of his plays, a grudge against Life. It is all very well for people such as I, who prefer to sit on an avalanche than under it, to pose as being in love with it all. But if I had been submerged as O’Casey has been submerged I would have tried essay writing in gall and wormwood. He got out because of his worth and genius.”

It seems as though some benevolent fairy welcomed writers who alic:-ir,t to find their way back to the garden of childhood, and to recover their small unforgotten selves,” states a reviewer in the “Observer.” “In tiie last lew years we have had five or six notable and beautiful examples of this benefaction, as, for example, in the eases of Mr Frank Kendon and Mr Herbert Read. We must now add ;■ orr list with real gratitude Miss I - ii'tiibone’s ‘When Days Were Ycr.rr • rrnollection of her childhood in the first decade of the century. One of the reasons why this book chimes so pleasantly in the mind may be that‘t belongs to a period when there was leisure in the world and in the heart. So far off and so strange it seems that it is almost as .cloistered as the streets of Barchester, in which Trollope’s legendary people move.” Teachers of English, in particular, will be interested to read the list of eight books, which the Carnegie Endowment, doubtless after most careful consideration, chose for its gifts last year to foreign students, as being of a quality to encourage the reader in his struggles to master a new language. Seven English and one American writer were selected, the chosen books being Lewis Carroll’s “Alice in Wonderland,” Dickens’s “Christmas Carol,” Conan Doyle’s “Tales of Sherlock Holmes,” Emerson's Essays, Hardy’s "Under the Greenwood Tree,” W. H. Hudson’s 1 Green Mansions,” "Shakespeare’s "Merchant of Venice,” and Stevenson’s “Treasure Island.” Though it might be wondered what foreign students would make exactly of some of the verbal gymnastics of “Wonderland” (says "The Times Literary Supplement”), the reader who had mastered these eight books, though he had never seen another in our language, would have received no bad introduction to English literature.

The residue of Lord Rosebery’s library, sold by Christie’s on March 30, included a fine copy of the first edition of Bolderwood’s “Robbery Under Arms,” three volumes, 1888, which sold for the surprisingly high figure of £66. The opinion is expressed in the Literary Supplement of “The Times” that a good history of Shakespearean criticism is wanted. Sound critics and researchers have worked on this or that episode or aspect of the subject, but there is need of complete work on the scale and with the learning of Dr Nichol Smith’s study of Shakespeare in the eighteenth century.

A memorial tablet has been placed on the wall of the villa where Katherine Mansfield once lived, at Mentone. The unveiling ceremony was performed in the presence of the mayor (M. Durandy), and a gathering of Katherine Mansfield’s admirers, by M. Francois-Primo, the playwright. A luncheon was given at the Casino for those who attended the function, including Countess Russell (cousin of Miss Mansfield), Mr Philip Carr, Captain and Mrs Stanley Cary, Mrs Money, Mrs Roe Thompson, Mme. Francois-Primo, Mme. Blasco Ibanez, Mrs Birkin-Young, Mrs Hankey', Mrs Enriquez, Dr Bonchage, and Mr Noble Hall (delegates of the British Council), M. Gabriel Boissy, and M. and Mme. Jean Desthieux.

Rehearsals from J. B. Priestley’s recently produced new play “Johnson Over Jordan” were conducted in secret, but the author did make a revelation when he said: “This play is an attempt to overcome the disinclination of the public to allow themselves to be deeply moved. People to-day would benefit from an occasional emotional outlet. They go to the theatre only to be superficially diverted. But they are never properly relieved, and when they emerge the whole weight of life tumbles on top of them again. You may say that the stress of modern, life is so great that man is growing a protective shell of indifference. But that is the way to extinction. I have seen in the Arizona deserts the marks of prehistoric creatures who grew bigger and deeper shells until the living organisms ceased to exist.”

“The disappearance of the ‘London Mercury,’ fc" owing hard upon that of the ‘ Criterion,’ leaves this country without a single literary journal better known that the paper in which the ‘Mercury’ has been merged,” writes Janus, in the "Spectator.” “The “Mercury" in its 20 years of life, first under Sir John Squire and latterly under Mr R. A. Scott-James, had made itself into something of an institution, combining the creative and the critical, the established and the experimental in a way which no other paper has quite succeeded in achieving. It is not flattering to the public taste of this country that a journal like the “London Mercury" should be forced to vanish, while in Nazi Germany even now several papers of its kind survive, and Republican Spain, in the agonies of civil war, could support no less than four. The ‘Mercury’s’ circulation, I believe, remained surprisingly good to the end, but it was expensive to produce (because admirably produced) and advertisements were insufficient to covercost.” ’

The charge .that literary critics today lack the proper tools was made at a recent session of the Modern Language Association of America by Professors Theodore Spencer and Harry Slochwer. The Professors laid the blame for this upon the teachers, saying that they poorly prepared their students and that, as a result, literary criticism was “impoverished and rickety.’’ "The critic,” they said, "should seek to raise the level of the reader's enjoyment and to bring out the different relationships surrounding the object he is studying and to communicate to other individuals understanding, discrimination and enjoyment.” “In a period when literary criticism has come to mean little else than book reviews, such a pronouncement is welcome and pertinent,” remarks the ‘Christian Science Monitor.’ Professors Spencer and Slochwer have reaffirmed the words of George Saintsbury that criticism is ‘the discovery and celebration of beautiful things.' The true critic is not merely a ‘recounter’; he is a ‘re-creator.’ Through his words a work of art takes on added meaning and significance. Further than that, his is a duty to evaluate and judge so that in a world of change there remains some basis of form, both for the artist and for the snectator.”