TWO EDITHS.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 17567, 18 June 1925, Page 6

TWO EDITHS.

NOTE ON MISS SITWELL. ' There arc two Edith Sitwells. One is the creature born of tho imaginations of those v,ho have never read a line of her poetry, and would not understand it if they did, writes a contributor A“i■ P. s "Weekly. lius imagined Edith is a literary anarchist, a high priestess oi free verse, the hysterical St Joan of an unholy war on sanitv in poetry. Tho callow satirists of the rovue stage present this figure to their audiences as an object of reprobation and derision- -the reverence of rovue librettists for the highest traditions of handed parodists rush in where angels ? would fear to tread. Unfortunately, Miss Sitwell is not sufficiently armoured against this sort of attack. Her strength and her weakness is to be acutely sensitive, and she is goaded' into reply on occasions when silence would be more effective. Not that her replies lack sting and point; but you cannot hurt a hippopotamus with a. hatpin. All this lias very little to do with the real Edith Sitwell, the delicate sentimentalist, the singer of transcendental nursery rhymes, whose wit ‘s . as sharp and uunameable as the flavour [ of an olive. Edith Sitwell is a feminist who J avoids the folly of aping man. “Woman poets,” she has written, “ will do best if they realise that male technique is not suitable to them,” and site places sonnets, blank verse and free verse in the category of forms which can only be . used successfully by men. In the poetry of women she demands a fantastic, peacock elegance, and abhors pomposity, metaphysics and “passion, which is apt to bo a little hot and dusty.” These, then, are the limits which Miss Sitwell sets for her work and within which it is to lx- judged. l)o not read her new book. “ Troy Park,” if you wish to be soothed, edified or drugged. You will enter into a bright, crystal world where you will have to bo indefatigahly alert if yon are to keep your bearings in a rnaz<* of strange images and bizarre associations of ideas. I have called Edith Sitwell a delicate sentimentalist—-although she has publicly disavowed sentiment—and am tempted to p-ercert an epigram of Oscar Wilde’s in speaking of tin’s aspect of her poetry. Wilde said that Meredith was a prose Browning—and so was Browning. Edith Sitwell is a feminine* Walter de la Mare—and so is de la Mare. All Miss Sitwell’s verse seems wistfully to “ remember nursery afternoons when the snow’s little old musical-box £ave out half-forgotten tunes, and our nurse told us tales.”' In “Troy Park” the sentiment of memory is mingled with the sentiment of the farr.'ily. Her pride of race and her admiration of her md brothers, Osbert and Sacheverell, *-s expressed in the poem dedicated to them, “Colonel Fantook.” There is a two-line sketch of her “ childish self ” : J Whose hotly flat and strange, whose pale Made mo appear as though 1 had been drowned. And then follow portraits of “ Dagobert ” (Osbert) and “ Peregrine” (Sacheverell): And Dagobert, my brother, whose large strength, Great body, and grave beauty, still reflect The .Angevin dead king 3 from whom wo spring: And sweet as the young tender winds I that stir In thickets when the earliest flowcr-bella Bing Upon the boughs, was his-just character; And Peregrine th* youngest with a naive Bhy grace, like a faun's, whose slant eyes seemed The warm green light beneath eternal His hair was like the fronds of feathers, life In him was changing ever, springing fresh [ As the dark song 3of birds. 4The verse is smoother than we are accustomed to expect from the author of “ Bucolic Comedies”; indeed there , is a- surprisingly mellow note in many of the poems, most of all in one called “ Tho Little Ghost Who Died for Love.” Here sneaks a voice from the , grave, hollow, chib, remote and yet very human : it is the voice of Deborah | Churchill, who, it is explained in a footnote. “ was hanged in 1708 for I shielding her lover in a duel. His onponent was killed, her lover fled to Holland, and she was hanged in his stead, according to the law of the time. ’ Tho chronicle said : “Though she died at peace with God, this malefactor could never understand tho justice of her sentence, to tho last moment of 1 her life.” Deborah’s ghost, unconsoled, laments in lines of sheer beauty: Now Time beats not, and dead Love Is forgotten .... The spirit too is dead and dank and rotten. And I forget, the moment when I ran Between my lexer and tho s worded . Blinded with terror lest 1 lose his heart. The bworded man dropped, and I saw depart 1 Love and my lover and tny life-—he fled. Ami I was strung and hung upon tho It is so cold now that my heart i e dead. 1 And drops through time—night is too dark to bco Him still. There is the old Sitwcllian unearthly gaietv in “ Four in the Morning.” “ I Do'Like to be Beside tho Seaside” and “The Boar.” Who speaks of Alexander And General Hercules, , And who speaks of Lysamier? For I am strong as these! The housekeeper’s old rug ’ Js shabby brown as me, Ancl if I wished to hug ; Those heroes, they would flee- , For always when J show affection j They take the contrary direction. “Troy Park” is a notable book; 1 but l am afraid it will not destroy the false and foolish Sitwell legend, for ’ it is too much to hope that Miss Sit- ' well's detractors will read it. Mr Frank Swinnerton has been teilj ing the readers of an American magazine how he first conceived the amhi- . tion to be a novelist when he was -e----ception clerk in the publishing offices of Messrs J. M. Dent and Co. I had to tackle all sorts of visitors, f from those who brought masterpieces s i • those who wished to borrow half- , crowns,” he writes. “It was necessary to decide at sight whether Mr Dent t might wish or be willing to see each - ' man or woman, or whether the caller i ! must be manoeuvred out of the building ; without offence, without an interviewIt will be seen at once how such a task formed a training in the summary estii mate of character, which must always i play an important part in the novelist’s equipment. ■ “ At the age of eighteen, accordingly, i I formed the ambition that has re* r mained constant ever since. I wanted : to write a novel about human beings. : From that moment human beings !>o- . cine my .-iK-orbing .passion,”