}'10NTREAL, CANADA. Iv1AY, 1943 LIFE BLOOMS IN THE A~TERNOON 1,fIRI.Al\1 WADDINGTON -..--.,...,.,.._____ All morning tho sun strunms in through tho corner windowo Slantwise its boruns fRll across tho four brown paper packages that wnit so pn.tiontly for noon. The four lunches primly set out in a row thst smell faintly of sardines, cheese and tomato. This smell of food injects :into the disinfected atmosphere of the city Public Welfare Department an incongruous and bizarre flavor of life. When the big clock over the city hall strikes noon the three social workers c-· · ·the student who is doing her field vvork will come and sit ·0 •. ~.t the table by the window. They will go through the ritual 01 ~--cu.ring tea, a.Ttd the brown pap er packages will be taken from ~icl shelf. The paper will rustle in the faint, sulphur-laden breeze that blows from the lake at the edge of the cit;y, a.vid the sun, moving imperceptibly to its place in the west, will spread clear, thinning fingers of light over the empty shelf. The da ---= varnished Slrrface will shine like oiled hair. Today Miss Cotter is on counter duty. She stands at the beck and call of all comers; all the desperate and timid and defiant demands for medical supplies, shoe repair vouchers and rents past due.. Some times women ,veep haltingly before her as they tell of an evictionq Some times men in dusty caps twitch their battere-l faces into smiles as the;y thank her for services rendered. There are people who come every day and stand patiently in front of the counter, waiting , hoJ)ing a.vid waiting for something to ha1)peno IVIrs" Lenny-.is such a one; her husband deserted her drtring her seventh pregnancy and is living with another woman e Vvhat ]VI.rs,. Lenny hopes to find here is ha.rd to say. To Judith Vannin, the student, it seems that the placid, mournful face of rJlrs . Lenny confronts her every time she raises her eyes from her ovvn desk , Not only that, but she sees M.1--s. Lenny on street cars and in busy dovmto'\f\1n stores c The placid, mournful face haunts her like an eternal reproacho Judith 1s desk faces the large open frame over the counter, so that she seems constantly to be Joo~cing through a large window from which the pane of glass has been removed and in front 0f of vh ich passes a never-ending stream of faces. So many of the faces are dead. Old pale men look heartbreakingl3 at Miss Cot ber from betvvepn the brj_stly sedges of their worn-out beards" The 111.rife j_s s:i ('k ~ they plead, how can I go out to look for w0rk wll.e the wifs is sjck? I can 1t leave her alone like that, can l:? · 1d faded l1 ll1e eyes with limp lffair hair straggle in, vague a:-reas of indeterminate child-life clinging to their elbows. Children tro1Jp 1J.p the stairs, yowl, fall asleep on the vvaiting benches~ anonymous and wilting r, -2 - 11. Great vvindows open to the south. Oh Lissadell! Once there was someone beautiful and another like a gazelle. But Mis.s Cotter, harsh and dry as a nut, tough and rubbery as an ostrich, goes about her business automatically, Her movements are without grace or love or mercy, and her body is a cor:rugated iron pipe. Oh LissadellJ The poQr you have always with you and the dead are never buried~ Daily the dead stream into the public offices, line up behj_nd the public counters, fill out endless forms and expose their gaping wounds to the lancets wielded by officials. And the public authorities 1 on their part, caught on the other side of the s@ne trap, held prisoners in their own camp, dole out inch by inch and pen~y by penny the blessings which public-minded citizens have p~ovided for the poor. Dole them out meanly, grudgingly~ drily" Writhe like worms into the dead hearts, push their way ~~dely past closed doors and drill like insane woodpeckers through the rotten wood. Tread softly~.for you tread on hallowed ground. 11rs. Lenny. Large and sodden and patient as the sphinx. If I could onl;y get my hands on him. Left me with six children and another on the way . .An eviction to face. I wonrt move. I'll come here every day till I die or something hap1)ens . Something happens. Mrs . Lenny, push your hat back from your forehead, yank the . springs from your sausage curls and down a beer. Two beers, three beers ~ five, ten; then stagger home rakishly, eyes bloodshot and face askew, a lewd song issuing from your throat, and murder your six children and the seventh too, and throw their bodies into a trunk and ship it collect to the public-spirited citizens of this world.~ Then, Mrs o JJenny, sit down on the curbstone and weep. For the world hath neither joy, nor love, nor light, nor certitude~ nor peace, nor help from paino I1Iiss Cotter rs heels click smartly over the bare wooden floor. The telephone shrills and is silenced, and soft grayed conversations flow through the wires. All the voices in the office are gray and fuzzy like cat's fur, and the smiles are pinned onto the faces and hang tremulously, ready to drop at a moment 1s noticee Miss Cotter j_s writing out a voucher for household remedies. Suddently the vast silence is shattered by a harsh scream from one of the walled-j_n offices -the investigators 1 domam. A st:range, inhuman, hysterical voice screeches: "I 1m not asking yo1.1, I 1m TELLING you" • Nob~dy looks up to see who thus profanes the morning quiet. On all the passages of sense the atoning oil is spread with sweet -3 The stenographer, Miss Jamison, sits unaware. Her hard white face is set in lines that have long ago lost their way in search for dreams. Miss Roger shakes her old eagle's head over a record and continues to write, And Miss Laurie, blue and tinkling as a china figurine, seems strangely removed from this world to a distant sunny upper deck, first class. Up there she cannot hear the groans from the steerage and misery is h:idden from her cold blue stare, Death litters the office. Death creeps along the walls. The inflexible Anglo-Saxon tem:rerament. Stupid, wooden and unkind, or pink-icing sweet, cunning and libelous. 111. When Judith looks up again she sees on the other side of the counter Mrs. Galleo. Dark, wide-apart eyes in a West Indian face. She bristles at Miss Cotter. With triumph she announces: asold my furniture and got him out of jail.n nwell, what do you want now?" intones rviiss Cotter with deadly efficiency. There are more heartless things done on earth than are dreamed of in your philosophy, Mrs. Galleo. 0 I vvant to put him back on the voucher," says Mrs. Galleo, still triumnhant• .J. A careful, low reply from Miss Cotter and Mrs. Galleo's color rises. She begins to shout with frenzy. "What the hell d'yuh think I am? D'yuh think I 1ve got nothin 7 t'do but sit home and wait for yuh? This damn office expects yuh to sit home'n wait until yuh get ready to make a visit. Not s'posed to get out or nuthin 7 • Just s'posed to wait all day. Hell! What next! Yuh mean old bitch, yuh're just as crabby as yuh look," she clinches vindictively. Miss Cotter walks urgently to the file. Her face is flushed a dull, muddy pink. Her hands falter with anger. Mrs. Galleo splutters dark thunder for a minute, then subsides. I' Judith, who has been watching all the time, meets the black, storm-empty eyes of the West Indian woman. Involuntarily Judith begins to smile. The woman's eyes answer with sudden singing warmth that overflows into her face and shapes itself into a glistening white smile. This smile makes Judith glow. This smile spirals gaily through the lysoled air. It gives off a fragrance of its ovvn, it dances toward the window where the afternoon sun streams in. It warms Judith who thins -"Now there are two of us alive. Tvvo of us and the sun. 0 FOR DEAD LOVERS They ran on shores as honey and coney, they lay in house as luck and lovely, their hunting lovewords were busy as bees and they were beautiful. Praise these~ Gulls flickered like a curtain on their bed and stars reprinted everything they dP..id: never quite soil or sea creatures were they yet drowned in a wave of land, whose bed was a bay. Their angels never sexless yet often flew, cut off by sleep they walked each other's dreams, our age would give them cle2ror work to dopraise them aloud, and they 1nay waken you~ . Patrick Anderson EDUCATION Drugged with the opium of the Flanders poppy and born to dreams of peace, he played where the people out down like flowers . or starved in a witty winter falsified all vows the dead had made: he learned to know his accent and his place, a true-blue boy and happy floating .the Royal Navy, whose mother's smile was guarded by the police. Pitches and tennis courts drawn smartly over the natives crowded down below, he trod their fingers like daisies and chalked his rules on their races he cut the kiss of love to his hero or drove the ball for six in the trees, happily unaware of what history prepared, the terrible trauma droning beneath his hair. But when his tears froze solid to a cane to beat his hands into the grasp of love, his flesh baroque and empty as a church rocked the more real all&ysof his search or with the stammer of a schoolboy's loins he planned his life amongst the rank waste grasses there in a nervous shiver hoisting a pirate flag the factory of his father rose amongst nicotine and whiskey glasses~ Who fell on bed, a virgin in love, was not aware of where his strength was sucked; in the community of his clinging the amputation of the Jewish limb- a ruined stump in wiich all love was mocked: who clapped his girl and cried like birds love is miraculous b~ing utter happiness! awoke to Hitler's gangrene empire and little Franco strutting in Spain 1s pus. Patrick Anderson WAKING I lie in the long parenthesis of arms dreaming of love and the crying cities of Europe wake to the bird a whistler in my room and sun a se:cret light on the bed of air and buoyed by morning the easy bugle of breath projects anl echo and over the difficult room the brimming vindow opens the bandaged eyes to the shape of Asia. Invalid, I, and crippled by sleep's illness, drowned in the milk of sheets and silk of dreams, I wake and write the rising curve of day with mercury of the smashed thermometer and trouble the sudden mirror- who have been pale in suspension on the oval bed. PKP JOURNEY Never resist the going train of the dream risen and steaming onlhard tracks through Breugh 1 landscape or the troubled slum. The houses and the faces fabricate heart 7s drop to tGrror and eyes' flight to madness; cling, madam, the blunt caboose like a streamer or prod the engineo -6 Oh do not lag behind syringe of vtiistle douching your ears; on spongy fingers number the revs. per min., they are your tempo. You may be box-car baggage or begonia, porter with epaulettes and moon for navel; the way is water-colour to the station, the stop is limbo. PKP THE BARONS The barons make Applause they take, .And pay for Peals That hide their Steals. They buy the Press In mich they Stress The press must Be Unbought and Free. They sit on Hordes Of corporate Boards, And use their Shares To sell their Wares.a They take their Slice Off every Price, And shut down Shop When prices Drop. -7 This is their Test Of V\hat is Best - ., ·Whate·ver·, Fills Their vaults and Tills. They push their Rule To church and School, And pose as Guardians, Trustees and Wardens. Their bread-lines Take The men they Break, Their prisonsSeal The fools who Squeal. Their needs Dictate Affairs of State, Their stooges Sway Election Day' Their lobbies Bend The forward Trend, And laws Cominand Protects their Hand~ While we with Arms Protect their Homes, -8 Their fingers Force The public Furse. Though' parties ·stro.in, The barons Reign. Though experts Plan, The barons Ban. For them the Loot, For us the Boot. For them the Swag, For us the Bag. F.R. SCOTT TO A FALLEN Aifil/IAN Starless now is he who owns Egregiously these grounded bones: Silence, his praise who vainly brings A quill to him who died on wings. RALPH GUSTAFSON PARABLE SUn behind this fog seeps through, yet, vapor-tvvisted, is no reassurance but shifting, dull-white uneasiness, distorting the true V\Orld. Stunt-limbed trees waver through mist smeared with uncert~n luminance, octupus-branched, leering-leafed. So, blurred by furry fog of fear (small false securities melt under the dank touch) old, clutched life looms shapeless 1 without comfort, menacing our thin desires. -9 But -wind fro1n decisive, human-dwarfing sea will cut away this fog, leave a strong land action-ready, all outlines sure. .A.nne Marriott OLD ELIZABETH ANTI N:ENV GEORGE Neufville Shaw By contrasting attitu.des as remote as those of the Renaissance with those as immediate as our own one· might be accused of a fondness for pedantic jousting or a delight in the obvious, but it is possible that an effort in this dii"ection .·. might be valuable in that the writing of the poets and dramatists of the period which ushered in what has loosely been termed moderm history is generally considered as the greatest which we possess. "Uthough,. in an essay of this length 1 it would be an impossible tasl-c to elucidate in detail the conditions which allowed either · the Renaissance or the more limited outlook of today it should be recognized that this writer realizes their importance without, he believes, falling into the positivist error of asserting that a general social analysis is in itself a complete aesthetic for besides the mechanism of birth thc~o is the product of birth to be considered in its own right. The heroic attitude is perhaps Gasier to recognize than to define. If one was to contrast, for instnnoe, Bloom and HamlGt it would not be difficult to select the one to whom the term would best apply. Hamlet is heroic because when faced with a problem he attempts to solve it in a dynamic fashion; he plots, murders and is killed at the climax of his triumph which is a nemesis (How little this word is r0quired by critics of modern literature is, in itself, significant.) not only for his uncle and mother but necessarily one for himself. When Bloom has to cope with an almost ident.ical situation he goes for a walk and carefully a.voids the scene of the seduction only to return when ho is sure it is all over, Su.ch an attitude is unheroic -that is it is one of acceptance of conditions which are of considerab1e importance to himself. This contrast is a general one i.e. one has only to think of Iviacbeth, Faustus and Swann, Mr. Prufrock to admit it. That it can be r el ated to the social and technological achievement of the t.i1ne goes without saying. The intellectual Rwakening of the Renaissance was caused or allowed, if you will, by the discovery and application of a ser1es of tools such as the compass~ printing press, paper and the cannon. Al~ t-,f this equipment for dealing with nature created a prosperity ~ _..ch as had only rarely been known before -the compass meant Asia and the Indies, the cannon reinforced immeasurably the povver of the central government and so on. For the arts this -meant not so much a time of questioning btlt rather a proclaination of all the energies and rich abilities of mankind. In their excitement at the possession of a new world men pitted themselves against it daring the most overwhelming odds, preferring the forlorn hope to the easy victor7. The best of Shakespeare and l\Iar1owe is found in their ~-• 10 .... .I l • tragedies while even Dante preferred hell to heaven. The public was interested in the hero, the individual who chose the hard road rather than the easy one. There. was none of the broad social conception of War and Peace, for example. Literature concerned itself with a man surrounded by a group of gther unit• men. The character per se, his achievement unmarred by the vague numbus of comrad~ band or nation, served as a focus of attention. His'solation was a part of the glory which through him to a peak of acclamation and his inevitable destruction was at the hands of forces which he himself had unleashed. Thousands of nameless silent people died in order to provide him with a stirring background; the throng of whispering courtiers who gathered about his deathbed were there merely to record the tremendous culmination of his death throes, Writers created a host of such people who, like Icarus, were only interested in living in order to die magnificently. There was little social uncertainty, no questioning as to the motivation for these tumultuous adventures for the reason that 1 broadly speaking, men had accepted their new world without being aware of it, The period surrounding the first Great War was characterized by a much greater intellectual curiosity but, whereas the men of the Renaissance were so certain of the premises with which they faced the world that they were willing to test them with their lives, the curiosity of this and its succeeding reriod (our own) springs from a deep rooted sense of uncertainty. Worse than Th.ms Scotus who counted angels on pinheads, people were sure neither of the angles nor the pinheads. For an. artist it was largely an age of rejection, a rej ection which some times went to fantastic lengths i.e. pure verse~ pure prose. The writer obsessed with a sense of drift resorted to a negative criticism of the forces which he felt to be pulling him. The typical character became an observer (often solely of himself) and not a doer, The importance which the author attached to this critical detached attitude is evidenced by the frequent and frank insertion of himself or of friends with whose opinions he either contrasted or identified his o~~ i.e. Daedalus, Marcel of The Past Recaptured, Paul Morel of Sons and Lovers, Rampion of Point Counter Point, etc. It became a fashionable practice for readers to try to identify characters with this or that person in the literary coteries of Paris and London. It was as if writers saw nothing of interest beyond their own immediate circle. The positive and broader clement of an energetic and stimulating world had gone. Instead of it providing a stage for heroic action it offered only the onesided attraction of analysis without a corresponding opportunity for synthesis. The writer drew aside the facades from magnificent exteriors in order to demonstrate their hollowness and, his message being one of disilusion, he often resorted to verbal pyrotechnique as if to encourage our attention. No longer does our hero proclaim that nThere is a tide in the affairs of men Which taken at the height leads on to fortune" .: I -11 but rather allows the tide to recede in order to expose the fragile and trembling underworld upon wi ich it rests. The· world, then, had become a challenge not to one's ability but rather to one's credulity. The hero lost his forceful attributes and became a shy exhibitionist or an irrationalist who sought by a kind of orgiastic and spurious enthousiasm to escape the tentacles of the city and live among a variety of deities ranging from Flora to himself. It is noteworthy that the calm and dispassionate tone adopted by the greatest of the writers of this time by reason of its very photographic common sense impressionism served to expose the bravuras and inconsistencies of society without making any very deliverate attempt to do so. So shabby had tho rationalisms and justifications of the various status quos beoome that even so apparently an unprofound and superficial examination of them served as a condemnation. Indeed one realizes that by relating the neurotic and bysterical mores of the 'tens and twenties to an uncompromising spade is a spade estimate is in itself a very profound attitude. Naturally very few of the writers attempted to impose their ideals upon their environment, Its analysis sapped all their energies, With the advent of the thirties there appeared on the scene for the first time in many years the rebellious partizan. "The whole of the peetry of Auden and Spender and C. Day Lewis implies that they have desires and hatreds of their own and further that they think that some things are to be desired and others hated.a (MacNiece). The world had become a challenge once more with the important difference that these new young men were not so much interested in measuring their strength against it but in attacking its worst aspect i.e. capitalism. The hero in this last metnmorphosis appears in the garb of a missionary with his book of ideals and his sentimental gesture. There had been no fundamental departurG from the general morality of their immediate predecessors. They still analysed only their attack had become political and they possess a Plan. This partizanship made reaching demands on the new school of writers. Too often the villian became a caricaturG of the real thing -the pip-pip game loving moron instead of the clever ingenuous being he really was; but their worst failure was in the treatment of the positive character (the hero) who by reason of his identification with the correct belief became an anxious Sir Galahad who retained his aitchGs and flourished a copy of Marx. In this connection one might recall the Dos Passos personnage; how mucl~ more convincing are the down at heel sailors bumming their way from port to port, the drunken business men, the busy whores than the uprightly indignant partizan. The love their creator bore for them only too often resulted in their death much as a mother kills a spoiled child by over-pampering. They were too good to believe in and it is partially for this reason that many of the newer writers havG of late dropped partizanship but only to find themselves in the mystic camp which a few years ago they were attacking and attacking so effectively. Their croquet mallets, like Alice's~ have turned to flamingoes. Much of this change had to do with a surge of over-optimism, a feeling that we recognize things are bad, here is the solution, now that we understand it and are with you, Utopia should arrive in the next mail. From his college vvindow the writer saw a force with which he thought he could ally himself and, not forgetting his blazsr, he ran to join it as if to join the angels. It took him many years and a war to recognize the bitter historic realities of revolution and social change~ He had not missed the train but rather, when he climbed aboard found that the damned thing would not pull out of the station. This inefficiency disheartened him and he went in search of other railroads which although they didn't lead to Utopia provided him with an immediate satisfaction. He had found that he had overanticipated and, in disgust, he withdrew withi~ himself, Auden wrote a poem whose main aim seems to be to show the world that he has read Maritain and Kieregaard while Isherwood seems to be contented in devoting his spendid talents to vv:riting for the expensive slicks. At best this latter pay-s. Again disillusion has become fashionable -for everything stinks, see Partizan Review; for totalitarianism is upon us, there is nothing you can do about it, I have been there and seen it so you shut up, vide George Orwell. By means of some comforting solipsism, Alec Comfort gravely asserts that he is anti-war but not (that is objectively) pro-fascist. Among the elderly writers Andre Gide discusses the fall of France in terms of flowers and frankly states that he is only interested in the esoteric. rlrt is just that the more they (thoughts upon V\hich everyone agrees) are shared, the less it matters to say them; whereas the others (thoughts which occur only to Gide) if I do not express them they are lost, tr -as if most of the greatest in art was not concerned with ideas which are common to everyone. This disillusion transcends that of the twenties and tens in that it is an almost complete rejection. At least the others thought that there was something to be analytical about. In the face of such an attitude (which i .s one with the bellicose antithesis of the neo-imr,erialists) Spender finds it necessary to assert -credit to him -the ordinary human values. The great wave of American naturalist writing is receding. Its dean, Dos Passos, has just written a novel whose leading character (the one who bears the body of its assertion) has, it appears? given up the mass in order to plunder it. 1·The hero is dead after a brief but·-false resucitation during the thirties. VVhat is there left, they seem to say, but our pacifism or their Roosevelt, their Van Wyck Brookes and ]11acLeish, and their hurrah for every piddling concession vvrung from the ruling class, for every Beveridge and Marsh report, their halloo for the new internationalism which means a Stars and Stripes and, perhaps, a Union Jack in every drawing room? In the meantime the Soviets·_Jplod on and we hope that the world will totter as we think it should. There is still much left to destroy with the honestly destructive realism of a Joyce or an early Dos Passos. The hero cannot be a~ticipated. We shall have to wait for a new Renaissance, but there is no reason why we cannot prepare for him. We still can fighte -13 NCT E: Much of the foregoing appears to fall within the realm of rmeasy generalization. For instance to say that all the writers of the Renaissance accepted the world in which they lived is not true (for example More) but to say that most, including the greatest, did is true. The same holds for the disillusion I have attributed to today's authors, Spender, MacNeice, Sholokov, etco may be advanced to qualify this generalization. However there can be little doubt that a rejection of humanism has infected most of the North American writers (those who concern us most) whether they be Americans (Allan Tat•) or Englishmen linng in the U. S • Ac (Auden ) • We would remind our readers that we welcome contributions, although we are not able to pay for them at present. Subscriptions ($1. per year) and manuscripts should be sent to M~s, Kit Shaw, 5593 cote St, Luke Road, N. D. G. , r~ontreal.