PK.PAGE N.SHAW B.RUDDICK PANDERSON ERSCOTT 
SEPTEMBER 1942 MONTREAL CANADA STEPHEN SPENDER AND THE TRAGIC SENSE 7 THE following quotation from Karen Horney's THE NEUROTIC PERSONALITY OF OUR TIME will serve me for an introduction: 'In spite of all the happiness life can afford, it is at the same time full of inescapable tragedy. Even if there is no particular suffering, there still remain the facts of old age, sickness and death: in still more general terms, the fact remains inherent in human life that the individual is limited and isolated- limited in what he can understand, achieve or enjoy, isolated because he is a unique entity, separate from his fellow beings and from surrounding To understand this is to have the tragic sense of nature'.... life- 'La tristeza que tuvo tu valiente alegria'- the sadness in your valient gaiety, as Lorca once wrote of his friend the bull-fighter. It is to share the unhappiness of the Duino Elegies: to possess also something of the detachment towards social theory and political set-up which was characteristie of both these poets. This sense will readily align itself with romantic individualism and will be inclined to temper Marxism with psychoanalysis. The tragic' poet will be aware that much of the stuff of poetry lies beyond the social struggle altogether: he will annoy his more practical friends by seeing special cases everywhere and cancer or loneliness where others can detect only the historical position or the secret police. At his rare best he will, despite his pessimism, achieve an understanding and humanity so intense that his work will transcend his detachment and become a part of the movement from which he may seem personally to stand aside. Thus Lorca, who took no side in the Spanish war, wrote poems so utterly Spanish in character, so full of the temperament and aspirations of the people, that they were recognised as the dominant cultural inspiration to victory. Almost always a tragic attitude will conflict with the mass of articulate public opinion in war-time, even though the greatest tragedies of all are being enacted. Morale requires a patriotic optimism, an ability to translate groups of men into abstractions, to move flags over maps, to withstand adverse news and to recognise the teleological aspects of death: by its very immensity it numbs responsive feeling. Wilfred Owen's 'pity' is drowned out by the mass meeting or by Sholokov's vigorous plea for a 'Science of Hatred' The poet often feels himself a sort of potential fifth columnist. He realises only too well the confusion of war aims, the fact that we are using a bad system to combat a worse, while he tries to reconcile a struggle for freedom with re-actionary leaders, and war as heroism with war as catastrophe and disaster. His only certainty is the despicable character of the Nazi death-in-life. Is this why no great war poets have appeared as yet? Is the bourgeois poet's view, comprehensive rather than combative and more elegiac than propagandist, incompatible with the Atlantic Charter or the Party Line? I am led to these questions by the appearance of a new book by Stephen Spender, RUINS AND VISIONS 
(Faber), which is curiously full of melancholy personal poems (it opens with 'A Separation' and closes 'To Natasha') and is almost wholly negative in outlook. Certainly Spender's is the tragic view; he could have taken my quotation from Dr. Horney as his motto. Here are poems ond sickness- 'Poor girl, inhabitant of a strange land / Where death shines through your gaze'- and on Shall I remember to forget. death- 'Oh how, when you have died,/ Here is the problem of isolation- 'Stretching from lonely birth to lonely / Death'- and of limitation also- 'Born, you're dead: loving, are sad.' But most remarkable of all is the detached and despairing note of the poems on war. Can this be the same poet who took such an active part in support of the Spanish Government? one asks oneself, meanwhile recollecting that thousands, perhaps millions, of pithy little verses are being distributed monthly amongst the Soviet troops and that many of these, whether good or bad and I imagine neither, are from the pens of the principal Russian authors. Spender speaks of the 'boring burned city' in a world 'Where of 'the perpetual everything stops but the wishes that kill' and pleasures winter / Of this violent time, where freeze.' IH 'June 1940' a dead soldier says: 'I lay down with a greater doubt That it was all wrong from the start: Victory and defeat both the same, Hollow masks worn to shame Over the questions of the heart. Such poems illustrate with great poignancy the problem of the artist in war-time. They show even less of the 'affirming flame than has recently glowed in the poems of W.H. Auden: considerably less than the surpristingly successful red ballet directed by shall speak of love George Barker in his LAMENT AND TRIUMPH¬ .. on every first of September.' They are tragic to the point of being defeatist, personal almost to sentimentality. Is it then the fate of the bourgeois or democratic poet to lose himself in his 'death wishes' and nostalgias while new 'Rupert Brookes' and 'Wilfred Owens' spring up in the Red Army? I pose these questions but I do not foel capable of answering thom here. I am quite prepared to believe that the poet will usually, whether now or in a later and happier age, be the protaganist of a tragic view, somowhat in deviation to accopted patterns, something less than an ideal citizen in anything but the ideal city, But his detachment is, paradoxically, only another side to his enormous involvement. He must be overwhelmingly interested in life if he is to escape appearing defeatist in regard to some sides of life. He can only justify his lach of power in decision and action by his representative faculty, the quality of his cmotional involvewent. It is precisely here that Spender's book strikes me as thinamounting indeed to a failure of sonsibility. That Spender is extremely sensitive is obvious: he presents a strange but likeable combination of the indignant and the cuddly. I admire his work and the utter sincerity that lies behind it. What I deplore is neither his sonsitivity nor his detachment but the various restrictions of 
range and limitations of oublock which This book shows- the tendency towards abstraction, the absence of people and the 'feel' of people, the reedy public-school note. There is a lack of universality. One feels that war-time is at once more hopeful and more tragic than this. PATRICK ANDERSON of Lorca I am indebted to Arturo Barea's Note: For my reading articles in HORIZON. QUEEN STREET SERANADE What bantamweight champ is training this week at the Apex What fair young thing (under grease-paint) will knock them cold in the Casino With belly-rolls to traps who works the old beats the most at all the hotels, who has the best Who drinks dose, the best soft-touch, the best tips, the best set of bug-eaten lungs , the dust, the heat, the cheapness, the easy Is the dirt virtue, the hidden fear, the scream, the crazy laugh, Still on both sides of the coin No matter what day What hour you flip it WHO THE HELL CARES AT ALL THE BUGGER SVUIIG AT ME SAUCY JOE IN THE THIRD DOES SHE EVER GET HOT LAST CALL? GENTLEMEN BONG BONG Both sides of the coin tick of what clock what day what hour what AIRCRAFTSMAN RAYMOND SOUSTER 
lour 25 In the lab, flat on his back bedsores open, cyes closed Joseph A played Death adnirably. At first we were awod our senses unaccustomed. Laterwe stood with heart and brain raw in hand following channel and tract studying pulley and hinge, lung and gut that fanned and fed. And cities of colls. the thoroughfares of blood, the luxurious lolling in cye, the rich in tongue and car and the dark tough slum of the rectum. He, labourer, musele machine required daily 4000 calories:to contract the heart and to expand the lungs etc.-42% Specific Dynamic Action¬4% loads lifted, running to and fro¬37 leisure activities (pursuit of happiness, defense of freedom etco miscellany, Acts of God ete --57. Age crept like a vine within the skull. Repetition of days, like centrifuge whirled the frayod mind among its comic-strip constellations. (Ho droamed a Face in The Sky. Heard the unctuous assurance. ) Then the lode in his brain sank in his salt red flood, While the Old Boy sat there he played his part told his tale. Milquetoast become Daniel. BRUCE RUDDICK — 
— 
.7 POEM I have seen the mottled man upon a branch, Have known him play with silver sound That froze the air with metal-work. Have chased the sacred through their halls Where pictures only stare at walls. Have died in desert lands And seen the stones mark silonce with the sands. Watched pike man slope his startling spear And hoist his flapping lion on seas Which neck their isles with necklace foam. Have found myself to grin at fires Seen houses spill themselves unmarked, Caught speed and pulled myself On feathered backs, Then wondered that the story thus myself. Should fix itself upon NEUFVILLE SHAW x. AS THE SUN FLOWS. he has the fluidity of sunlight flowing over the flat bland marshlands there is an everywhere at once spread-out light upon him, with what a tense exclamathe sun on the white sands runs but tory brightness----this is the rhythm of some, and for one the nearest to consumation is the hand on the window ledge one with the sunrise but not with him, not with the rest of the darkoned flesh over the edge of the sill, the hand flows with the silemtsilk river of light cut off at the wrist from the body's tharst for inundation, the cry in the river beds of the thigh and the parched valley sockots of the eyes; while he, the first, points not a shexpened pencil of light to truth in a tree or text in a ctoud, he is not proud enougk to leap into light to build himself to a statue of light on a mound of earth----he flows as the sun flows with the earth. KAY SMITH — 
page six WRITER He turns his deadskin memories to the day and he dies daily writing his doom's diary while body's white career is his carrier in time across a plain of life and paper. Persisting in the dogdays of declining summer on the redletter days like a latterday saint, on serious sundays blurred with workers' sleep he writes his notes, and counts the months of war. Blood soaks the calendar in the threatened room as cities fall on days where lovers hide and clockwors time with its monday moniter alters by tearing leaves and scaring love. Loss is by kiss, a death in the double mouth, as railways run by homes to ruin them: but in bare days he finds a winter's work and swears that time, his murderer, shall talk. ANIMALS Animals always real and royal and always at other corners and levels their cruel encounters where the perfumed boughs are logical with desire in a second landscape greener and darker than oursShall we hunt them, then, with athletics and morphine to the tangles of jungle they travel so silently eating, a long way off, the surveyor's map or worrying hidden things we owned in dreams? These, the tangential ones, who fierce with absence outrun the eye and bolt through the hole of go, the alien lion and the artistic gazelle behind the picture of ferns that startled Paris: We who own our national beasts in the circus of mathematical dust and of dry flags only while the sleeping girl in her nightmare screams and sees fluent in Portugese, her elegant vampire? PATRICK ANDERSON 
page seven THE GREEN BIRD I cannot escape the fascination of doors, the weight of unknown people who drive me into myself and pin me with their personalities. Nor can I resist the desire to be led through shutters impaled on strange living-room chairs. and Therefore when Ernest stood very squarely on his feet and said: "I am going to call on Mrs. Rowan today and I hope you will come, I said "Yes." The desire to be trapped by old Mrs. Rowan was strong er than any other feeling. Her door was particularly attractiveset solid and dark in her solid dark house. I had passed by often and seen no sign of life there-- no hand at the window, no small movement of the handle of the door. We rang the bell. A manservant, smiling, white-coated, drew us in, took our coats, showed us into living room. the "So it is this," I said to Ernest. "Beg your pardon?" He crossed his knees carefully, jerked back being introhis head with the abstracted air of the public speaker duced, leaned his young black head on Mrs. Rowan's air. t is this, " I said. "No ash trays, " I said. "But I don't smoke," said Ernest. Mrs. Rowan came then. There were dark bands holding a child's She sat as though she were our guest face onto a forgotten body. and we had embarrassed her. Ernest handled the conversation with an Oriental formality aided by daguerreotype gestures. Mrs. Rowan responded to him-- a child under grey hair, above the large loose shambling torso. She talked of candy and birthday cake. She said proudly she didn't like radios. I said, „Music," and looked about startled as if someone else had said it, suddenly imagining the horror of music sounding in this motionless house. She said, "But you do miss hearing famous speakers. I once heard Hitler when I was in a taxi." She said, "We will only sit here a little longer and then we will go upstairs. I have an invalid up there who likes to pour tea." I felt the sick-room atmosphere in my lungs and my longing to escape it was a strong hand pushing me towards it. I imagined the whole upstairs white and dim, with disease crowding out the light. Mrs. Rowan said, "We will go now," and we rose and followed her up the carpeted stairs and into a front room where a tea table was set up. There was a large silent figure in a chair. "Miss Price, the invalid," Mrs. Rowan said, "insists on pouring the tea. She likes it. It gives her pleasure." The figure in the chair moved only her eyes, staring first at Ernest and then at me. Her face was lifeless as a plate. Mrs. Rowan continued to talk about her. "She's been with me a long time," she said. "Poor dear." And then. „It's quite alright. Her nurse is right next door." She introduced us. Miss Price sucked in the corners of her mouth and inclined her head slightly with each introduction. The white coated grinning manservant brought in the tea. "You can pour it now," said Mrs. Rowan and Miss Price began, slowly, faultlessly, with the corners of her mouth sucked in and her 

8 eyes dark and long as seeds. She payed no attention to what we said about sugar and cream. She finished and folded her arms, watched us without expression. Mrs. Rowan passed the cake stand. "You eat these first," she said, pointing to the sandwiches, "these second," pointing to some cookies, "and this last," indicating fruit cake. My cup rattled a little. I pretended to drink my tea, but felt a nausea--the cup seemed dirty. Ernest leaned back in his chair, said, “Delicious tea' Miss Price sat with'her arms folded; there was no indication of life except in the glimmer of her seed eyes. "Dear " said Mrs. Rowan suddenly but without concern, "you haven't poured yourself a cup." Miss Price sucked in her mouth, looked down into her lap; her was hurt. face "No," I said. "You must have a cup too." I laughed by mistake. Miss Price looked up at me, flicked her eyes at mine with a quick glance of conspiracy and laughed too, in complete silence. Mrs. Rowan passed her a cup and she poured her own tea solemnly and folded her arms again. "Before you go," Mrs. Rowan said, "I'd like to give you a book-one of mine. Which one would you like?" Why," I said, looking at the cake stand which had never been passed again and stood with all the food untouched but for the two sandwiches Ernest and I had taken, "why----" I wondered what I could say. I had no ilea that she wrote. hy," I said again and desperately, "I should like most the one you like most.' Miss Price flicked her eyes at me again and her body heaved with dreadful silent laughter. I like them all," Mrs. Rowan said. "There are some that are vritten about things that happened in 300 B.C. and some written about things that happened three minutes ago. I'll get them," she said and vent. Ernest was carefully balancing his saucer on his knee, sitting very straight. There was no sound in the entire house. "I hope you are feeling better, Miss Price," Ernest said. I saw the immense silent body heave again, this time with sobs. Dreadful silent sobs. And then it spoke for the first time. "They cut off both my legs three years ago. I'm nothing but a stump. And the sobbing grew deeper, longer. I looked at Ernest. I heard my own voice saying, "Such a lovely place to live this--so central. You can see everything from this room. It looks right out on the street. You can see everything.' Miss Price was still now, her face expressionless, as if it had happened years before. "Yes," she said. "The parades," I said. "Yes, the parades. My nephew's in the war." "I'm sorry," Ernest said. "He was wounded at Ypres. My sister heard last week." Her arms bere folded. Her cup of tea was untouched before her, the cream in e thick scum on the surface. "Noy here," Mrs. Rowan came in, her arms full of books--like a chld behind the weight of flesh--covetous of the books--of the form ovfAe books, spreading them about her, never once opening their Covers. "Which one would you like?" she asked. 
page nine "This," I said. "The colour of its cover will go with my room. "What a pretty thought," Mrs. Rowan said and for some reason my eyes were drawn to Miss Price, knowing they vould find her heaving with that silent laughter that turned her eyes to seeds. "We must go," said Ernest suddenly. He put down his cup and stood up. I tucked the book under my arm and crossed to Miss Price. "Goodbye" I said and shook hands. Her seed eyes seemed underneath soil. Ernest said, "Goodbye, Miss Price," and held out his hand but hers still clutched mine. She beckoned to Mrs. Rowan and whispered, "The birds. I want to give her a bird." And then to me, "I want to give you a bird. Mrs. Rowan walked into the next room and returned with a paper bag. Miss Price released my hand and dug down into the bag with shelving fingers. "No, not these," she said angrily. "These are een. "They're the only ones, "Mrs. Rowan said. "The others have all uone. don't like them," said Miss Price, holding one out on a beaded cord. It was stuffed green srge, dotted with red bead work and two red cherries hung from its mouth. 'It's paddy green," she said disgustedly and sucked in the corners of her mouth. Never mind," I said. It's lovely and paddy green goes with my name. I'm Patricia, you see, and they sometimes call me Paddy." I stood in astonishment at my own sentences and Miss Price gave an enormous shrug, which for the moment, until she released it, made her fill the room. And then, "Cod!" she said, "hat a name." The scorn in her voice shrivelled us. When I looked back at her as I left she had fallen into her silent shapeless laughter. Mrs. Rowan showed us downstairs and called the manservant to see us out. She stood like a child at the foot of the stairs and waved to us every few minutes as the grinning white-coated houseman helped us into our coats. "You must come again and let Miss Price pour tea for you. It gives her such pleasure." Outside on the step I began to laugh. I had been impaled and had escaped. My laughter went on and on. It was loud; the people in the street stared at me. Ernest looked at me with disapproval. "What do you find so fünny?" he asked. What? What indeed? There was nothing funnylat all. Nothing, anywhere. But I poked about for an answer. "Why this," I said, holding the bird by its beaded cord. "This of course." He looked at it for a long time. "Yes," he said seriously. "Yes, I auppose it is uaint," and he smiled. It was as though a pearl was smiling. P.K.PAGE We would remind our readers that we welcome contributions, although at present we are not able to pay for them. Manuscripts should be sent to Mrs. Kit Shaw, 5593 Cote St. Luc Road , N.D.G. Quebec, Canada.