.,, 1AOFiTREAL, OA.1:-TADA. OCTOBER 1942 A 'JO~.!L]UNIOATION To the Editors of PrevievJ SIRS: Your _,,.~. Pat:i,ick .tu1.dorso~:1 in his nStephen Spender and The Tragic Senserr gives such a poor performance as a critic that, until he hao considered th,J position of the contemporary poet with the in tellectual honesty thG problorn demands, one is bound to suggest he content hi mself with the private circuses v1hich constitute his ovm poetry. l\'1r~ Anderso.t1 's articl2 can have value only as a criticism of his personal thought. PreviGw should set higher standards. ~:Ire .An.derson starts out 1Nith what is a loud but not vz;;ry signif icant bang when he places on t he record a long quotation from Karen Horney which in toto declares the essential isolation-insight ("the tragic sense 0) of the private-world poets (Lorca, Rilke 1 etc.). All this had become platitudihous until Mr . Jmderson ran across it. Not ·satisfied with this, h2 goes on to use the word 0 tragictt as an ulti mate critical yardstick~ ,_:.:hcreas its application even in the sense in v1hich ~Ir . .Anderson uses it, is extremely limited. In other vvords the [sum do0sn 7t stick: l-~r. Anderson's labels come off too easily. For a poet who has con::-·:j_stently developed an inner world of rcality, the vvord atragicri? us ;d empirically, is not only slick but also silly. Th2 wholG sorry busin2ss boils down to the fact that N[r , .Anderson is eit er incapable of resolving the conflicting dualism of his politico poetic world, or simply won't face up to the task. i':Ir. !u1derson recog nizes (good for him) that we aro by this time somewhere beyond the eternal reciprocity of tears; it is too late for that; but he cannot, like Rilke, rcaliz8 himself 0 in0ffa.bly individual as I am0 and accept the heavy artistic responsibility of synthesizing his attitudes. Vhat l1.Ir. Anderson fails to see is that the major English poets 1 achieved a -synth~:-sis early in tho 1930 1 s. For these poets, particularly Auden and Sp1.)nd0r 5 this war b ogan a long time ago. Auden wrote his major war poems in c}1e son110t s cc:uoncc Hin Time of War" ( 'He neither knew nor chose the Good, but taught us/ And added meaning like a comma' he says of the soldier in China ) and in the unE·Uccessful poem, "Spain". Spender wrote the disastrous rrvienna" and went on to write his scarcely more commendable Spanish poems$ Fon0 of the English poets of note produced anything of comparativc J112rit in their Spanish War phase: perhaps they had already writ-con 'the i:var' out of their blood. In any event, both -~udcn and Sp8nd0r u:ntorcd a period of p .::rsonal affirmation1 and both produced poetry charc1cteriz2d by a reaffirmation of integral personal valu.es a-~ a time wh2n ·the disintegration of personality caused by the advent of thl; main war ii.1eant a gr0at hu1~1an need for just such reaffirmation. nThe Doubl0 manH and "Ruins and Visions u constitute a 1nore genuine war poetry than evor appeared during the last war simply because thGse modern po0t;s proct.:0dod to build an ordGr of belief after they had mastered tlH:;ir normal horr or an6. indignation at th8 circumstance of vvar . The po2ts of the last wn:r aev2r got past thG recoil stage--they only • ' # • .. • ..... ., ...... .. ";, ....._ ,~. l.. •·--..- page 2 loamed to disboli8V0. Thus Ovvon vs own tabll~ of contents to his poems shows that ·what h8 has wri•cton is a chaptor of futility and disgust: ho was ovorwh2lrnod by his o·~·vn pity. Similarly Sassoon in a book of war poems called 0 Picturo-Shovvtt (the v0ry titlo underlines the ~~orarnic natur0 of th~ poems) suf:t\~rl.!d a co1nparablo ruaction but was not abio to absorb it into his oxp0rionco as 5rowth. Y8ats was right in a way h0 did not intoncl v-;hon he said 11passivo sufforing is not a them'3 · for pootryr'. Poetry 1s calamity howlers aro of courso clamouring for "tho physic-· ally torturod and indignant poot the man of actions and r0actic!>.ns, a positivc and plausible 0war po,3tl1• Nir-. Patrick /u1d0rson poops ovor thG shoulders of this hvrd vvith what arnounts to thG same look on his face. In a volume 3ntitlad uEight Oxford Poets" (1941) such poets have indeed ap,0ared on a minor but lGgitimato scale ('for all the Saints is no uso as a. i'Darching song novv/ God can l0t this ha:1pen without turning a hair/ Though he w.Jeps viith us 1 ) , but 0ven these young men are not altogother taken in; thoy disavow Auden and swan-dive into a ro.4nanticism of 'spiritual readjustment' (which r .atho:r turns out to be a pool without any water in it); anoth0r group of J3ritons has taken a header into the muggy waters of outright escapism (N-Jw Apocalypse); noith0r of these groups shows any signs of tho toughness n0c~ssary to come out of the pool and dcspite bombs _i.1.nd .bullet.ins build a h0avcnly mansion raging in thG dark; no r~al effort is made to 0ndorso principles of faith; inst~ad they busy tr1amselvos y_rith a0sthctic pattorns. The point is, however~ we are not likely to hav0 any 'war poets' in tho Old English or the School Tio s0nsc; for thirtacn_yca:rs we have b0cn 'involv_:;d 1: tho poet has little left exc0pt his own po.war to or.Jato and bGlievG. MorGover there is another consideration~ , The Eliots and the Rilkes and Joyccs Rnd Kaf'kas established the literature of a ·war-torn society. ~\Iuch of this was W8r litcraturc directly rGlat0d to the nature of the work boing done by men liko J~uden and Spondcr now. This is r5cognizod by Sponder when ho says (1941): 0 The world in which tho poet finds himself is ruled by forces which he.v~:) mad1.:~ lifo into f'. kind of death; a ~·nochanical proc0ss, vvith mGche.nic2~1 laws, i.nto v1htch liv0s arc flune;. Tho choice for th,J individue.l is oith0r to b0 dcstroy8d or corrupted. Hfodern poetry accept~) th0 in0vitability of corruption and tri2s to discov0r an innoconc0 E~nd a faith b-.°Jyond that· corruption.0 and this stA.temcnt is linkq_d with Eliot's line "WhEi.t is life? Lifu is denth, n and SpGndor shows tha-t 3liot 1s lj_no implitJs its opposit0 "What is claath? Doath is lifo. tt It is ·this. r0birth out of our v1ay of civilization that makes tho modGrn pChJt r0volutionory, much more of a revolutionary in fact than the politically-mind~Jd p3,rtisan who ·would insist on the necessity (even for the poet) of a social consciousness (~1ich ftr Patrick l:...i.11.derson passes off as r emotional involv0me:nt') as tho sine CJ.Ui?i. non of a rovolui:ionary spirit. The poJ..itical r2-for1n,Jr insists th2t th~ poot accept a politico-social outlook; it would be cr1ually fair and 0qually ridiculous if at tho same tin10 tho poGt maintained that on a pro ::cat2i. basis th0 political roforn:10r should ace.opt in profossional lif0 tn-.; poet's subj-.;ctivo and symbolic vell1os. I11r,, P2trick ./uidorson has be~Jn sold a bill of goods and is lorith to t ak(]