SUN'IDAY, NOVEMB~ER 9J, 1930
THE MICHIGAN DAILY
PAGE
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C : ' J
INTERPRETS
SHAKESPEAREAN
TRAGEDIES
K 'al RD S AMERICAN NOBEL PRIZE WINNER The
GRET uS1
1
Wheel of Fire:sEssays in Interpretation of Shakespeare's
Sombre Tragedies, by G. Wilson Knight, With an Intro-
duction by T. S. Eliot, Oxford Univrsity Press.
London, 1930. Review Copy Courtesy of
W ahr's Book Store.
ADDS TO FAME
FIVE MASTERS: A Study in the
Mutationsof t e ve :by Joseph
Wood Krutch: Jonathan Cape and
Harrison Smith, Ne: York lI0:
Price $3.50.
Joseph Wood Krutch merges sev-
eral critical methods and charm-
ingly resolve>s shmifiant research
into illuminating, frequently pro-
found, commentary on the lives
and work of five novelists. The
consistefnt intelligence of these
studies and the charm and clarity
of the style make Five Master one
of the most satisfactory American
critical works in sonic years.
The first three essays are com-
petent but very profoundly Origin-
al. Boccacie is strikin~1y explainedI
as a product of his age: thetypi-
cality of his work, as well as the
importance of it, Krutch probably
overestimates. The essay on Cr-
vantes is the most slender in th
book, though by approaching the
work through biography (Cervan-
tes' pitiful failure to at any point
to adjustrhimself to the world
Krutch arrives at an interestinge
thesis: "The soul of Cervantes was
far more bound up with that o
Lon Quixote than he imagined
when he made him so unequvo-
cally a butt." The essay on Rich-
ardson, written by a sardonic con-
temporary liberal, is charming re-
statement of critical cilon-
places.
Stendhal and Proust.
The essays on Stendhal and
Proust reach deeper problems-
primarily attempting to get at the
mechanism of artistic creation. A
French critic, Ramon Frnandez,
some years ago suggested ta
Stendhal's artistic process consist-
ed of the "biography of an imagin--
ary being composed with elerneaL
borrowed from nature and exper
ence of the author" and that L
Rouge et Le Noire was "the only
novel permitting intelligent com-
parison of author's ego with au-
thor's work."
K r u t c h admirably elucidates
these two points. On the biographi-
cal side, Krutch shows Stendhal an
inveterate introvert comically in-
capable of practically testing the
plans that tortured his sensibility:
the man who arrived at Paris "with
the idea of becoming a seducer of
women" ending up a grocer in
Marseillaise, in abject devotion to
a secondrate actress. This estab-
lished, Krutch then shows Stendhai
attempting to compensate for hi
comic maladjustment by imagina-
tive affirmation of his ego in nov-
els. All the contradictory impiuses
of his eccentric sensibility become
fused into the fictional doctrine of
Beylism: a doctrine which at all
points caters to and gratifies the
emotional needs of Stendhal the
man who was trying to live. This
transposition of an unsuccessful
life-personality into a fictional
character, probably represents the
exaggeration of a normal, frequent
mechanism of creation. ~
Proust's novel Krutch thinks of
as "a compensation for the absence
of active or vital impulses by the
cultivation of the pleasures of in-
trospection." The . plain facts of
Proust's life--a bourgeois, thwarted,
neurotic, introverted, develops a
desire to mingle with and a curios-
ity to know the aristocrat's world-
he interprets as a "retirement from
life and a penetration into that
particular world that was his." j
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REVIEWED BY PROFESSOR OSCAR J. CAMPBELL
Mr. G. Wilson Knight, with the aid of T. S. Eliot who writes an
admirable introduction to his book, attempts to define and execute what
is, in several aspects, a fresh and stimulating approach to Shakespeare's
"sombre" tragedies. The book, whi'ch has already controversial comment
?n England, includes two essays on "lamlet," one each on "Troilus and
Cressida," "Measure for Measure," and "King Lear."
The word "interpretation" is the key to the character of these essays.
The author in the first one draws a sharp distinction between criticism
and interpretation. The first of these terms suggests a deliberate objec-
kawft-
al Nttka.-
tification of the work; the comparison of it to other works, in order to
determine whether it is good or bad; and finally "a formal judgment as
to iLs lasting validity." The second term suggests an attempt to under-
stand a drama, for examle, in the light of its own nature. This attempt
leads ideally to the discovery of what T. S. Eliot calls the pattern of
a woirk, that fundamental meaning which gives a deep coherence to allI
the more obvious qualities, such as its fable, its characters, its vocabu-
lary, syntax, metric and cadence. Mr. Knight illustrates his meaning
by referring to the play Journey's End. Remove the background of the
war from our consciousness when we see that play performed and the
6, dialogue falls limp and the whole action becomes trivial. In certain
poets, like Dante this pattern is a philosophy; in Shakespeare it i's some-
thing at once less tangible and more subtle. Nevertheless both Mr.
Knight and Mr. Eliot insist that it exists and may be discovered.
The author's thi'rd essay in the collection called The Embassy of
Death: an Essay on Hamlet illustrates effectively his method. The themeI
Anne Douglas Sedgwick's Latest Novel of Hamlet, he says, is death; the Prince of Denmark is his ambassador.
.e LThe pain in his mind produced first by the ghost is suffused throughout
hows ChdOren of Divorce in N ew Light the play. His mind is prone to grave-yard meditations filled with the
SAAO SNES
THE FOOL OF M W iFAlIJLY: by
Mgaret K c n ai e d y: Doubleday,
Dran Co: Price 52.00. Review copy
courtesy of Wair's ook Store.
Continuing the s:a of the mad-
cap Sangers, Mrs. nnedy does
not disappoint by owerig the con-
3istenlty high level which she main-
tained in "The Constant Nymph."
The deftness with whlch she guides
,he children of Alfred Sanger
;rough the maze of the situations
which their own fierce natures
:reate for them, is rather to be ex
:ected in that it reflcts lher pas-
ion for the neat and precise which
s the hall mark of the English
authoress.
Thereis present in this latest
iddition to the story of "Sanger's
.ircus" all the delicate subtlety of
:haracter shading, all the exquisite
)athos of thwarted emotions which
vere not guided by reason, and all
'he lilting magic of description
which characterize Mrs. Kennedy's
vork. The fierce flow of life which
urges through the veins of all the
)angers is not here abated, and
;aryl,the eldest of the tribe, is
one the less a Sanger than -Sebas-
ian, living in a garret with
xemma, and composing melodies
ouched with the divine spark of
enius.
Music is again the background
gainst which the stormy battle of
motions, and it is essentially the
uiding hand which controls those
moitons, and it is esentially the
iotivation which determines the
utcome of the plot, for Sebastian
gels that it is enough to fill his
fe, while Caryl knows that the
eve of F'enella, to whom he had
ven the knowledge of herself, is
s much a part of his being as the
iusical heritage which his father
.,ft him.
M. O'B.
Margaret Kennedy.
PLXIUPPA, by Anne Douglas Scdgwick: Houghton, Mifflin Company,
Boston and New York: Price, 82.5O: Review copy courtesy of Wahr's
Book Store.
This book is a divorce novel of a new kind. Instead of the usual
child, wounded and left stranded in the social catastrophe, we have'
Philippa, an extraordinary young person, confident, radiant, and power-
ful, whose life is, indeed, the only one not ruined in the general wreck.
She is the center of every situation, the hub of the wheel of which
th y all revolve.E
She alone understands all the characters in the tragedy when they
do not understand each other. She alone views the play from both the
foot -lights and the pit. The father, mother, and step-mother are theI
ones who suffer intensely, and with whom we suffer as the author drives
her keen shaft of analysis deep into their souls.
_______- Between Aldous and his daughter,
well. Proust was endeavoring to see the author has succeeded in depict-
passing events as part of a static ing a perfect love, a combination of
.aternity in which the end is simul- comradeship and adoration. Even
taneus iththebeginin. Te Iwhile Philippa rages at the injustice
taneous with the beginning. Th e of hits desertion, and punishes hin
richness and novelty of his sensi- by refusing to see him (for Aldous
'ility and the brilliance of his style had never meant to give up this
child of his heart, she understands
for exploring it made a great novel, that he is helpless, just as her
But beyond this recognition of mother is helpless, and she forgives
interesting life and great. gifts, him
Krutch refuses to go. Ic does not occasional glimpss of a certain arti-
seem to be aware of the necessity ficiality of construction, a sense of
for moral judgement. "Living real- events too well "fitted," these fleet-
S. on- ig impressions are always swept
ity I met in moments of myvolun- away in the high tide of a master-
tary and complete recolection" ful analysis, brilliant characteriza-
Proust said. But an affective sparl: tion, and exquisite beauty of style.
is necessary to light these mo- -
physical circumstance of death, presented with remorseless realism.
His meditations skirt the terrors of the life beyond the grave. His knowl-
edge of death drives him from pain to cynicism, to madness, and to
murder. The world in which Hamlet must enter is sunlight to his dark-
ness. He introduces death into a court which believes keenly in life.
It abandons itself eagerly to Life's affairs- So Hamlet is "the ambassa-
dor of Death walking amid Life." A pale abstracted youth brings chill
to a world of light and bustle. This profound and sombre contrast is1
therefore, the pattern which the events weave. A reader unaware of this
misses much of the intrinsic beauty of the poetic drama.
This method can occasionally be made to yield new insight into the
larger poetic character of Shakespeare's plays. Its dangers are obvious.
Being subjective, unchecked by facts eternal to itself, it may produce
subterranean music so esoteric that it can be comprehended only by the
mind in which it originates. It may become disagreeably obtrusive by
interposing an alien vision between the reader and what he himself
beholds in a given play. At its worst, it substitutes the contemplation
of absolutes which remove the mind to a dangerous distance from the
action of the play. When, for example, Mr. Knight says that "the root
idea of Troilus and Cressida is the dynamic opposition in the mind of
the two faculties: intuition and intellect," he becomes absurd. He is
then merely reviving the old Hegelilan criticism of Shakespeare which
reached its ultimate inanity two decades ago in the work of Denton E.
Snider, the last of the St. Louis school of Hegelians. He made Shake-I
speare's work a mere appendix to Sociology. This book at intervals
makes one apprehend the return of the outmoded Hegelian method to
the field of Shakespearean criticism.
In spite of all these dangers, Mr. Knight's method of interpretation
is suggestive and valuable. It provides a healthful corrective for minds
devoted to a study of Shakespeare's plays in relation to their sources,
to those immersed in aesthetically irrelevant problems of literary
history. Above all, it is a healthful antidote to the poison of the skeptics,
who insist that Shakespeare was a mere Elizabethan playwright securely
imprisoned in the theatric conventions of his time.
Faculty Men Write
in Sewanee Review
The current issue of the Sewane
Review, October-December, contain
a group of poems by C. E. Burk
lund, English instructor in the Uni
versity and an article on The Ra
tionale of Graduate English Stud
by Prof. Howard Mumford Jones.
Professor Jones defends the "pro
fessor of English who ventures t
step into the field of cultural an
social history"-the type of schols
whose method Norman Foerster s
drasti'cally criticised in his book c
The Amercan Scholar. In the fir"
of what is to be a series of articdl
Prof. Jones defines the equipmex
the average graduatestudent po
sesses and concludes that "tl,
hardest single task a professor h
to meet is to give the graduate stu
dent a sense of chronology, of th
historicity of events.'"
We cannot make all the Ice Cream so we make the best of it
We cnnotTempting Thoughts for Tired Tastes
Cranberry Sherbet made from fresh shiny cranberries
makes a delightful dessert.
Pumpkin pies are ideal to top off the successful dinner, made from
Vanilla ice cream and crushed pumpkin.
Try this Specia
Phones 22553
ii:
Black Walnut
Tutti Frutti
Pistachio
"Ann Arbor's Best Ice Cream"
436 Third Street
ments: "a frame of sensations in
which the original experience is
preserved and caught again." Thus
ProusT's sensibility enacts a con-'
tinual fumbling for these "franes
of sensation." There is no ordered
progress through the activity of a
selective, evaluating intelligence;
but enly a striving for a multipli-
city of moments, almost mystical.
Proust's thecry of the intermit-
tences of the heart is actually a
subtle perversion of the normal
process of spiritual progress through
the intE-eaction of memory and
intelleet. Recognition of this seems
necessary to any integrated atti-
tude about Proust.
W. J. G.
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our stack way too large--We must reduce it at once-Note these cut prices
In discussing the novel,
states the commonplace
Krutch
things
I1
We find
PA L ER
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in
Organ
Reci'ta
v e r y Wednesday
afternoon at 4:15
during the school
shoes
Prs. of Fin $10.00 Pumps or Oxford s... $7.90
Prs. of New $8.50 and $9.00 Pumps and
Oxfords . . . . . . . . . ....................$7.45
Prs. of $8.00 Pumps and Oxfords, now... $6.45
Prs. of $7.50 Pumps and Oxfords, now.... $5.90
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3 Lots of $10.00 Shoes, cut to..............$7.90
150 Prs. New Fall $9.00 Shoes .....$7.45 and $7.90
7 Lots New Fall $8.50 Shoes ........ $6.90 and $7.45
100 Prs. $6.00, $7.00 and $8.00 Shoes $4.90 and $5.90
These shoes are in the newest leathers in black, tan or brown, smooth calf
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Gym Shoes and House Slippers all reduced
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