Mr. Ransom, therefore, though a modernist in his disrespect to himself, leans rather toward the sentimental tradition of irony. He insists upon the wit of his reader; he makes an appeal which it is impossible that the reader shall overlook: if the reader be slow in discovering the clues to the poet’s clownishness, the poet forces his clownishness in a way that the reader cannot mistake. It is as if a performing clown had made a deep but delicate joke against himself which the audience had missed. Bound to have his audience appreciate his mood, the clown slaps himself very hard and makes a long face. The audience now sees the joke and laughs. But the clown was obliged to brutalize his joke in order to soften his audience to him. It is a question whether irony, as a means of self-mockery, does not fail, in overstepping the disrespect which the poet wishes to do himself. For it adds a pathetic element, a tearfulness, which rarely is entirely sincere. In the main, however, the modernist clown, feeling a want in his audience, turns his back on it and performs his ritual of antics without benefit of applause. As he is not out to make anyone laugh and cry in the same breath, and as his audience is not likely to respond unless he exerts himself to do this, he relieves himself of the burden of an audience. It is for this reason that we find in modernist poetry so many examples of _pure_ burlesque, not in the trapeze tradition, but in the tearless, heartless tradition of the early Italian comedy. Miss Sitwell, as much as any modernist poet, belongs to this tradition: The wind’s bastinado Whipt on the calico Skin of the Macaroon And the black Picaroon Beneath the galloon Of the midnight sky. Came the great Soldan In his sedan Floating his fan,-- Saw what the sly Shadow’s cocoon In the barracoon Held. Out they fly. “This melon, Sir Mammon, Comes out of Babylon: Buy for a patacoon-- Sir, you must buy!” So far, so good. The poem is a fantasia, a sort of a mime-show, and the antic figures are expressed by obsolete romance words like Macaroon (a clown) Picaroon (a rogue) galloon (rich embroidery) barracoon (convict-prison) patacoon (Spanish dollar). The clown and rogue come out from the shadow of the prison dressed in their white calico pierrot costumes (see the cover of Sacheverell Sitwell’s _Thirteenth Caesar_) and offer a fruit to the great Soldan: as two old-style poets might offer their works to the great Public. Said il Magnifico Pulling a fico,-- With a stoccado And a gambado Making a wry Face: “This corraceous Round orchidaceous Laceous porraceous Fruit is a lie! It is my friend King Pharaoh’s head That nodding blew out of the Pyramid....”