The London Mercury, Vol. I, Nos. 1-6, November 1919 to April 1920Various
General
The London Mercury, Vol. I, Nos. 1-6, November 1919 to April 1920
Various
English literature -- Periodicals; London (England) -- Periodicals
This volume contains fifty-two poems selected from Mr. Sassoon's
previous volumes, and twelve new ones. The former are far too well
known to need description at this date; but we think that even in
these, and still more in the new poems, there is ground for the
conjecture that those who think of Mr. Sassoon primarily as a savage
realist and satirist are likely in the future to be surprised. It was
a genuine and profound sensibility, tenderness, and a cheated passion
for beauty that produced his war poetry; not an innate predilection for
violence, vituperation, or caricature. Now the storm has gone over he
seems to be becoming more and more a poet of nature. The transition is
perhaps symbolised in the most beautiful of the new poems here printed.
It is called _Everyone Sang_, and concludes the book, so full of blood
and corpses, rats, evil smells, and all the turmoil and _débris_ of war:
Everyone suddenly burst out singing;
And I was filled with such delight
As prisoned birds must find in freedom
Winging wildly across the white
Orchards and dark green fields; on; on; and out of sight.
Everyone's voice was suddenly lifted,
And beauty came like the setting sun.
My heart was shaken with tears and horror
Drifted away.... O but every one
Was a bird; and the song was wordless; the singing will never be
done.
The book contains much that, however sincere, can only be described
as journalism _in excelsis_, but it is all inextricably mixed with
genuine poetry, and the collection as a whole, we suspect, will have
a permanent interest and value. Better than from a hundred histories
posterity will get from these poems a picture of how men felt and
looked in that world of
Sad, smoking, flat horizons, reeking woods,
And foundered trench-lines volleying doom for doom.
Their merits are never more clearly displayed than when they are
compared to the poems of the imitators who have sprung up like
mushrooms since Mr. Sassoon began publishing. These have taken his
brutal words, his more obvious attitudes, and the senile and complacent
objects of his satire; but in the copies the life is lacking.
ARGONAUT AND JUGGERNAUT. By OSBERT SITWELL. Chatto & Windus 5_s._ net.
At first sight this book looks like a revolutionary manifesto. Its
title is vehement and original, and its paper "jacket" is decorated
with the photograph of a negro head surmounted with a towering and
tapering wickerwork structure. It has no bearing on the contents, and
we can only assume that the author put it there because he liked it
or to arrest attention. Attention having been arrested, expectation
is disappointed. It is true that Mr. Sitwell often writes in _vers
libres_, and that he opens with a challenge and hearty proclamation in
the key of
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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