Winnipeg Free Press

Winnipeg Free Press (Newspaper) - August 17, 1963, Winnipeg, Manitoba Winnipeg free press saturday August 17, 1963 on being a. Poet in Russia empires come and go from in camera Home is where the cat is by Gene Telpner cats in camera photographs by Jan Styczynski Toronto Andre Deutsh. S3.7s. To definitely in t necessary to be a Al cat Lover to enjoy the appealing photographs in this volume. Admittedly photographer Jan Styczynski s cats come mostly from Poland but a cat is a cat regardless of his habitat. The talented animal photographer has captured Alley cats furious cats cats on the prowl rampaging cats sedate cats in fact just about every facet of feline life. In a preface by Beverley Nichols the Reader is told that this is the first Survey of the feline world to emerge from Poland. According to or. Nichols the Alley cats in the Book Are As untrammelled piratical and sometimes As for Lorn As the Alley cats of Liverpool or Stepney. Perhaps those who know English cats Well May nod agree ment. One thing about a cat the animal is a natural actor does t flinch in the face of a camera. Cats have the ability to give expression to a situation and hardly anything can ruffle their dignity. These Are not Mere studio port Raits but More of a cats As cats can. An unusual picture Book with a lot to recommend it. Particularly if cats Are your dish. . S by the Way Many years ago while Reading d. H. Lawrence s studies in classic american literature i was interested in his comment on j. Hec Tor St. John de Crevecoeur. Law rence said Franklin is the real practical prototype of tie american Crevecoeur is the emotional. To the european the american is first and Foremost a Dollar fiend. We tend to forget the emotional heritage of Hec Tor St. John de the title of Crevecoeur s Book also fascinated me. It is letters from an american Farmer. Between 1782, the Date of its publication and the present age Crevecoeur s Book has been published in Many editions but i never found one in a Book store and always neglected to order a copy. The new american Library of Canada limited has now furnished the missing volume publish ing it As a Signet classic for 95 cents. And the publisher has included Crevecoeur s second Book sketches of eighteenth Century am Erica to round out the author s Pic Ture of the land where he was an immigrant among immigrants. Crevecoeur was born in France in 1735. He received a so und Educa Tion and in 1755 joined the army As a Cadet. His. First took him to new France and during the next four years he became an efficient military Engineer and map maker. He was wounded at the Bat. Tie of the Plains of Abraham then got into some obscure trouble with the French military authorities. He sold his commission changed his name to j. Hector St. John and in december 1759 he had reached new York. From new York he travelled to Many areas had glimpses of the great Western wilderness and apparently understood the British colonists mainly because he had Al ways admired the English. After Many years the Reading of letters from an american Farmer was not a disappointment. Out of a colonial environment with literary achievements limited to Dull his tories sermons and psalm books Crevecoeur s work stands out As a signal achievement. It is emotional literary modern and As american As Copley s paintings. For students of the Frontier it is Well Worth Reading. Gun fighting dentist Doc hoi Uday by John Myers Bantam 40c. A television viewers who in Al Joyed the Wyatt Earp series will be avid readers of this documented Story of Doc Holiday. John Henry Holliday dentist Gambler and gunfighter spent the last 15 years of his life in tie old West. He lived on cheap whiskey and the earnings of Lence. I suspect that Rich of his life Story is legend but if you Are interested in the outlaws who dominated the american West 75 years ago. Doc is an excellent example. . Precocious autobiography by Yevgeny Yevtushenko Toronto Clarke Irwin. Or there Are two ways to criticize a such a Book As a precocious autobiography by Yevgeny Yevtushenko translated by Andrew Mac Andrew As one would the Auto biography of any thirty year old poet who is becoming Well known or As one would that of any Young rus Sian writer who is a product of the special conditions following Stalin s death. We have room to do both. I shall consider it in conjunction with the Penguin volume of his selected poems translated by Robin Milner Gulland and Peter Levi. If these two books were written by a Young English or american poet one would say that the poetry although not without Force and originality was not destined to last. The Youthful author is too interested in propaganda in throwing his weight about. In his own words we had flutes in plenty. What we needed now was the and so Yevtushenko became a bugler. One result was the famous anti semite poem baby set to music by it is Worth examining it in detail since it brought him in letters and also some bitter attacks. The poem appeared in 1961, and was called after a Ravine near Kiev where Many thou Sands of jews were massacred and buried during the second world War. It is a Short poem and has some thing of the sensitivity though not the imaginative technique of Early spender. Over baby Yar Rustle of the wild grass. The Trees look threatening look like judges. And everything is one silent cry. Taking my hat off i feel myself slowly going Grey. And i am one silent cry Over the Many thousands of the buried am every old Man killed Here. Every child killed Here. What is so unexpected is the end ing. Influence perhaps of Aragon Eluard when the last anti semite on the Earth is buried for Ever let the International ring out. No jewish blood runs among my blood but i am As bitterly and hardly hated by every anti semite As if i were a jew. By this i am a russian. A rousing piece of fighting prose the objective reviewer would go on to compare the Long Frey poem Zima Junction with summoned by and even imagine the influence of or. Betjeman and of american Rural poets like Frost both deriving from the turning to the autobiography the objective critic changes his tune. This is a remarkable Book under any circumstances and fascinating As coming out of Russia. It is a Book we ought All to read and our duty is our pleasure. He writes from the Quick. Every sen tence is alive conveying the essence of the author a vigorous poetical Young idealist for whom cynic is the worst term of abuse and who sees communism As the religion of the russian people and himself As one of a dedicated band whose task is to reassert the Hopes of the rus Sian revolution. This after several ups and Downs he now appears to be in disgrace with the authorities but he is in no sense a possible defector he harks Back to the pre Stalin an intellectual climate of Pasternak and Mazakovsky and Forward to a wider. International soviet culture. Books received seventeen by Booth Tark Motoh 184 pp., Montreal Bantam books. Sports shorts by Mac Davis 184 pp., Montreal Bantam books. Bloody Gold Peter Dawson 121 pp., Montreal Bantam books. By Cyril Connolly it is most interesting to see which Western writers and painters he admires. On the whole not always those who Are most available Picasso Max Ernst Chagall Henry Moore Sidney Nolan Leger and they the Young read Hemingway Remarque Salinger Kerouac and Kingsley Amis they see plays by Tennessee Williams and if one cannot be read As a non communist there is always a Chance that one might be taken up As an example of the decadence Suhich history has a right to expect from us. Yevtushenko s life Story May be accepted As fairly typical. Grand son of a mathematician and a peas ant revolutionary who were de ported to Siberia under the tsars and killed in Stalin s purges he grew up in Siberia Zima Junction where his father worked As a geologist. Nineteen at Stalin s death he Flung himself into poetry football and politics he is not a member of the party and was an instantaneous Success. I discussed love and politics with tractor Drivers in the Altai i argued about Stalin with fishermen on the Volga. I talked with Tiger Hunters in the far East about the Best Way to Stop wars debated happiness with crab catchers in Kamchatka and poetry with Vine growers in Georgia. I mostly listened of course in the changed conditions in our coun try not even the deadliest words had the Force they had had before. My verses were still printed Roy books came out and i went on read ing my poems in the lat est edition was of copies what is wrong with Yevtushenko is that the simplicity tinged with exhibitionism which is characteristic of his poems about childhood and is now translated into propaganda leads him to take Short cuts and oversimplify the nature of Piv etry. His Book is too pleased with itself his poems rely too much on a snap in the Tail his admiration of hem Ingway takes in the obvious effects and not the toil with which they were achieved. It is not the most favourable Prog Nostic that he should now be writing a novel. Perhaps his role is to Blaze a Trail for poetry which greater poets can now follow secure in the Protection which he has obtained for them and in the new enthusiasm for poetry which he has helped to create. But of course he could not have Given us such a Good autobiography were he not a genuine poet. Let us Hope he is the first of Many. Copyright 1963 the seeing Tennyson Plain by Robert Saunders Tennyson laureate by Valerie Pitt 292 pp., Toronto University of Toronto press. Tote Don t sneer at tie Victor to ians any More. The clever1 ironies of Lytton Strachey and the Bloomsbury set have worn thread Bare. Now amid the wreck of pub Lic morality and the shifts of political Power we see the Amaz ing men of 19th Century England for the giants they were. Ruskin and Arnold Are listened to with increasing respect. Mill on Liberty and Morley on Compro Mise have found new readers. Even Carlyle before he got bitter and started shouting had much to say that is still Worth hearing. And what about Tennyson he used to be the chief target of the sneer ers and belittles. He was the Man who sold the pass who had sacrificed his integrity who had used his undoubted poetic talents to sing the praises of the Compla cent materialism that was supposed to be the hallmark of the victorian age. It was Here that Strachey and his disciples went wrong. The victorians were anything but Compla cent. They knew All too Well on what a fragile basis their pros Perky rested. The Prospect of class War terrified them. Spiritual doubts tormented them. Strachey found this especially amusing chaos they Felt threatened them on All sides. This is Why Tennyson s poetry struck so responsive a chord. In her Wise and perceptive Book miss Pitt shows that Tennyson Felt in tensely All the doubts and fears of his age. He knew them at first hand because the death of his great Friend Arthur Hallam had shattered his universe. The Bright dreams of his youth had turned into a hideous Nightmare. I falter where i firmly trod and falling with my weight of cares upon the great world s altar stairs that slope through darkness up to god. I stretch lame hands of Faith and Grope and gather dust and chaff and Call to what i feel is lord of All and faintly Trust the larger Hope. Miss Pitt goes on to Trace the poet s agonized pilgrimage Bis search for some gleam of Hope in a world turned cold and forbidding. In his in memorial he Lias re corded his struggles and his final spiritual Victory. Beside this the blustering optimism of Browning seems curiously shallow. Miss Pitt a lecturer at Cardiff University writes of Tennyson with sympathy and discernment. The inaccessibility of the Tennyson manuscripts has since Liis death disguised his methods from us. Miss Pitt has been Able " to Trace the making of in memorial through its various manuscript stages making use in particular of the nearly Complete manuscripts of the poem now in the Ussher gallery in Lin Coln the existence of. Which was not suspected until a few years ago. Tennyson the tormented Doubter Speaks to us in 196? with a living voice. And review ;