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Of LITERATURE EDITED by HENRY SEIDEL CAN BY ^-^-71330 - ' TEN CJSNTS A COPY Toward Civilization, by Charles A. Beard, on page 896 The Saturdqp Review of LITERATURE EDITED BY HENRY SEIDEL CAN BY VOLUME VI NEW YORK, SATURDAY, APRIL 5, 1930 NUMBER 37 Uncle Tom on Prohibition // / Could Utter The Unknown Poet* NCLE TOM'S CABIN" was a grossly By VIRGINIA MOORE By FRANK HILL unfair book, and yet no one has ever F I could utter one true word A LTHOUGH Geoffrey Chaucer is the most denied that the miseries of slavery which And then die, Zjk friendly of all the great poets of the world, it depicted might have happened, and did sometimes I I would be shriven strict and fine X .m. he is the least known. happen. In so far as it was a study of slavery, and Of a subtle lie. I do not mean that he lacks reputation: his repu­ notu sentimenta l melodrama, it was a study of the tation is justly great. I do not mean that his read­ Which birds know not, nor grass nor grain possibilities of slavery, and these possibilities dramati­ ers have been few: those who have read a little of Nor thick-sown dew, cally presented aroused emotions deeper than reason. him are legion. Yet to accept golden opinions about Nor sweet air pressing a man's lung's The economic argument for slavery was not so often a poet, or to get a slight acquaintance with him is And washing through. advanced, nor so quietly listened to, after "Uncle not knowledge. Either is far from that brooding Tom's Cabin" had run out its hundreds of editions. Nor anything which keeps itself familiarity with phrase and feeling which many of Someone will write "The Uncle Tom's Cabin" Itself, without flaw. us have for poets like Keats, Wordsworth, or Whit­ of Prohibition. It will not be another "Ten Nights According to a chartless clear man. And few have this for Chaucer, though many in a Barroom" or "John Barleycorn." There is Most difficult law. have sought it. Despite an infinite charm and hu­ little new to be said of the evils of unrestrained manity he is, in proportion to his importance, the alcoholism. This book will be a novelty, for it will Iced water of invincible truth most legendary of poets. show how Temperance in the U. S. A. was kid­ Would burn my head, This should be regarded as a fact, not as a re­ napped by a Reformer, and went wrong. I would lie frozen as new sheets. proach. An English poet, Chaucer wrote in a differ­ It may be a great book. The underworld, seeth­ And quiet as the bed. ent English from what we know. He himself ing with the profits of Prohibition, making its own brought his language to literary flower, and though laws, fighting its own battles, speaking its 'Own lan­ And gorgeous as a crowned queen And happy as a saint, it shaped the character of our later speech and writ­ guage, hke the barbarians in the Roman Empire, is ing, for purposes of literature it may be said to have ripe for inclusion. Bootleggers, hijackers, fire-breath­ My throat, my mouth, my lips at last Clean of a taint. died with him. In order to possess him, we must ing parsons, flaming youth, lying politicians, smug learn it almost as though it were a foreign ''mguag^. industrialists, self-deluded idealists of mate, rialism, are And Chaucer's peculiar misfortune (and ours) is all ready for use. But this book, like "Uncle Tom's that Middle English, while actually so different from Cabin," must be more than descriptive. It must Modern English, seems fairly close to it. We as­ have great protagonists and a theme more elevated sume it can be mastered with a casual amount of than drink-me, drink-me-not. This Weel^ study, and though it never is, the illusion of ease (,5* (^s t^w persists. Convinced that Chaucer is too English to The new humanists, who have been scolded for "The Women of Cairo." approach as a foreign poet, we are not honest enough to admit that he is generally but half-appreciated as producing no great books, might be of help here. Reviewed by PIERRE LOVING. Henry Ford has already challenged their defense of a native one-—that, though greater than Browning, "Gallows' Orchard." Tennyson, Byron, Wordsworth, or Spenser, he is the rights of Man against the needs of Thing. He Reviewed by AMY LOVEMAN. says (in effect) that the true end of man is pros­ less read on the whole than Macaulay, Longfellow, perity, and therefore man is born to produce. But "Eroica." or Goldsmith. Reviewed by HUGH L. SMITH. liquor, any liquor, interferes with production (love A poet in a lost language can be reached by go­ and laughter too, he forgot them! ) It dulls brains, "Vile Bodies." ing to him in his own speech, or by translating him and destroys inventiveness (witness fourth century Reviewed by STAXLEY WENT. into ours. With the great foreign poets we have Greece where they had wine but no Fords, or Eliza­ "The Crusades." followed both methods. I should like to believe that bethan England with ale but no factories! ) There­ Reviewed by GARRETT MATTINGLY. in Chaucer's case the first would be sufficient. Yet fore all liquor (and love and laughter.?) is rightly "The Painter's Craft." for many years every conceivable incentive to dis­ covering him in Middle English has been in opera­ forbidden by statute. Thus men are made safe for Reviewed by CHRISTIAN BRIXTON. machines, and civilization proceeds. tion, and there is no reason to hope for more Chau­ In the Mail cer readers in the future than we have had in the past. Indeed one of the curious and disturbing results By CHRISTOPHER MORLEY. The truth is that the number of people who will mas­ of this controversy over Prohibition has been the in­ "The Stock Market Crash and ter a dead language for the purpose of knowing one creasing disregard of human values. Both sides have After." great poet is never likely to be large, and in Chau­ been guilty, but the Prohibitionists most. They have Reviewed by SAMUEL ANDERSON. cer's case many have saluted him but few have halted the crusade against drunkenness and alcohol­ ism which so concerned the advocates of Temper­ "Columbus." learned to read him well. ance, and have thrown all their energies into war on Reviewed by GEORGE PARKER WINSHIP. On the other hand, Chaucer has suffered, as com­ the moderate drinker. Not the good life but a dry "Tu Fu." pared with poets like Homer and Virgil, from the life, has been their object. Their arguments have Reviewed by WiLLIAM HuNG. lack of adequate translations. Should we put him said more of money to be saved than of happiness. "Footlights Across America." in the same position as these foreign poets, we might Thev have seemed willing to ignore the filth of cor­ Reviewed by MONTROSE MOSES. end by getting a far wider and a considerably closer ruption and the evils of law-made crime if an out­ enjoyment of him. ward resemblance of obedience to a formula could The idea of translating Chaucer into our owrt be preservd. ^ j{ ^ U^xt Tf^eek^ or Later English is not new. It came to Dryden two hun­ dred and fifty years ago. It came at a later date The whole of literature is available—a historical Clemenceau. By CHARLES SEYMOUR. to Wordsworth, to poets like Percy MacKaye, and record far more trustworthy than written history it­ to distinguished Chaucer scholars like Skeat and Pro­ self—to show that man has never lived and never fessor Tatlock. Indeed, Dryden's "Palam.on and will live by economics alone. The whole of litera­ arousing concern by its violent irritation, but dan­ Arcite," a rendering of The Knight's Tale, and his ture is available to prove that self-control can be gerous only because it indicates an infection within. translation of The Nun's Priest's Tale, were widely learned, but that self-denial must be justified quickly. Drinking may be the excuse for, but it will not read for a hundred and fifty years. They were both Literature, as a whole, is a blazing argument for be the theme of, the new "Uncle Tom's Cabin." included by Lipscomb in 1795 in a complete trans­ Temperance, but a bomb for Prohibition. The vast That book will plunge deeper, into rifts of the lation of "The Canterbury Tales," done by ten majority of students and lovers of literature are hu­ American mind which are forming now as they manists in this respect as in others. They are for formed before the Civil War. It will deal with the * This essay, which will form the preface to Mr. Hill's Temperance, but not for Prohibition. survival of individualism, with freedom versus au­ translation of Chaucer's poems, are from the forthcoming volume, "The Canterbury Tales," copyright 1930, by Long­ This present disturbance over the Eighteenth thority, with the right to live as a man versus the mans, Green & Co. One of the poems will appear in a later Amendment is like a sore upon the face of society. duty to serve as a machine. issue of Tlie Saturday Reoieiv. PRODUCED BY UNZ.ORG ELECTRONIC REPRODUCTION PROHIBITED THE SATURDAY REVIEW OF LITERATURE, APRIL 5, 1930 authors in the neo-classical fashion, and containing Yet it is a poem of action also. Here, told with timental Lied, the moonlit lyric, and the ballad of Pope's translation of The Merchant's Tale.
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