Trinity College Trinity College Digital Repository Trinity Publications (Newspapers, Yearbooks, Trinity Review (1939 - 1980) Catalogs, etc.) 12-1-1952 The Trinity Review, December 1952 Trinity College Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalrepository.trincoll.edu/review Recommended Citation Trinity College, "The Trinity Review, December 1952" (1952). Trinity Review (1939 - 1980). 22. https://digitalrepository.trincoll.edu/review/22 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Trinity Publications (Newspapers, Yearbooks, Catalogs, etc.) at Trinity College Digital Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Trinity Review (1939 - 1980) by an authorized administrator of Trinity College Digital Repository. t '7 december 1952 EDITORIAL BOARD THE TRINITY REVIEW Published by the Undergraduate Students of Trinity College BARNUM L. CoLTON Hartford 6, Connecticut Editor-in-Chief VoL. VII DECEMBER, 1952 No. 1 WINTHROP W . FAULKNER TABLE OF CONTENTS Executive Editor WILLIAM R. WHrrELAW A Note on Shelley ........................................ John R. Burrill Business Manager ::::::l Garden } ···························---- -- --William Laufer 2 Days After Victory --- -----··--·····--· ----·-·-·--·---------- --Jac1(_ Boyer 3 ROGER ]. HARMoN Fate ·--·-- -·-·----- ·--·-- ----·-------------- -.......... --------- -...... .]oh n H a.sler 4 Circulation Manager Mysticism ---------- -------- ------- --------------Walter. M. L. Brown, Jr. 5 Some Poems For Your Consideration ....Wilson G. Pinney 7 Gum Boots ----------- -- ---- ---·------- ------- ---- ---- ---- -----Patterson Keller 8 Voltaire: Man of Justice (a review) ---- ------ ----- -Paul Terry 10 The Snake ------- ------ ----- ----- ------- ---------- -------.Douglas S. Green 12 Fools' Tools ------ ---- ----- ------ ---- ------ --- ---- --- ----- ----- -- --.John Hasler 13 WILLIAM DoBROVIR America the Odorless ------ --- ---- --- ------- -William A. Dobrovir 14 ]ERALD E. HATFIELD ~;:~tioo } ······················································John .H&lcr 15 P ATTERSON KELLER To Dowse or Not to Dowse ----- ----- ----------Richard L. Hirsch 16 ] OHN SAMOYLEN KO Night Motor Guard ------ ---- -'- ----- ------ ---- ------ ----- --- --.Jac 1(_ Boyer 16 STEWART WooDRUFF Published three times during the college year at Trinity College. Address: Box 198, Trinity College. Subscription rates: 1 year, $1.50. Printed in U. S. A. by the Bond Press, Inc., Hartford, Connecticut. There are three nice things about the REVIEW: contributions, but rather interpretation and direc­ you don't have to buy it, you don't have to read it tion of policy. The content of the magazine is sup­ and you don't have to write it. What more could posed to represent the literary expression of the en­ you ask of a college literary magazine? As a matter tire student body. This is your magazine; if you of fact you do have to buy it, but the college makes have something worth saying, it is worth saying it it easy for you by taking the printing expenses out here. of your tuition. And many people do read it and The board is primarily interested in papers writ­ ten for the REVIEW and not for classroom work; if however, you feel that a paper prepared for a course would be of interest to the rest of the student body, the board will be happy to consider it for publication. On the following pages there are a number of articles worthy of the reader's attention. On page one, Mr. Burrill has some interesting ideas on ap­ proaching the poetry of Shelley. Mr. Walter Brown intelligently discusses Mysticism (page 5), and Mr. Paul Terry presents some interesting aspects of Voltaire's life on page 10. Short stories by Messrs. Boyer, Keller and Green show better than average a certain few even write for it. We are very grate­ writing ability we believe. ful to these last two groups, they make life inter­ esting for the motley group of board members. You have no idea how adventurous life can be until you We would like to call to your attention the ex­ try your hand at a literary publication. Usually we hibition of Amy Lowe Award Paintings hanging receive four or five articles by deadline time, and then, after a certain amount of begging and threat­ ening, we get a good number of articles, but there is always that air of uncertainty. We almost al­ ways manage to produce three issues a year, and we get some consolation by reading other under­ graduate publications which seem to have similar tribulations. The most trying problem of the REVIEW is that Trinity students do not become interested in it until their junior or senior year, which means in the second floor of the library. It contains some that most of the material submitted represents the excellent examples of modem expression in oil endeavours of only half of the student body. Under­ paint. Also worthy of . mention is the beautiful classmen, it seems, do not realize the nature of the presentation of Handel's Messiah by the Oratorio magazine. The REVIEW is made up of a nine Chorale under the direction of Herbert A . France, man board. The board's job is not the actual writ­ which was presented December 7 at the Bushnell ing of the magazine, although they make many Memorial. A NOTE ON SHELLEY By John R. Burrill I It is our conviction of the truth of what these state­ ments have in common, and the belief that this N reading a poet we should, ideally, remem­ truth refers to the bulk of Shelley's poetry, that is ber the tradi~ional ~hristian imprecation to the experience which keeps us from approaching 0 become as httle children again, or recall his poetry with complete innocence. Blake's demand for innocence as a sine qua non of true vision. But, for good or evil, any poetry calls II up different parts of our experience (and Blake The basic strategy of the Medieval poet was to knew something about this, too), and is judged by objectify his inner attitudes through the moral cate­ its relation to them. The most that we can hope to gories given him by his religion into allegorical fig­ do is to approach a poet, insofar as we can, in terms ures. In such 11 scheme, regardless of the feelings of our literary experience, aware that there are lim­ of the poet, 'Lust' and 'Avarice' would behave as itations in our ability to do so, but knowing that they were expected to behave. Blake said of Chau­ literary experience is in a degree public and capa­ cer, "-as Newton numbered the stars, and as ble of being shared and modified in ways that our Linnaeus numbered the plants, so Chaucer number­ childhood memories, our tastes for food, drink, and ed the classes of men." It was the class that was im­ the opposite sex are not. portant, and the classes were defined as moral ab­ For his own time and the Victorian age which solutes exterior to the poet. After Spenser the strate­ followed it, Shelley might, with some accuracy, be gy shifted and the emphasis fell upon the behavior spoken of as the "poet's poet," but we order these Df individuals in particular situations. Given this things differently today. We are reminded, for in­ individual in this situation, the poet asks how he stance, that Shelley was Swinburne's poet, and that would behave, or, as important to a poet, what he Swinburne is in no sense ours. Or, we cannot make would say. The individuals have become self con­ up our minds about Shelley without remembering scious, and argue the relative merits of alternate what Arnold has said of him and Byron, that "their moral absolutes, and ask which ones are operative in names will be greater than their writings." While their particular cases. The romantic poet combines we know that Arnold has his limitations, we also these two strategies in his own peculiar way: he know that he is not to be dismissed lightly, without, becomes his own hero (the Renaissance individual in as Mr. Eliot has said of Johnson, "having assimilat­ a situation), and he defines his own moral cate­ ed . .. (his) .. canons of taste." We could cite gories (the Medieval poet's church) . The poet's other occasions which keep the moderately literate standards become absolute, and there can be no reader from approaching Shelley with anything such thing as a failure of feeling or of imagination, like innocence, but we should only be skirting the since there is no exterior check, no reality to which main issue, which has been well attended in our they refer themselves except their own. time. Mr. Eliot has made the point directly: With Mr. Murry's formulation of Classicism I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed! A heavy weight of hours has chained and bowed and Romanticism I cannot agree; the differ­ One too like thee: tameless, and swift, and proud. ence seems to me rather the difference be· tween the complete and the fragmentary We are not likely to accept Shelley's feelings in the adult and the immature the orderly and the chaotic. ' this matter, and we are not apt to find them justi· Mr. Stevens, in a different context, and without all fied imaginatively in this case. Metaphorically we Mr. Eliot's irons in his fire, has said: have a weight of hours that chains, and while we understand what the poet is getting at, we are not The imagination is one of the great human poV:'ers .. The ro'?antic belittles it. The imagi· imaginatively gratified by such diffusion. Of the nat1on IS the hberty of the mind. The ro• last line we are inclined to ask why "too like mantic is the failure to make use of that li_berty. ~t i ~ to the imagination what sen• thee," rather than "not enough like thee," since trmentality IS to feeling. It is a failure of we don't expect to find the West Wind chained the imagination precisely as sentimentality is a failure of feeling. and bowed. These are prosaic considerations, per- Vol.