Welsh Journals

a bullet. While we are still wondering how we can persuade people to read our poetry, Lorca's verse is being sung by the people and in the night-clubs of Spain and Latin America. Everything in the world of the eye from the moon and tambourines to revolvers and whisky hangs together unselfconsciously, coherently; his poems are not modem, they are timeless. He lived in the world and spoke the language of the world, not as a realist but as a poet: Lorca produced exegesis, never transcription. Quoting from the introduction to the Buenos Aires edition of his Complete Works, Federico never took the least part in politics," he lived with the people of Spain and spoke their language, he was against tyranny and violence, and for that he was shot: but he was never a political bonzo, he had a horror of such people. Hands off Lorca I The translation is accurate and enables the reader to follow the original set out on the opposite page which is all it need do. No one who realizes the mag- nitude of Lorca is going to be satisfied with an English version which naturally cannot reproduce the extraordinary beauty of the Spanish words, but will get down and learn some Spanish: this book will help him do that too. Senor Gili is a Catalan who runs an excellent Spanish Book-shop in London, and as Spender knows little Spanish, the credit for this competent translation is due to him. Spender has, I think, five or six translations on the market at the moment: this is no doubt good exercise for him but if he thinks that there is any similarity between his work and Lorcas' which fits him for a share in its translation, he is greatly mistaken. Spender stands for the mannered epithet, the bookish experience, the pseudo-modern Victorianism, in short for every tendency which deadens the steel voice and screens the biologists eye of modern poetry. Where music has already reached Bartok and Berg, poetry (and especially the Spender type of poetry) is mostly in the Edward German stage, and more often not in any stage at all. NIGEL HESELTINE. Danton's DEATH. George Buchner. (Tr. Goronwy Rees and Stephen Spender). Faber. 7s. 6d. I think the worst dream of Goronwy must still be the production of this prose- monster on a public stage. The first three acts are the sheerest thickest prose pages of dissertation about death and the deity in Act 4 we are treated to some poetry one would like to stand like this for ever the sun has gone down There is a reaper, his name is Death (no I), etc. The prose-section contains such brilliant dialogue as (p. 93), "Then how do you arrive at an imperfect effect from a perfect cause ? (answered by) Against that I ask can a perfect cause have a perfect effect ? and so on. May I ask what the actor is supposed to do while uttering these gems ? Does he make a face, stand on his head, or just sit down and discuss perfect causes ? If so does the audience join in ? No, Messrs. Spender and Rees, the audience goes HOME.