Conversation at Midnight
by
[Harpers, $2.00]
IN Miss Millay’s new volume a miscellaneous group of seven persons, including a stockbroker, a Communist poet, a Roman Catholic priest, and Ricardo, the Epicurean host, talk and talk. They begin on the subject of hunting dogs, then range through songbirds, the labor problem, food, aviation, the machine age, advertisements, languages and jargon, hypocrisy, faith, capitalistic wars, music, women, Communism (in rather romanticized form), history, Communism (in less romanticized form), mushrooms, and again Communism (undisguised) — at which point one of the company threatens to sing and be sick, and two others to be sick with him. Thus flushed with alcohol, the conversation goes down the drain. Ricardo remains fastidiously the arbiter. He is the central figure, unswayed by passion, above the battle, and probably the poet’s mouthpiece. As a focus he is admirable, but scarcely strong enough to impose any discipline of logic on a chaotic piece of writing.
Since my opinion of this work as a whole is severely unfavorable. I must point out that it lifts toward poetry occasionally: —
. . . Midnight, Midnight, in New York. It will he almost dawn now
In Paris. . . .
... I fear not, friend, I fear that in Paris, too,
It is midnight, midnight in London; midnight in Madrid.
The whole round world rolling in darkness, as if it feared an air raid.
Not a mortal soul that can see his hand before his face.
In Paris. . . .
... I fear not, friend, I fear that in Paris, too,
It is midnight, midnight in London; midnight in Madrid.
The whole round world rolling in darkness, as if it feared an air raid.
Not a mortal soul that can see his hand before his face.
Though these lines fall far below the solar vision of Sir Thomas Browne’s conclusion to the Garden of Cyrus or MacLeish’s You, Andrew Marvell, yet the reversal of Joshua’s miracle is somehow impressive. More abundant are the flashes of wit: —
‘You can’t any longer even support your slaves in the slavery
To which they are accustomed,‘
To which they are accustomed,‘
or
Babel will not encroach
On Heavon, save at the cost
Of all communication lost,
On Heavon, save at the cost
Of all communication lost,
or
‘Don‘t shoot,’ says the crow in the cornfield: ‘I‘m an albatross.’
Such random felicities cannot redeem a 122page work which, to speak frankly, is unutterably dull as dull as a dictaphone record. To give the semblance of reality, the author has included pages of irrelevant talk; yet owing to a compromise with tradition in the form of Hudibrastic rhymes and loose, interspersed sonnets, she has lost all reality. And the mere phrasing is unworthy of one who, however one might suspect her substance, was a good phrase maker.
‘I’ve got an aunt who’s neither worse nor better
Than other people’s aunts; she has her ways, —
Disbuds her dahlias, occasionally writes a letter
To the Times; she’s going to die one of these days.
Than other people’s aunts; she has her ways, —
Disbuds her dahlias, occasionally writes a letter
To the Times; she’s going to die one of these days.
These Opening lines to verses in sonnet rhymescheme display the careless indifference of a poet who feels beyond the need of taking pains.
It would be tedious, and indeed unprofitable, to consider the form of the work, for that does not exist either in substance or in expression. Little is said that one would not hear at any conglomerate gathering, and it is not said well. There is no climax. The characterization is nebulous. The reader has thought of Ogden Nash long before Miss Millay confesses to his idiom on page 47. Let us hope that the patent unworthiness of this present book will persuade Miss Millay to a resumption of her real powers.
‘ Renascence’ is still an acceptable model.
ROBERT HILLYER