is also a heaven of blissful visionaq

experience; there is al& a hell of

t h n s of tone and hne is notably

heightened.
This is the beghning. There are
marvels ta come. Huxky posits the
reality s f other-worldly events. He
S e f i t X dl&
pE..liZtTitieiil Z i C o i l viincing way, with scientific accuracy
of statement.
I would not wish to divulge all
his secret% except to say that the
TXeaven- induced b y drug may in
some cases, and under certain condit i a x noted, turn into Hell. So
even in this Other W,orld there may
still be duality. Yet his last paragraph, before eight appendices, offers resolution, as fdlows:
There is a posthumous state of
the kind described in Sir Oliver
Lodges book Raymond; but there

the same kind of appalling visionary

experience as is suffered here by
schizophrenics and some of those
%-ho take mescalin; and ther.e,is also
an experience, beyond tiine, of union
with the divine Ground.
Throughout the book and in the
a p p e n d i c e s there are cogent examples of mans attempts to get beyond usual reality to visionary excitement in various arts and rituals.
W e t h e r the reader will rush out
and buy some mescalin I donot
knowe but he ,might well t u s h out
and buy a transporting book. It is
a book of vision, so to speak, paradoxically written in a most downtoearth manner.

Awful Orcs!

IN 1937, Dr. J. R. R. Tolkien, %R the alph,abets and grammars of the

Oxford don, published a childrens various tongues spoken by his charbook called T h e Mobbit, which had acters, and giving full genealogies
an immense success. The hobbits are and tables of historical chronology.
Dr. Tdkien has announced that
a not quite human race who inhabit
an imaginary country called the this series-the hypertrophic sequel
S1
1 ;It: and who combine &ne
charac- 10 T h e k - o b b it- is i n t e n d e d f o r
children, and i t
teristics of certain English animals . adultsratherthan
they live in burruws like Tabbits has had a resounding reception at
and badgers-with the traits of Eng- the hands of a number of critics who
lish country-dwellers, ranging from are certalinly grown-up in years. Mr.
rustic to twkedy. (The name seems a Richard Hughes, for example, has
telescoping of rabbitand
Hobbs.) written of it that nothing of the kind
They have elves, trolls and dwaris a3 on such a scale has been attempted
neighbors, and they are associated ,since The Faerie Queen, andthat
with a magician called GandaIph for width of imagination it almost
and a slimy water-creature called beggars parallel. Its odd3 you
Gollurn. Dr. Tolkien became inter- know, says Miss Naomi Mitchison,
ested i m his falrqr-tale country and uone takes it as seriously asMalory.
has gone on from this little story to And Mr. C. S. Lewis, aIso of Oxford,
elaborate a long romance, which has is able to top them all: If Ariosto,*
appeared, under the general title, he ringingly writes, rivalled i t in
T h e L o r d of the Rz9~g-s~
in three vol- invention (in fact, he does not), he
umes: T h e Fellowshzp of {the Ring, would still lack its heroic seriousT h e T w o Towers and T h e R e t u r n ness. Nor has America been behind.
of the King. All volumes are ac- In the Saturday Review I of Literacdrnpanied wit11 maps, and Dr. ~ o l - ture, a Mr. Louis J. Halle, authorof
klen, who i s a philologist, professor a book on CzuzEizcetion and Foreign
at Mkrtm ~ o ~ e of
g eEnglish Lan- Polzcy, answers as follows a lady who
--lowering, he says, her pince-nez
guage and Literature, has equipped
the last volume with a scholarly ap- has inquired what he finds in Tolparatus of appendices, explaining kien: m a t , dear lady, does this
invented world have to do with our
own2 You ask for its meaning-as
*Xougheon Mdilin; $5 each.
you ask for the meaning of the Odys. EDMUND WILSONS Red, Blick, sey. of Gmesis, of Faust-in a Cord?
live: Studies in Four
I

meaning than this is to be found ln

any literature?
But if one goes from these eulogies
to the book itself, one is likely to be
let down, astonished, baffled. The
reviewer has justread
the whole
thing aIoud to his seven-year-old
daughter, who
has
been through
T h e H o b bz t countless times, beginning it again, the moment she has
finished, and whose interest has been
held by its more prolix successors.
q n e is puzzledto
know why the
author should have supposed he was
writing for adults. There are, to be
sure, some details that arealittle
unpleasant for a childrens book,
but except when he is being pedantic
and also boring the adult reader,
there is littlein T h e Lord of the
R m g s over the head of a,seven-yearold child. It is essentially a childrens book-a childrens book which
has somehow got out of hand. since.
instead of directing it at the juvenile market, the author has indulged himself in developing the
fantasy for its own sake; and it ought
to be said at this point, before emphasizing its inadequacies as literature, that Dr. Tolkien makes few
,
claims for his fairy romance. 1na
statement prepared for his publishers, he has explained that he began!
it to amuse himself, as a philologi-
cal game: The invention of,,lan-.
guages is thefoundation.The!:
stories were made rather to provide
a world for thelanguages than the:
reverse. I should have preferred to
write in IElvish. H e has omitted,
he says, in the printed book, a good
deal of the philological part; but
there is a great deal of linguistic
matter
included or mythologi d l y expressed in the book. It is to
me, anyway, largely an essay in Enguistic esthetic, as I sornetlmes say
to people who ask me what it is all
about: . . It is not about anything
but itself. Certainly it has n o allegorical intentions, general, particular or topical, moral, reJigious or
political. An overgrown fairy story,
a philological curiosity-that is, &-en,
what The Lord of T h e Rings really
is. The pletentiousness is all 011 the
part of Dr. Tolkiens infatuated admirers, and it isthese
pretensions
that I would here assail.
The most distinguished of Tolkiens admirers andthe most con-

...

"

equipped critic of verse, m one, a5

h e y say, will dispute. I t is significant, then, that he comments on the
'1,badnessof Tolkiei?'sverse-there
is
a grFat deal of poetry &I T h e L o r d
bf the Rzngs. Mr.Auden is 'apparently quite insensitive-through lack
of interest in the other departmentto the fact thatTolkien's
prose is
ju$t a5 bad. Prose and verse are
the same level of professorial ,am=
tedrishnps. What I ,believe has mis-,
led Mr.Auden is his own special
preoccupation with the legendary
theme sf the Quest. He has written
a book abouttheliterature
of the
Quest; he has experimented with the
theme himself' in a remarkable sequence of sonnets; and it is to be
hoped that he will do something
with i t on an even %argerscale., I n
the meantiq~e-assometimes ,happens
with works that fall' in with one's
interests-he 'no doubt' so ovekates,
T h e Lord, sf the Rings because he
reads into itsomething that iie means
t? write himself. It is indeed the tale
of a Quest, but, to the reviewer, an
extremely unrewarding one. The
hero has no serious temptations; is
lured by no insidious enchantments,
perplexed by [few problems: What
we get is ' a simple confrontation-in
.mere or less the traditional 'terms of
British melodrama--of the Forces of
Evil with the Forces of Good, the ,
remdte and alien'villainwiththe
plucky little home-grown hero. There
are streaks of i,magination: the an, cient 'tree-spirits, the Ents, with' their
deep eyes,
twiggy
beards, rumbly
voices; the,Elv&, whose nbbi1i;y ,and
beauty is elusive and not quite human. But evenlthese are rather cluhsily handled. There is never much
' developmeni in the episodes; you
'simply go om getting more, of the
same thing. Dr. Tolkien has l i t t k
Sonnet in +?arch of a i Authbr
Nude bodies like 'peeled logs
sometimei, g w e off a sweetest
odor, man and woman
under the try in full excess
matching the cushion of
aromatie pine-drift fallen
threaded with trailing woodbine
a sonnet mlght be made of it

Might' be macle of it! odor of excess

odor sf pine needles, odor of
peele'd logs, odor of no odor
0th: than trading woodbme that
has no odor, odor of a nude woman
sometimes, odor of a man.
WILLIAM CARLOS WILLPANS

sGIl at n a h t i v e and rm instinct far

Iiterary form. The characters ' h l k a
story-book language that might have
come out bf Howard Pyle, 'and as
personalities they donoi
impose
themselves. At the e n d ,dfIthis long
romance, I had still no conception
of the wizard Gandalph, ,.who, i s a
,cardinal,figure, had never been able
to visualize him at all. For' the most
part such characterizations as Dr.
Tolkien is able to contrive are per-'
fectly stereotyped: Frodothe good t
little. Englishman, Samwise, his soglike servant, who talks lower-class
and resp,ectful, and never deserts hi3
master. These characters who are no
eharacters are involved in interminable adventures the poverty of invention displayed in which is, it
Seems to me, almost $athetic. On the
country in which the Hobbits, the
,Elves, the Ents and the other, Good
People live, the Forces of Evil,are
closing in,and they have to band
together to save it. T h e hero is the
Hobbit called Frodo who has become possessed of a ring that Sauron,
the King 'of the Enemy, wants (that
learned reptilian suggestion-doesn't' '
i t give you a goosefleshy fqeling?).n
I
spite of the author's disclaimer, the
struggle forthe ring doesseem to
have some larger significance. This
,.
ring, If one continues to carrr): i b #
confers upon orie special powers,
but it is felt to become lheavler and
heavier; it exerts oh onea sinister
influence that one,has 'to brace one- '
self to resist. T h e problemis, for
Frodo to get rid of 'it ,before hi can
succumb to this,iriflutnce.

wA

brilliantly rkasond )'and

inspiring view of America's

oppoktunities in a world of
revolution.
E "A sober, measured analysis
and critique . . conetruetive
and impressive."

"The

M e w Yorker

H'"Extreme1y useful and ehdlenging

a valuable contri-

. .

but~Qn."-lA#S RESTON.
"Timed Book Review

M. Yo

B y the author of AMBASSAbCMtRr

REPORT

NOW, ' this , situation does , mea*

interest;it does seem to haye possibilities. ,One looks forward t s a
queer dilemma, a new kind of hairbreadth 'escape, in which Frodo, in ,
the Enemy's kingdom, will find himself half-seduced irito taking over
the enemy's point of view, s o that
the realm of shadbws, and horrors
will cometoseemto
him, once he
is in it, once lie is strong in the
poymr of thering, a plausible and
pleasant place, and he will n a n o w b
escape the danger of becoming a
monster himself. But these bugaboos
are not magnetic; they are IcebIe and
rather bIank; one does not feel they
have any,rea1 power. T h e Good People simply say "Boo" to them. There
are Black Riders, of whom leve~-ydh~e
is terrified but who never seem anything but specters. There aye.dreadI

, $+SO

fuI hovering birds-thinink of it, hor- w l d e d volumes of what looks to tRis

elicrible birds of prey! There are ogreish reviewer likebalderdashhave
as those above?
disgusting Orcs, who, however, rarely ited suchtributes
get to the point
of committing any T h e answer is, I believe, that certain
overt acts. There is a giant female people-especially, perhaps, in Brispider -a dr e ad f u 1 creepy - crawly tain-have a 1iEelong appetitefor
spider!-wholives
in a dark cave juvenile trash.. They would not acand eats people. What one misses in cept adult trash, but,
confronted
pre-teen-agearticle,
they
all these terrors is any trace of con- wlththe
cretereality. T h e preternatural. to revert to the mental phase which debe effective, should be given some lighted in Elsie D i m m o r e and Little
sort of solidity, a real presence, rec- Lord Fauntleroy and which seems#
ognizable features-like Gulliver, like to have made of Billy Bunter, inEngGogol, like Poe; not like those phan- land, almost a national figure. You
tom horrors of Algernon Blackwood can see it in the tone they fall into
aboutTolkienin
whichprove s o disappointingafter , whentheytalk
the travel-book substantiality sf the print: they bubbk, the? squeal, they
landscapes in whlch he evqkes them. coo; they go on about Malory and
Tolkiens horrors resemble these in
their lack of real contact with their
vict~ms, who dispose of them as we
do of the
horrors
i n dreams by
s l m p l y p u s h i n g themor puffmg
By May
them away. As for Sauron, the ruler
of Mordor (doesnt the very name IT IS notstrange since, as we are
have a shuddery sound?) whoconcen- constantlyreminded,this
is an age
trates in his person everything ,that of criticism, thatironyshould
beis threatening the Shire. the build-up come one of thecanons in literary
for him goes on through three vnl- appraisalandthat
a work lacking
umes. Me makes his first, rather in this quality seems to -us to lack
promising,
appearance
as a terrible
seriousness. Tn contemporarycritfire-rimmed yellow eye seen in a icism the word irony is often coupled
water-mirror. But this is a5 far as we with the word maturity and a young
ever get. Once Saurons realm is in- poet: or novelist so aberrant as to
vaded, we think we aregoing
to set no value on it, would appear to
meet him; but he stdl remains noth- be a clumsy, beaver is^ c h a r a c t e r
ing but a .bul;fiing eye scrutinizing with no literary manners.
But once
all that occurs from the window of an attitude or device becomes fasha remotedark
tower. T h i s might, ionable, it is surelytime it was reof course,: bemade
effective; but examined. It is m y intention to do
actually i f is not; we never feel +- so here, however tentatively. How
rons p4iver. Andthe
climax,to
interestingit would be, for instance,
whlch +e havebeenworking
up to come upon a review in which a
through exactly ninehundredand
poet was taken to task for an insufninety-nine large close-printedpages, ficientlydeepened
c o n c e p t i o n of
when it comes, proves extremely fiat. irony, andnot merely praised for
Thering is at lastgot
rid sf by knowing how touse the bright shield
beingdropped. into a fiery crater,
andthekingdom
of Saurontopples in a brief andbanalearthquake that sets fire to everything and
burns it up, and so releases the authorfromthe
necessity of telling
the reader what
exactly was, so terr ~ b l ethere.Frodohas
come tothe
end of his Quest, b u t the reader has
remained
untouched
by the
wounds
and fatigues of his jqurney. An irnpotence of imagination seems to me
to sap the whole story. T h e wars are
never dynamic;theordeals
give no
sense of strain; the fair ladies would
notstir
a heai-tbeat; the horrors
would not hurt a fly.
Now, how is it that these long-

Spenser--both of,
whom have a eh,aqp
and a distinction &at Tolkien has
nevertouched.
,
As for me, if we must read about
imaginary kingdoms, give me James
Branch Cabells Poictesme. H e at
least yrites or grown-up people, and
hc does not present the drama of life
as a showdown betweenGood PeoPI! and,Goblins. H e can cover more
groundinan episode thaL lasts only
three pages than Tolkien is able to
.in one of this twenty-page chaptcrs,
and he can create a more disquieting
impresslon by a reference to sometlnng that is never described than
Tolkienthrough
his whole demonology.

4
I

T h e Shield of Irony

514
I )

Sarton
in his own defense. How interesting
i t would be to find a contemporary
novelist defined, as F. R. Leavis has
defined George Eliot, She sees too
much3andhas
too muchthe-humility of thesupremely
intell~gent
whose i nt e I 1i g en c e involves selfknowledge, to he nux than incidentally ironical.
Of course we are in a ,period of
timidretreatfromtheavant-garde
positionstaken
by ourimmediate
forebears. T h e novel is lapsing into
long-windedparticularizedrealism;
poetryconsohdates itselfby
means
of varied and distinguished mastery
of inherited techniques. Neither conviction nor passion are much- in the
atmosphere, nor is the clumsiness,
that sometimes accompaniesthem.
I n these last years we have come a
long way fromtheenthusiasms
and
indignations of the twenties. .We
look back ora giantslikeDreiser
as
toocrudeforour
purposes, which
are increasingly self-conscious, discriminatingand
wary. Wewould
suspect a poet as personal in one
sense as Elmor Wylie, or in another
as Carl Sandburg of beingexhibitionist. T h e wricei- in Arnenca today
has no illusions that he is #the De-

M A Y SARTON, poet aa.d nonelift,

was a GuggenhezmFellow
poetry.
, I n 1952 she reretved the L y r x Aam-d
of the Poetry Soczety of Amertca a n d
rn 1953 was honored by Bryn M q w r
College wzth t h e Lucy Martin Donnelly , Fellowship. Her most. recent
book 2s Faithful Are t h e Wounds.