Hanover Browsing

Michael Fraenkel's Writing, a Way of Life; Four Good Books of 1939; Prof. Knight's Suggestions

HENRY MILLER, about whom a good deal has been written lately, gives credit to this MAGAZINE for the first considerable comment about him in the United States which appeared in this column some two or three years ago. His collaborator and friend, Michael Fraenkel, is due for a brief turn now, and I regret that lack of space forbids a longer and more serious article on him, for in many respects he is a better writer than Henry Miller, though happily not as sensational.

Both writers agree, I think, that "Art is a language from mountain peak to mountain peak, a hermeneutic (the science of interpretation and explanation) telegraphy for and among artists." They do not share, therefore, Tolstoy's dictum that art should be for all, and indeed their work has an appeal only for those who are capable of enlarging considerably their literary horizons.

T. S. Eliot described the chaos which is ours in his famous The Waste Land, 1922. Henry Miller boldly cries, "This is the Schizophrenic era!" Both Miller and Fraenkel owe much to D. H. Lawrence, but they owe more to Freud, Bergson, and the chaotic era in which they live.

In 1936 Carrefour, Paris, published Fraenkel's Bastard Death: The Autobiography of an Idea. Of this Miller writes to Fraenkel: "For if I choose to say of you the first artist to merit the distinction of being the most dead among the dead it is only to say that you are alive in a new, fourth-dimensional sense." Mr. Fraenkel in this most original book has followed Nietzsche's dictum: "Remain true to the earth, my brethren." In rhapsodical prose he writes: "Sink deep into the earth, as into yourself. Let only the earth speak: and let that speech be root and grass and flowering and tree. Here, step into my silence: do you hear the voice? It is the earth's." Walt Whitman would have understood this; so, too, D. H. Lawrence. All those whose faith primarily is in the truth of instinct, or the voice of nature, will believe it.

Hamlet, by Henry Miller and Michael Fraenkel, was published in Paris in 1939. This book is composed of a series of letters between Miller and Fraenkel discussing their own views in relation to art and to life. Miller's are amusing; Fraenkel's intelligent.

I found the most thought provoking of Mr. Fraenkel's three books his Death isNot Enough: Essays in Active Negation, published in London by the C. W. Daniel Co., Ltd., 1939. Here among other things Fraenkel discusses the "death quality of these times." It has been noticed by recent commentators on Europe that there seems to be an unconscious "death wish" now endemic in Europe. Even the New York Herald Tribune commented on it after the suicide of Captain Hans Langsdorff of the ill fated Graf Spee. Death is NotEnough is composed of nine essays, all thoughtful and stimulating. One, on the meaning of modern poetry, claims that poetry is sick for lack of integration, and because the intellectual tradition is spent. Surrealism, imagism, and symbolism share the same impulse, to get back to lower (body) modes of thought and feeling. This is very clear in modern painting; it was certainly the message of D. H. Lawrence. It is evident, too, in German political philosophy, as it is clearly shown in their new "Paganism." The present intellectual world is emancipating itself from reason. This, in your reviewer's humble opinion, is one of the reasons for our present chaotic outlook. Vide: The writings of all modern humanists, particularly the books of F. L. Lucas.

Mr. Fraenkel presents an attitude toward life, art, literature, ethics and human behavior in general, that enables the creative individual to find and realize himself, within the possibilities of himself and his time. Writing, for him, is a way of life. It is unfortunate that his work has not reached a wider audience, for he is well worth reading. His books are not as amusing as Henry Miller's but they are more intelligent and intelligible, and I am inclined to think, of greater relative importance.

Mr. Lewis Parkhurst '78, Senior Trustee, who has done so much far sighted work for the Norfolk Prison Colony in Massachusetts, recommends Parole WithHonor, by William La Roe Jr., published, by the Princeton University Press. Of this Mr. Parkhurst writes: "I believe this book gives the only sensible solution of America's crime problem that I have ever seen written. It is highly endorsed by men and women who know considerable about the subject."

Four books to have in your own library: FOLK SONGS OF OLD NEW ENG- LAND, by Eloise Hubbard Linscott. The Macmillan Company, 1939. $5.

Mrs. Linscott, the daughter of a Massachusetts surgeon, is a graduate of Radcliffe, and for fifteen years has been collecting these folk songs of New England. You will recall many of them. The words, tunes, and the histories of the songs are given, and furthermore this is a book that you can take to the piano when the family gather around and sing. I hope that families still do this in spite of the radio and the gramaphone. Here are nursery songs, comical songs/ old minstrel songs, sea chanteys, lumberman's songs, folk songs, and country dances. Many of them have been known in England, Scotland, Ireland, Norway, Sweden, and so on, for years but they all have the real New England flavor, and are now our own.

Do you remember Amsterdam, of which only one verse is fit to print? It is still sung at the Boston Yacht Club.

In Amsterdam there lived a maid, And she was mistress of her trade I'll go no more a roving with you, fair maid, "In Amsterdam there lived a maid, Mark well what I do say,

A roving, a roving, Since roving's been my ruin I'll go no more a roving with you, fair maid."

Then there is that wonderful "Oh, Shenandoah! I love your daughter. Away my rolling river goes," "Whiskey Johnnie," with its fine "Whiskey is the life of man, Whiskey Johnnie," etc., and 150 more. This book belongs on your shelf of American history, for here in 337 pages, are the songs our ancestors sang in their homes, on the seas, and around their camp fires. We may well be proud of them, and of their music.

MAUD, edited by Richard Lee Strout '19. The Macmillan Company, 1939.

Whether it be in Cairo, Illinois, or in Amesbury, Massachusetts, everyone may say with Isabella Maud Rittenhouse: "I am always filled with happiness upon reaching home. Every rickety old house looks familiar and sweet,—every tree an old friend. I was born here and have lived here and can never do ought but love our dear ugly Cairo."

Cairo, a Mississippi river steamboat town in the eighties, comes to life in Maud's delightfully frank and ingenuous diary. The years are from 1881-1895. At 11.20 p.m. on Saturday, October 15, 1881, Maud wrote: "Elmer and Will left me at the gate a while ago. Imagine my feelings walking along demurely between the two." Other entries are several pages long. All are saturated with the atmosphere of the horse and buggy age, and what a friendly and homely age it was. This book, too, belongs to American history as well as to autobiography, for the country of our fathers (and some of us) explodes with the impact of a 1904 cannon cracker. As I read about Elmer, Will, and others I shuddered, for 10 and behold, I often beheld myself. This is a period piece, and most delightful. One of the few books of 1939 which has survival value.

THE ELIZABETHAN JOURNALS: BEING A RECORD OF THE THINGS MOST TALKED OF DURING THE YEARS 1591-1603, by G. B. Harrison. The Macmillan Company, New York, 1939.

This is a revision in one volume of three Elizabethan Journals published first in 1928, 1931, and 1933.

The author felt that to understand the interests of Englishmen during the age of Shakespeare a new kind of history book was necessary, a record of those things most talked of when Shakespeare, Marlowe, Jonson, Bacon, Donne, and the rest were writing and first being read.

Each entry in the Journals is based on a contemporary source but is turned judiciously into readable form. For instance on October 27th, 1591 there is an entry headed "Disorders at Dartmouth" which immediately caught my eye: "The mariners and other loose and dissolute persons have committed foul outrages and disorderly embezzlement of the goods brought in to Dartmouth by the two prizes newly arrived. Sir Francis Drake is required with all speed and circumspection to restrain these contempts and to recover from any party such parcels or portions as he can find by proof, suspicion or examination; and to this end to use the assistance there of any gentleman of quality."

I know of no one single volume which will give the reader the flavor of Eliza-bethan England as well as the 1200 or more pages of Mr. Harrison's Journals.

CAPE HORN, by Feliz Riesenberg. Dodd, Mead & Co., 1939. $5.

The late Felix Riesenberg was well known to all readers of the sea and ships. He himself had sailed around Cape Horn in sail, and knew well the treacherous straits named after Magellan, and the forbidding lands of Tierra del Fuego. In this sizable volume the author gives you the complete history of this most exciting and dangerous bit of water from the time Magellan sailed through the straits, and Schouten discovered the Horn, to our own times. A must book for all lovers of sea books.

PROFESSOR OF COMPARATIVE LITERATURE