A Winchell Among the Poets

Curiosity, aroused curiosity which can tunnel through mountains, which can bring the book to life in the hands and a Schliemann to the buried gates of Troy, is a passion not at present much encouraged. For let a person once notice something, and there is no telling what he may notice next: possibly the unfitness of his mentors, who have their status to safeguard. Mr. Gilbert Highet, for instance, “is Anthon Professor of the Latin Language and Literature at Columbia University, a member of the Board of Judges of the Book-of-the-Month Club, and Chairman of the Editorial Board of Advisors of Horizon magazine.” He is also “known throughout the country for his popular radio talks.” To these responsibilities he brings a mind capable of affirming with some earnestness that between, say, Ogden Nash and T. S. Eliot the typical differences are “differences of technique and purpose between several craftsmen all, it may well be, equally valuable, and, I am sure, all equally conscientious.” In undertaking to discuss with his reader an art supremely calculated to arouse the human faculties, Mr. Highet is running some risk: hence his massive injections of tranquilizer.

The Powers of Poetry (Oxford, $6.00) are not, the reader is meant to feel, much more taxing than Professor Highet’s small talk. They are wielded, to begin with, by unusual but basically ordinary men and women, straight out of the Reader’s Digest: Robinson Jeffers (“lonely, too, lonely. Yes, he is a romantic figure”); William Butler Yeats (“Poor Yeats”): Shelley (“an eccentric and passionate young man”); the inscrutable Mr. Eliot (“I have never met him myself. . . . My wife met him later, though, and says he was quite charming. . . . He is a puzzle.”); and to cap the climax, Byron, whose most constant torments, it appears, emanated from a determination to keep his weight down. They are never really belittled or debunked. The strategy is to keep the reader feeling comfortable in their presence.

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Hugh Kenner

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Curiosity, aroused curiosity which can tunnel through mountains, which can bring the book to life in the hands and a Schliemann to the buried gates of Troy, is a passion not at present much encouraged. For let a person once notice something, and there is no telling what he may notice next: possibly the unfitness of his mentors, who have their status to safeguard. Mr. Gilbert Highet, for instance, “is Anthon Professor of the Latin Language and Literature at Columbia University, a member of the Board of Judges of the Book-of-the-Month Club, and Chairman of the Editorial Board of Advisors of Horizon magazine.” He is also “known throughout the country for his popular radio talks.” To these responsibilities he brings a mind capable of affirming with some earnestness that between, say, Ogden Nash and T. S. Eliot the typical differences are “differences of technique and purpose between several craftsmen all, it may well be, equally valuable, and, I am sure, all equally conscientious.” In undertaking to discuss with his reader an art supremely calculated to arouse the human faculties, Mr. Highet is running some risk: hence his massive injections of tranquilizer.

The Powers of Poetry (Oxford, $6.00) are not, the reader is meant to feel, much more taxing than Professor Highet’s small talk. They are wielded, to begin with, by unusual but basically ordinary men and women, straight out of the Reader’s Digest: Robinson Jeffers (“lonely, too, lonely. Yes, he is a romantic figure”); William Butler Yeats (“Poor Yeats”): Shelley (“an eccentric and passionate young man”); the inscrutable Mr. Eliot (“I have never met him myself. . . . My wife met him later, though, and says he was quite charming. . . . He is a puzzle.”); and to cap the climax, Byron, whose most constant torments, it appears, emanated from a determination to keep his weight down. They are never really belittled or debunked. The strategy is to keep the reader feeling comfortable in their presence.