The most significant studies to date of Saint-John Perse approach his work “extensively,” keeping the poet's total output in the foreground. Commentary on individual poems is not entirely lacking, especially on Anabase and Vents, but nothing approaching exhaustive textual analysis of any one poem has yet been attempted. The present study has been undertaken in the belief that an intensive approach to a small segment of Perse's work may supplement and give sharper relief to the insights of more general studies and perhaps lead some readers more directly to the actual text of one of the unquestioned major poets of our time.

In his prologue to the first Argentine edition of Eduardo Barrios' novel Un perdido, Manuel Gálvez sets forth a number of germinal ideas. One of these is that Lucho Bernales, the perdido of Barrios' fictional creation, is a “brother” to Gálvez' own Carlos Riga of El mal metafísico; and furthermore he proposes certain literary sources for both characters. It is the present purpose to examine these two suggestions, testing their adequacy, then passing on to inquire whether a pattern of thought may not be detected and whether other important novels may not be related to the questions thus raised.

On sait que Sartre a placé son activité littéraire sous le signe de l'ethique. Il ne maintient que la poésie dans le domaine purement esthétique. Cette profession de foi n'a toutefois eu lieu qu'au lendemain de la guerre. Elle laisse derrière elle un premier groupe d'œuvres. Maintenant que ce premier stade de l'œuvre de Sartre est clos, on peut revenir sur l'étude des morceaux dont il se compose sans risquer les jugements prématurés que certains appliquent à la seconde phase, ou qu'on appliqua jadis à la première phase. C'est à l'examen de La Nausée que nous reviendrons dans cet article.

To Remember the literary criticism of John Middleton Murry only as the “Inner Voice” praising the effort to “Muddle Through,” as T. S. Eliot has characterized it, is to ignore the comprehensive, largely concrete system of literary evaluation which preceded the later doctrine of romanticism. Unfortunately for contemporary literary criticism, most critics of Murry have seen fit to concentrate on what Murry wrote after he began to apply an externally-formulated religious or philosophical theory to literature, or have interpreted the early work in the light of that which followed. Too many who have remembered The Mystery of Keats and Heroes of Thought have forgotten the positive virtues of The Problem of Style and Countries of the Mind. And very few remember that Murry, developing an aesthetic theory similar to Eliot's “objective correlative,” used such a concept as the basic assumption in a consistent system of practical literary criticism. By making a more or less arbitrary distinction between the work primarily concerned with literature per se and that which followed, I believe that it is possible to discover many valuable insights and concepts which can have, or have had, validity for literary criticism today.

Sonnet 65 by Gerard Manley Hopkins, “No worst, there is none,” has been criticized by Yvor Winters in the Hudson Review (Winter 1949) as an instance of late romantic emotional over-emphasis without a statement of the generating concept, of the motive, of the nature of the experience. Hopkins, says Winters, “cannot move us by telling us why he himself is moved”; therefore the poet urges, in effect, “ ‘Share my fearful emotion, for the human mind is subject to fearful emotions’.” Hopkins' skill in metaphor and in metric variation succeeds in stirring the reader occasionally, admits Winters, but since we are being led “blindfold into violence,” the poem becomes a “violation of our integrity.”

On 27 September 1871 there appeared in an inconspicuous corner of the New York Tribune a piece by Mark Twain entitled “The Revised Catechism.” Obviously drawing on his Sunday School memories of the Westminster Catechism for the form of the contribution, Clemens makes use also of the Bible (a work thoroughly learned in his boyhood and never forgotten) for striking satirical effect. “The Revised Catechism” is a scathing denunciation of Boss Tweed and his associates—as accomplished a group of rascals as ever pillaged a public treasury—and at the same time an indictment of the age that permitted such men to thrive. The story of the Tammany Ring is too well known to need retelling here; but to make clear the reasons that led Mark Twain to the writing of his satire and to demonstrate the ironical character of his references, so apposite to the day and hour, it is necessary to consider briefly the part played in the exposure of the Ring by its two principal antagonists—one, the cartoonist, Thomas Nast, and the other, the New York Times.

“Cause Inconnue.” Ces mots flagellent. Les voici bien inscrits dans une colonne du registre de la Morgue où tombèrent quelques renseignements secs sur le suicide présumé de Gérard de Nerval. C'est une excellente conclusion; et qui pourrait couper court à bien des querelles. Faut-il pourtant que cette position de repli nous soit elle-même refusée? L'idée du suicide accueillie par une poignée de fonctionnaires, résolument sinon en tout état de cause (quand une autre colonne interroge “suicide ou homicide,” il faut bien répondre), n'a cessé, en effet, d'être remise en question.

The Scarlet Letter explores the effects, on the transgressors, of three distinct types of sin—the revealed sin of Hester, the concealed sin of Dimmesdale, and the unpardonable sin of Chillingworth. The complexity of these effects is suggested when Hester, outwardly penitent, exclaims to Dimmesdale that their deed had a consecration of its own, or when Dimmesdale, spiritually tormented by his hidden guilt, finds his power for good in the community increased as a result of his transgression, or when Chillingworth becomes, through his demonic pursuit of revenge, the greatest sinner of them all, and is assigned, finally, to eternal damnation in Hawthorne's special hell reserved for those of his villains who commit the sin for which there is no forgiveness.

In Browning's second letter to Elizabeth Barrett he uses the imagery of “white light” versus “prismatic hues” to represent the contrast between the full and direct reflection of her personality in lyric utterance, and the partial and oblique refraction of his own personality in the medium of the dramatic monologue. A little later, he reveals his consciousness of the limitations of his poetry through a kindred image: “these scenes and song-scraps are such mere and very escapes of my inner power, which lives in me like the light in those crazy Mediterranean phares I have watched at sea, wherein the light is ever revolving in a dark gallery, bright and alive, and only after a weary interval leaps out, for a moment, from the one narrow chink, and then goes on with the blind wall between it and you …” In response, Elizabeth Barrett, while deprecating the merit of her own poetry and paying tribute to the worth of Browning's, acknowledges the justice of his self-criticism: “and in fact, you have not written the R. B. poem yet—your rays fall obliquely rather than directly straight. I see you only in your moon” (i, 22). In one of her letters, though referring to “the glory of dramatic art,” she urges: “Yet I am conscious of wishing you to take the other crown besides—and after having made your own creatures speak in clear human voices, to speak yourself out of that personality which God made, and with the voice which he tuned into such power and sweetness of speech” (ii, 182).

In a communication to the Times Literary Supplement, J. J. Auchmuty has suggested that a study of Wordsworth as a practical politician might remedy certain traditional misconceptions about the poet's activities in his declining years. As a matter of fact, he worked assiduously at a period of his life “when, according to legend, he is supposed to have been desiccated and devoid of principle,” in attempting to influence the passage of the Copyright Act of 1842. His part in this legislation has been taken for granted by scholars on the basis of statements to several correspondents that he had written many letters in support of the measure. But there is evidence now, both published and unpublished, that for five years he labored continually in assisting Serjeant Thomas Noon Talfourd, the originator of the bill, by letters both private and public, interviews, and an official petition. While it is true that the Act promised to benefit him directly, there is no doubt that his interest in its passage was more than selfish and had its roots in what was, in effect, a struggle for survival of literature of quality in an age demanding quantity.

Studies which have been made in the West of this important topic of international literary relations have been either very general or biased or both. It is indicative of the Stand der Forschung that M. Gorlin's sketchy article, “Goethe in Russland,” remains to this day one of the sources most frequently referred to. The most recent contribution to our topic is Mathew Volm's study W. A. Zhukovskii als Übersetzer (Part ii). It is a most detailed evaluation and analysis of Zhukovski's translations of Goethe. Unfortunately, however, Volm has chosen to make of his work a polemic against Gorlin's views; he maintains that Zhukovski not only was equal to his task as a translator of Goethe but in his renderings actually proved himself a greater poet. It cannot be said that this approach resulted in an acceptable contribution to our topic. Moreover, Volm's work, like Gorlin's, is completely lacking in factual, biographical material and argues its thesis in a historical vacuum.

Defoe's The Fortunate Mistress (1724) has always had less popular appeal than Moll Flanders. To what extent this unpopularity is the result of the complexities in its theme cannot easily be determined. In a significant comment on this theme Roxana declares: “The opposite Circumstances of a Wife and Whore, are such, and so many, and I have since seen the Difference with such Eyes, as I could dwell upon the Subject a great-while, but my Business is History.” In a series of interrelated episodes the history itself presents sharply contrasted matrimonial circumstances. Both the character of Defoe's realism and his social vision are illuminated by an investigation of the pertinent backgrounds. In his last great novel he explored a subject increasingly important to a society middle-class in its moral and literary values. He drew materials for the dramatization of this matrimonial theme from his varied careers as journalist, moralist, and novelist.

A writer is moulded out of faults, and the greatest become much more the better for having had the courage to be a little bad. All writers experiment in some degree with technique, but not many, after their apprenticeship has been served, appear willing to desert the manner in which one achievement has been attained for another, untried, yet potentially permitting fuller and more complex expressiveness. Even less frequently does an established writer change the manner of expression midway in the work, destroying the unity of effect by radical alterations in technique while the work is in progress. In a novel or poem, at least, the new manner is not likely to emerge unexpectedly; a work written for publication can be withheld until its parts are integrated. A dramatist, however—especially one working in close conjunction with a voracious theatre—may not have such an opportunity. Deadlines render revisions luxuries and make beneficial experimentation a catch-as-catch-can matter. Under such circumstances, discoveries that cannot be ignored are likely to be dangerous to both the art and the commerce of the theatre.

Three distinct but often interwoven topics—a commentary on the doctrinal import of the Apostles' Creed, a relation of the circumstances of its actual formulation, and a narration of the subsequent careers of the Apostles—constituted themes of pleasure and curiosity to the medieval hagiographer and poet. Surviving Old English texts illustrate the first and third topics clearly: the Fata Apostolorum in the Vercelli Book (fol. 52v–53r), and the Credo in Deum Omnipotentem in Bodley MS. Junius 121 (fol. 46r–47r). An early Middle English text in British Museum MS. Nero A.xiv (fol. 131v) preserves uniquely a truncated version of the Creed. While it would be impossible to state with any certainty the approximate date when these traditions reached England from the Continent, we may safely assume that they were well established in the vernacular as well as in Church Latin from early Christian times.

Few important literary passages have resisted clarification more persistently than the procession of the Holy Grail in Chretien's Perceval. Let us review his version very briefly.

There is fairly concerted agreement among Romance scholars that the word nuance had as its antecedent a verb nuer constructed on the noun nue ‘cloud,‘ which is derived from the Latin word nubes through the Vulgar Latin form *nuba. Diez (ii-c, 648), Hatzfeld and Darmesteter (s.v. Nue, Nuer), Meyer-Lübke (REW 5974), and Bloch and von Wartburg (s.v. Nue) concur in this etymology, which has been most recently summarized by Dauzat. The path of derivation which Dauzat describes is essentially as follows : 1) an archaic verb nuer, conveying the meaning of the modern verb nuancer, and now used only as a technical term, was derived, through the suggestion of the varied tints of clouds, from the noun nue (attested in the twelfth century [Littré, s.v. Nue]); 2) the verb nuer is attested in the year 1352 in the expression or nué, according to Bloch and von Wartburg, and appears in the works of d'Aubigné in the sixteenth century; 3) from the verb nuer is derived the noun nuance, which is attested in 1611 in Cotgrave; 4) the verbal form nuancer appears in the works of d'Aubigné as nuancé in the sixteenth century, and is attested in the 1701 edition of the dictionary of Furetière; and 5) the verb nuancer superseded the archaic verb nuer.