1 20 2 https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/f108bc6f2ece5f74234f82ed7d57c2f1.pdf ffbdafa07ce669d1f983f972bb702ff2 PDF Text Text ST. JOHN'S T R IV IU M Of Doom and Hope . ... . .. . . . .. . . . .by Richard Kuehn emund (College Bites Housin g Autho rity) ... . . ... . . ... .an editorial "The Dictat or" Reviewed DEC EMB ER, 1940 Twenty-Jive cents �CONTENTS TRIVI UM Edi to rials . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 Of Doom and Hope. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 A Letter Home . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . I 4 Second Fiddle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . I 7 The Blues. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . I 8 The Awakening . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 Impropaganda ...................... ................... . .... 25 Books .. .... ...................... ...................... ... 26 Book Notes .. 30 Idiotica. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32 Cinema ...................... ...................... ........ 32 Trivia ...................... ....... •. •. • • • • •. • • • • • • • • •. • • • • 35 The Play . ..... ...................... ...................... 36 Contributors ...................... ...................... ... 39 Editors: FRANCIS S. MASON, Treasurer: JR., '43 A. ScoTT ABBOTT, Circulation: WILLIAM Departments Etc.: STERN, '43; T. AND JOHN Louis HEDEMAN, '43. '43, HART, '43; RoBERT HUNTER, JAMES S. MARTIN, WILLIAM BRUBECK, '44 '43; MARTIN ANDREWS, '43; ADRIAN MAYER, '43; HERBERT VoL. 1 DECEMBER, 1940 No. 2 Editorials Reason and Authority in the Modem World. It all started last November. The Director of the Annapolis Housing Authority asked That Man Barr whether the College would like to get rid of the now famous five and one third acres of the back campus. The College replied that he did not want to get rid of them because the rest of the College had athletic and other plans for the land. The thing went under ground. The College on the hill passed through the winter in blissful ignorance that intrigues, machinations, conferences, objections were being committed, plotted, had, and made. "They" finally decided the College would be glad to get rid of the land. The-long-winter-evenings' occupation of deciding this point was not marred by anyone's asking anyone outright whether anything was true or not. All seminar participants can readily understand this. But came the spring. On May I 5th the College got a letter saying the Housing Authority had ordered Mr. Stromeyer, its Chairman, to get the land from the College. The College asked the Board and the Board told him no. Quickly replied the Authority that he hoped the College would cooperate with him in getting the land turned over because if the College did not cooperate, the Authority would take it anyhow. This shows the similarity between the cooperative state and the corporative state and explains the Berlin-Moscow treaty. The College decided to be liberal and hold on to the land unless Authority could show reason. Followed several conferences. The Authority and his four cooperative members met with the College, the Dean, the Secretary of the Board of Visitors, the Admiral, the Mayor, and the County Health Director. The Authority reasoned. Seminar Leaders Nos. I and 2, used to simple matters like Plotinos, Apollonius, Ptolemy, Newton, Einstein, Timaeus, were unable to get their teeth into it. Neither was anyone else, although teeth were clearly shown. June IO the Board of Visitors met, examined maps, read correspondence, discussed, and decided not to hand over the booty. Thinking perhaps one Authority could understand another, the Chairman of the Board of Visitors asked the Administrator of the USHA how to understand it. He was told the idea was unintelligible. The Annapolis Authority tried to unscrew the matter by making the following proposition: The College owned about eight or nine acres of unimproved land. The Authority would take about five of these and in return would improve the remaining two or three and create another somehow in College Creek and thereby make an even swap with the College acre for acre. The College, having read St. Thomas and Calvin, knew that only one Being could create and, 3 �4 ST. JOHN'S TRIVIUM that He was inscrutable. This unscrewed everything. On August 1st a little man walked in and presented the College with a paper full of legal language, which the Evening Capital reported had been filed "reluctantly" by the Authority in the Circuit Court for Anne Arundel County. The same newspaper contained a story, "Rotary Club Opposes College Housing Site." That Man Barr declined to make any press comment. Instead, Barr and Pooh-Bah went to Washington to see the USHA. Said Barr, the roof is coming off in Annapolis. It is bad for houses when the roof comes off. The College believes in houses and would like to see more in Annapolis. Said the USHA, everyone feels sad when he's having his land snatched. We do it all the time. It doesn't hurt if you get used to the idea. Come in next week and talk to our Public Relations man. He will make you feel better. Next week Barr and Pooh-Bah went to see Mr. Prins, who spelled it different from Machiavelli. Said Prins, if you fight, housing will suffer badly; but so will the College for opposing housing. Said the chorus from the College, oh, woeful woe, but you are not right. If you think a fight is not good and call off the dogs, I will not answer the misstatements which have appeared in the press; but unless better reasons are brought forward, I will have to open fire before the College answers the suit so the public will not misunderstand the College. August 19th the ultimatum expired. Barr shot off a ten ton bomb to clear the air. The August 20th Evening Sun said, "Stromeyer Assails Barr in Housing Row." Picking up pieces of the ten ton bomb and combing the plaster out of his hair, the Authority said: "I'm sick and tired of fooling around with an outfit like that. We've filed condemnation suits and it is in the hands of the courts. We're going to continue regardless of who likes it or who doesn't .... "Why, just a few minutes ago I got a telegram from Washington asking me to 'let up.' Just that-to 'let up.' . "They're afraid this will get to Congress, and 1t may hurt chances of getting an appropriation. Well, we don't care whether it gets to Congress or not. We're just a little country town with a housing problem which we are trying to solve. We're not trying to handicap anybody. We have the interests of the city of Annapolis at heart, and if we hurt an institution that brings revenue into the city, then we'd be injuring the city. We are certainly not trying to do that." The Authority picked up the following bomb fragment and made of it a scream bomb to be released on the 22nd. The fragment: Barr: "I inquired in Washington whether there was any precedent anywhere in the United States for a municipal housing authority seizing part of a college campus, but I could not discover that such a precedent existed. I can well believe it." Screamed the Authority's bomb: "This man [Barr] won't give the two sides of the story. And I don't like it. He's never told the true story about it. He never told his board. He never told it in Washington. "We of the Housing Authority are unanimous. We have the law on our side and when you have the law, there is no argument .... "Then Mr. Barr talks about precedent. There is a precedent. When we took land from the Indians, we had no precedent. This is something new. Housing is something new in this country." That Man Barr went to New York on business but stopped off to see the editors of. Time. The editors were pleased. Said one, "Do you think it would be possible to get a picture of the Chairman?" Thus Cockney Barr released a scream bomb which whistled the "all clear" signal as it fell. Arriving at the Annapolis Chamber of Commerce dinner at which he was to speak on St. John': ST. JOHN'S TRIVIUM plans for the use of its land, That Man was approached by a newspaper man who said, I understand Time Magazine is going to run something on this fight. Said Barr, Really? Tell me some more. "Yes, I saw Bill Stromeyer walking to the Post Office yesterday with a package under his arm. I said, 'What's that you've got there, Bill?' He said, 'It's my picture. Time wants it.' And he hurried on toward the Post Office." It was Donald's Lucky Day. He was pedaling off to 1313 Thirteenth Street on Friday the 13th to deliver a package, and didn't know the package under his arm was a Time Bomb, although you could hear it ticking for blocks. Time came out, picture and all, with "Rape of a Campus," on September 2nd. Time also mentioned the seven little Injuns who, according to the Sun of August 27th, had hit the war path for old St. John's College. It seems that Barr, accompanied by Pooh-Bah carrying a huge blueprint of the College campus, had appeared at the afore-mentioned Chamber of Commerce dinner. The blueprint was adorned with the figures of seven little red Indians. Some were standing and healthy. The ones on the five and a third acres were laid out cold. Barr apologized for the appearance of the blueprint. An assistant in the College Architect's office had wished to make the map historically accurate and Barr had not the heart to reprove him. The Chamber of Commerce liked the Indians. Screamed Mr. Stromeyer, "We went to St. John's because it is tax-free property." The Sun reported: "Then Mr. Stromeyer aimed at the purses of the business men. The campus, he said, was taxfree property. If the authority had to build elsewhere, taxable property would be used. "That would raise taxes for them, he said, and already forty-seven per cent of the city's property was tax free. Then he made a suggestion: 5 "'If you can get the county to do what the city is doing (i40,ooo) for the Housing Authority, then we'll forget about St. John's. You're all representative citizens of Annapolis and there is a proposition. I'm shooting it right down your teeth.'" Said the Chamber, What a word has passed your teeth! The Chamber instructed its counsel to intervene in the condemnation proceedings as a Friend of the Court with a brief opposing the condemnation. The same evening a mass meeting of citizens opposed the grab by a resolution. Barr's phone rang. early one morning. Said Mr. Prins, "How do you feel?" Said Barr, "I feel fine. How do you feel?" Said Prins, "I'm all right. I want to congratulate you on your public relations technique. When the College folds up, as Mr. Stromeyer assures me it is going to do any day now, I would like to offer you a good job as a public relations man.'' Said Barr, "I like my present job. I think I shall run for a third term.'' Said Mr. Prins, There are too many citizens writing letters to us and to Congress and to the President under the impression we can do anything about it. Why not call them off? Said That Man Barr, I cannot control the opinions of my fellow-citizens. They think you could stop it. Press release September 6th: "The United States Housing Authority will not intervene in a dispute between the Annapolis Housing Authority and St. John's College. "Nathan Straus, administrator of the USHA, said, '... There is nothing in the United States Housing Act which authorizes the USHA to dictate to a local housing authority either that a particular site should be used or that a particular site should not be used for a housing project.' " Barr liked USHA's candor. USHA did not have power to intervene in the dispute. Barr wrote to the Comptroller General. If USHA could not intervene, �6 ST. JOHN'S TRIVIUM why was it lending money to AHA to enable AHA to prosecute its suit? Replied the Comptroller General, USHA did lend AHA six thousand dollars as an advance on its new project, but the Comptroller General did not have to give opinions to outsiders on what was lawful. On September 1st Mr. Felix Morley fashioned a shrapnel bomb out of fragments of Mr. Stromeyer. Echoed the papers from coast to coast: "TYRANNY IN ANNAPOLIS" "ST. JOHNS-MARYLAND CONTROVERSY MAY RIVAL FAMOUS DARTMOUTH COLLEGE CASE" "TAX-FREE LAND UNDER HEAVY FIRE OF HOUSING LEADERS" "THREAT TO ALL EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTIONS SEEN" September 14th Mr. Stromeyer offered to buy one and one third acres of the back campus. Queried That Man Barr, Does this mean the condemnation suit is being withdrawn? September 19th Mr. Stromeyer said, No, but it would be nice to make this a "friendly" condemnation suit. Then the Authority would just take one and one third acres instead of five and a third and everybody would be happy. The Authority would defend the nation by putting petty officers' quarters for the Naval Academy on the one and one third acres. Said the Sun, It is nice to know the Authority did not need the five and a third acres for a low cost housing project and could really put it elsewhere, because everybody had had the impression that the Authority needed the land. That Man invited the Authority and his counsel to appear at the Board meeting on October 14th. The Board wanted to hear this new plan to defend the nation in all detail. The Authority and his Reason appeared, reasoned, authorized, shoved down teeth, an- nounced, denounced, cajoled, confuted, imputed, and trotted down the hill. After having well and exactly seen, surveyed and considered the matter, the Board said no. Said the evening papers to the Board as the Board left the meeting: "COLLEGE AND HOUSING GROUP NOW IN ACCORD "St. John's Sells r• Acres for National Defense Project, but Housing Project will be Moved, Stromeyer says "William F. Stromeyer, local housing authority chairman, said today the Authority had reached an agreement with St. John's College officials on the purchase price for I• acres of College land. "Originally, the Authority sought 5• acres of College land for a regular low rent housing project, filing a condemnation suit when the College refused to sell the land. "In an attempt to end the dispute with the College, the Authority abandoned its plans for a regular housing project on College land and asked the College to sell r• acres for a national defense project for the Naval Academy's warrant officers. "Stromeyer said Stringfellow Barr, College President, had agreed on the purchase price for the r• acres. Barr is making a full report today on the compromise proposal to the College's Board of Visitors and Governors. "Representatives of the College and of the Housing Authority will hold a conference at 3 p.m. today to reach a final settlement." Said That Man Barr, "None of these proposals was accepted, in whole or in part, either by me or by any other agent of the College." The Board was "amazed." At last reports Mr. Stromeyer was leaving the prosecution of the Authority's suit to his Reason, and had accepted a post on the Local Draft Board where he will see to it that everyone else does his bit to Defend the Nation. The Authority likes the Nation. The College likes the Republic better than the Nation or the New Republic. The Republic knows the difference between cooperation and corporation.-PooH-BAH. ST. JOHN'S TRIVIUM 7 Of Doom and Hope REGARDLESS of how profound the inner unrest and upheavals of an era may be, we shall never be able to detach the present completely from the past. Nowhere in history has there ever been an absolute breach. Thus, in order to evaluate the present we shall have to turn to the past, whether we deal with the story of individual lives or with the history of entire nations and civilizations. But is there actually a national character or soul? Or are those terms romantic generalizations, not more than mental pictures of certain group characteristics in which a spectator's vague impressions are reflected? We speak of the psychic serenity of ancient Greece; of the soldierly spirit of Rome; of the keen, artistic genius of France; of the mystic Russian, and the tragic Nordic, soul; and, it seems, by right. For in every homogeneous group dwells the dormant "consensus omnium" ready to assert itself, to transform the individual irresistibly into a supra-individual part of the "soul" of the group. Such potential submergence in the soul of the congregation, in the spirit of the assembly or of the national "awakening" and rising, bears witness to it. Part of this group-soul, in abeyance at ordinary times, remains however constantly active and self-conscious in the thinkers and spiritual leaders of the age, in whom the trends and tendencies of present and past converge, and to whom we must turn in order to see the "spirit of the age" most clearly reflected. As guides to the enigmatic German soul, we may take to-day such figures as Oswald Spengler and Thomas Mann, Count Keyserling an:d Stefan George, with men like Schopenhauer and Nietzsche as leaders to the more recent mental past; for they reflect for us, as in a symbol, the struggle of the truly tragic German soul with its perpetual vision of a greater tomorrow and its ever-present apprehensions of stagnation, of decline and doom. The history of Germany, more than that of any other people, has indeed been one of trying tribulations, full of sharp contrasts, of rapid rises and precipitous declines. For centuries her soil has been the physical and spiritual battleground for many decisive issues. The traces of the Reformation and of its gruesome aftermath, the Thirty Years' War, as well as those of the rise against Napoleon and the spirit of Western revolutions, are indelibly engraved upon her mental physiognomy. For her, as a nation, more than for any other, the problem of Decline in all its implications has always touched upon her very being, that is, upon the tragic irony of life. No wonder that her thinkers have taken the issue to heart; that in the hours of danger they have searched their souls and raised their voices with stern reproofs and pleas. Moreover, all great German art and thought are essentially auto-psychological in nature. From Luther, through Goethe, to Nietzsche and Spengler, their favorite theme has always been: what is German, and who am I? But Nietzsche's vexatious self-search finds its counterpart in the clarity of Spengler's dazzling precepts, from which all Nietzschean doubts seem banished as by magic. Thus Spengler arrives where Nietzsche might have wished to end had not his dream of Greece and the vision of the Superman stood in his way. For, out of the abyss of Nietzsche's Gotzendammerung-gloom, out of his total rejection �8 ST. JOHN'S TRIVIUM of German culture in the Abendrote-mood, there still rings Nietzsche's tragic lament of frustrated hope: "There is something about the Germans that could be Hellenic," i.e., humanly perfect. By way of a final and stupendous effort, since Greece appeared to him irretrievably lost to the stamina and temper of modern man he then makes his pre-Socratic Hellenism of Dionysian hue the basis of his vision of the superman, an attempt unique in magnitude, full of an heroic courage in the face of Fate which only Spengler's fortitude of heart could equal. Both Nietzsche and Spengler are fighters to the core, though for different ends. For, Spengler preaches fortitude in the face of the fulfilment of our final destiny which, to him, spells decline and doom; whereas Nietzsche strives to build anew over the shattered remnants of our decadent civilization into a most distant beyond. But Amor Fati in the face of hopelessness and doom keeps Nietzsche and Spengler on a common ethical plane. "Man is something that has to be surpassed," preaches Nietzsche, the prophet and idealist. Man has to fulfill his destiny courageously as a soldier makes his last stand for a hopeless cause, knowingly embracing his doom; that is the triumph of true inner greatness, teaches Spengler, the intuitive determinist and realist. He knows that the past is past and can not be reborn; for all living organisms, and individual cultures as such, have their inherent law oflife, unalterable and unchangeable in course. For such is the irreversible oneness of Fate. Attempting to escape it, be it by flight into fancies or by ignoring its dread realities, is as cowardly as it is futile in Spengler's eyes. Fate fulfills itself, whether we wish it or not. We can accept it willingly and thus free ourselves inwardly of it, or be crushed in its course; there is no other choice. We, the last stragglers of a belated culture, have the unique and terrible advantage of knowing our fate, of being able to go down with open eyes. Thus Spengler's concept of decline is closely linked with his relativity of history as well as with his concept of Fate, because decline, historical completion, means an end, the final fulfilment of Fate. In his essay on Pessimism Spengler undertakes to refute the common attack upon his philosophy of history as being one-sided, pessimistic and deterministic. Pessimism, he replies, means to have lost and forsaken all tasks and aims. But there are innumerable tasks yet before us, much as they may differ from those of our preceding generations. Art- yes, but in concrete and steel; poetry- yes, but by men of iron nerves and unfailing will and realism, avows the lover of the Gothic, of Goethe, Beethoven, Bach, and Brahms. Times without productive philosophy and art can yet be great. Better no new philosophy and art than shabby substitutes and pseudo-arts, Spengler exclaims. He sees but one type of decline that is truly suicidal: the decline of the will; of the will to action and the will to triumph against the forces of an adverse fate. That is certainly not of the tenor of Schopenhauer's "Futile and In Vain"; it is of the Faus tic spirit of Nietzsche's" And Yet!" Spengler's interpretation of history as a sequence (or simultaneity) of independent cultural organisms which rise, mature and decline, by force of their individual inherent life-law, leaves indeed little choice as to the course of our future fate. With Schopenhauer he denies that the "history of mankind" has any inherent logic at all; that it has either meaning or aim. The over-optimistic trust in mankind's unending progress is shal- ST. JOHN'S TRIVIUM low, absurd, and utterly without historical foundation. Only the lifecycles of those organic entities called "cultures" have tangible historic aims, direction, meaning and fate. By way of comparison with previous cultures, Spengler then proceeds to prognosticate at length the inevitable course of Western civilization whose tempo alone might vary from that of its forerunners in history. He claims for himself the inestimable merit of having opened our eyes for the first time to the proper perspective, and to the irrepeatability, of the facts of history, to .their inner logical inevitableness. His ominous Orphic "Urworte" spell: time, direction, tactics, physiognomic tact, life, compulsion, and fate. The cogent oneness of all being and occurring is the form in which Fate reveals itself to human eyes. From such view all chance is banished, Anagke, (inmost necessity) prevails in his world. And why do individual cultures alone possess such fateful significance in history? Because, as living organisms, they possess an inner unity of purpose, aim and understanding, by virtue of their common vitality, initiative, and will. For the interpretation of Spengler's concept of decline in all its implications such as we face them to-day we have to consider his theories of society and state. We do not live in a crisis, Spengler asserted twenty years ago, but in the midst of a catastrophe of stupendous proportions. We have just entered the era of World Wars which will reshape the form of the world and are moving towards the Imperium Mundi, the last phase of white race world-domination. Amor Fati, henceforth, means not to shrink from reality, to embrace the tragic view of life. Optimism will be cowardice, and scepticism is our last attitude. Life 9 will be once more a struggle on a tremendous scale in which "peace is a wish and war is a fact." In this gigantic gamble between races and nations, with everything at stake, we have to learn again that true statesmanship, great politics, means the complete mastery of the "art of the possible." Germany is the borderland between East and West, Asia and Europe. As such she has always held a peculiar cultural and political mission. Yet-and here we seem to hear Nietzsche once more-Germany's political thinking has been small so far, lacking in realism, full of ideologies and fear of reality. But in history sound instincts and the will of the strong decide. The Nordic political instinct is based on the will to property, to power through possession. Only ideologists dream of justice, eternal peace, and happiness of the greatest number. Political romanticism is a sign of weakness: Liberalism, Communism, and Pacifism, are alike sentimental. We have to abandon the theories of one hundred and fifty years if we wish to survive, for they have failed. For a century and a half society and state have been systematically undermined. Thus we have forgotten that both are based on a natural order; that they are the vital organs of the cultural organism and not mechanical contrivances, set up at random and kept going at will. Decline of state authority is a symptom of the loss of the natural social instinct and moral stamina of Western man. This results with compelling necessity in social chaos and economic collapse, as all revolutions stem from it. The state-the "being-in-form" of a people, means strength, unity and leadership. The state- that is, "the inner order for an outer end"; and this end is �10 ST. JOHN'S TRIVIUM power. Its contrary spells formlessness, decline in every direction. Human society, on the other hand, is based on the natural instinct for the inequality of men; for the natural order of inner rank and value, once freely acknowledged by all. Hence, social decline means the trend towards the destruction of the natural order of men. Nineteenth Century Liberalism already displays all the trends toward Nihilism. From the Bastille to Soviet Moscow is one straight way, whether we admit it or not, holds Spengler. The final goal was always anarchy, economic chaos and communism which, in turn, tend towards a one-man dictatorship as their only solution. For one hundred and fifty years political rationalism has been striving for liberation from the state with the aim of leveling down the old, natural order. Political democracy and parliamentarism mean the bankruptcy of strong state's authority and efficiency, disguised under the slogan of "the rule of the people." In reality, true statesmanship is lacking, political opportunism, dilettantism and economic selfishness prevail. Yet, without strong politics there is no sound economy. Thus parliamentarism promotes the decline of the state which once the army preserved. Even wars are being waged now for economic advantage, and the "peace treaties" continue this warfare with different means. To this Spengler adds the "Revolution of Labor" of the last one hundred years. A political Boheme has arisen preaching class-hatred and equality with the view of reducing the natural order according to achievement and distinction to the level of the mob, with the "dictatorship of the proletariat" as its ultimate goal. A wage-bolshevism has been instituted with strikes as its weapon and with the economic ruin of private initiative and property plainly in view. That is the sinister "Revolution from Below." Unemployment and inflation follow in its wake. The literary form of this long-drawn process towards bolshevization is called "Naturalism," a movement whose "heroes" are the sick, the physically, mentally, and socially misfit; and the poor, exploited, and enslaved wage-earner; in short, the proletarian as the one and only truly human being. Such types have been made the new saints, pets and idols of a "fourth class" literature. Along with it, the old ethos of work has been undermined, for work is no longer valued as man's best pride and chief purpose in life. On the contrary, it is being branded a curse to be shunned and has been degraded to the level of a political barter commodity. Adding to this the ominous signs of the "Colored Revolution" just looming over the horizon from Asia to Africa, we have the symptoms and dangers of the "Decline of the West" such as Spengler beholds them. Is there any way out? The one and only hope for the rise of a new spirit, able to cope with the last phase of our approaching doom, Spengler sees in the triumph and spread of what he terms "Prussian Socialism." It is a spirit not nationally bound and can manifest itself on the Thames as on the Spree or on the Ohio River. In fact, England has known it quite well in the course of her agitated history. Moreover, it is a spirit ethical to the core, inherent in the genius of our race, and has nothing in common with ephemeral political aims and aspirations. Spengler, the Bavarian by choice, calls it "Prussian" in order to emphasize the region of its most striking manifestation. Basically, it is an ethos of the will and has ST. JOHN'S TRIVIUM been alive in the best of our race throughout the course of Western history. As such, it has become an inalienable part of the German soul, Spengler asserts, and has manifested itself again and again at great historic moments. Its workings in the individual, Spengler attempts to define by quoting the soldier, Count Schlieffen: "To talk little; to achieve much; to be more than one appears to be." That, Spengler holds, is "Haltung": not an empty pose and gesture, but self-discipline; a sense of duty, of truly Christian humility, of honor and self-sacrifice; an inner freedom gained from willing devotion to a supra-personal cause. Such spirit, he avows, will be able to conquer the sinister forces of the present World Revolution. It embraces, in a way, the ideals of ancient Rome as well as Nietzsche's will-to-power, ethically bound. Yet, in spite of their kinship in "soldierly" spirit, the difference between Nietzsche and Spengler in political creed is most pronounced. Nietzsche's strongly individualistic "every man first for himself" is strongly contrasted with the Prussian "Each for all, and all for one," to which Spengler adheres. For Nietzsche, the early advocate of a "United States of Europe," nationalism and imperialism are and remain grave dangers engendering narrowness of view and heart, hampering sound cultural advancement and intercourse. The state is, to him, a danger to the individual as much as a benefit. To Spengler, however, it means the social disciplining of the individual under guarantee of free initiative of property and person. To him, the state is the natural organ of ordered society, the one and only safeguard of cultural and material advancement. Nietzsche feels Greek, and Spengler feels R oman in political view. They 11 differ fundamentally as to the purpose, function, and goal of human society: Nietzsche strives, first of all, to promote the great individual at the expense of the mass. Spengler strives to further the concerns of the group through the medium of those naturally endowed for leadership. Thus Nietzsche, the "good cosmopolitan," hates everything about the Prussian spirit and state but its soldierliness. To Spengler, the "socialist," Prussianism is a spiritual source, a sound instinct and view of life; a last guarantee for the honorable future-and exit-of our race; the last promise of the final defeat of political and mental particularism. Kant's categorical imperative, Nietzsche's scorn for individual happiness, and Hegel's sound political realism, he sees blended in it. "Socialism," Spengler knows, "means something different in every land: the Prussian worker is the only born socialist, therefore he has been the fool of all others." With such views at heart, Spengler envisages the ethico-socialistic state of the future along the lines of the Prussian tradition, with the will to conquer, to dominate, and-to die. Such a state, he holds, is Germany's last mission; her last and only inner possibility in a world fraught with all the dangers of decline and impending doom. But why, one is tempted to ask, this ever-lasting quest for "Form?" Why this constant self-search of the German soul, unless it is perpetually aware of an inherent formlessness, of the dangers of chaos deep within itself? And further, why is this concept of Decline of such particular appeal among the Germans? Even Luther spoke of the "ever-impending danger of relapse into chaos and barbarism" on the part of the German soul. Nietzsche speaks of this soul as having its ../'caves and hind-caves"; and �12 ST. JOHN'S TRIVIUM the subtles t auto-psychologist, knew all he remarks, as if by way of self-castigathe tragic lures and snares of Dionysian tion: "The German is always of yesterecstacy and self-abandonment. Thus he day and of the day after tomorrow; he longed, more desperately than any other has, as yet, no today. " Both Spengler Germa n, for Apollonian "sophr osyne, " and Nietzsche view the German soul as self-re straint and perfection. The sound an eternally restless, romantic worldsynthe sis of both was the vision of rover and spiritu al particu larist; a perGoethe 's sublime human ity, an aim so petual "prote stant" and conscientious hard to achieve among Germans. And objector in the face of the rest of the yet, it is the one and only, though truly world. Only the faith in its own mission, super-h uman, self-redemption of this the undyin g vision of a new way of life, enigma tic Germa n soul. can save this soul from chaos and utter Betwee n the Ninete enth Centur y self-destruction. Faust is of such nature. thinker s and the mental crisis of today We find this trust in the German calling stands also the lonely, venerable, and in Spengler's Prussia n Socialism as much tragic figure of Spengler's great antagas in Nietzsche's Zarath ustra-v ision, the Thoma s Mann. To him, as their onist, acme of an eternal metabolism. This tor in aesthetic form and taste, the precep eternal becoming and self-transforming post-W ar generations of Germa n and prehas made the Germa n soul the mental youth perhap s owe a profounder feeling sphinx of Europe , just as Russia has of indebte dness and gratitu de than to been, and is to-day, the Asiatic sphinx. any other recent German thinker . Mann This inner unrest and threat of "formhas ponder ed deeply upon the Germa n lessness" has always engendered the soul, upon the meaning and values of dangers of self-destruction. How often human culture , and upon the problems in their lives did Freder ick the Great, the and sympto ms of decline. For almost Goethe of Werthe r and Faust, Kleist, half a century , his heart has been a Nietzsche, and the countless lesser spiritu al battleg round, and he knows "roman ticists, " think of suicide? Only that the fight is not over. Thus he has a few great Germa ns have ever been men become the last great Germa n "Prote sof definite "Form ." Goethe searched for tant" at the end of an era in the face of it all his life. This search for, and process crises and catastr ophe: a restless searche r of "formi ng" is the very core of his conand wander er between the times, a cept of "Bildu ng." We touch at this Nietzsc hean supra-G erman of unfalte ring point at the tragic duality and inner conscience and courage; a Schope nhauer discord of the Faustic soul. It is, once Wagne rite with a nostalgia for Mozar t's more, the romant ic Germa n genius in its delicate simplicity of soul. Thus he is eternal quest for genuine "cultur e," for to-day not only one of the most highly "the land of Greece" as Nietzsche saw it culture d Germans, but the protag onist in his dearest dreams . But there also par excellence of the very best that ever is in it the insurm ountab le fear of finality; dwelt within the German soul. Knowing as "form" means completion, fulfilment its "caves and hind-caves," its inner For beyond completion and-d eath. discords, deep within himself, he has hope, there is only future no is there pleade d and warned and presaged more decline. Nietzsc he who perhap s has and more empha tically at the thresho ld been the most subtile interpr eter of the of decline and collapse. The milestone Germa n soul since Goethe, because he was ST, JOHN'S TRIVIUM 13 forseen and of this inner strife and struggle, his Keyserling. All three have c collapse psychi ar post-W the ed ," witness tischen "Betra chtung en eines Unpoli ptcy bankru the it in ized recogn have and history has become a landma rk in the very ing someth of as a stamin moral an of e of the Germa n mind·, of the struggl . had soul n Germa the : indeed l, spiritua empha tic and desper ate protest against was alone this and itself, of vision its lost and the danger s threate ning from within What te. comple own breakd make to able withou t. Throug h the subtile and artisspirit, had tic medium of Mann' s aesthetic irony, once was inner "Form " and pose, empty an into ed harden since Schope nhauer 's sceptic pessimism has long The . scheme and e pretens mere triump hed once more. Slowly but con- mto Great the ick Freder Kant, of stantlr , the scope of Mann's perspe ctive spirit ' . A force, was widened, from the psychic perplexi- Fichte and Hegel, had waned. sublime, had turned into a farce ' ties of the individual outside r, over the once . the old degene ration of whole families and social mto dead conven tionalit y. Thus as one, new a and lost was type groups, to the decline of national culture Germa n trithe lity, instabi Inner . and of an entire civilization. To be sure, yet, unborn witness the "being -so-and -not-ot herwis e" of a umph of mere formlessness, bore charac ter, this fateful and perplexing to that. No wonder that the Germa n soul, as aggregation of heterogeneous mental , tely psychic, and social components that has always been its way, alterna ing wander went and makes for individ uality, has always turned recluse The itself. r recove to deman ded his first though t. But with abroad in order ways are his scope, his conscience, his sense of representatives of those two ling. Keyser and duty and responsibility, have grown for us Stefan George vision the create to Have they been able tremen dously . preof a new Germa n type? That the examgreat the Mann, s Thoma Yet, to server, interpr eter and advocate, of ple of one single individ ual is able been has task a everyth ing genuine and best in culture is, accomplish so gigantic work in a sense, not a "re-for mer." To be borne out in the past by the life and sure, Hans Castor p's generation, as of Goethe. Yet, it seems clear to-day that neither others before him, atone for the inner whole a of ce formative vision of Spengler, nor that decaden the and disorderliness a dying and war for or Keyserling, has sufficed to ering George of era by volunte but out, way a is That fulfill this deman d, no matter how heroic soldier's death. or man of type new a it does not create their individual efforts have been: they to left was It oflife. way envisage a new only represe nt sympto ms of a tempor ary and seek to er Spengl two others besides situatio n and of a new striving for form. to preach a new Germa n type in the hour In each of them the inner restlessness of of crisis and collapse: the world-rover, the age is clearly reflected. Thus, each Count Keyserling, and the poet-pr ophet, of them marks a new steppin gstone in the Stefan George. progress towards a new Germa n vision, Of the thinker s discussed, only Spengler none its fulfilment. (with the exception of Thoma s Mann) The new Germa n type, considering its reaches directl y into the porten tous psychological backgr ound in history , cerevents of Germa ny's recent past. That is unthin kable as a mere Spenglerconnects him with Stefan George and tainly �14 ST. JOHN'S TRIVIUM ian fatalistic realist; nor merely as a perpetually restless rover between the ages and zones of this globe in the sense of Count Keyserling; nor as the overindividualistic, mystic recluse of the priest-like Stefan George who dedicates his soul to Eros and Kairos, beauty and solemnity. Spengler belittled man for the sake of dread historic facts. Keyserling's individualistic superiority expands and enhances man at the expense of historic reality. George's type, however, remains for ever a personal, and nothing but a personal, task to itself. Yet, he represents a mystic innerness and solemn contemplativeness which we never would miss in the German type of the future because it is of the best and most sacred tradition of the German soul. To be sure, Spengler, George, and Keyserling, represent three different, though equally essential, German sides and trends. The vision of each alone would never suffice. But the sum-total of their influence upon the German future seems of the utmost importance. For all three are searchers, pathfinders, and leaders on a weary way: on the return of this German soul to its own true self.RICHARD KuEHNEMUND. A Letter Home Chesapeake Bay and above all, St. Here's a letter that I have been John's, make Annapolis what it is, a planning to write to you since I arrived little colonial seaport town with a taste at St. John's, a letter which I think will of classicism and a vintage of modern tell you in some vague fashion what I times thrown in. But the great thing about our college am doing, what the college is essentially seems to be the ideas, ideas such as like, and how it differs from anything never known back home. At home we I have ever come up against before. do some thinking, mostly, as you reFrom a physical standpoint the college member, in the kitchen, where we could is very beautiful, with buildings of look next door and see Mrs. Archibald colonial types, some of them dating back looking at us. If our thinking was about to the Revolution. We have a freshimportant things it was only a poor apman dormitory which had its calling proximation to that type of thinking and presumably prior to the Civil War, but the ideas we use here. And the ideas are many of us have wondered if it didn't deep, so much so, that we find it difficult see the light of day somewhere around the Norman Conquest, and if the con- sometimes to extricate ourselves from quest isn't still going on. The campus them; yet if we are able, we explore those with its quaint structures is in Annapolis, depths to test and retest the validity of but one might also say it is out of it, for causes, natures and insights. I have Annapolis is so rambling that it is dif- learned more since I have been here than ficult to say when one is in it and when I ever thought would be the case. I one is not. Little byways, passes, find, however, that many of our kitchen government buildings with colonial ap- variety notions are subjected to great proximations and cupolas, the Navy, assault and attack by men who appa- DEAR Family, ST. JOHN'S TRIVIUM rently have a different variety of notions. Of course an intellectual fight ensues, and only adds to the delight, and somehow makes the manipulation of the mind and the thrust and parry of the ideas a pleasurable pastime. And yet I sometimes feel that many of my friends use ideas just for that purpose, namely to engage in a sort of pleasurable pastime. Some of them have all the ideas at their command, and are able to use them quite well in a sort of artistic way. With them they jibe, with them they taunt, and with them they play, but the result seems to be, at times, an intellectual rope climbing. They get nowhere but up the rope or down. You might call them intellectual jitterbugs, mindful of their steps, and cognizant of their dance, hurling their partner to the left, and then to the right, up and down, and in all ways at once. Yet they are limited by the dance itself, and the ideas fail to lead them to anything else except another step or another dance. And so you might conclude that these intellectual jitterbugs fail to conform to the object of the curriculum, which seems to be to make the student an intelligent person. And being an intelligent person seems to include the idea of morality, and a moral person is one who doesn't restrict himself to leaping, gliding or tripping in a rhythmic fashion. Perhaps, as some of us have heard, we are a graceless people, and no matter what we try to do in a right way we shall always be doomed to failure, and morals will remain something to be discussed and played with, and not something to be practiced. Seminar is considered the hinge of the curriculum. It is there that we get the opportunity to put the liberal arts into practice, in a discursive way of course. We again discuss morality, politics, God and all other things imagin- 15 able. Possibly the only thing we haven't discussed is the seminar itself. Some have defined a seminar as a place where no one knows what he is talking about. But I know that this is not correct, because it is apparent that some do know what they are talking about since they state so in such an emphatic manner. They call those, who do know what they are talking about and who can show the others what they are talking about, dialecticians. The others of course just make a noise like a dialectician. One time in seminar some of us had the floor, two or three at once, and we were discussing nothing. Somebody said you couldn't talk about nothing if it were nothing, and hence had to refer to nothing as almost nothing. And I think it makes some sense to talk about nothing as almost nothing, for who can talk about nothing unless it be Mrs. Archibald next door. Besides we get into conflicting philosophies, and some hold that there is only one philosophy and anyone who doesn't agree is wrong or crazy. These people are commonly referred to as Aristotelians. I'm not quite sure what an Aristotelian is, but someone mentioned that he is a person who is right at the top of his voice. And that may be true for there are a few in our seminar who are always shouting and if you ask them if they could be wrong they think you are asking an absurd question. Then there are Platonists. A Platonist is a person who can be just as definite if he isn't. He answers everything with a shrug of his shoulders and mumbles under his breath something which sounds like "can't afford to be dogmatic." And you see right there, there is difference of opinion. Yet you remember that we decided, in the kitchen, that a difference of opinion in important matters was �16 ST. JOHN'S TRIVIUM likely to lead to serious consequences; for if everyone is entitled to his own opinion, and his own opinion is all that can be stated concerning something, then it seems that the only way to settle such a difference of opinion is to resort to force. And you remember we decided that force was a bad thing. But here, apparently, those who hold various opinions don't think much about it, and they don't use force, so all that remains is the difference of opinion. But the toughest people to handle are the eclectics. They take a little bit here and a little bit there, pulling down an argument from this source, reverting to a contradictory statement from that source, and generally confusing themselves and their listeners so that no one knows which way to turn next. On Friday they are Pragmatists, Saturday, Epicureans, Sunday, they are Thomists, and on Monday they have to be Stoics. My roommate and I are now living in Gov. Oogle's house pronounced Ogle; Gov. Oogle pronounced Ogle was one of the first governors of Maryland. I sleep in the governor's four poster bed. It's so large that if three people were in it none would be aware of the others' presence. . . . So you see what an mterestmg time I am having here at St. John's and what a few ideas can do to one. Sometimes however, I get too much, and at nights, I am told by my roommate, I sit up in ST. JOHN'S TRIVIUM bed screaming: "Nothing, which is not nothing, but almost nothing, Platonists and Democrats, God, soul, Oogle, pronounced Ogle, Ogle, Oogle, Oogle, Ogle!! I can only attribute these unusual occurrences to my recent and sudden entrance into the world of ideas. The only thing I have forgotten to mention is the Navy. Everyday seems to be Navy Day here, and I have developed such an affinity for the noble lads that row, row, row your boat has ceased to be a slogan. But when I find my interests tending towards the nautical, I return to the world of ideas, not nothing but almost nothing, or Gov. Ogle pronounced Oogle. And from out of such a maelstrom of ideas I can conclude either that this is the stuff worth living for, or that they insure one a certain and well directed demise. But be that as it may I can't deny that those things we were inclined to think important are now inconsequential, and that people like Mrs. Archibald next door only air their prejudices and that intelligence as well as morality comes at a premium. I must go now because I am late to sculpture class. We did a head of a lady last week. This was my first venture. The rest will come later. Love, Sidney. -WILBUR JERGER, '44 17 Second Fiddle MUSIC at St. John's is in a singularly embarrassing position. It is neither flesh nor fowl, not enough of a liberal art to be completely sponsored by the College, nor yet wholly enough a fine art to be quite dependent as an extra collegiate activity. Thus it is periodically advertised by the Administration, and the rest of the time is left to fend for itself as best it can. This same situation last year, that of an ambitious program being carried on with the scantest of support, led to the virtual "death" of music, and its reestablishment as a fine art subject for a small nucleus of students who were concerned enough to go farther than the mere stage of "passive" music. This year with a new music director and a large freshman class, great things were expected of the music program. A very good concert series was arranged with such artists as Ralph Kirkpatrick and the Budapest String Quartet, Glee clubs were organised, and Bach cantatas anticipated, and a thoroughly musical campus was expected. At the end of October the subscriptions for the concert series were so discouraging, although they were above the execrable total of the year before, that the College felt compelled to urge the Student Body to attend the series, which was costing the College one thousand dollars a year. The Glee club had a remarkably small, although enthusiastic membership, and the whole musical situation appeared to be one well warranting an explanation by the College. We are not morbid prophets of disaster. We are not belittling the efforts of the College. We are wholly for a good musical program here at St. Johns. But as an essentially undergraduate medium of opinion, we are forced to criticise the tactics of the College. The problem that the latter is facing is one which every liberal arts college worthy of the name must confront, and the more aid we can offer towards its solution, or the more advice we can solicit from our readers, the better we feel this problem will be solved. At present we feel that music here cannot be properly included as a semiliberal, semi-fine art. It is true that music was originally one of the Quadrivium, and as such has an essential place in the curriculum here. But its essential place in the curriculum is not being given it. It is still definitely outside the New Program, save for a few books on music read in seminars. Even concerts here are in danger of having a greater proportion of subscribers from the Navy and the town of Annapolis than from the College. If the fact were realised that it is only the people who regard music as a fine art who subscribe to the concerts, then the situation might be less painful than it is at present, in which everybody is not only expected to see music's connection as a liberal art, but is asked to act on that connection. In the future, perhaps, when the Program is so arranged as to have a full-fledged music course, with the twenty-five Great Works as its backbone, the College's dream might be realised. But it is no use trying to create a music course the wrong, way around. Far better to admit that the concerts are for the benefit of the community comprising Annapolis and the Academy, and that the Glee club is only for those who are really interested before they join, than to try to stimulate a labored responsibility among the Student Body that they should attend the �18 ST. JOHN'S TRIVIUM concerts, and should first join the Glee club, later learning to appreciate singing. Until a music course integrated with the New Program is worked out and set in motion, the solution would appear to us to be an admission that music at St. John's is yet a fine art, and that it should be upheld by a nucleus of keen mus1c1ans, a nucleus always open to expansion, but never in such a weak position as to have to boost themselves, and force the rest of the Student Body to feel both guilt and condescension when they participate in the program.-NERO. The Blues DESPITE harrow arguments to the contrary, the slavery in the South was as cruel a form of subjugation as any other instance of this sort in history. A "good nigger" was one who was resigned to his fate, a "buck nigger," one who either thought for himself or tried to escape from the perpetual stick held above his head. Field hands, to ease their pains and sorrows and relieve the monotony of their task, sang songs. They also used songs as a way of speaking with one another without having the overseer understand their implications. The overseers, in turn, felt assured when the slaves sang, for a singing slave was almost always considered a "good nigger." It was out of such an oppression that the work songs of the slaves were born. And it was from these work songs that the blues grew-the blues, a music that was sad and hopeful-hopeful because things were so bad they could get no worse. The long hard road just had to finish somewhere. As Bessie Smith sang: "See that long lonesome road, Lawd, you know it's got ta en'." The optimistic element in the blues is also well characterized in these old traditional lines: 19 ST. JOHN'S TRIVIUM "Lawd, the sun's gonna shine In my back doh' someday." Blues very often expressed a craving for drink or women, but in their true, early form blues were not obscene and had no sexual implications. It is only in later years that the blues, some people call "risque" came into popularity. As a matter of fact, this aspect has overshadowed the blues to such an extent that, today, many people believe that they are merely a legitimate way of expressing a dirty ditty. But in this type of music, the timbre of the singer's voice and the way the lyrics are built, are as important as the actual meaning of the words. There are a few singers whose version of almost any song would have a blues quality. Blues, as did all other forms of jazz, reached its height in New Orleans. Such men as Tony Jackson and "Jelly-Roll" Morton carried them through the honkytonks and "houses" of Storyville, the low high-life center of the Crescent City. And outside, on the sidewalks of the delta town, there was sung another type, a more real blues than that of the tonks, the blues sung by beggars on the street. Among these street singers were "Blind Lemon" Lemon Jefferson and Blind Willie Johnson. "Blind Lemon," who has become a legendary figure, made many records which today are rare items. He experimented with blues structure and also used a great variety of new subjects for his records, one of them being "Wartime Blues" recorded at the time the United States entered the World War. As for Blind Willie Johnson, from a point of view of folk music as well as that of jazz, his blues are unsurpassed. His very basic guitar and his primitive moans are only stirring at first, but upon "listening" closely, many previously unseen qualities may be discovered in his songs. There was still another distinct type of blues, a type destined to gain greater public favor than any other. These blues were the ones sung by women. They had a greater general appeal and were not confined to a certain locality. Ma Rainey and Mamie Smith were the first known singers in this category. Both were famed among the Southern Negroes. They often travelled from village to village and were always exuberantly welcomed. Ma Rainey, who was probably the greatest blues singer of her time, frequently had her audience in tears. Tears that came because Ma and her listeners knew something-something that hurt and something that was exciting. Ma Rainey greatly influenced Bessie Smith, who became the most popular of such singers. Bessie had a low, throaty voice and sang her blues mean and lowdown. Because of these qualities and her extreme sincerity, many connoisseurs consider her greater than Ma Rainey. Anyone who likes blues is emotionally affected by Bessie Smith. We have known some who, after listening to her records, cry; some who feel they must go out and get drunk; and others who can't believe that anything can be so sincere. Her records have sold over five million copies and she has been surnamed, "Empress of the Blues." In 1936, Bessie was driving to Memphis to appear in a vaudeville show. Her automobile was in an accident and she was seriously hurt. Quick medical attention might have saved her, but the nearest hospital would not allow Negro patients. She died, and her death showed that there was still a very good reason to sing the blues-the original reason. Today, singers are introducing a new interpretation of this style of music. A modern swing rhythm replaces the old blues feeling. However, the spirit is not altogether gone. Because of renewed interest in true blues, some old timers like Ida Cox are making records again. Very interesting is Billie Holidays' record, "Strange Fruit," which was a revolt against injustice. "Southern trees bear a strange fruit, Blood on the leaves and blood at the root, Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze, Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees." RECOMMENDED Jesse James-Southern Casey ]ones-(Decca) Blind Willie Johnson-Dark Was the Night(Vocalion) Jelly-Roll Morton-New Orleans Memories-(general album) Winin' Boy Blues-(Bluebird) Bessie Smith-Two Albums-(Columbia) Ida Cox-Deep Sea Blues-(Columbia) Billie Holliday-Bi/lie' s B/ues-(Vocalion) Many good blues made recently by race artists are available at most music stores. Rare items may be ordered from the H. R. S. Music Shop in New York City.-AHMED ERTEGUN, '44. �20 ST. JOHN'S TRIVIUM ST. JOHN'S TRIVIUM The A wakening FATHER died when I was ten. I can't remember much of my childhood except for one or two incidents, but, father's death, or rather, his funeral, stands out vividly in my mind. It seems to me now, that this thing, this-I do not know how to describe it except by calling it an impression. Anyway, this impression was the start, the impetus, you might say, that made me alive. That sounds odd; making a child of ten alive, sensitive, impressionistic; but, it isn't. It is tragic to see an apathetic child; it stirs me more, makes me feel more despondent than seeing a grown hulk of a man, a human derelict, with dead eyes and decay oozing from him; for apathy is decay. For the child has yet to grow and is dead in the embryo; while the man has grown. Enough of this, though. I can say that this is what woke me, for I have lived a good many years and can look back on them with a sense of perspective, from an objective plane almost. I cannot say from a purely objective plane; I've lived long enough to realize that men do not look at things entirely in the light of objectivity. They cannot. So what I say will in some ways be influenced by the life I have lived, the experiences and impressions that I have gone through, and which I have garnered up to now. However, there are certain sensations and images which I can recall from the time of the funeral, that are untouched, as far as I can discern, by the years and what they have held. As I said before, my childhood, up till my tenth birthday, can offer me now no memories. It is an unavoidable gap; but, for some reason, mine was that way. And it does not include any palpable memory of Father of any length. That is another odd fact. I have no picture, that is, no full length portrait, so to speak, of Father. I can recall certain incidents; but they have no continuity. The picture is incomplete and will always be so. The several strokes of the brush that make up the image are spasmodic. And so, when I am presented with a picture of Father, an old daguerreotype, or an early photograph, I feel as if I had met such a person, had known such a person; but, no matter how hard I try, I cannot link the two together. I cannot imbue that photographic reproduction with any sense of life. Perhaps I might have had some definite picture of Father if I had seen him sometime before the end. He was sick for a month before he died. That is, he was in a hospital that month. I don't know how long he was ill before that. (I have heard about him from friends and relatives, though, in the course of time. He was always jolly; had laughing eyes and a mobile mouth with that upward twitch at the ends which designates many good natured people. He was always thinking of some new deviltry, and thought nothing of making himself perfectly ridiculous in order to provoke a laugh. Everyone loved him.) I was taken to see him in the hospital, but, for some reason they would not allow me to visit him. I was left outside his door while Mother went into his room. I remember that door. Not that it was any different from any other patient's door along the corridor. It was just a plain, white door with a common brass knob and with a number on it. It opened noiselessly and closed the same l way. All the doors opened and closed the same way. All the people entered through those doors and exited from them-noiselessly. Everything was quiet; was mute. It was deadening. But the doors fascinated me and I watched them, a scared, wondering, little fellow with big eyes. Then, the door of father's room opened and Mother came out. And I caught a glimpse of a figure lying in bed. A second time the same thing happened. I did not see him. Only this was under different circumstances. Father had been taken to his sister's home. Mother knew about this and she brought me there. But, his sister had already sent him to the hospital. I remember there were angry words between Mother and father's sister. I thought that I was the focal point of the argument, but, I see now that I was merely a minor issue. Mother was angry, as I see it now, because they had taken Father from the hospital and then shipped him back, as if he were a curiosity. Mother was quite right in being mad; for Father was in a critical condition. It was a Sunday when this incident occurred; and the following Wednesday, Father died. So, you see, when the day of the funeral came and all were gathered, friends and kin, I neither considered myself one or the other but felt like an outsider, a stranger-or, to phrase it more aptly, an alien. One, who had no realization of who had actually died and what was actually happening, but, who simply saw the stark physical properties of the scene. And even these were somehow a bit askew, being unfamiliar. And as such, I felt no emotion. That is, I did not feel like crying; nor, did I have that greater grief in which weeping 21 has no part. (How can a child feel the latter emotion, you are perhaps wondering? All that I can say is this: you would be amazed at the emotion of a child, as to deepness, in comparison with that of an adult, if the farmer's could be fully expressed. As it is, it is inarticulate.) On the other hand, I was not happy; nor was I indifferent. I was permeated with a vague curiosity, a curiosity bordering on the metaphysical, which ran around in my head something like this: Dead? Father's dead. . . . I will not see Father anymore? They say so .... Who was my Father? . . . The man who every night came home just before supper. Who used to pick me up and against whose cheek, with its day's stubble, I would love to rub my own.... He is gone. They say so. . . . Then I will never again smell the faint aroma of cigars which tickled my nose? ... You must realize that I am giving expression to these thoughts; that, perhaps, they were not as defined as I have made them; that, perhaps, they were not even in my mind and that, now, I am creating them. I will not argue with you on any of these points. Let it suffice that at ten they were there in an inarticulate state. The ceremony took place in a long, narrow room. My seat was in the first row and I had to walk the length of the room in order to get to it. The coffin was at the head of the aisle and as I walked toward my chair, with my eyes on the coffin, I was struck with a vague similarity. The room seemed to me a second coffin, only on a larger scale. It was a large, plain box filled with little chairs and with moving dolls. And the cynosure was the raised toy box at the head of the larger box. It was funny. �22 ST. JOHN'S TRIVIUM I took my seat and found myself between Mother's sister, Aunt Esther, and my six year old brother, Lennie. Mother I did not see. I looked at Aunt Esther. She was crying quietly; her eyes were red, and her fat face was streaked with the lines of her tears which were running unconcernedly off her face and onto her broad bosom. Her buttocks, bulging over her chair, pressed against my thigh, and, I moved away from her to the end of my spasmodically sobbed chair. She throughout the entire ceremony. I tried to sit quietly on the end of my chair. I could not. I grew fidgety. Aunt Esther noticed my uneasiness and sought to soothe me. She drew me towards her. I resisted. Something caught her attention for a moment and she let me go. In that instant I nudged Lennie and whispered fiercely in his ear. "Change seats with me." He shook his head; so I grabbed one of his fingers and pulled it backwards. He was going to yelp; but, I glared at him and muttered, "Sh!" Aunt Esther noticed the struggle. She pulled me toward her and asked me what was wrong. I told her that I wanted Lennie's chair. She must have felt my antagonism for her and realized that Lennie would be more docile in her hands, for she leaned over, nearly smothering me with her bust, and whispered to Lennie. Then, she pulled Lennie out of his chair; and I wriggled out of her embrace and slid over to the vacant chair. I took a deep breath. Of the ceremony itself, there is only one incident which stands out vividly in my mind. It was the unveiling of Father's face. I mean, of course, that anyone was now allowed to have one last, fleeting glance of his face before the lid was battened down, so to speak, and no further mortal eye could gaze upon him. I was intently watching those persons who were filing around the coffin when suddenly I heard Lennie's petulant voice crying, "I want to see Daddy. I want to see Daddy." I had not realized it, but, the thought had never entered my head to go up to the coffin and look at Father. Why had I not thought of it? I became afraid. An abject terror seized me and I cringed in my chair. Of what was I afraid? Of what is a child afraid when he awakes in the dark? He does not know. Nor did I. We can explain, perhaps, of what the child is afraid. But the child cannot. And I was a child of ten then. In my fear I gripped Lennie's arm; and my fingernails must have bit into it, for he cried out. I awoke then. In a quavering voice I whispered to Lennie, "You mustn't go up there; you mustn't. There is nothing to see. Nothing to see, you hear, nothing to see. Daddy isn't there." He looked at me with wondering eyes. "Daddy isn't there?" "No." "You sure Daddy isn't there?" "Yes." "But Mamma is up there." And he pointed to the coffin where Mother was now standing. "Don't point." That was the only thing I could think of, at the moment, in answer to what he had just said. "Mamma is there. Let me go-" "Mamma has to be there. She doesn't want you." He subsided, then, but I still held his arm. ST. JOHN'S TRIVIUM Mother was standing beside the coffin. I did not entirely believe Lennie, until I looked now and saw that he was right. She was there, and, as I looked at her, I knew that I had lied to Lennie. Mother did want us. I saw that in her eyes as she caught my glance. She made a slight gesture with her arms, imploring me to come to her. I looked away quickly as if I had not seen her, and riveted my eyes on the blank wall ahead of me. I was still afraid. And as I sat gazing at the wall, I became aware of what I was in fear of. I was afraid of Aunt Esther and Mother and all the people in the room; Uncle Charlie, Uncle Harry and Uncle Sam; Aunt Mary, Aunt Sarah and Aunt Martha; even Lennie. Lennie seemed to me the epitome of them all. He was curious. He wanted to see something; it did not matter what. He saw the adults parading around the coffin and his curiosity was piqued. Only his curiosity was ingenuous. The adults seemed to me to be hypocritical. They knew what was there. They saw something; and they were feigning pity for it, and sympathy for Lennie and me. They were shamming, I said, for they do not know me. They have never met me, nor seen me except for today. Uncle Charlie and Aunt Esther only know me. And I have met Uncle Charlie only twice; and I have stayed at Aunt Esther's house for one week when I was eight. Yet they were looking at us with sympathy. They were crying. They were spilling their tears on Father's face. TheyFor the first time that afternoon something stirred inside of me; a feeling for Father, one that was wrought only for him and that was free of all other as- 23 soc1at10ns. Of course, it was engendered by the past impressions; but the effect is still the effect even though brought about by the cause, and can stand by itself for such as it is. I wanted to be alone, away from all these people with their prying, sympathetic eyes. I wanted peace and time to mull over in my child's mind this eternal question of death. I wanted solace, a personal kind, not the impersonal and seemingly diffident sort that was now being shown on all sides of me. And I wanted faith. Not faith in God; for that is too intangible for a child. But a faith, or should I say, a mooring, that I could cling to amid this bewilderment that was choking me. And these very emotions I associated with Father. I felt that they were his feelings and that he was only waiting for the ritual to be gone through before his will would execute them. As I think of that moment, now, of many years ago, I am amazed at the depth of these first stirrings. It seems fantastic that I, at the age of ten, when my little mind was, as yet, only in the stage of a foetus, should try, unconsciously to force open the womb prematurely and assume a bastardly growth. The more I think about it, the more I wonder at it. But my wonder assumes catastrophic proportions when I recall what followed. For gradually gaining momentum, my emotion finally engulfed me. Tears were in my eyes, and, I felt as if I were choking, for my throat was tightening. And dimly I heard the closing words of the service 'Ashes to ashes, and dust to dust.' and an hysterical sob from Aunt Esther. I was outside finally, and, as I breathed heavily of the late, afternoon, autumn �24 ST. JOHN'S TRIVIUM ST. JOHN'S TRIVIUM air, my head cleared. Everyone was bustling about trying to find a suitable carriage. Aunt Esther called me, but I pretended not to hear and wandered among the crowd. At the last minute, someone found me and put me in the first carriage. I replied sullenly to the few questions asked me, and sat huddled in the corner oblivious of everything. We stopped once for a bottle of spirits of ammonia, but, otherwise, the long ride to the cemetery was passed with hardly a word spoken. I dozed fitfully all the way. The clop-clop of the horses' hooves was soothing. It was evening when we reached the cemetery. The wind was biting; and the people had gathered in small groups to keep warm. I was cold. I was shivering. I walked briskly along the path among the tombstones. A small pebble lodged in my shoe and I stopped to take it out. Ahead of me was a mound of loose dirt. I hopped over to it and sat down; untied my shoelaces, pulled off my shoe, and took the pebble out and threw it at a stone angel a few paces away. I missed. I tried again with one of the pebbles lying at my feet. This time I hit squarely on the face. "What are you doing, sonny?" I turned around; and, I saw a man in a worn, leather jacket, in baggy trousers, and with clay stained shoes leaning on a shovel. "Oh, nothing. Just taking a pebble out of my shoe." I quickly slipped my shoe on and bent over it to tie the laces. "Maybe you were, son, maybe you were. But I wouldn't throw pebbles at the tombstones if I were you. That's blasphemy." I did not know what "blasphemy" meant, but, the intonation given the word, hushed, awe filling and tinged with a nameless fear, made me feel guilty of some great offense, and brought me back to the moment from which I had momentarily escaped. "I didn't mean anything. Really, I didn't." "I know you didn't, son. You don't know what these stones mean. They are the mute signs of the living to the dead that death has not wholly separated them. Now, if your father died- " He stopped; looked at me oddly and then at something behind me. "I'm sorry, son." He picked up his shovel and walked away. I got up and clambered up the mound of dirt to see what he had looked at. There, below me, was the pit. It seemed very deep from the top of the mound. I kicked some dirt and watched it dribble down the side of the mound and bound off into space; all the while trying to think what that old man was sorry about. The others were now close by. I jumped off the mound. The pall bearers with the coffin were coming up the pathway. They were at the grave. They laid the coffin on slings stretched across the pit and slowly lowered the black box until it came to rest at the bottom. I found my way to Mother's side. I slipped my hand into hers. It was warm and my cold fingers began to throb with the warmth. Lennie was beside her, snuggling against her thigh. Mother did not move a muscle during this last ceremony. Except for one quick movement near the end, I thought she was one of the carved stone figures that were all about us. As the first spade full of dirt landed with a thud on the coffin, her hand tightened over mine. Then, we were home. I refused to eat any supper, but went to my room, undressed, got into my pyjamas and climbed into bed. I cried. For no accountable reason, I burst into tears. I was ashamed and buried my head in the pillow. I heard someone coming into the room. I stifled my sobs and pretended to be asleep. "Are you a wake ?" It was Mother. I did not answer but breathed deeply. "He's asleep." That was Aunt Esther. "Thank God for that," I heard Mother say. "It has been a trying day. I am thankful it is over. The children behaved splendidly. But they need rest. I, too. My nerves are frayed to their last shreds. I still cannot forget his face. I did not realize that the disease, what a horrible thing it is! had ravaged him so. His face was so guant; his eyes were sunk into his very sockets. But that look on his face, in his eyes, that look of agony, of heart rendering pain, my God! I could hardly control myself. He must have died in the middle of his worst attack."-H. W. S. IMPROPAGANDA PRESIDENT Lincoln was a great man. The people made the Republican Party so he could get elected. President Willkie is a great man. He made the Republican Party so he could get elected. In Lincoln's day the people went to the Polls and voted in Booths. Modern science and invention now bring the Polls to the people. Caeser had his Brutus, Lincoln had his Booth, and George III did not profit by their example. If that be reason, make the most of it. Now the word of God came unto 25 Jonah saying, ARISE, GO TO NINEVEH AND CRY AGAINST IT; FOR THEY DEPART FROM THE AMERICAN WAY. But Jonah rose up to flee from God and took ship into the Tennessee Valley. But God sent out a great wind upon the Tennessee Valley and there was a mighty tempest so that Jonah's ship was like to be broken. Then the mariners were afraid and they cast forth the wares that were in the ship to lighten it unto them. But Jonah was gone down into the innermost parts of the ship and he lay fast asleep. So the mariners cast lots that they might know for whose cause the wind swept the valley, and the lot fell upon Jonah, and they saw that Jonah was their Jonah. So they took him up and cast him into the water. And Jonah was like to have drowned. But God prepared a great Fish to pick up Jonah. And Jonah spent some days with Fish. Then God spake unto Fish and he vomited Jonah out upon the land. So Jonah arose and went unto Nineveh and preached unto it of the American Way and said, Yet forty days to save Nineveh; yet forty days and Nineveh shall perish. And the people of Nineveh believed God and they turned from their evil way; and God repented of the evil which he said he would do unto them and he did it not. But it displeased Jonah exceedingly and he was angry, that God did not any evil unto Nineveh. And Jonah went out of the city and sat on the East Side and there made him a booth and sat under it till he might see what would become of the city. And God prepared a network to grow up over Jonah that it might be a shade over his head. And Jonah was exceeding �26 ST. JOHN'S TRIVIUM glad because of the network covering his booth. But God prepared a worm when the morning rose the next day and it smote the network that it withered. And the sun beat upon the head of Jonah that he fainted and requested that he might die and said, I do well to be angry. And God said, Thou hast had regard for the network for which thou hast not labored, neither madest it grow; which came up in a night and perished in a night. That is the American Way. Then the people of Nineveh cast lots upon Jonah; and the Republican Party went the American way. And Jonah Willkie prospered according to the manner of his people; and the people erected a monument unto Jonah and his booth and called it Jonah Willkie's Booth.ERASMUS. Books TO CARTHAGE THEN I CAME Love in the Western World. By Denis de Rougemont. Translated by Montgomery Belgian. Harcourt, Brace and Co. $3.00. If the history of the West during the past nine hundred years may be seen as a tragic sequence having its embodiments on various planes of action, then, just as the present war is proving to be a catastrophe or turning-point, where the literal, allegorical, and moral planes of action intersect, so the conception of Love in the Western World marks a major, even if not yet widespread, recognition on the allegorical and moral plane. De Rougemont is primarily a moralist and a theologian writing in the guise of an historian: the subject of his history is the birth, growth, consummation, and degradation of the myth of passionate love; he is a theologian because he views the myth as the secularization of a heresy about the relation between the world and man's love of God; and, because he is a theologian, he must become a moralist, admonishing us to discover a casuistry of act, virtue, and thought in order to encircle, regulate, and lift up that which has become a second nature in most of us. Or to shift to the image in the Phaedrus, that of the charioteer trying to guide a chariot drawn by two headstrong horses, black and white; whereas the Socrates in that dialogue placed his rhetorical emphasis on the dangers of letting the black horse get out of control, De Rougemont is concerned to show what happens when the white horse takes the lead in running away with the chariot, and how both the irrational and the supra-rational brute are swayed by something which is essentially the same, and that the movement of both must be curbed by the rational charioteer. It is a truism to ask, in comparing the modern West with any other civilization, why is it that passionate love plays a much more important role in our conception of human living than in that of a Greek, Indian, or Chinese. The Greeks, for example, looked upon passionate love as a kind of temporary madness, and usually more of a calamity than a blessing: the tragedies of Aeschylus and S9phocles and the comedies of Aristophanes ignore romantic love, and even Euripides, who comes the nearest of any to being like a modern dramatist, ST. JOHN'S TRIVIUM 27 associates it with an inhuman plan of forever. But as regards the second alrevenge in the Medea and with incest in leged 'appearance,' if the reader will look the Hippolytus. Even Plato, who is scrupulously into his own mind, he will supposedly the real teacher of the doc- probably find that his thoughts of love trine of love to the West, talks of love as are bound up with thoughts of death or a frenzy and, if to be desired, still a gift surrogates for death. And if we turn from the gods rather than an ordinary to the mythopoetic arts, we find that human passion. Yet today what pub- from the Tristram romances, through lishing house would be doing business Antony and Cleopatra, Le Cid, and Phedre, if there were no novels about romantic down to Le Rouge et le Noir, Madame fornication; and we need hardly remind Bovary, Wuthering Heights, Anna Kareourselves what the chief stock-in-trade nina, Rosmersholm, or even Garbo's of the movies is. Most of us feel that Camille, love is not only linked to death romantic love is the normal and desirable, but somehow achieves its consummation or at least the vulgar but necessary, con- in death alone. And we have all read summation of human experience,- in the newspapers of the boy and girl women are perhaps more frank about this who committed suicide after going to see than men, yet the men usually have a Mayerling. D. H. Lawrence remarked sneaking feeling that the women are upon the necessity of the mutual inright. This everyday demand for pas- volvement of romantic love and death sionate love, like bread and circuses, is as a sign of a sickness inherent in the the general phenomenon, whose causes nature of romantic love, but he did not Love in the Western World is investigat- prolong discursively his flash of insight. For De Rougemont the Tristram and mg. But perhaps more leading and sug- Iseult story is the eminent case of the gestive, for any causal inquiry, than the myth of romantic love. He finds the two mere widespreadness of the belief that phenomena noted above present in a falling in love is the one event which disguised form: the emphasis upon the manages to compensate for the rest of the intensity rather than the humanity of dull round of human destiny are two love may be detected in the episode of other 'appearances,' namely, the unim- the love-potion, Tristram's marriage with portance, or even irrelevance, of the the second Iseult, and even in the person loved in comparison with the singleness of Tristram's passion, if inexperience of passionate love itself. The tensity of feeling is increased by the first phenomenon, namely, that intensity oneness of the object; and the preoccupaof experience rather than a duly ordered tion with death, apart from the ending relation to another human being is the of the story, in the various obstructions important thing, will probably be more which Tristram and Iseult willfully and readily admitted than the second; indeed, deliberately set between themselves and for example, in the Heart's Intermittences the consummation of their love. Now, sections of Remembrance of Things Past, granted those two phenomena, by what Proust hardly does more than to argue, hypotheses can they be saved? De Rougemont argues that the though with great subtlety and skill, that it would not matter with whom Tristram story is essentially a myth you fell in love or what you did about it, about the kind of love the Troubadours if only Time would let you stay in love were writing songs about in Provence of �28 ST. JOHN'S TRIVIUM 29 ST. JOHN'S TRIVIUM the twelfth century, and furthermore that troubadour love-poetry bears the same relationship to the Catharist (Albigensian) heresy as does surrealism today to Freudian psychoanalysis. The Catharist heresy was the way in which a Manichaean doctrine of mystical love corrupted Christian love during the twelfth century. According to the Catharist heresy, the world was not made by God but by an evil daemon; as the world was wholly evil God would never suffer Himself to become incarnate in it, that is to say, Christ was not "very God of very God" and the second Person of the Trinity was much inferior to the First; and as man was a part of the world, he could only be saved through the cultivation of a mystical desire for God whereby he would escape completely from the world through death and lose his own substantiality, his very being, in oneness of essence with God. Yet as man is still within the world and God is infinitely distant, the spiritual preparation for this mystical desire would be a love which does not accept the beloved person as he or she is but employs him only as a pretext for intensity of passion, a love which is hopeless rather than happy and which looks forward to being transfigured by death. Thus the most perfect secular image of the Carharist desire for God is an adulterous love which obeys the code of chivalry and purifies itself in death. In opposition to this doctrine, the Catholic Church taught that the world was made by God, Who became incarnate in it, that man could, by the gift of grace, attain to a spiritual communion with God, and that as a part of the world wherein God had been incarnate, man should express his love of God through the "love of his neighbor." Thus the secular image of communion with God is found in the sacrament of marriage. De Rougemont names the Catharist love eros and identifies it with the love defined by Socrates in the Symposium, which climbs from beautiful bodies to beautiful souls and to beautiful institutions and occupations, and thence to the contemplation of beauty itself. This Platonic love, says De Rougemont, dies to the world on the ground that the world is wholly evil, and, without charity, leaves its neighbor to shift for himself. Yet if we are to be exact historically, it is the Plotinic rather than the Platonic conception of love which turns you away from the love of your neighbor; in the Republic, it is surely as much through love as by legal compulsion that the philosopher goes back down into the cave in order to serve the state. . Thus the doctrine of romantic love , a disguised passion for a mystical death is the great heresy to which the West succumbed in spite of its true virtue, which lies in the exercise of Christian charity. De Rougemont surveys the past five hundred years in the West as manifesting the gradual breakdown of the. Tristram myth, which, although ansmg from the Catharist heresy, served to set up limits to pure passion and to hold it in check. "Romantic love," as prevalent today, is an unconscious longing for death, at a stage of arrested development. Love in the Western World may be divid_e d into four parts: the first part, which comprises The Tristram Myth, 'I'he Religious Origins, and Passion and Mysticism is analytical and theological rather than historical in its emphasis and is the most carefully and fully thought out section in the book; it comprises, so to speak, the exposition of elements and causes. The second part, The Myth in Literature, is an historical survey of the gradual popularization and degradation of the Tristram myth in poetry and the novel. Unfortunately it is somewhat hit or miss in its scope: De Rougemont discusses Romeo and Juliet but not Othello or Antony and Cleopatra, Corneille's La Place Royale but not Le Cid, and his glance at the fate of the myth in the nineteenth century is very cursory indeed. There are however some brilliant passages, such as his analysis of Phedre as a chastisement inflicted by Racine upon the myth, in making the romantic heroine incestuous; or that of Don Juan as the inverse, or Satanic counterpart, of Tristram; or finally, his analysis of 'I'ristan und Isolde as the artistic consummation of the myth. The fourth part is Love and War, where he draws an extremely interesting series of parallels between the styles of making love and waging war in different ages: the elaborate rules of the Courts of Love in the twelfth century are matched by the equally elaborate code of knightly honor in warfare; in the fifteenth century, wars in Italy were carried on by mercenaries, and at the same time the courtesan occupied a respectable position in society; in the eighteenth century the military tacticians made the art of war as "scientific" as a game of chess or an experiment in Newtonian mechanics, and the art of seduction attained the dignity of an applied science, as may be seen in Les Liaisons Dangereuses; early nineteenth century romanticism reintroduced passion into love at the same time that Napoleon reintroduced passion into warfare and won his battles by breaking the classical rules; during the nineteenth century proper, most wars were fought for economic reasons or in a flurry of senti- mentality, like the Franco-Prussian War, and similarly marriages were arranged upon an economic or sometimes sentimental basis; and finally, in the Fascist state, passion is transferred from the individual to the state: love is depersonalized by eugenics, and warfare, by complete mechanization; and then, curiously enough, just as romantic lovers are transfigured in death, so the Fascist state can attain its consummation only in war. The reader wishes, however, in going over both Love and War and the Myth in Literature, that De Rougemont had tried to develop an analogical dialectic showing how successive manifestations of the myth were brought about by the preceding ones. The last part of the book comprises The Myth v. Marriage, and Active Love, or Keeping Faith, where De Rougemont writes as a moralist, viewing a world where the Tristram myth, which once governed men's lives, has broken down completely and pulled down marriage with it. At times, in this last section, he appears to be uncertain whether there is a Manichaean and irreconcilable opposition between passion and charity, or whether romantic love can be made to submit to the rule of reason and charity. Now though we condemn as wrong our proneness to romantic passion, we must not forget that while we can always discipline or temporarily trick or coerce a part of our nature, we cannot expunge it from us, even though St. Paul says, "there be some who have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven's sake." De Rougemont's own Kierkegaardian solution to the "break-down of marriage" lies in keeping faith "by virtue of the absurd, by virtue of an old promise, of human unreason, of a reason of faith, of a pledge given to God and underwritten by God."-C. G. WALLIS. �30 ST. JOHN'S TRIVIUM BOOK NOTES We are pleased to see that Franz Kafka's novels and stories are being published in America. Alfred Knopf plans to print a new edition of The Castle, which he issued some years ago, this time with an introduction by Thomas Mann. In early December the Twice A Year Press will publish A Franz Kajka Miscellany which will include shorter works that have never before appeared in book form in this country. Max Brod, Kafka's literary executor, and Edwin Muir are translating and preparing the book. Amerika, Kafka's first novel, has recently been brought out by New Directions. The Trial, Kafka's other novel, has been previously published by Knopf, but is now out of print. If Knopf would reissue this with The Castle, all of Kafka's novels would be available in America .... Members of the St. John's faculty have been at work during the summer on books for use in the program. Mr. John Kieffer is preparing a new Greek grammar for the first year language tutorials, and Mr. George Bingley is translating Cantor's On Trans.finite Numbers for the fourth year students. The books will be published by the St. John's Bookstore during the year. Mr. Charles Wallis, who has done more translating than any other member of the College community, adds another first translation into English to the St. John's books. This is Pico della Mirandola's essay On the Dignity of Man . ... Freshmen at St. John's have always read Aristotle in the Oxford translations, with the exception of the Physics which first year students read last year in Mr. Wallis' version. This year they will read Richard McKeon's revised edition of the Oxford translations. Random House plans to publish this in January. Mr. McKeon, who is Dean Of Humanities at the University of Chicago, has lectured at St. John's. His publishers have arranged his work in one large volume. This will contain the Ethics, Politics, On Generation and Corruption, Physics and Metaphysics, De Anima, Organon, Poetics all in complete form. Besides these there will be selections from Aristotle's other writings. Random House is publishing other Great Books. In fourteen months they plan to issue an extraordinary mathematical work. This is the combined magna opera of Ptolemy, Copernicus and Kepler. Two years ago Mr. R. Catesby Taliaferro, a tutor at St. John's, translated into English for the first time Ptolemy's Almagest. Mr. Wallis' "first" translations of The Revolutions of the Spheres by Copernicus and Kepler's Epitome of Astronomy (Books IV and V) will make the accompanying volume in the Random House edition. These books have been studied at St. John's in mimeographed format. Their appearance in print in English has been delayed so many hundreds of years that the event of their publication will be both important and exciting .... In their first year at St. John's, students spend almost eight months studying the thirteen books of Euclid's Elements in their mathematics tutorial. They use the translation of Sir Thomas L. Heath, which is in three volumes (Cambridge University Press and Macmillan). This edition is so expensive that few freshmen are able to buy it and they have used copies from the College library. Within two years, Random House will have published a one-volume edition of Euclid, newly translated by John Neustadt of St. John's. This will enable every member of the College to own Euclid, which they find difficult to do without. ST. JOHN'S TRIVIUM Helen Hill Miller, a lecturer and member of the St. John's faculty last year has written Beyond German Victory in collaboration with Herbert Aegar, which Reynal and Hitchcock have recently published. Forsaking popular instruction, Mortimer J. Adler's new book is Problems for Thomists (Sheed and Ward). Mr. Adler will begin his series of lectures in Annapolis in early December. Jacques Maritain, who visited and lectured at St. John's late last spring, also has a new book; Scholasticism and Politics (Macmillan) .... A great many of the books read at St. John's have been out of print a long while. Publishers do not think it profitable to reissue these, so the college has had facsimile reprints made of some works. Books I and III of Kerr's translation of Lavoisier's Elements of Chemistry has been reprinted for third year students; Mottelak's translation of On the Loadstone by Gilbert has been made available for sophomores, and Dalton's New System of Chemical Philosophy (Part I) for juniors. For the fourth year, Freeman's translation of chapters I-III of Fourier's Analytical Theory of Heat and Virchow's Cellular Pathology (Chance Translation) have been reprinted. Macmillan has reprinted for St. John's a special edition of Thompson's translation of Huygen's On Light. These add considerably to the College's remarkable list of reprints and new translations. All of these books, including the mimeographed publications may be purchased by mail at the St. John's Bookstore in Annapolis. A complete price list of the Great Books may be had on request. Knowing that there are a large number of people outside the College who are occupied in reading or rereading the books of the St. John's program, the Bookstore has provided a pamphlet 31 listing the books studied at the College, noting all the available_ cheap editions. This pamphlet also includes the reading schedule followed by students during the first three years of study .... To take leave of the ancients, we'd like to note a number of good books in cheap editions that have appeared in the last several months. Delmore Schwartz's translation of Rimbaud's A Season in Hell has been published by the New Directions at $1.00. The Exiles' Press of New York has also issued some of the rest of Rimbaud's work in a new translation, Lionel Abel's Some Poems of Rimbaud ($.50). Among other new translations are Gilbert Neiman's- Blood Wedding, a tragedy by F. Garcia Lorca (New Directions, $.50)-and R. Ellis Roberts' Peer Gynt by Ibsen (Oxford University Press, $.80). Some will remember Mr. Roberts' informal lecture at St. John's last year on Yeats .... New Directions has reprinted William Carlos Williams' In the American Grain ($1.00). The Modern Library has supplemented their modern selections with Catherine Anne Porter's Flowering Judas ($.95) and Joyce's Ulysses ($1.2.5). The edition of Joyce contains Judge Woolsey's famous decision on Ulysses that is in the original Random House imprint .... For readers of excellent detective fiction, we must not forget the books of Georges Simenon, which Harcourt, Brace has put out. Simenon's sleuth is Maigret, who never makes a deduction, and whose patience is inexhaustible. Each of the three books so far issued contain two novels. The books are The Patience of Maigret, lvfaigret Travels South, and Maigret Abroad, all at $2.00. Simenon is a Frenchman who has written hundreds of mystery stories under dozens of pseudonyms. His Maigret books are the first to be printed in America, and they scarcely accord with �32 ST. JOHN'S TRIVIUM the modern devices of detective fiction. We have been delighted with the change. Mercury Books (1,.25) have also published Simenon. His Maigret in The Death of Monsieur Gallet is a little more conventional, but still the best contemporary detective we know of.... Contrasting the quiet Maigret is Elliot Paul's cosmopolite Homer Evans, who inevitably makes major riots and minor deductions. Paul's first Evans orgy, The Mysterious Mickey Finn (Modern Age, 1,.50) is the one amusing effort. The hugger-mugger and mayhem he has made for his man since are a little too much like the old two-reelers. In the new Homer Evans story, Fracas in the Foothills, the locale is Montana. We expect Homer will be taking shortcuts and heading them off. -BILGUS. IDIOTICA It would be impossible, in a contest before a committee of competent judges, to show that temporalities are, in respect of number, more than matched by eternalities, and that, in respect of relative importance, changes are as dancing wavelets on an infinite and everlasting sea.-CAssrus J. KEYSER, PH.D., LL.D., D.Sc.: The Human Worth of Rigorous Cf'hinking. Five brilliant men got together for a dinner party 2,000 years ago. What they said about love is being re-discovered to-day. Read Plato's Symposium. Then listen to Huntington Cairns, Mark Van Doren, and Allen Tate discuss the one emotion in the world that makes a mouse out of a man, and vice versa. Get your copy of the Five Dialogues of Plato now. Spend Sunday afternoon listening in on a college reading course that will help you to catalogue your ideas about love! Tmes, ST. JOHN'S TRIVIUM GIMBEL'S advertisement in The October 19, 1940. When human intelligence, the quality hidden away in the central heart of the lowest germ life, and arrived at after infinite unfoldings and long ages of development-when human intelligence arrives, the survival of the fittest proceeds along new lines.-FRED HENDERSON: The Case for Socialism. CINEMA To OUR generation, Charlie Chaplin is more of a myth than an actual personality. We have heard his name ever since we can remember. Our elders have always spoken of him with awe and profound respect. At some point we were sure that he must be an ex-President capitalizing on the ill effects of a present administration. Chaplin has been much more than president, of course. He has made the world laugh, and there is no nation that has not known and loved him. Charlie to us, he is also Carlos, Carlitos and Charlot. He was the one person in the new motion-picture industry who convinced the public that they couldn't do without the movies so long as the small man with the derby, the baggy pants, the cane and the fake mustache kept on appearing. It was in the Keystone comedies before the war that Chaplin first adapted this costume. It was there that he began to create one of the few universal clowns. And when he had perfected his character he knew that he should never change it. He was aware of his own capacities, and he knew that he could accomplish everything he wanted as the little clown. Actors today avoid portraying similar characters for a second time. They call call it 'getting the rut', and their god is Glamour. It is strange that they do not know that the character performers are the only players endeared by the public for any length of time. Audiences are delighted when they know what to expect from a particular actor. Chaplin has always known this; it has been his special problem to know what people anticipate in the little clown, and he has not disappointed them. Once they were accustomed to him as a comedian with an astounding sense of the pathetic and a determination not to imitate the unnaturally distorted, Chaplin knew that his audiences would never permit a reversal in his characterization. But he foresaw that there should be surprises. Since he did not speak his part, he improvised a kind of pantomimic ad lib, thereby giving the impression that the little clown was liable to make extraordinary gestures and decisions seemingly apart from character but immediately recognizable as distinctively his. After Chaplin had completely captivated his international audiences, the critics, who had appreciated him, thought something was wrong. To them, popularity was indicative of mediocrity, and not wishing to retract their admiration for Chaplin, they raised him from a comedian to an artist and gave his talent phases and periods-like Picasso. (It had not previously occurred to them that he had been an artist all along the lme.) So they took his films and analyzed them, dissecting the little clown's movements and gesticulations to such an extent that they weren't funny any more . They came to regard him as a tragedian as well as a comic. There were suggestions that he act in Liliom and Peer Gynt. Despite this last the critics were continually mistaken. When they diligently observed Chaplin's scenes they 33 discovered that there was no single motion or insinuation that the comedian had not analyzed before them. They saw that all possible effects had been thoroughly investigated and that interpretive alternatives would lead towards the desired end. Neither were they far wrong in supposing that Chaplin could do tragedy. In Ernest Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises, two characters agree on "Oh, Give them Irony and Give them Pity." This might well be Chaplin's motto, but for its despair. With considerable subtlety Chaplin has always mixed irony with pity, taking care never to make use of the one without the other. Chaplin has also consistently taken us away to another planet. Deliberately, he has made this change as quickly as film footage will permit. In Modern Times the substitution was difficult; too much of the imaginative world depended on our own. The Great Dictator introduces a new device. Here there are two worlds, one of Hinkel, leader of the Double Cross, and the other of the little Jewish barber of the Ghetto. When the film begins the little barber is on the battlefield of I 9 I 8 operating cannons and anti-aircraft guns. Everything he could do correctly he appropriately mismanages for Tomania. And even though he rescues one of his country's generals, the war is lost. There is one superb scene in the airplane when the ship is flying upside down. Chaplin and the general do not know this, and it is only when the little barber slips out of his seat that they are a ware of their predicament. Not to be flurried, the general offers his companion a cigarette while he hangs down from the plane. The motor stops, the general reminisces �34 ST. JOHN'S TRIVIUM pleasantly, and they glide down to spoken dialogue, his screen play is accrash on the trees. complished and expert. Here is an The little barber loses his memory example from the barber shop scene: after the war and is sent to an asylum. HINKEL: I'm going to re-model the When he comes back to his shop in the barber shop and put glass windows on the Ghetto twenty years later he is sur- sides and the ceiling. N APALONI: prised to find that there is a dictator. What's outside? HINKEL: A magHe ignores the storm troopers, and with nificent view of the bay and the mounthe help of the little laundress next door, tains. NAPALONI: What's overhead? escapes their torment. Every time he HINKEL: The ballroom. is attacked, the laundress hits the But it is as the little barber that Chaptroopers on the head from her window. lin does his best work. When he shaves On one occasion she accidentally hits the a man to Brahms' Fifth Hungarian barber, and he dances on the curb in a Rhapsody he is certain of his effects, and daze. This is the notable instance when the supper scene at which one member of we are assured of the old Chaplin. The the party is to find a coin in his pudding world of the little barber is that of the is so perfectly done that we find little to little clown. Hinkel's is a world of approach it elsewhere. And when we satire. have become accustomed to this incomChristopher Morley, writing a brief parable personality his character is history of the autumn of 1938, remarked changed and the film promptly collapses. that Charlie Chaplin should sue Hitler Here Chaplin has made his one error in for plagiarism. In The Great Dictator not knowing what his audience expects he has done so with satirical vengeance. from him. At the end of the movie, His characterization of Hinkel is bril- when the little barber is mistaken for the liantly written and performed. The great dictator, he is called upon to make several times the dictator speaks to his a speech as conqueror of the world. people are classic examples of imitation. He is introduced by Hinkel's assistant, Chaplin has taken Hitler's screeching Herr Garbitsch, as the man who will crescendos and turned them into pig- someday rule all peoples on the earth. German and pigeon-English. The por- The little barber, just free from a contrayal of an ignorant and emotional centration camp, is not surprisingly ruler has been well done. There are nonplussed. His expression is one of scenes in which Hinkel appears that rival exquisite suffering. He turns to his the traditional actions of the little barber: companion, who motions him forward. Chaplin's dance with the balloon, the But he still cannot be sure of the situaincident when he and Napaloni, his fel- tion. He simply cannot walk up to those low-dictator from Bacteria, are burnt microphones and speak to those thouwith English mustard; the dance with sands of people. With one last look of Madame Napaloni; Herring's attempt to futility, he hesitantly rises and slowly use psychology on Napaloni, and the climbs the steps to the platform. There brief interlude in the barber shop. For Garbitsch awaits him at rigid attention. an actor who has stepped out of character The little barber does not understand his for the first time, Chaplin's impersona- respect, and when he is saluted he can tion of Hitler is prodigious. And for a only bow meekly, turning his cap in his scenarist who has not previously written hands. But of a sudden he is inspired 35 ST. JOHN'S TRIVIUM and steps forth to speak. The speech that he gives is one any other person in Tomania might have given but the little barber. The man who addresses the expectant crowd is unfaltering and determined; he has thought it all out before. He screams denunciation of dictators, demands that all races be treated decently, bemoans the state of the world and gives commands and hopes in the name of democracy. Had he omitted this last speech and the few actual scenes Chaplin would have made one of his greatest triumphs. But he has punctuated the two worlds he has made for us with stark reality. It is a reality we do not doubt, but one we refuse to accept beside the others. Chaplin has joined it with the life of the barber in order that it will not be ignored, in order that we might see truth and hear a message. The truth he shows us is the persecution of the Jews, and his message is to combat persecution and dictators. He has, in a word, said that this is no time for comedy. We are unable to forget that Chaplin's means of arriving at his message is comedy. It is a means others have used for similar ends. Aristophanes inevitably placed a message in his comedies, but they were all cleverly obscured in brilliant satire. Chaplin's satire of Hitler resembles the Aristophanic method. It is unfortunate that he did not realize how much more forceful his argument is when it is exemplified in Hinkel. The Great Dictator ends in a Millet setting with Miss Paulette Goddard as the little laundress gazing despondently at the ground. We observe her for several minutes of portraiture photography. During this time she hears the little barber as the great dictator. She raises her eyes to the sky and smiles. Looking at Miss Goddard's face for so long a while reminds us of her singular talent. The other members of the cast-Jack Oakie, Reginald Gardiner, Henry Daniell and Billy Gilbert-do much with the opportunities their director affords them. But for the one exception, Chaplin has had excellent support in The Great Dictator. The music Meredith Willson arranged from Chaplin's themes is never inappropriate and always an addition to the perfection of particular scenes. "The egregious merit of Chaplin," T. S. Eliot has said, "is that he has escaped in his own way from the realism of the cinema and invented a rhythm. Of course the unexplored opportunities of the cinema for eluding realism must be very great." This was written in the days of an earlier motion-picture, but to Chaplin it is still applicable. He has re-created realism in his own right with a spontaneity and tempo that demands a place with the great. Offering a pathetically chaotic universe with sublime characters has been his business. He has created in the little clown a modern Petrouchka whose world is both joyous and absurd, gentle and true. But unlike the boyish puppet, there is no need for the little clown to thumb his nose at the charlatan who does not believe he is real.-SREDNI VASHTAR. TRIVIA SOMETHING should be said for the woman who walked into the Book Store and demanded "that book on Platonic Love." "It's called The Republic, isn't it?," she said. "You know, the one where an apple is cut in half and if one half finds the other, everything is all right." At the earliest opportunity we're going to make a special trip to the Big City �36 ST. JOHN'S TRIVIUM to see what The New Yorker's Wolcott Gibbs means when he says the chorus girls in the Ed Wynn show, Boys and Girls Together, have a "rather literary look about them!" Mr. orgies return Books Willkie, having been spared the of the presidency, is now free to to his reading-204 Big Little a year. Mr. Mark Van Doren, in a recent lecture here at the College, told us that John Stuart Mill lived, during one period of his career, in a state of living death. This coma was charged to improper education. Gives one a sense of security, doesn't it? Assistant Dean Raymond Wilburn, in a recent sophomore Seminar, while jumping too hastily from the specific to the general, confused the issue by introducing the term "intellectual tuition." The error might have been pardoned had Treasurer Wright made it. We suppose that something should be said about the fact that Housing Facility Stromeyer's name was misspelled in this column last month. On second thought, however, it doesn't seem to make a great deal of difference as this illustrious political figure is called by other names here at the College. Anyhow, a rose by any other name .... This season Broadway is presenting two comedies about film land. At least, Hollywood is still laughable. A Cockney suggests to the British Government that it use a "screaming bomb" which, instead of screaming, whistles the "all clear" signal as it falls. Last Monday morning someone remarked to us that it's a great life if you don't weekend.-R. H. The Play THE charming Grace George has returned after five years to do a revival of what is probably the finest of her many famous roles. It's a joy to see a character portrayed with such skill as Miss George lends to the part of Mary Berries in Kind Lady. Peak suspense coupled with genuine sympathy makes it difficult to imagine anyone as unfortunate as Mary Berries: for this again Miss George is responsible. Felix J acovy, the Director, fulfills admirably the job of weaving a fast-moving story of horror and intrigue. Mr. Jacovy' s presence is defi- nitely felt, although certain minor details are, as yet, unsatisfactory. The mood of suspense and terror sustained throughout nowhere resolves itself into that burlesque, physical, Perils of Pauline sort of melodrama typified by last seasons's unhappy Goodbye in the Night. The show is far more subtle than Emlyn Williams' classic psychological play, Night Must Fall. The well planned settings by Watson Barrat are in perfect harmony with the action and atmosphere of the play. They have been ingeniously designed to ST. JOHN'S TRIVIUM provide an easily adaptable, never static background which intensifies the effects of the action and keeps pace with the changing moods of the plot. Kind Lady was adapted by Edward Chodorov from a story by Hugh Walpole. It was first produced in 1935. The present run opened at the Playhouse Theatre, New York in early September and was one of the first offerings of the present season. The principle criticism of the original presentation seemed to be the weak script. Although certain faults in the book-such as a rather slow opening and indefinite delineation of minor characters-still exist, the structure of the play on the whole has been improved considerably. Mr. Brady, Kind Lady's producer, has seen his opportunity in the current trend toward revivals; indeed in a sense he is the father of the trend, for it was encouraged, if not started, by his excellent presentation last season of Laurette Taylor in Outward Bound. To mention but a few other revivals of this season and last, there are in addition to the above mentioned: Blind Alley (another melodrama); Charley's Aunt; The Show Off, (in prospect); and, of course, Helen Hayes and Maurice Evans in the Theatre Guild's production of Twelfth Night.ROBERT MYERSON, '44· When we first saw Robert Sherwood's There Shall Be No Night, we were convinced that the contemporary theatre had reached its apex and henceforth would go into decline. Sherwood was the world's greatest playwright and Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne were the world's most superb acting combination. We held our breath until the play was published, so that we might 37 read again the letter which Dr. Valkonen sent to his wife, a testament to all that was honorable and loving and brave in a world filled with the crash of battle. The play has been published, and we have read it. Strangely, it awakened in us not one of the emotions which we felt when the Lunts were doing the interpretation for the audience. Perhaps it had to be seen to be appreciated; we journeyed to New York, and watched them go through the motions. It was sadly evident that the actors had long since spoken their lines with any inspiration, and the highlights of the play passed by as though a fuse had blown somewhere. In his introduction to There Shall Be No Light, Mr. Sherwood has traced his mental maneuvers in his past plays, and from them extracted a growth of his character and beliefs. Perhaps he has reached maturity at last; perhaps he has said in this play the things which deep down in his heart he believes; but for some reason his manner of saying them does not bear repetition. He has a belief in the fundamental dignity of man, and he tells us that anything worth living for is worth dying for, no matter how futile or horrible the death may be. He tells us these things through the story of a Finnish-American family, caught in Helsinki during the Russian rape of Finland. Dr. Valkonen (Alfred Lunt) is a Finn, the winner of the Nobel Prize for researches in the human mind; his wife Miranda (Lynn Fontanne) is an American product of Cape Cod and New Orleans. Together they have settled in Helsinki and raised a son Erik (Montgomery Clift), who is seventeen, solid, serious and healthy. In their house also is portly Uncle Waldemar (Sydney Greenstreet), who plays a Finnish philosopher �38 ST. JOHN'S TRIVIUM in the Sibelius style. It is to these four people that things happen. In the first scene (the best in the play), the audience is shown how happy the Finns are, how democratic and peaceful and idealistic. Dr. Valkonen has just been awarded the Nobel Prize, and speaks over the air to America; all is jollity and peace. The audience loves this family and its friends, despite the undercurrent of impending tragedy which is dimly felt. In the next scenes, tragedy is the motif; we hear of the invasion of Finland, followed by the call to bear arms sent to every Finn capable of carrying a rifle. Erik, who has done work on the Mannerheim line, goes with the skitroops in the North, and his father, who has not looked at a mump for twenty-five years, serves in the Medical Corps in the South. Erik is killed; but before he dies, he is married to Kaatri Alquist (Elizabeth Fraser), by whom he is to have a child. Kaatri is sent to America, through the assistance of Dave Corween (Richard Wharf), the American radio man who covers Europe for the news-mad Yankees. Dr. Valkonen, caught in a school-house in the path of the Russians, together with several assorted citizens of various countries, is told by one of them of the death of his son, of which fact he had hitherto been ignorant. He is then inspired to make a speech, an extremely optimistic speech, in which he testifies to the nearing of the time when men shall know the light, and find within their own foreheads the place where there shall be no night. He also writes a letter of comfort to Miranda, and goes forth to die gloriously on the ice for Finland and the world. Miranda discloses the letter's contents to us when she reads it aloud to Dave Corween and Uncle Waldemar; she is sending it to America for Kaatri's child; Miranda feels that the child, as yet unborn, is her link with the future. In accordance with an old Finnish custom, she and Uncle Waldemar have prepared to raze the house, and die in defense of the city; her soft hands are unused to the touch of a rifle, but willing nevertheless. Uncle Waldemar plays a lovely Finnish folk-song, as Miranda sits on the couch, alone, where once her husband and her son sat with her; and as the curtain falls, the audience sees, as Mr. Sherwood intends them to see, that "there is a kind of peace in this FinnishAmerican house." Throughout all this action, Mr. Sherwood has his actors say what he wrote when he was inspired; but it has the desired effect only upon those who share his feeling. He therefore has failed in his purpose; for if he desires that the rest of us should feel as he does, then we should be raised to his heights, and not merely kept there. We think the fault lies in his place of action; Finland today is a dead issue: events move too swiftly, and tragedy overshadows tragedy. No longer is it easy to make audiences feel the fate of Finland as something alive and vital and supremely cruel. This is a shame, for a man of Mr. Sherwood's talents should be made immortal when he has a theme such as the author so obviously felt. He read Mein Kampf in 1930, and has been fighting for democracy ever since: would that he could make many more people feel the same way. The whole play was written for three main speeches, which testify to Mr. Sherwood's beliefs: a confession by the Nazi ambassador to Finland of the goal of his country; the lecture which Dr. Valkonen gives in the little school-house; and the letter which he wrote to his wife. The first of these is brutal, shock- ST. JOHN'S TRIVIUM ing, fantastic: and for that reason, believable. The second is a vision of the future, seen through the eyes of a man who takes the Bible as scientific truth; and the third is a beautiful symbol of one man's faith in his own mind and love for a woman, coupled with understanding of both. Mr. Sherwood, to make the tragedy forceful, has one example of it after another, and it is almost too much for an emotional animal to take; but that is the way war is, and that is the way he has shown it. He has tried to awaken a nation, and sadly enough, succeeded only temporarily. Both Mr. Sherwood and Finland deserve a better fate.J. L. H. CONTRIBUTORS DR. RICHARD KuEHNEMUND (Of Doom and Hope) is the second oldest member 39 of the St. John's faculty in years of service, having taught here since 1924. A classical scholar of the old German school, he obtained his Ph.D. from the University of Gottingen in 1922, while acting as assistant in the Philological Seminar there. Before the advent of the New Program at St. John's, he taught modern languages, but now adds Greek and Latin classes to his continued tutorials in French and German, thereby being an instructor in every language studied here. He writes numerous articles for newspapers and classical journals, usually analyzing the present in terms of the work of some ancient or modern scholar. This habit he carries into his tutorials, adding much of ,interest to them. Of Doom and Hope is a condensed version of a much longer treatise which he intends to bring out elsewhere in the near future. �� Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource <em>St. John's Trivium</em> Description An account of the resource A short-lived magazine edited and published by St. John's College students in 1940. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource St. John's College Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1940 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/">In copyright.</a> Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context Trivium Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data paper Page numeration Number of pages in the original item. 21 pages Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource St. John's Trivium, December 1940 Description An account of the resource St. John's Trivium, volume 1, issue 2 (December 1940) issue. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Mason, Francis S., Jr. (Editor) Hedeman, John L. (Editor) Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College (Annapolis, Md.) Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1940-12 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/">In copyright.</a> Type The nature or genre of the resource text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf Subject The topic of the resource St. John's College (Annapolis, Md.) Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context Trivium_1940December Student publication https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/d712b37dfac55cce94c8e32955fddfd1.pdf c88b578d37b3b2c9310cec81d519b84b PDF Text Text ST. JOHN'S TRIVIUM The War and the College ............. . by Scott Buchanan We Are Not Alone ............ an undergraduate statement Two Poems from Baudelaire NOVEMBER, 1940 Twenty-.ftve cents �CONTE NTS The War and the College. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 History, Geography and a Temporal Sequence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 The Letter Setteth Free ... . . . .. . .. .. .. . .. . . . .... .. .......... . 13 We Are Not Alone . . . ... ............ . . . . . . . . ..... . . . ... ... .. 15 Athletics. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 In Praise of Im propaganda. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 Second Fiddle. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . l Trivia . . .. . . . . .... . . . .... .. ....... .. ... . ......... . .... .. . .. 20 Books ....... .. ... . ...... . . ... . . .. .... .... . .......... . ..... 21 9 Cinema .. . .. . . .. .. . .. . ... . .... . ...... . .. . . .. . . ........... .. 24 The Play . ... . ... . ..... . ..... . ........... . . . ....... . .... . .. 25 Contributors .. . .. . ... .. . .. . . . . . . .. . . . ....... . ...... .. . .. ... 25 Two Poems from Charles Baudelaire . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27 Editors: FRANCIS S. MASON, <freasurer: A. Circulation: ScoTT ABBOTT, WILLIAM T. JR., '43 AND JOHN Louis HEDEMAN, '43. '43. HART, '43. Departments Etc.: ROBERT HUNTER, '43; STERN, '43; JAMES s. MARTIN. MARTIN ANDREWS, '43; ADRIAN MAYER, '43; HERBERT TR IVI UM VoL. 1 NOVEMBER, 1940 No. 1 Editorials Prospectus. The St. John's Trivium is a monthly magazine to be published on the 25th of each month. It will sell for $.25 a copy, by subscription $2.00 for eight issues. It will appear beginning the 25th of October, 1940, through May, 1941. This same schedule, if found practicable, will be followed in succeeding years. It is published and edited by students of St. John's College in Annapolis. Trivium is not supported by the College, and was founded primarily as a good magazine for St. John's, one that would incidentally provide the College with a new student activity. By supporting itself, the editors feel that 'l'rivium will be a much better publication, since it will have to fight for its own life-blood, and in view of the diabolic fate of other College-supported organizations. It will be a magazine of, by, and for liberal artists. Although its name is 'l'rivium, signifying the three liberal arts most applicable to a magazine of this sort, it does not intend to ignore the remaining four. Originated by students, 'l'rivium is itself an undergraduate of St. John's, and is not an official spokesman of the College. It will provide a means of expression and publication of the typical and best of undergraduate thought at perhaps the leading liberal arts college in America, toward the end that outside persons may acquire a knowledge of what is happening to St. John's, to the students of St. John's, and the effects upon them. The official College Catalogue is the counterpart of Trivium for the Administration , and it is to be expected that the two will both complement and contradict one another. Trivium will be a critic of the College, and an active one. Criticism, despite the popular belief that it has a negative and destructive sense, will mean to 'l'rivium what it truly denotes. 'I'rivium' s midwives feel that a medium of exchange should exist between the College and its friends. Passing through officialdom, the information that the friends of St. John's obtain concerning the students is, at best, second-hand and pre-digested. As in geometry, so here, contact with the source is essential for true understanding. 'I'rivium will be no classical journal, but always aware and immediately contemporary. The mistaken impression among students that college publications are for the few and particular should be heeded and corrected here. Students who have never written think themselves unable to write. The editors of 'l'rivium will welcome, above its off-campus contributions, suggestions and submitted material from their fellow-students. 'l'rivium will contain no advertising, as it is the opinion of its editors that advertising in college publications is, 3 �4 ST. JOHN'S TRIVIUM in the main, a gesture of condescension on the part of those who give so profusely with their funds. Instead of depending upon this largesse, the price of 'I'rivium has been set so as to insure its economic independence. Our business managers will therefore concentrate on the circulation of the magazine for its subsistence; a minimum of five hundred subscriptions is our goal. 'I'rivium asks for no blind subscribers. Complimentary copies of the first issue will be distributed to those requesting them, previous to any solicitation of payment. A person receiving one of these copies is not obligated in any way. 'I'rivium will not be copyrighted. This is done to give to the magazine the air of freedom so necessary for its survival. We, unlike some other college publications, do not assume that 'I'rivium' s contents will be felt worthy of reprinting by many others, but wish in any case to place no restrictions in their way; as our precedent, we note that the trivium has never been copyrighted. Trivium will, however, attend to the details of copyrighting a single article, if requested to do so by the author. 'I'rivium seeks to make no profits for its own sake, and will use any additional funds for the welfare of the College, preferably as student aid. Contributors: 'I'rivium looks toward the student body with anticipation. From it must come the stable portion of the magazine: the editors, the departments, and the many minor details which are so necessary in its make-up. 'I'rivium also eyes the College Faculty with hopeful expectancy. Besides requesting the St. John's tutors to write upon subjects of personal interest to them, 'I'rivium also hopes for repetition and supplementary comment upon their individual work in the College. Off the campus, 'I'rivium seeks articles from visiting lecturers, members of the Board of Visitors and Governors, and any other person who, in the opinion of the editors, would write in a manner and upon a subject suitable for the character of the magazine. In this category fall undergraduate students on other campuses. Contributions to 'I'rivium are voluntary and without payment. Contents: In content, 'I'rivium' s first few pages will be devoted to comment by its editorial board. This part of the magazine is not departmentaliz ed, but will include paragraphs of opinion on subjects immediately relevant to the College and its community, as well as commentaries upon modern American and foreign life. Since 'I'rivium is a product of an educational program unique in American colleges today, its primary concern will be with matters educational, although this will definitely not restrict its subject matter. Its editors aim to escape from the traditional negative policy of college publications, and will not be subservient, and only deliberately revolutionary. Departments: Its departments will be conducted by the members of the editorial staff, devoting themselves to the following subjects: Books, the Theatre and Cinema, Contributors, Letters to the Editor, Department of Impropaganda, and Trivia. 'I'rivium's book reviews will be both ancient and modern. By ancient we do not mean only those books studied at St. John's; 'I'rivium's literary critics will be at pains to point out that the Great Books List is not an index of exclusion: that it is a list which forms the foundation for the immense structure of progress in the liberal arts, ST. JOHN'S TRIVIUM and should be studied like the Preamble to the Constitution. Guest reviewers may have articles here. Complementary to the columns on books will be a subsidiary department, concerning itself with pertinent comment on new and old editions and translations of the Great Books, the books mentioned in each issue, notes on their authors, and modern publications. Believing that the theatre provides both entertainment and incentive for enjoyable living, 'I'rivium will devote space each month to dramatic criticism. We will try to review as many plays as possible, prior to their performances in cities near Annapolis. The motion picture department is interested not only in the latest films, but in the history of the motion picture as evidenced by the collection and supplementary material found in the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. The remaining departments-T rivia, Department of Impropaganda, Letters to the Editor,-speak for themselves. 'I'rivium' s off-campus contributions and articles by those not on the staff will be signed; staff articles, outside of editorial comment, will be initialed. A Return to First Principles. Here at St. John's the students are for all practical purposes indoctrinated with the idea that they are in a college where the true liberal education is the rule. St. John's is the return to first principles-the first principles upon which every educated man must found his life, and is the rock which serves as the foundation for his philosophy, as well as being the path to its discovery. As a natural result of this, there is much criticism, in the popular sense of destructive, of the rest of the modern American colleges and universities; crit- 5 icism that is leveled at them because they are, by and large, obtaining money under false pretences, and are not giving to their students that which they have so fervidly promised to them. There is some basis for this contention, indeed more than is usually found for the mud-slinging engaged in by rival candidates for the same office. Yet, there is one point which seems to have eluded us thus far, and occurred to us long after we were supposed to have had our "intellectual awakening," if that nebulous event has yet taken place. The criticism of all, or almost all, other colleges is the equivalent of the remarks which might be directed at a restaurant: one of its customers could say, "That's a terrible place-they have no caviar listed on the menu." A perfectly valid fault, indeed, provided anyone would want caviar in sufficient quantities to warrant the maintenance of it in stock. That is the error which we make here at St. John's: we assume that young people, starting out in the game of education, want a liberal arts course, i.e., to be educated. Until that is verified, then the harsh words tossed at them are harmless, except for their nuisance value. After all, the average youth of today could want nothing more of the future than security and health and a modicum of happiness, and all he can therefore desire of his college is that it take some steps to make his future earning capacity reasonably secure. Health and happiness are his own concern, and to his mind the money is probably the first consideration. As Henry Adams, in his Education of Henry Adams, said, " ... in sum, education without capital could always be taken by the throat and forced to disgorge its gains, �6 ST. JOHN'S TRIVIUM nor was it helped by the knowledge that no one intended it, but that all alike suffered .... The failure of the scientific scheme, without money to back it, was flagrant." This means to those entering college that it is better to think of the sheckels than the intellectual shackles which bind them. Once they are financially secure, then it is time enough to be educated. The only trouble is, this doctrine is false, for rather too obvious and lamentable examples point out its failure. Gramps, in You Can't Take It With You, had the right idea. In short then, the fault lies largely with those who pick out their colleges: they are a little too spineless to revolt and demand that society give them their birthright, or a free mind. If man is a rational animal, then it is his heritage to be rational: having only the potential capacity to reason is not enough. Society too is at fault; though its sin is one of omission rather than commission. And we at St. John's are not at fault, strictly, but only because the other colleges still insist that they are educating their students. Once they would come right out and say, "We offer you a secure future, for we will teach you one profession, and make you a decent mechanic, or economic specialist, or whatever you, in your sublime ignorance, choose," then we wouldn't have a leg to stand on. Then both of us, both the other colleges and St. John's, would be much happier. A note on Trivium's cover ... Difficulties are inevitable when the founders of a magazine feel that the cover needs an appropriate design. The temptation to include all possible symbolism in a representation of the Liberal Arts is irresistible, and the complications resulting therefrom are immense. Through the kindness of Mr. Graham Carey, who has long been interested in the program at St. John's, the present design has been arranged. The aim was to give easily recognizable symbols for the Trivium and to somehow include the other four arts. The New Program seal, which Mr. Carey himself designed, made an ideal model for such an arrangement. The seal consists of seven opened books, denoting the seven arts. These are placed in circular form around a primitive balance. The seal is also endowed with a Latin motto meaning "I make free men out of children by means of books and balances." Since T rivium was not to be an official publication, we could not duplicate the seal in detail. It was also necessary to exaggerate the three books representing grammar, rhetoric and logic, for which the magazine was named. The first step in this direction was to make these three books face outward from the balance. Then the symbols presented themselves. It was first suggested that the first three letters and the last three letters of the Roman alphabet be used for grammar. These were to be situated on the separate pages of the opened book. Mr. Carey, however, rightly feared the algebraic connotations of these significant letters, upon which the present design was adopted. As the cover is now, grammar 1s represented by the first and last letters of the three leading alphabets of our Western tradition- Hebrew, Greek and Roman. Rhetoric, which was to be represen ted in the center book, made the most difficult problem. Two hearts ( Con ad con Loquitur) seemed to explain communication , but the suggestion ST. JOHN'S TRIVIUM of a double valentine greeting on the cover of a magazine whose name has enough variations seemed to invite more comment. Again coming to our aid, Mr. Carey mentioned that in modern symbolism the circle, square, six-pointed star and triangle have been used for the Final, Material, Efficient and Formal causes respectively. Being a communicative art, rhetoric involves two persons- the sender or artist and the receiver or patron. Artists are concerned mainly with Formal causes, patrons with Final causes. Using the Material cause to connect these two 7 and effect the copula the three symbols signify the necessary features of the transmission of an idea, such as the art of rhetoric. The syllogism seemed the application of one of the first principles of logic and the most immediately recognizable identification of that art. The help given us by Mr. Carey cannot be exaggerated. His patience with our frequent criticisms was great. The cover design he has made for Trivium warrants thanks we are not unable to give, but which we can never complete. The War and the College FOR the last year we have been doing our lessons, reading our books, and trying to listen to peaceful, reasonable discourse about human affairs, while special newspapers have been let loose outside the window telling us of the latest crack and ruin in the affairs which human reason should control. That the College has recently dedicated itself again to the ancient purpose, that it is three years along on the new road to recover the lost arts of reason, that there are signs of success, all this is reassuring. But there are also signs that the greater human project of which this is only a part is at least temporarily failing, that it is failing perhaps because one of the proudest products of human reason, the machine, has taken charge of affairs, and that we shall have to harness ourselves to it, to save ourselves and our reason from total ruin. In a recent pamphlet Archibald MacLeish, the new Librarian of Congress, has accused people like us, the liberal artists in this and other countries, of being irresponsible, of not seeing the practical effects and implications of the literary and intellectual arts. He thinks that we have imitated the laboratory scientist who has shut himself up in the laboratory and the artist who has shut himself up in his studio and forgotten their responsibilities as citizens and as men of authority. There have been students and teachers in this College who have agreed with Mr. MacLeish in the last year. One of the older students who came here last fill said then that he did not know how long he would be able to stay; he sailed for Europe in May for ambulance service. He is now somewhere in France. His departure made a deep impression on us all. We are not sure, as the rest of the country is not sure, what we should be doing. We are not sure that we have settled the matter when we have comforted each other by saying that we are saving, for ourselves and for the world, the most precious and important part �8 ST. JOHN'S TRIVIUM of the civilization for which it has worked from the beginning. That may turn out to be irresponsible talk tomorrow or next month. In the last war the colleges turned themselves over to the R.O.T.C. and the S.A.T.C. instead of athletics, and their classrooms to gunnery and navigation along with courses in War Aims. Some of us remember that we were unable to carry what we got with us. The military training didn't work or we never used it, and the war aims turned out to be sour propaganda in our mouths. We couldn't use either one after the war, and we turned out to be a lost generation drifting towards another war. It would be good this time if we could concentrate on something that we could take with us-into the war and beyond the war. It may be well to recall that some of the work and thought that went into the present St. John's Program came out of an early recognition that the world was drifting and that something must be done, something fundamental and perhaps drastic, to discover our position and direction. The list of books that we are reading now at St. John's was begun immediately after the Armistice by the American Expeditionary University at Beaune, France. It has been taught, revised, and added to ever since by people who had direct and vivid experience of the last war, the Peace that followed, and these last years of bewilderment. It has always been the aim of these collaborators against demoralization to rediscover and to make available again the things that human beings, young men, and old men, can take with them wherever they go and whatever happens to them. Those of you who have seen the play 'Journey's End know how Alice in Won- derland went to the trenches; you have heard how Alexander always slept with Homer's Iliad under his pillow, how General Smuts became a philosopher general by reading Kant's Critique of Pure Reason during the Boer War. The books have gone many places with human beings, have made them see, and know, and do many things. Wherever you "have to take it," you can take these books- especially if they have become a part of you. But one of the troubles with war is that you have to go through it and come out the other side. You have to go on, when nobody knows where to go. War destroys roads and landmarks as well as cities and dwellings. It destroys familiar and reassuring things inside you. Again these books have seen many wars and have gone on afterwards with those who • were left to go on. It is often said that the great books have stood the test of time. They have done more than that; they have gone on through the fire and destruction of many wars and told men what to do afterwards. It is somewhat comforting to know that the St. John's books have this deep, practical use in the present crisis. Still this is not enough. We are members of the American community and the College has deep roots as an American institution. We must know what its full function will be in the immediate future. There seems to be wide agreement that we Americans should have universal military training and that therefore boys of college age will be asked to train themselves for the manifold specialties of modern organized defense. This time we should not have the mad scramble for preferred positions and special competing services. It would seem likely therefore that ST. JOHN'S TRIVIUM some general basic training in the manual arts would be desirable. Again the plans in the minds of the collaborators in the St. John's Program have been better than we knew at the start. It used to be said that a young man who worked his way through college was getting a double education; he was studying books and in addition he was learning the value of money. In the old American college it was not the value of money that was being learned, but the dignity of work. We at St. John's have long thought it necessary to add the manual arts to our curriculum, because hands are as important as eyes in the training of the intellect. Laboratories these days have become streamlined and demand too little of the manual skills that went into the training of the older scientists. We have wanted to have the students build their own apparatus so that they would know just what has gone into the experiment and the observation. We have done some of this already, but we have had plans for carpentry and metal working shops. Modern industry has need of men trained in this way, and now we have had it demonstrated to us that modern warfare is also scientific in this sense. But just as we have not wanted to professionalize our scientific training, so we would like to give our students a general viable training for what they will probably face when they are called for national defense service, a training that will make them intelligent, versatile agents of the American spirit defending itself, not merely mechanical parts of the military machine. The books will make them adult human beings; what will make them effective agents in action? 9 We have done considerable inquiring and considerable guessing about this matter at the College recently, and we have a suggestion to make, a suggestion that comes from the inner structure of the Program, and a suggestion that might be followed by other colleges. We should focus all of our training in the natural sciences on the gas engine and the electric generator. As the steam engine and coal were the living parts of the industrial system for the last hundred years, so the internal combustion engine and the electric generator are the vital center of the industrial revolution of this generation. Their immediate utility in national defense has become painfully obvious during the last two months. To those who have grasped the constructive, aggressive program that we have projected for ourselves in the natural sciences this apparent reversion to immediate utility may be shocking. But we have discovered in our attempts to liberalize and intellectualize the experimental techniques of modern science that the major strategy must be the focusing of our training on a concrete problem that will bring the theoretical and speculative issues out and force them on our attention. The application of the natural sciences to human beings in medicine has been our aim so far. The mathematician, the physicist, the chemist, and the biologist, as well as the medical man and the philosopher will bear witness that this is not a simple, easy task that we have undertaken. It will take a long time to carry out. On the way to the solution are the sciences and the arts of heat and electricity, represented on our list and in our laboratory by Fourier and Clerk Maxwell. The immediate practical problem soon to be forced on us by �IO ST. JOHN'S TRIVIUM our national emergency and the suggested solution in terms of the gas engine and the electric generator point out the nearer focusing points for our curricular problems in science. Shops for the mechanical arts connected with them would extend our liberal arts and sciences as well as provide the elementary training for those who may have to play important parts in the immediate historical occasion. Napoleon once said that an army moves on its stomach; it might well be said now that an army lives and moves in its internal combustion motors. The educated soldier of a democracy should know more than the British or French soldier know about their prime movers. The colleges should see that their students know about the prime movers of industrial cultures, not only for purposes of war but also for purposes of any hopeful peace that may follow. Archibald MacLeish's article suggests that the liberal and the intellectual should use their pens as weapons. I hope [but I am not sure] that he does not mean that they should turn their intellects to the dark purposes of propaganda and their literary skill to the arts of recrimination. I am persuaded that he should mean that the literary, artistic, intellectual man should not be snooty about technology. Technical education has long been known as an integral part of culture by the anthropologists; one learns as much about primitive peoples by studying their tools as one learns by studying their language. One of the disturbing things in modern culture all over the world is the false sophistication of the liberal intellectual who ignores mathematics, machinery, chemistry, and biology. On the other side is the engineer who can not read poetry and has childish ideas about morals and politics. This rift is as shocking to those who have discovered it as the rift between the military intelligence of the Allies and the technological intelligence of the Germans. The present apparent victory of one is as horrible as the defeat of the other, and they both symbolize the great issues in our bewildering culture. It has been from the start the major concern of the St. John's Program to lay the foundations for the mending of this rift. In the modern world there are two great traditions which are represented best by religion, ethics, and politics on the one hand, and by science and industry on the other. The former is usually understood to be conservative and established; the latter is radical and progressive in the popular mind. Technically considered, religion, ethics, and politics move in a medium of literature, talk, words; science and industry use a mathematical medium. The task of any civilization is to assimilate the new to the old, and the failure of a culture results in a revolution of the new against the old. We at St. John's have tried to put the new and the old together in a way that will force the assimilation. We have been criticized for having too much religion, ethics, and politics, too much literature and philosophy of the old-fashioned variety. On the other hand, we have been criticized for having too much mathematics and laboratory science. The criticisms balance pretty well, and we hope they accurately reflect the balance in the curriculum itself. Actually the balance is a dynamic one, and has a direction. Arming ourselves with the traditional disciplines in language and literature which include poetry, religion, and politics as subject matters, we hope to move ST. JOHN'S TRIVIUM into the baffling problems in mathematical physics and medical science. This is our way of facing the modern world and of preparing ourselves to solve some of its problems. There are grave dangers in the project, dangers which some of our wisest critics have pointed out. There is the danger of simple failure, there is the danger of too easy a solution with consequent disillusion and despair, there is the danger of a further reduction of the humanities to the natural sciences and a consequent slip of science into magic and black arts. But these are dangers of the modern world whatever we try to do in it. If you are ill you are forced to choose between a priest and a psychiatrist, between a psychiatrist and a medical man, between a medical man and a quack. How and why do you choose; why should you have to choose when you are a man, a human being with all these dimensions and potentialities? Is there an escape from the choice for the individual? No, we must II face the dangers in life, and therefore all the more we must face them in a liberal education. But they can not be faced without an integral attack from many sides. St. John's has books written by men who had faith and courage in the prospect of solution. We have laboratories where the problems can be posed in detail and in easy stages. It may be that the war emergency will hasten our determination to face the problems in the machine shop with our hands as well as our intellects and our eyes. We shall wait to see what the national government proposes, hoping that the deliberations now in process will give something to the colleges to do that will be effective for the immediate practical purposes which we all share, and that, whatever the government gives the colleges to do, it will be something that they can take with them through the war to the other side where we shall want to be able to do our part in finding a way into the future.-ScoTT BucHANAN. History, Geography and a Temporal Sequence THE only reason that men care to study the past, other than that of pure intellectual curiosity, is that history apparently is repetitive, and a knowledge of it makes the present and the future potentially understandable. Perhaps it may even have the effect of making man aware of his mistakes and failures, his successes and strokes of genius, in the events of ages long dead, and thereby he may learn someday to profit by this vicarious experience himself. Through understanding of the past, in other terms, may come control of the future. The implications of this are of importance beyond the power of words to express. The statement that history does repeat itself is nearly prehistoric, proposed by Plato in the Fifth Century B.C., and lately by Spengler. The cyclical theory is old and seemingly true, as far as our observations go. Working on this basic assumption, men have attempted, with some notable successes, but many more remarkable failures, �1'2 ST. JOHN'S TRIVIUM to fathom and predict the future. They can do this if the things which they observe are natural to men and are not merely incidental causes acting upon them. That is, the language of a people is a product of their environment, civilization and culture in the first instance, and later on, through its richness, color and implied meanings, may serve to keep that culture alive, or even to revive it, long after the original impetus is dead. So long, then, as men will adhere to observations based upon natural causes, and not incidental ones, their attempts to read what is written in the book of Fate has some logical justification. In this article, I will deal with a phenomenon which I have observed, but one which can lead, sadly enough, if I am to stick to my above statements, to no logically founded results. I therefore shall try to draw no conclusions from it; if I should be so rash, you may be certain that I apologize. This observation, which came to my attention one evening when I was gazing at a Mercator projection of the world, would apparently make the progress of civilization's centers in a directed curve, which is not, so far as this aspect goes, as yet repetitive. From the small amount of history which is at my command, the theory seems accurate in its facts. Fortunately, those upon which I find it necessary to draw do not have to be correct to the last detail: an error of a century or two makes no basic difference to me. This is fortunate, for the knowledge we have of the past is generally still the subject of learned debates. The geography which I demand, and you must possess to understand this theory, is also unhampered by even considerable errors. In short, only a superficial knowledge of the generalities of both is essential at all. The historical aspect of the theory requires only a list of the successive centers of civilization, arranged chronologically. These are, I think, as follows: China, India, Babylon, Egypt, Greece, Rome, Spain and/or France, and England. If you feel that I have erred here, the order in which I have placed these nations is my own personal opinion on the matter, and your agreement is now necessary. However, I do not make the claim that each of these countries added something to the general sum of civilization. All I ask is the admission that this is the order in which the countries named seized or had supremacy or dominance in the world. This is not taken to mean in the sense of economic or military leadership, although some surely possessed this, but in the sense that the culture which each country had at some time was the best to be found; this, of course, also implies that we have the same viewpoint on culture, but that is not important. Having granted this order, we now pass to the geographical field. Here, I wish that you would look at, or imagine, a map of the world. That is all. Having obtained the ingredients, we will now essay a mixture, hoping that the elements will fuse in some way. The first nation on our historical list is China; let us then direct our attention to China on the map. Then to the second on the list, India; to reach it on the map, we move to the west of China. Then Babylon; we move now west of India. To Egypt, west from Babylon; then again west to Greece; now we sail into the setting sun and reach Rome; ever moving westward, we sweep into Spain and France; the ST. JOHN'S TRIVIUM trail seems to move westward across the Channel, and hesitates in England as though unsure of its future movements. We have now made a regularly westward progression from China to England. The direction of our travel has not changed or suffered reversal. There could be, if we were on the watch for conclusions, only one drawn: the progress of civilization is from east to west. Where can it go now? Only west again, and the logical country west of Britain is the United States. But there, I have drawn a conclusion, and I apologize. There are a multitude of objections to this theory, if such it be, and no one is more conscious of them than I. But it is an observation, and one which may prove of value in reassuring the sophisticated Americans that they are not perishing from the earth, but are, on the contrary, just beginning to rise from the ashes. The first objection to this is that there apparently is no reason for the geographical progression: that is, geography is only incidental. Probably this objection is valid; I cannot dispose of it, except to repeat the statement made about geography affecting culture 13 through language. The Frenchman speaks six times as rapidly as the South Sea Islander, and the ratio of their cultures is even greater; could not the climates be the cause of this? In the absence of greater research work than has been done to the present time, this will be purely a matter of personal opm1on. Another objection would be that there now is a water gap between the old and possible new centers of civilization. But cannot the water gap between Egypt and Greece be likened unto it, when the two means of transportation are taken into consideration, as in a proportion to the distances? Then they are, I think, comparable. There may be, and probably are, many other more serious objections. But they are all objections to the attempt to predict; not to the observation itself. It is made, and can be taken for whatever value you wish to assign to it. I am not capable of a valiant defense on its behalf, but I hope that there is something of truth both in the observation and the almost totally embryonic conclusions which I have drawn from it; apologetically, of course.-J. L. H. The Letter Setteth Free spirit killeth; the letter setT HE teth free." Thus did T. S. Eliot once paraphrase an old and venerated epigram, the memory of which led President Stringfellow Barr to deliver one of the most stimulating lectures we can remember hearing at St. John's. As is customary, Mr. Barr gave the first Formal Lecture of the scholastic year to the students and members of the Faculty, on the topic, Grammar. The lecturer, speaking of grammar, gave an excellent exhibition of rhetoric. His talk was smooth, yet animated, and he somehow managed to space it with anecdotes which did not distract the students' attention from the theme. Mr. Barr has that happy faculty of making the complex seem simple, while still giving credit to the listener for understanding the complex. Not that one may ever boast of understanding �14 ST. JOHN'S TRIVIUM a lecture here, except in part; the lecturers force the students to raise themselves to the speaker's level, or fall by the wayside. Though we do not pretend to have understood it, the most exciting thing Mr. Barr said pertained to the Renaissance, and indirectly to the "intellectual awakening" which every student should undergo at some stage of his career here. The Renaissance, he said, consisted of men using words, and using them often, without realizing their meanings, and then suddenly discovering just what those words did stand for. Words are the parts of grammar, they are the marks we make on paper, or the sounds we utter, or the tools we use to convey ideas. Words, here, as a term, is also symbolic, since it stands for any tools which may be used for the communication of intelligent meanings. The mechanic, the soldier, the sailor, the farmer, the sculptor- each has his proper grammar. The reduction of the Renaissance to these terms made it something vital and comprehensible to the students. For many, it will also serve as a clue to distinguish the "intellectual awakening" from another case of understanding of one term. Mr. Barr, in his similar lecture last year, called grammar "frozen logic." He has since realized that this would make it static, and its dynamic quality, which he brought so forcibly to our attention, belies this definition. The President also referred to a statement he made in the College Convocation, concerning the courage it required to embark on a liberal education in times like these. Instead, he said, it requires faith. Certain it seems, to us, that to a student who as yet does not know the real meaning of the term he is using, it takes more of the latter to continue using it than it does of courage. Faith in the men who insist that the word has a meaning; faith in the men who use the word; and above all, faith that some day he himself will discover that meaning, and have the use of grammar for his own ends. Having only the spirit will kill; "the letter setteth free."-THE CIRCLE. ST. JOHN'S TRIVIUM We Are Not Alone SINCE a year ago September, some of us have surveyed the generation which we may call our own by birth, and have found little to make us proud of thi·s allegiance. A short while ago, we were appalled to read in the pages of the August and September issues of the Atlantic Monthly, a gentlemanly and distressed query by Professor Arnold Whitridge of Yale University, and its attempted answer by two undergraduates of American colleges: Kingman Brewster, Jr., also of Yale, and Spencer Klaw of Harvard. We were appalled because Mr. Whitridge's honest and interested open letter to those who would fight in the war he foresees, received a reply just as mugwumpian as the young men who had so mystified him. Believing that he did not wish to have his unenviable position magnified but clarified, we feel obligated to answer him further. And this is not only because we seem to be misunderstood ourselves, but also for the reason that we think we represent a sizable bloc of other students in American colleges. Like the gentlemen from Harvard and Yale, we do not presuppose that our views are shared by all, or even a majority, of the rest of us, but we are happy in knowing that we are representative. Succinctness was not one of the virtues of the gentlemen from Harvard and Yale. We shall try to make it ours through natural sympathy and respect for Mr. Whitridge's propitious question. His open letter was more inquiring than challenging, and we propose to treat it as such. Mr. Whitridge's first pertinent remarks dealt with the traditionally impulsive, generous, and idealistic qualities of youth as witnessed in the college press. Not unreasonably, he had gone directly to student publications for his answer. What he discovered there was justly horrifying to him. The Daily Dartmouth was afraid of swinging its emotions to that side which might have less than all the right, and dove headlong for shelter from British and French propaganda; the Harvard Crimson (Mr. Klaw's journal) Munichally demanded peace-at-any-price, and branded expression of belief in the Allied cause as war-mongering; three-hundred students from the same college informed the President that they would never follow in the footsteps of the 1917 alumni; the Yale News (whose chairman is Mr. Brewster) placidly discovered that neither the Allies nor the Nazis had a decided stand as either friend or foe of morality and religion. Regretfully, Mr. Whi tridge extended the list. To counter this evidence, we ourselves have had some experience with collegiate editorializing, and unless the journalists of larger campuses are better for their offices than we were, the great bulk of their printed matter was written in a frenzy with but superficial thought, and taken post-haste to the printers. Authors have been more than once amazed to find what they have written, and since there are not many lexicographers among us, too few have analyzed their own words with the keen incisive investigations that have been made into the words of others. This may serve as a reminder that Mr. Whitridge's sources of information are not infallible. It is an extremely simple matter to make a profession of faith; this is the a priori cause of Mr. Whitridge's inquiry. Precisely because it is not difficult to pay lip-service to strange �16 ST. JOHN'S TRIVIUM gods, youth has often left its heart out of its mouth, and kept its traditional impulses, generosities, and ideals obscured, to the understandable bewilderment of Mr. •Whitridge and his kith. We realize that thus far we have made an apology; a conclusion on our part which the gentlemen from Harvard and Yale evidently failed to comprehend in their own reply. We cease to fight the duel; there is little need for one. We believe that never before m the world's memory has there been an issue as clear-cut as the one being settled now by the Battle of Britain. As proof, it may be seen that from the conflagration in England, there leads a highly incendiary fuse to numerous small but powerful powder kegs dotting the entire surface of the globe. Upon the worst fate of Britain hangs the worst fate of South America, the Empire, the British navy, which has so long and with so eminent a success guarded, and still guards, our Atlantic coast; the Dutch East Indies, Indo-China, and thereby the sole supply route to Chiang Kai Shek's armies battling the Japanese invader; thus the fate of China herself; Japan's policy will be shaped by the outcome, and this, it is agreed, will profoundly effect America's Far-Eastern policy, and subsequently our naval plans for national defense. Further may we cite the fact that the Nazi philosophy of life is based upon the assumption that man is by nature an indolent, weak, and indecisive animal, not social, but seeking to be left in his own small world, and desiring to have his decisions made by men whose word he has not the right to question. Opposed to this is the British democracy, which may be classed by some as a poor example of what the democratic state should be, but yet firmly believes that man is by nature a rational, social, idealistic, strong animal, each individual having a certain fundamental dignity, which requires that the first duty of the governing power shall be to have the consent of those who are to be governed. This is as clean a philosophical break as could be imagined in any abstract argument. But this is by no means abstract; it is living, forceful, yet profound. The very physical means which the combatants choose to wage their war may be the same. But the manners by which these instruments are used to achieve the ends sought are just as vitally incongruous as the philosophical assumption that led to their construction. Religiously, one side has found the Church its greatest stumbling block; the other has found God a source of comfort. Morally, there is no military compunction on the part of the one, but when the enemy has chosen his weapons, none but a fool would use those inferior to his, regardless of the moral indignation at being forced to use them. Some suppose that Britain's ideals are not our ideals, but they are ours if only because those of Germany are not and could never be American. We have said that the choice of weapons is not England's own; likewise if, though God grant it not, we should ever be compelled to fight, it will not be ours to make a choice. Conscription has been condemned as a dictatorial method of raising physical strength, but we must fight fire with fire in the absence of something stronger than flames. It has been said that democracy cannot combat total war without itself becoming a dictatorship, and that also once the fundamental liberties contained in the Bill of Rights have been usurped for a period, then we have ST. JOHN'S TRIVIUM forever sold our birthright for a pot of porridge. This is profoundly and historically untrue. It has been the experience of every democracy that, in time of crisis, freedom disappears, but certainly not forever. And may we present as evidence the authority of Woodrow Wilson in 1917 and 1918, and inquire as to whether the freedom of the American individual failed to re-appear. The word propaganda today has the same connotations that the word witch had in old Salem. Applied to any article, to any written or spoken word, it labels it as untrue, malicious, and inciting emotional epilepsy. The gentlemen from Harvard and Yale seem to have forgotten that it was propaganda that made our Founding Fathers libertyconscious in 1776; that it was propaganda that aroused the nation to fight infantile paralysis, and is now forcing it to fight syphilis; that it is propaganda that elects the President of the United States. Yet we feel that they would be the first to condone its use here. Propaganda, then, is another term for high-pressure salesmanship, and must be judged not absolutely but relative to the product it attempts to place in popular favor. Bearing this in mind, the name of propaganda need frighten no one who retains his intellectual freedom and reserves the right to make his individual judgments. Mr. Whitridge's attempt to excuse our generation by placing the blame on his own is an appreciated gesture, but no more actual than the dogma that the Versailles Treaty is the fountainhead from whence flow all our troubles today. The preservation of democracy is an intricate task. It calls for more blood and tears, sweat and toil than any other with which wemayconfrontourselves. If the past has taught us at all, it has taught us that America is capable of heroic exertions. We believe that the victory of sweetness and light over the forces of evil and darkness can be attained. And if only because it can be, we shall see it done. Here we take our stand, in the name of our impulses, our occasional generosities and, above all, our ideals.- F. S. M., JR. AND J. L. H. ATHLETIC ACTIVITIES AN annual visitor to St. John's, were he observant, would notice the distinct improvement in the equipment of the athletic corner of the College. A new diamond shines in the setting sun, and the coaches and referees now caper energetically in smart, though ill-fitting, blue tights. Inside the red-brick gymnasium new rowing machines have been installed, new wrestling mats laid down, and an extra squash court built. The reason for all this development is not that there has been an athletic endowment, but rather that the size of the College has been doubled by incoming freshmen, and accommodation has had to be made for their desire to blow off steam. Another result of the increase in numbers has been the redivision of the teams. Instead of banding together in respective houses, players are now vaunting the current prowess of their seminars, although the highly technical method of numbering seminars is rather cumbersome for the supporter, who roots loudly for his beloved "seminar 2ab." Perhaps the names of the seminar leaders might make the teams less impersonal, and more worth risking one's neck for. However the main result of the redistribution has been to create more teams, and thus make competition greater, and possibly healthier. �18 ST. JOHN'S TRIVIUM The only two veterans of the palmy days of intercollegiate athletics are sailing and fencing, and they are continuing in this vein throughout the year. Apart from these two sports the program is an entirely intramural one, having been established with the object of fuller participation by more scholars, and a shift of the emotional energy expended on intercollegiate teams to other presumably more worthy fields. There are, however, rewards offered for individual and team achievements, in the forms of golden charms, college blazers, and a choice of athletic equipment for the winner of the "outstanding athlete" race, competed for on a points basis. And now the season is beginning, the seminars, stimulated by dialectic, are ready to throw themselves into the feast of sports that awaits them. Touch football, softball, sailing and soccer are already here. Fencing and basketball are on their way. Harder studying makes for more free time, it has been said, so let everyone wallow in an orgy of mental calisthenics, and then participate in the sports program, making it fulfil its purpose of greater enrollment and greater enjoyment for all.-W. T. H. IN PRAISE OF IMPROPAGANDA PROPAGANDA is addressed to passion and prejudice. But you seldom find any in the dead letter office. This means that we should cultivate sweet reason-within the walls of the dead letter office. Subversive elements are always injecting propaganda into our national life. For instance, now comes the rumor that someone wants to do away with the Army Regulations that require in every soldier ten pairs of teeth, upper and lower, capable of meeting between decks. This appears a monstrous pro- posal, and the rumor is probably propaganda. The army has always required ten pairs of teeth. But impropaganda immediately suggests that perhaps it wouldn't be so bad to modify the rule anyway. After all, such a regulation is undoubtedly a survival of earlier days and not justified by the conditions of modern warfare. In a cave man army, ten pairs of teeth, capable of meeting each other, were also capable of meeting the enemy. And even as late as the Civil War, when teeth were used for opening cartridges, a toothless infantryman looked dangerous to the enemy-until he smiled. But we think this antiquated rule has now become subversive. Why should our army continue to insist upon naturally grown teeth when science has demonstrated the acceptability of the mechanized units on sale by reputable dealers everywhere? Of course, only genuine replacement parts, bearing the Seal of Approval of the American Dental Association and installed by an authorized dealer, should be recognized. This is our guarantee of satisfactory workmanship and the maintenance of prices in keeping with our national defense requirements. But with these safeguards the army could well relax the rule and thereby make available for national defense untold thousands of our citizens in this emergency. In fact, the whole set of physical requirements should be streamlined and brought up to date. The conditions of total war require that every possible resource be devoted to the service of the state. This is no time for rejecting any reasonable proposition. Science and industry, if left unhampered, could undoubtedly throw into the field countless secret weapons of proven quality ST. JOHN'S TRIVIUM and recognized effectiveness. We might even see the day when the flower of our army would be a mighty pansy division of 100,000 mechanized eunuchs, all bearing a Seal of Approval of Good Housekeeping Institute.-ERASMUS. Second Fiddle ALTHOUGH we had not heard any orchestral music for three months before Leopold Stokowski's performance in Baltimore some weeks ago, we were almost sure our untrained ears were not deceiving us when they told us that the All-American Youth Orchestra was considerably better than it was before it left on its South American tour of glory. The coordination of the different sections of the orchestra, particularly of the strings, was less seamy, and far above that in the recording of Dvorak's "New World Symphony." Mr. Stokowski has certainly done things in weeks to this orchestra that he spent years doing in Philadelphia. Can it be that the musical youth of America is more docile? The playing was the Youth Orchestra, the program was Stokowski. The Bach was entirely composed of his "arrangements" of that notable composer. It was better than the newest renditions of Tschaikowsky in dance bands, but it was far from being Bach, although no mention of Stokowski's free transcriptions was made in the program. No orchestra alive could hope to reproduce the shades and interweavings of tone and parts that Bach intended for a small orchestra, and although the Youth Orchestra attempted the impossible rather heroically, they lost too much of Bach to make it a great performance from the composer's point of view, or for that matter from the Bach lover's standpoint. But it was a gratifying display of technique and orchestral experience. Shostakovich is a Soviet composer, and despite the efforts of the orchestra to straight-jacket the music into some order, he remained a composer for the Soviets. The drums were very finely played, and well used musically, and the marimbaphone did much more than merely excite the audience's curiosity, but the stimulus given by this music was not the one we associate with concert halls, but rather with ballroomsexciting and vigorous, nevertheless. In all the Bach was well arranged, but only 50 per cent Bach, and Shostakovich was novel and stimulating. The orchestra was fine, and played like veterans, and Stokowski is undoubtedly the best "Arranger," besides having those unforgettable hands.- N ERO. Decca has issued an album of New Orleans jazz, played by some twenty musicians who are from that city or thereabout. There have been attempts to vulgarize New Orleans jazz in order to popularize it, as in the case of Bob Crosby's orchestra, but this album is an earnest effort to represent this early jazz in its original and best form, and by its most reputed artists. In trying to reach the apex in this type of jazz, Stephen Smith and Charles Edward Smith, who directed these "sessions" for Decca, succeeded in recording together, Louis Armstrong and Sidney Bechet for the first time since the days of the Red Onion Jazz Babies and the Clarence Williams Blue Five. The fact that these two musicians are considered the greatest jazzmen to have blown into a horn shows �20 ST. JOHN'S TRIVIUM ST. JOHN'S TRIVIUM the degree of importance of having recorded them together once more. However, in this album, Decca achieved something greater than recording "King" Louis and "Pops" Bechet: it waxed some discs by Johnny Dodds, the greatest clarinet player in the realm of jazz, the man whose name is synonymous with the hot clarinet, but most of all, the musician who played righteous music until his dying day; a day when his sincerity could bring him nothing more than a bare living, if not poverty. New Orleans at the turn of the century was the center of gambling, drinking and prostitution. At that time, it was also rocking the cradle of jazz, a music that arose from and had become a combination of the work songs and the blues of the slaves, of the festive New Orleans marches and of the French quadrilles. Naturally, New Orleans holds a very sentimental place in the hearts of the followers of hot music. A New Orleans type of band usually consists of a trumpet, a trombone, a clarinet and a rhythm section. In the ensembles, the trumpet plays the melody or the lead, while the clarinet plays above the trumpet and complements it. The trombone plays between the harmony and the rhythm and "pushes" the trumpet from below. Of course, in its ideal form, New Orleans jazz should be played without a written score, that is, it should be totally improvised. In many cases in this album, the music lives up to the New Orleans tradition. Unfortunately, in other cases, the Fiftysecond Street influence has been too great to overcome and the old spirit seems to be lost. This is especially apparent on the Red Allen sides. The classical collective improvisation works at its best on the Johnny Dodds and the Jimmy Noone sides, which were made in Chicago. The musicians here seem nearer to the real thing than the other groups which recorded in New York. At the Chicago session, Preston Jackson plays a trombone which establishes him as one of the greatest. He is greatly instrumental in making those records what they are. As the listeners will notice, most of the sides are blues. I found Johnny Dodds' "Gravier Street Blues" to be the best in that it is the most nostalgic blues and that it keeps its intensity of sadness from beginning to end. It is played in the old tradition from Lonnie Johnson's guitar to Natty Dominique's trumpet. The "219 Blues," played by Louis and Bechet, is one of the earliest blues known. "Jelly Roll" Morton, the living legend of jazz, says that it is "the first blues I have no doubt heard." It is about two trains, the 219 that goes west and the 217 that returns to New Orleans. Sidney Bechet, the most lyrical of jazz musicians, plays a beautiful obligato to Louis' vocal on this blues. He is also excellent on "Perdido Street Blues," although he doesn't equal Johnny Dodds on the earlier recording of the same tune by the New Orleans Wanderers. This album is the logical beginning for the uninitiated. For those familiar with this thing called jazz, there are more than enough kicks to make up for the disappoin tmen ts.-AHMED ERTEGUN, '44. TRIVIA HERE at the college, we welcome a new Director of Music; and note that the old one is safely over the border. Dorothy Dunbar Bromley told us last month in Harper's that "Wendell L. Wilkie's self-assurance is great." We wonder why she bothered? 21 Mr. Barr passed a persistent Indian Summer with Mr. Strohmeyer of the Annapolis Housing Authority. The War and the College- One of the Freshmen has the largest collection of tin soldiers in the world. Someone asked the other night, "Why do we need Eliot, we have wars." Somebody had it that under a long range upward and onward movement, the administration has its eye on Bancroft Hall. On the whole, the innovations at Convocation the other afternoon had us rather tipsy-especially Mr. Barr. With Jolson back on Broadway, who could possibly object to one more Barrymore divorce? One of the townsfolk asked us on the street the other day if "that Dr. Martin" had had any trouble with the Federal Investigation of un-American Activities which took place in Annapolis this summer. Last week we got involved in a stuffy political argument. The Republican gesture definitely had the majority. For our part, we're still in doubt. What do you think, Willkie or won't he? Those who know the St. John's seal will recognize the cover's mother. Some may wonder about the spots on the top three books, and some may recognize them as symbols for the three Liberal Arts: grammar, rhetoric, and logic. What we like about the whole thing, however, is that little business in the middle book, the sign of rhetoric. The triangle represents the formal cause; the square, the material; and the circle, the final. After scratching our heads over this for a while, we decided that it must be that the triangle was chosen because it was so sharp, or so hot as Plato says, the square was obviously earthy, and together they made the circle which, being the result of the hot and earthy, was perfect.-R. H. Books Out of Time and Mind. Mr. L. H. Myers is a novelist who is forever surprising us. Each of his four novels is a thing apart, having few similarities. The Orissers, his first work of fiction, was written fifteen years ago, but the book seems to have come from a more distant past. Peopled with indeterminate and brutal characters, the family of Orisser was a strange mixture of vengeance, supplication and discontent in an early nineteenth-century atmosphere. The prevailing catastrophic mood of the book has placed it in the gallery of the grotesque, where it has not perished. For his second novel Mr. Myers took us on a yachting party down the Amazon with modern English sophisticates. The Clio was a light book compared with The Orissers, and we should not have known Mr. Myers capable of so charming a comedy of manners but for the signature. Strange Glory, published only a few years before The Root and the Flower, convinced us of the author's versatility, but reminded us �22 ST. JOHN'S TRIVIUM that that quality is more often indicative of progressive talent. Mr. Myers' new novel, The Pool of Vishnu, is a sequel to this last, and although it can be accepted out of sequence, recollections of the first book can do little harm, and will perhaps do much toward an understanding of the other. To detach himself and his readers from the problems of our time for the purposes of fictionizing problems of all times, Mr. Myers has made India in the reign of Elizabeth his scene. The temptation to write a purely historical novel has been resisted, and only a few of the characters are drawn with particular attention to fact. The Emporer Akbar, his difficult sons, Salim and Daniyal, and the ruler's personal adviser, Shaik Mobarek, did actually exist, and provide the novelist with the screen on which to present his own creations. The two heirs in their ruthless battle for their father's favor supply intrigue and melodrama enough to please Mr. Louis Bromfield, whose more minor personages find lesser troubles in a similar setting. Involved in the royal indecisions are Rajah Amar and his family, who are Mr. Myers' main concern. Prince J ali, son of Amar and his wife, Sita, is the principal in '!'he Root and the Flower. He is twelve years old at the beginning of the book, and although he remains obscure in the first chapters, the second part is titled with his name. It is here that J ali is most closely studied. An adolescent introvert, J ali is eager for spiritual and worldly happiness. His hesitations, his sudden leap toward the latter, and the remorse that follows afford Mr. Myers the opportunity to show Jali to us. And what Mr. Myers shows us is the premature bitterness in a young prince, his realization of anticipated pain, and the wisdom gained from unfortunate but revealing experience. Prince J ali of Vidyapur is comparable to Doctor Aziz in Mr. E. M. Forster's Passage to India, for these two with their remarkable insight, their grudging delight in human relations are closely akin. The analogy, however, cannot be stressed, for the lessons derived from their separate experiences are not even distantly like. Mr. Forster's novel ends in a failure, Mr. Myers' m a fulfillment. Prince J ali is not as prominent in '!'he Pool of Vishnu, but we leave him in a completely happy and resolved state. He has been helped toward this solution by the Guru, who is the habitual philosopher of Mr. Myers' long novel. Poet, priest, and doctor of spirits, the Guru makes all other characters subservient in the sequel. It is through his quiet conversations that the spiritual and romantic complications and bewilderments are solved. The inclination to call the books philosophical novels because of the great quantity of speculation is treacherous. In the prefatory note to '!'he Root and '!'he Flower Mr. Myers disproves personified abstractions, and in his novel he has made fast his belief. Mr. Myers has a great passion for detail, but it is scarcely a laborious one, and requires no labor to enjoy. He is a good novelist; that is to say he presents his characters in detail not by conveying their every quality immediately, but in revealing them gradually in the characters' relations to other characters. Seemingly a basic aspect of the novel, it is seldom performed with more facility. The attraction India holds for the ST. JOHN'S TRIVIUM British novelist is one that has increased that country's place in fiction. The difficulty before has been in combining East with West. Rudyard Kipling believed the two could meet "When two strong men stand face to face." E. M. Forster does not care for the strong and indicates that the union is impossible. L. H. Myers has departed from the Anglo-Indian conflict and given us India alone. But his individuality in so giving it resembles Mr. Forster's problem of "Only connect" in the fact that there are no novelists quite like them. We liken Mr. Myers to Mr. Forster, but hope he will not be so silent. Virginia Woolf has forsaken experimentation and written a pleasing biography of Roger Fry, the English art cr1t1c. If we judge from the brief prefatory note, the book may be called the 'official biography', but Mrs. Woolf has by no means succumbed to Victorian tradition in that field. Like the biographers of the late nineteenth century, she has made use of letters, Fry's autobiographical notes, and recollections by his friends, but she has not connected these with superfluities. Virginia Woolf knew Roger Fry intimately, which fact enlarges her scope considerably, but not once are we aware of their friendship. Indeed, the author is often unreasonably impersonal. She is putting her theory of biography into practise. Mrs. Woolf has had a great deal to say about biography, and before his death, Roger Fry remarked that she might write his own life. She has done so, but there is nothing exceptional in her methods. The conceptions she might have had have already been demonstrated. Orlando, a novel in the 23 biographic style, is not admittedly fiction, and if Orlando did not actually exist she/he certainly should have. Mrs. Woolf here created a character about whom she could write a biography. This is a method others have resorted to with persons who have lived. Knowing that that is the wrong way to go about it, the author was wise to invent a personality she could know thoroughly. In Flush, a life" of Elizabeth Barrett's spaniel, Mrs. Woolf observed the Brownings in canine adjectives; words that smelled and saw, words that did not hear, but words that understood. The book is delightful, and an interesting experiment, but unfortunately we can't generalize about Flush's mind. Mrs. Woolf has come back to regulations in Roger Fry. She has shown us the Quaker home of the artist, Cambridge, Bloomsbury, the War, and their effects on a sensitive mind. She has also given us Fry's own record of experiences with Pierpont Morgan. This makes the most amusing part of the book. Morgan, who bought pictures as he did stocks, was the power behind the Metropolitan Museum, of which Fry was curator for several years. He was dismissed because he had bought for the Museum a picture Morgan wanted for his own gallery. In Roger Fry's own words, Morgan's "crude historical imagination was the only fault in an otherwise perfect insensibility." Mrs. Woolf has concentrated on recording things that happened. She has not mixed fact and fiction. For herself, she does not have much to say, but her way of saying things about Roger Fry convinces us of his talents and ofherown.-F. M. �ST. JOHN'S TRIVIUM ST. JOHN'S TRIVIUM CINEMA Holland, the moments m the tower of WHEN Vincent Sheean wrote his auto- Westminster, the sinking Clipper, the biography more than a dozen years ago, final air raid-all are pleasantly joined. there followed promptly a series of The whole film is one big chase. The memoirs by other journalists who had American reporter is after the assassin witnessed extraordinary occurrences of one of Europe's most distinguished He chases right through abroad. The personal historians brought peacemaker. to the end, when he discovers that his together their old articles, connected potential father-in-law is the British themwith impersonal beliefs, were briefly agent for a foreign government. We praised, and went back to the relative aren't told which foreign government, obscurity of the newspaper columns. In the past few years there has been a for Hitchcock was well aware that we all revival of reportorial recollections. This knew about that before the film started. The spy is played with customary has produced books by Pierre van suavity by Herbert Marshall, whom it Paasen, Lillian Mowrer and othersis nice to see out of martyrdom. Joel books superior to Sheean's. And now McCrea is admirable as the correspondHollywood has adopted the fashion. ent. The chase becomes his talents. Judging from their first product, Alfred Laraine Day joins the hunt attractively. Hitchcock's Foreign Correspondent, the George Sanders, Albert Basserman, and adoption is not to be deplored. Robert Benchley combine to make the Concerning themselves with Europe, cast well proportioned. motion picture producers have given us Foreign Correspondent is the best a varied assortment of attitudes since example we know illustrating the powers September a year ago. From the charmof the movie director. The story and ing satire that was Ninotchka they have players are not particularly notable, but arrived at the ostensibly revealing but the camera asides, the gestures of the eminently saturating type of production. extraseach of these means something When such novels as '!'he Mortal Storm to Alfred Hitchcock, and he develops are turned into movies, any subtleties their possibilities. The overhead view the books might have possessed are conof the umbrellas at the assassination , siderably diminished. the pantomine of the man trying to Mr. Walter Wanger's original plan cross the street as the pursuing cars for Foreign Correspondent was to dramarush by, the brief glimpse of the broken tize Sheean's Personal History, but all adaptations were unsuccessful. Recall- letters in the neon Hotel Europe sign. ing that book, we understand the diffi- These are moments that we remember culties scenarists must have had with the above the climaxes. Hitchcock directs movies as Miss Leslie Ford writes deRayna Prome episode- the one memotective stories- with concentration on rable part of the memoir. But Director atmosphere. He is the one director in Hitchcock, "master of suspense," saw Hollywood who manages to create as an opportunity to dispense with all his well as duplicate the script. Immediately directorial inhibitions, and somehow classed as melodrama, Foreign Corresponcreated a story to accompany them. dent does not depart from the category. Surprisingly, a conglomerative mass of But when good melodrama comes from melodrama does not result. The assas- California, we are reassured of the sination, the scenes in the windmill in cinema's forte.- S. VASHTAR. THE PLAY LATE last spring, Flora Robson deserted the Warner Brothers and came to New York to appear in Gilbert Miller's production of Ladies in Retirement. It was good to see her out of Elizabethan costume, especially in so fine a play. There are seldom successful attempts to write murder-mysteries for the stage. Playwrights either create the absurdly grotesque or try to turn popular detective stories into balanced dramas. Both ventures are invariably disastrous. But Ladies in Retirement is as pretty a piece of murder as we've seen in a long while. Not since Emlyn Williams' Night Must Fall has there been such accomplished artistry in the portrayal of crime. Reginald Denham and Edward Percy, who wrote the play, are adept in creating inhibited ladies. In this case, the lady protectorate over her pleasantly insane sisters, kills her employer, the lady with a past. Her motives are admirable, and after the deed is done at the end of the first act, we heartily sympathize with the character in her naive methods of concealing the crime. The murder is done, by the way, with the victim sitting at the piano playing "Tit-Willow." Never again will we hear that tune without remembering Miss Robson creeping up with the sash to the dressing gown. The Theatre Guild has apparently bought the play from Mr. Miller, and intends to send it on the road. Ladies in Retirement is a play the Guild itself would have done well to produce. There is something in the suggestion that they purchase all their plays from Mr. Miller. Flora Robson's performance as the murderess is flawless. She is an actress of splendid stature and distinguished talent. Her job in Ladies in Retirement is bloody, but it reminds us of the English school boy who was asked for Mary Tudor's common epithet. "She was known as Bloody Mary," he said, "but she wasn't half as bloody as you might think." The Theatre Guild has gone back to the classics again, and Mr. Shakespeare's Twelfth Night will be acted again after many years of undeserving silence. Helen Hayes will appear in her second Shakespearian drama, Maurice Evans will add Malvolio to an already overflowing repertoire, and June Walker will speak blank verse for the first time as Maria. Remembering Miss Walker's past performances as a comedienne, she and Sir Toby will undoubtedly steal the show. The production is directed by Margaret Webster, whose experience with Shakespeare is by now complete. We are pleased that the Guild has revived William Saroyan's 'I'ime of Your Life for its out-of-town subscription audiences. This will serve as an auspicious reminder of the days before the daring young man fell off the flying trapeze. We needn't tell you that this play is a masterpiece. Mr. Saroyan has previously done so.-SocRATOTLE. CONTRIBUTORS ScoTT BucHANAN (The War and the College) has been the Dean of St. John's College since the summer of 1937. He had been a member of the Committee on the Liberal Arts at the University of Chicago with President Stringfellow Barr and several others of the present faculty during the previous year. Before this Mr. Buchanan had taught philosophy at the University of Virginia, the College of the City of New York and Harvard. He had also been associated with Everett Dean Martin as Assistant Director of the People's Institute in New York. �ST. JOHN'S TRIVIUM Mr. Buchanan studied at Amherst, where he later taught Greek; Balliol College, Oxford, and Harvard. He is the author of two books: Possibility and Poetry and Mathematics. A. GRAHAM CAREY, who designed Trivium' s cover, is a partner in the firm of John Stevens in Newport, Rhode Island, which has practised designing and carving of lettering and ornament since 1705. Mr. Carey has also been an architect and silversmith. With John Howard Benson, he is the author of '!'he Elements of Lettering, a discussion of the theoretical, practical and historical elements of that craft. Mr. Carey lectured at St. John's during the first year of the program on medieval craftsmanship. CHARLES GLENN WALLIS ('Two Poems from Charles Baudelaire) is the Editor of St. John's College. He was graduated from the University of Virginia in 1936, and was the youngest member of the Committee on the Liberal Arts at the University of Chicago during 1936-37. Coming to Annapolis with other members of this Committee in 1937, Mr. Wallis immediately set about translating some of the books that were to be used in the St. John's Program. With other members of the faculty, he has translated those great books which are either out of print, or those which had not been previously published in English. Mr. Wallis has also made new translations of works which had been done before in our language. His translation of Plato's Meno, the dialogue that is most intensely studied in the Greek tutorials in the freshman year at St. John's, was published by the College last spring. The first four books of Aristotle's Nature and '!'he Fifth Ennead of Plotinus have also been newly translated by Mr. Wallis. Among the books he has translated for the first time into English are St. Bonaventure's Reduction of Arts to 'l'heology; On Light by Robert Grosseteste; On the Revolutions of the Spheres of Copernicus; and Kepler's Epitome of Astronomy. Each of these books has been made available in mimeographed form for students at St. John's College, although copies may be bought by persons not in the College. Mr. Wallis' translations of Copernicus and Kepler are soon to be published by Random House. ST. JOHN'S TRIVIUM Two Poems from Charles Baudelaire UN VOYAGE A CYTHERE Like a bird my heart rose up in joyful flight and soared in liberty above the shrouds. The boat rolled on 'neath skies unmarred by clouds like an angel drunken on the radiant sunlight. What is that sad dark island?-Cythe ra's strand: how well our songs and legends tell its joys: banal eldorado for aged playboys: observe it: all in all, rather poor land. -Isle of the heart: holidays, billets-doux, the ghost of Venus in her arrogant bloom floats o'er your waters like an old perfume, charging our minds with love,-and langor too. Sweet island of green myrtles and brown flowers, always in honor held by every nation, where sighs of hearts in loving adoration roll like the fragrance from roseladen bowers or like a dovecote cooing eternally: -Cythera had become but desert land, where only shrill cries troubled the stones and sand. And yet a singular object caught my eye: no sculptured temple shaded by tall trees where the young priestess, cherishing her flowers, walked on, her body burnt by secret powers, half-opening her dress to the cool breeze: In following the shoreline rather closely (our white sails caused the seabirds mild alarms) we saw a gallows stretching out three arms like a cypress, blackly separate from the sky. Ferocious carrion birds perched on their prey destroyed with rage a corpse now over-ripe. . . Each thrust his foul beak, like a monstrous dram pipe, into each bleeding morsel of this decay. �'.2.8 ST. JOHN'S TRIVIUM ST. JOHN'S TRIVIUM There were holes for eyes. And from the overflowing belly, the heavy bowels spilt on the thighs. His executioners, gorged on their hideous prize, had absolutely gelded him with their pecking. The stalls and booths of years back shape the scene: I see what broken columns in my mind, brown bushes, slabs by rain and slop turned green, the paving too with glittering rubbish lined. A pack of brutes, with muzzles lifted for his feet, competed ravenously for the feast. Amid them raged one even huger beast like an executive among his corps. There used to be a zoo here, long ago. I saw one morning when beneath the fair chill skies Labor awakes, and when the flow of traffic darkens through the silent air, Cythera's dweller, son of a sky so blue, how silently you suffered those insults in expiation for your infamous cults and sins that have denied the grave to you. a swan that had escaped from his ribbed cage scratching the pavingstones, sickly and weak, on the hard ground trailing his white plumage. Near a dried stream the bird opened his beak, Corpse-clown, your sorrows are my own: I felt -at sight of your limbs dangling wretchedlylike a long vomit, rise up from my belly the gall and sorrows my past years had dealt. bathed nervously his wings in the fine dust, and said (his heart could native waters feel), -Rain, will you pour? Ah! thunder, will you peal? I see this bird, (the myth is hard and just) With you, poor devil of too dear memory, I suffered every beak and grinding jaw of stabbing ravens, panthers with sharp claw that loved to lacerate my flesh and me. like man in Ovid, sometimes toward the sky, a sky ironical and cruelly blue, on quivering neck thrust his head avidly, as though to God he spoke reproaches too. The sky was lovely, and how calm the sea! But all I saw was blood and blackness there. Alas! For as in a shroud heavy and bare, my heart lay buried in this allegory. Nothing found upright in your island, Venus, but an ideal gallows where my image sways .... Give me the strength and courage, Lord, to gaze on my body and my heart without disgust. LE CYGNE I Andromache, I think of you!-This stream, a weak and tarnished mirror where once shone majestic sorrow in your widow's dream -false Simois that with your tears has grown, has fertilized my memory like begged storm. O'er the new Carrousel I walked apart; old Paris is no more (a city's form changes more quickly than a mortal heart): II Paris changes, yet in my melancholy nothing has budged, scaffolds and towers and blocks, old suburbs, all become an allegory, and my dear memories are hard as rocks. Before the Louvre a shape troubles me too: I think of my great swan, his crazy style, ridiculous and noble like an exile, gnawed by desire forever. Then at you, Andromache, fall'n with your husband's doom, dumb cow beneath the hand of proud Pyrrhus, kneeling in ecstasy by empty tomb, Hector's widow, and wife to Helenus. -And of the thin, consumptive negress too, tramping through mud, seeking with haggard eye for absent palms of superb Africa that despite wall of the deep fog shine through; �30 ST. JOHN'S TRIVIUM -of those who've lost what's never found again, of those whose tears fall in unceasing showers, who suckle Grief (their cradle shewolf's den); of puny orphans withering like flowers! TRIVIUM-ON THE STAGE Now that you have read Trivium' s first issue, you can judge its faults and merits. If you like it-if you would like to see more of it-you may subscribe for this year by sending a check or money order to "Trivium," St. John's College, Annapolis, Md., with your name and address. Your criticisms of the magazine will be accepted gratefully. 7frivium is meant to be a good magazine, of interest to the reading public, but especially of interest to those who are following the new program at St. John's. If you belong to either class, or if you wish to read what undergraduates write in both their lighter and more serious moments, it is hoped that you are pleased with this, its initial appearance, and will witness its soughtfor improvement and growth in the issues to come. In the forest where my spirit's in exile Reechoes an old memory like blown horn: I think of sailors lost on desert isle, of captives, vanquished, ... and of many more! -C. G. WALLIS. r---------------------------- 7 II TRIVIUM l (FILL OUT WITH PENCIL, PLEASE) I _ ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE ANNAPOLIS, MD. J I Gentlemen: I I I I I am enclosing my check for two dollars, for which please send me Trivium for the year November 1940 to June 1941. I I I I l I I I NAME---------------------- l ADDRESS I l I ____________ ----------------- I I I I I I L----------------------------~ �� Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource <em>St. John's Trivium</em> Description An account of the resource A short-lived magazine edited and published by St. John's College students in 1940. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource St. John's College Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1940 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/">In copyright.</a> Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context Trivium Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data paper Page numeration Number of pages in the original item. 17 pages Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource St. John's Trivium, November 1940 Description An account of the resource St. John's Trivium, volume 1, issue 1 (November 1940) issue. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Mason, Francis S., Jr. (Editor) Hedeman, John L. (Editor) Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College (Annapolis, Md.) Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1940-11 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/">In copyright.</a> Type The nature or genre of the resource text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf Subject The topic of the resource St. John's College (Annapolis, Md.) Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context Trivium_1940November Student publication