vol4-no2

Volume Four

J. Allen Hynek:

�

WINTER, 1962

�

Number Two

Cosmic Provincialism and the New Astronomy

James Hazard: Two Poems

Rohley W. Sundmacher: The Personal Vision of Ingmar Bergman

George E. Spink: Poem

George D. Dilts: Norris' s Wake Ralph J. Mills, Jr.: Denise Levertov: Poetry of the Immediate Ingehorg Hough: Artists Patricia A.

Rahhy: Poems

$.70 per copy

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Northwestern University

TRI-QUARTERLY Volume Four

Number Two

WINTER, 1962

J. ALLEN HYNEK: Cosmic Provincialism and the New Astronomy

"

JAMES HAZARD: Two Poems

12

ROBLEY W. SUNDMACHER: The Personal Vision of Ingmar Bergman

13

GEORGE E. SPINK: Poem

20

GEORGE D. DILTS: Norris's Wake

21

RALPH J. MILLS, JR.: Denise Levertov: Poetry of the Intermediate

..

31

,

INGEBORG HOUGH: Artists

38

PATRICIA A. RABBY: Poems

45

Tri-QUARTERLY is a magazme devoted to fiction, poetry, and articles of general interest, The

published in the fall, winter, and spring quarters at Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois.

Subscription rates: $2.00 yearly within the United States; $2.15, Canada; $2.25, foreign. Single copies will be sold locally for $.70. Contributions, cor­ respondence, and subscriptions should be addressed to The Tri-QUARTERLY, care of the Northwest­ ern

University Press, 1840 Sheridan Road, Evanston,

Illinois.

Contributions

unaccompanied by

addressed envelope and return postage will returned.

3

Except by invitation,

a

The editor is EDWARD B. Hll:\GERFORD. Senior members of the advisory board

be are

are

Professors RAY A. BILLINGTON and MELVILLE HERSKOVITS

Dean JAMES H.

of the College of Liberal Arts,

MC BURNEY

of the School of Speech.

Dr. WILLIAM B. WARTMAN of the School of I\Iedicine, and Mr. JAMES M. BARKER of the Board of Trustees.

Undergraduate editors: LOUISE M.

self­

not

contributors

Editorial Board

SUSAN

F.

ORCUTI,

MCILVAINE,

and FORREST G. ROBINSON The

Tri-QUARTERLY

limited to persons who have some connection with

is distributed by Northwestern University

University. Copyright, 1962, by Northwestern University. All rights reserved.

Press, and is under the business

the

management of the Press.

J Allen Hynek J. Allen Hynek was born and educated in Chicago, receiving both his under­ graduate and graduate degrees at the University of Chicago (B.A., '31, Ph.D., '35). From 1935-55, except for the war years, he taught at the Ohio State Uni­ versity. During WorLd War II he served as civilian scientist at the Johns Hop­ kins Applied Physics Laboratory, where he had a considerable part in the de­ so important in the defense velopment of the Navy's radio-proximity fuze against V-1's in England and the kamikaze attacks in the Pacific. From 1956-60 he was Associate Director of the Smithsonian Astro-Physical Observatory at Harvard, where he directed the U.S. Optical Satellite Tracking Program. He also taught astronomy at Harvard.

In 1960 Dr. Hynek came to Northwestern as Professor of Astronomy, Chair­ man of the Department of Astronomy, and Director of the Dearborn Observa­ tory. He has published in the learned journals in his field, has prepared for the United States Government many classified reports of a technical nature, and both contributed to and edited the symposium volume Astrophysics pub­ lished by McGraw-Hill in 1951. Mr. Hynek's article was written at the invita­ tion of the editors.

-

COSMIC PROVINCIALISM AND THE NEW ASTRONOMY T HE MARCH OF ASTRONOMY has been the story of the cosmic decentralization of the earth

but, oddly enough, not of man. Mankind, bolstered by its many religious systems, has refused to submit to a parallel "psychic decentralization" and adamantly maintains a position of psycho­ logical centrality. Call it a sort of psychic geo­ or egocentricity (the interchange of centricity the first two letters is of little consequence).

-

A

cosmic

round, however, seems upon us and, as surely as Copernicus and Galileo initiated the dethronement of the earth from its pivotal central cosmic position, so may the explosive strides of the New Astronomy, which has opened the possibility of a plurality of inhabited worlds, soon unseat man from a pivotal position in the new

psychic universe.

This cosmic provincialism is now challenged by the results of the great telescopes of the world and

especially by the great promise the new instru­ introduced ments and techniques of astronomy in only the past few years show for even greater acceleration in the investigation of the universe.

-

-

Winter, 1962

The travail the

challenge almost surely entails but the promise it holds for grander and nobler concepts of the nature of man

may

be

severe,

in the universe is

present concepts

fully

commensurate

of the universe

as

with

our

compared to

the dime-store universe of the ancients.

The words

spoken at the dedication, in 1948, of largest telescope, on Mount Palomar (by Raymond Fosdick, .President of the Rocke­

the world's

apply well in our present con­ "This great new window to the stars," Fosdick said, "will bring us into touch with those outposts of time and space which have beckoned from immemorial ages. It will bring into fresh focus the mystery of the universe, its order, its beauty, its power. It will dramatize the questions which mankind has always asked and to which no answers have been found, and perhaps can never be found. Why are we here on this dwarf planet?

Are there other planets that have burst into con­ sciousness like our own? Is there an answering intelligence anywhere in space? Is there purpose behind the apparent meaninglessness and incom­ prehensibility of the universe? feller Foundation), text.

....

3

"In the face of these supreme

mysteries

and

against this majestic background of space and time, the petty squabbling of nations on this small planet is not only irrelevant but contemptible.

Adrift in

a

imagine,

man

his fellow

cosmos

whose shores he cannot

even

spends his energies in fighting with over

man

issues which

a

single look

through this telescope would show to be utterly inconsequential.

"We need in this sick world the the astronomer It

is

my

.

.

.

purpose

perspective of

." here

to

this

examine

per­

spective and the new "Space Age" techniques of astronomy which are the instruments of new per­ spective, and to look at their impact on the questions enunciated at the dedication of the mighty 200-inch telescope. Perhaps man will find an answer to some of them sooner than one might have hoped even a few years ago.

First off, there has been a "perspective explo­ sion" in the past few decades: in just the past dec­ ade it attained especial violence; and now there appears to be a new "blast" virtually upon us. For "the great

new

window to the stars" which al­

single-handedly has presented

most

us

recently

with an observable universe a hundred-fold great­ er

in volume than the

before this

one we thought we had great instrument went to work (and so

"petty squabbling of na­ tions" more petty in the same proportion) is already being joined by novel instruments and powerful new techniques for astronomical investi­ gation. These will extend and enhance our univer­ sal perspective and may indeed alter our entire outlook on the universe. Our relationship as sen­ tient beings to the vast, apparently inanimate, insensate universe around us would undergo a drastic revision should, for example, projects like Ozma (radio monitoring of nearby stars for evi­ dence of intelligent "intermural" signals) give positive results. Or we would give a real wallop to our Weltanschaung should the breakthrough, now at hand, to the heretofore inaccessible re­ and the gions of the electromagnetic spectrum to the rockets reveal that coming space planets we do not represent the only combination of a handful of chem ical elements that has developed the introvertive ability to examine itself, and to question the very universe out of which it is fash­ ioned. Suppose, in short, that the universe sup­ ports countless "islands of consciousness," of in a

sense

has made the

-

-

which

we may be a minor representative. religious and philosophical implications of such a contretemps are obvious yet core-shak­ ing, and most astronomers do not enjoy con­ templating their immediate consequences. Yet

The

4

history of astronomy has been that of the physical decentralization of man; indeed, ex­ treme geocentricity became untenable three cen­ turies ago, although the non-central position of the sun in our galaxy and the existence of other galaxies were not irrevocably established until well into the present century. Psychic egocen­ tricity, however, is still paramount, and has stood until now on just as good scientific grounds as geo­ centricity did in 1600, when the absence of stellar parallax argued against the motion of the earth.

But stellar parallax was there, though man had not yet fashioned instruments and techniques for detecting it. We may now be on the verge of the discovery of our psychic parallax, and man's psychic geocentricity may well be the next outpost to fall in the accelerated pace of the newly instrumented blitzkrieg on the universe.

the

Instruments and

techniques of astronomical re­

search are in the midst of an "explosion" of their

triggered,

own,

in

a

measure

peace-loving

men

The admit, by World War technological advances of the past decade that have found direct application in scientific re­ search are, bluntly, superb, and should have put to rout any remaining shibboleth about a hard and fast distinction between technology and "pure

scarcely

science.

Man

care

II.

to

"

think

cannot

in

a

sense-vacuum;

his

processes of thought must be fed and stimulated by his sensory contact with the outside "real" world, and his instruments are simply means of extending his sense perceptions. The better and more "sophisticated" (to use a current term of highly questionable taste) his instrumentation, the better his thought and therefore his science.

Man's

perspective

upon

his immediate world is

both

the

perforce

research instruments. It is

universe

dictated

and

by his

but hard­

interesting ly profitable to speculate on the course of human events had an enterprising Egyptian taken some "burning glasses" and fashioned an elementary telescope, instead of leaving the happy task to a European spectacle-maker many centuries later. Could there have been the Dark Ages, the Inquisition, or even Christianity had the satellites of Jupiter been discovered in 2000 B.C. instead of in 1610 A.D.? Profitless, of course, to pursue such thoughts, but beguiling. World outlook and instruments are indissolubly bound, and it is therefore necessary to look ,at our present and developing instruments and techniques before we can meaningfully discuss the changing perspec­ tive of the astronomer.

In

tory

a

modest way,

are

helping

we

at the Dearborn Observa­

to fashion this

changing per spec-

NORTHWESTERN

TRI-QUARTERLY

tive in

application to astronomical research of two techniques of great promise the use of TV techniques in the enhancement of astronom i­ cal images (more technically, the use of photo­ electric image-scanning devices), and the use of large balloons to carry observer, telescope and auxiliary instruments to altitudes of 80,000-100,000 feet, where less than 2% of the earth's atmosphere (by weight) remains to impede astronomical ob­ our

-

servation. To evaluate these and the related tech­

niques of orbiting astronomical observatories and the electronic techniques of data-recording and processing, it will be well to look briefly at the changes in perspective that almost immediately flowed from the introduction of the major steps in astronomical instrumentation in the past.

The raw material of the astronomer is light, or, more broadly, radiation from any part of the electromagnetic spectrum from the long waves of the radio broadcast and global communications bands to the most energetic and deadly of the ultra-short wave, high-frequency gamma rays.

But unlike other scientists, the astronomer can­ not taste, smell, hear or touch (with the minor exception of meteorites) any cosmic object other than the earth itself. He must depend solely on .

the radiation his

was

no

way

the

ture,

essence

available

to

asking

of the

seem

to

be

any

more

light,

and

scientific

provide the motivation.

The

tele­

scope and the scientific method, and the notion that it was permissible and not sacrilegious to

by observation and experiment, same time, and almost cer­ tainly not coincidentally. question came

nature

at

about the

gather of the order of light photons than can the eye.

But if these are merely fed into the eye, to be dissipated at the retina, the chief value is merely to increase the magnification by spreading, by means of an eyepiece, the now copious flood of photons. This represented a great extension of the sense of sight, but clearly A large

a

telescope

quarter of

Winter,

a

1962

needed.

raw

Not

material

only could

storing give a permanent record of the image, but by integrating the effects of the in­ coming photons, instead of using them instantane­ ously and continuously at the retina, it could provide an effectively much larger "light bucket."

Even a small pail can fill a large container by repeated emptyings of the bucket. such

Two centuries

elapsed, however, before, again by accident than by a direct attack on the problem of light storage, the photographic proc­ ess provided the answer. In 1839 the Daguerreo­ type made its appearance; then the "wet-plate"; more

but not until three

decades later

was

the

fore­

of the present "dry-plate" photograph in­ troduced. First extremely inefficient, the photo­ runner

material" in one bin. Light is a "many-splendored

gathering

technique of,

the

was

questions of na­ method, was

of

if there had

even nor

there didn't

cry:

storing this precious

astronomer

been, neither the climate for,

little outpost in space, his intercepts. This is a woe­

own

observatory earth, fully small amount. The brightest star we see on the night sky (Sirius) sends us ten billion times less light than does the sun, and the faint­ est objects the largest telescope in the world can sense (so far) are ten billion times fainter than the brightest star.

The constant cry of the astronomer for light, more light, is about as legitimate a demand as can be reckoned.

For long centuries, however, conceivable

way of

the

graphic emulsion has now reached a plateau of efficiency and is still an invaluable tool. Its con­ tribution to the astronomer's perspective has been pivotal. Every four-fold increase in photographic speed, as the techniques of photography advanced, has been the equivalent of doubling the aperture of the telescope. The Dearborn telescope (an 181f2-inch refractor) is approximately as old as the modern photographic process. Yet today, with the aid of modern high-speed photographic emulsions, it is the equivalent in light-gathering power of a 200-inch telescope shortly before the turn of the century. Yet, even so, only one out of every few hundred photons gathered by the tele­ scope is effective in producing a perceptible image on a photograph. Here clearly the new goal must be making every incoming photon count. This is indeed the goal of the work now going on at the Dearborn Observatory and, of course, at other major institutions. Photoelectric imaging-devices presently in use on the Dearborn telescope have already transformed it, for some purposes, into an effective 200-inch telescope.

on

there

some

of

can

million

more

It is not enough to store the astronomer's "raw

thing," and its many colors must be recorded separately with as high a resolution from color to color as possible. In short, radiation has a spectrum of frequencies, and the physics of the stars and the universe cannot properly be at­ tacked without recording with a spectrograph the separate behavior of starlight along its entire available spectrum. This is the lifeblood of as­ trophysics, a discipline born with the spectro­ graph about a century ago. Brief mention should also be made of the precision micrometer and "measuring engine," for they have made possible the direct determination of the distances of the nearer

stars

and of stellar masses,

two

utterly

5

indispensable items in the astronomer's astro­ physical tool kit.

Despite the extremely short period, relatively, that astronomers have learned to "process" their raw cosmic material effectively, the "end prod­ uct" has been enormously gratifying, and quite truly unexpected. The present conception of the universe is so staggering that one· is regularly driven to the employment of such distasteful terms as "vast," "colossal," "countless," "astro­ nomical," "beggars description," "insignificance of man," "unimaginable," "impossible to con­ ceive," and a similar host of weak attempts to present to the earth-bound "intelligent layman" some concept of the things which astronomical research has recently revealed, but which serve only to illustrate the inadequacy of language to

anything for which our own experience already in some measure us.

It is, frankly, beyond language. prepared Numerical representation helps, but only if one has had some practice in translating numbers express and describe

has

not

into visual concepts.

It is often

sun,

a

pea

for the

convenient distance away, extend this

earth, placed Suppose we

etc.

some now

let the entire United States

concept: plane through the observable uni­ that verse; is, let us thus represent, to scale, those celestial objects that can be sensed with the world's largest telescopes. On that scale, the earth could easily get in the eye of a man board­ ing a bus in some suburb of Kansas City without his in the least noticing it. The earth, on that scale, is a sub-microscopic speck that not even an electron microscope could reveal. Whether such an analogy helps is questionable; it is hard to visualize, say, the number of particles of dust and lint in the pockets of 175 million U.S. represent

a

citizens, let alone much smaller sub-microscopic specks!

Or, we might look at it in a more practical and sobering way. With manned space flight es­ sentially here, many non-critical enthusiasts en­ vision that at long last man can explore the uni­ verse at first hand. Even if we are most sanguine

toward future developments, the volume of space that man can conceivably, in his person, explore

is, to the volume of the telescopically observable universe, as the volume of a pebble is to the vol­ ume

of the earth itself.

the

immediate

environment

system, must continue

6

sending man personally explore (save, of course, in his "space back­ yard") but in giving him a new vantage point, allowing him to explore in what is virtually a new

dimension.

as mighty as the 200-inch telescope and companion "giant eyes" are, they are an­

For

its

to

chored

of

ocean

bottom

of

a

atmosphere,

an

ocean

the

and dilutes them with its

to

be

done

own

to the astronomer er

as

turbulent

only

haze of scattered

to have the dial

in its

it would be to a radio listen­ on

his radio set

turning that only

one

so

limited

station out of hun­

(Of course, the astrono­

will

grudgingly admit that the atmospheric blocking of the deadly high-frequency radiation mer

does allow life to exist on it there would be

no

earth, and that without

astronomers around to take

advantage of the pristine and complete electro­ magnetic spectrum.)

No matter how large and mighty ground-based telescopes may become, they cannot break the atmospheric opacity barrier. But the barrier was broken with the launching of the first man-made satellite, scarce a decade after the Palomar telescope was dedicated. That launching broke open

a

vast

new

window onto the universe and

made available for the first time sion of

access

to

knowledge,

a

a

new

new

dimen­

avenue

to

the

exploration of the universe which may easily be as significant as the invention of the tele­ scope. It is a real breakthrough, literally and figuratively. In the coming decade veritable as­ tronomical observatories will be placed into orbit around the earth; their telescopes will not be as

large as the 200-inch but for many purposes

they will be far more powerful. They will have rather sensors for all portions of the spectrum than solely for the optical, or color, portion of the spectrum.

Oddly enough, and a point of significance for astronomy at Northwestern, for many purposes it is not necessary to fly as high as satellites do order

to

gain these new dimensions of ex­ paradoxical that with the

It is almost

ploration. development of the

new-age

through the

ficial satellites there

came

the

and

which not

light, but completely blocks entrance to informa­ tion-packed radiation in the ultra-violet, the X-ray and gamma ray regions of the electromagnetic spectrum, and in large portions of the infrared and radio spectrum as well. This is as frustrating

solar

of

vast

distorts and blurs incoming signals from the stars,

in

Exploration of space, except in what we might term

space. It does not lie in

to

dreds could be tuned in!

helpful in this attempt at visualiza­

tion to try a mental model. Weare all familiar with the schoolroom device of using an orange for the

receipt of radiation across the great stretches of space. And herein lies the primary significance of Space Age technology for the exploration of

technique of arti­ simultaneously

almost

NORTHWESTERN

TRI-QUARTERLY

the renaissance of the

comparatively ancient de­

vice, the balloon. It has suddenly emerged as a new and powerful tool of astronomical research.

Two things

long

were

needed to transform the balloon,

associated

with

fairs

and

sideshows,

into

scientific instrument of great potential: relia­ ble, thin plastic materials for the balloon itself, and precision gyroscopic stabilization which can a

hold

a

telescope "on course"

though

even

the

jet-black, crystalline sphere, jewel-studded with untwinkling stars.

Poets may extol the twinkling of stars, but they certainly have not the astronomer's welfare in mind. For twinkling, or scintillation, is a product of the small-scale turbulence in the tropospheric regions of the atmosphere. Twinkling, and the related phenomena of "star dancing" and image pulsation, are all atmosphere-produced, and are a

balloon turns and swings.

all direct evidence that the astronomer's

100,000 feet carrying two or three tons of equipment, and can stay aloft for a day or more. The equipment they carry is

terial is

Balloons

can

reach

recoverable and

considerably in

98 and

even

man

can

go aloft with it with

greater ease than he can at present

satellite.

a

a

Such

a

balloon

can

float

above

99% of the earth's atmosphere (by

weight), and although this is not quite high enough to give access to the ultra-violet and shorter of the

it does

wave-length regions spectrum, give a crystal clear view of the skies in the visual and infrared portions of the spectrum and opens up

a

treasure house heretofore denied to

based

earth­

man.

We at the Dearborn

Observatory are engaged in the "Star Gazer" balloon astronomy program in which

a

modest

telescope and

two

men

are

carried aloft for many hours of observation. While

less than the last one-thousandth of The magnified

its

not be sent to do

even a

then

job a

a

balloon

orbit

become

satellite

should

can

do better.

is scheduled to carry

Balloon astronomy portion of the astronomical

"freight"

a

good

of the fu­

a

second of

a

-

-

Proof

commonplace,

in

observatories

of

star, par­ journey! image ticularly in a large telescope, resembles a lumi­ nous, highly agitated amoeba, mute testimony to the devastating toll of the atmosphere.

Any hope of observing fine details on the sur­ the so-called canals on Mars, face of the planets for instance rests on our ability to rise above the seeing limitations imposed by our atmosphere.

Aristotle and his contemporaries are said to

abandoned when

for

matter of

-

have

as

raw ma­

a

being tampered deep philosophical frustration for the land-based astronomer to realize that a pristine light ray, that may have been speeding on its way to his telescope at the limiting speed allowed in the universe -186,300 miles a second since the time of Christ, or even long before man ap­ peared on earth, suffers ruinous adulteration in

glamorous (nor as expensive) as satellite astronomy, balloon astronomy promises to de­ velop into an extremely important and perma­ nent technique. By no means should the use of balloons be considered an interim technique, to be not

with. It is

the

believed

the

that

went out from

our

twinkled

stars

effluvia

"radar-like"

which, they theorized, objects to

in search of

eyes

greatly weakened by ney that it trembled, or twinkled, see,

was

so

that

it

is

the

not

because

its

long jour­

on

its return.

themselves

stars

that

twinkle can easily be had simply by looking cross­ at

eyed

an

obviously twinkling

that each of the two images, eye,

star

one

and

noting

formed by each

frequently twinkles separately. Any proof that deceive

ture.

that it is not

Only when, someday, permanent observatories on the moon have become routinely established can we dispense with balloons (as well as local earth satellites), for then we shall realize in real life what the late Princeton astronomer, Henry N orris Russell, meant when he quipped. "When good astronomers die, they don't go to heaven; they go to the moon." The airless moon, of

lieving that stars twinkle is likewise easily had by substituting a photoelectric cell for our eyes and noting its fluctuating output when starlight

course, would make as close to an ideal observing platform as can today be imagined. The moon has a 14-day night but the stars are visible even during its 14-day long "day," since in the ab­

of

atmosphere the sky is a near solid black and only in the immediate vicinity of the sence

an

our

eyes

us

into be­

is allowed to fall upon its sensitive surface.

The

stars

do

twinkle

not

when

feet

than

observed

at

Neither

heights greater 70,000 do their images dance or pulsate. Their light beams have been intercepted just before it is too late. If balloon observatories did nothing more than take

bad

us

or

so.

above the disturbances that

cause

realize the

theo­

and

"seeing" retical capabilities

allow of

us

our

which cannot· be realized

on

to

optical the

instruments

surface of the

the

earth, they would be eminently worth-while. But balloons do more: they also open for us an undis­

denied

torted infrared window upon the universe. One can

to viewers at the bottom of an atmospheric ocean:

only surmise what fine sights we shall see through

sun

would it be difficult to

moon

the

see

sky would appear in

Winter, 1962

stars. a

From

manner

7

this window. We

national

near

future

able

astronomers

a

envision

can

in the

"balloon

from

facility"

various

make routine observations

aloft

relatively to

institutions as

they

now

en­

to

multiplying devices, and their associ­ ated circuitry, soon sets a useful limit to which other

or

electron multiplication can be carried.

The photomultiplier is, on the whole, some 100 more efficient than a photographic plate.

do

national optical observatory in Arizona and from our national radio observatory in West

times

Virginia. We hope the balloon astronomy here

ter

from

our

at Northwestern may

develop into such a facility.

Even above the atmosphere, of course, the ra­ diation we receive from distant cosmic sources is

extremely weak. The photographic process, pivotal boon to cosmic investigation though it has been and still is, is grossly inefficient; it is wasteful of the feeble stream of light photons that finally find their way to the earth. If only some way were known to make each photon count! When that ideal is reached, "that's it."

It is the end of the line, for when every bit of "raw material" is processed, that sets an obvious limit to the output to the finished product. In the past few

years

a

momentous

stride toward that

It

individual photons. We get of its power when we consider that

to

thesis

that

non-tech­

significance description in some detail is appropriate.

The story begins with the first application of the the ejection of an photoelectric effect electron from a sensitive surface by an incident light photon. If the ejected electron can be put to work, then the possibility exists of recording each photon of incoming, feeble starlight.

The photoelectric cell, and its evolutionary de­ rivative, the modern photomultiplier, does just this. The latter indeed seemingly goes beyond this limit. It is a device in which the incoming light photon acts as a trigger for an electronic chain reaction. Ideally, this would seem to offer limitless possibilities, and is akin, in result, to the dramatic effect used at the opening of the Century of Progress Exposition in Chicago, in 1933, when light from a distant star (light which had left the star, incidentally, forty years earlier when the great Columbian exposition was in progress) was collected by the nearby Yerkes telescope (which had been on exhibition at that Fair) and used to trigger the switches that flooded the grounds with light.

But something has not been obtained for noth­ ing. In the case of the multiplied photon, even though by the action of the photomultiplier cell one photon produces a flood of electrons, no new information has been added. Each incoming pho­ ton is an information-bit barrier, and once its bit has been used, mere multiplication serves no additional purpose.

Further, in the realm of individual photons, the "noise" of spurious and spontaneous electrons introduced by the photocell our

nical

-

8

a

of

as

a

some

coun­

notion

a faint night light used in the home emits 10,000,000,000, 000,000,000 photons per second. Yet some celestial sources are so faint that even their light, col­ lected with a very large telescope, amounts to but a few photons per second.

Most unfortunately, the photomultiplier can be used on but one object at a time and often requires an hour or more per object to obtain a statisti­ cally significant and recordable signal. There are

enough years in the lifetimes of the next 100 generations of astronomers, working full time with photomultipliers, to canvass the sky even not

once.

What is needed is

ideal has been made. That forward stride is of such

operate, under ideal conditions,

can

taneously. for

a

wide

a

device that

field

what the

of

can

do simul­

celestial

do for

objects object.

photomultiplier apparently has come in the last few it and is with pride that we can point out years, that some of the pioneering work has been done at Northwestern, at both our Evanston and Organ Pass, New Mexico, observatories. The answer is The

-

can

one

answer

television.

Here

mer

again is

an

example of how the

astrono­

has learned to take advantage of the "breaks"

in the

technological game. Indeed, the astrono­ mer is an eclectic, taking this and borrowing that, in the pursuit of his quest. (It could be said that astronomy is to the sciences what opera the arts: opera borrows from stagecraft,

is to

ballet, orchestral music, acting, and, of singing, and welds them into a desired entity; astronomy borrows from mathematics, physics, chemistry, photography, optics, engineer­ ing, electronics, rocketry, ballooning, etc., for its desired ends it is not a pure discipline in the sense that mathematics is.)

Astronomers quickly recognized that what was the

course,

-

needed

was

an

army of miniscule

photomultipli­

conjunction with a telescope, so that an entire field of the sky could be covered simul­ taneously. But it is most unlikely that astrono­ ers

used in

mers

could

ever

have

marshalled the

sums

of

money and manpower necessary for the accom­ plishment of this means of increasing mankind's

astronomical

tering ligious

the and

number of

perspective,

course

world

and

thus

perhaps al­

of his

philosophy and his re­ outlook, if a much greater

people had

not had

NORTHWESTERN

a

yen

to

watch

TRI-QU ARTERL Y

wrestling matches, prize fights, football, late­ late shows, and funny men, all in the comfort of their own living rooms. The astronomer, allis, much to the

owes

For

TV

a

man

in the gray flannel suit.

tube

camera

is, in effect,

such

a

mosaic of photocells, although the actual photo­ sensitive surface is a continuum. In the photo­ electric effect,

is well known, a light photon photo-emissive surface can eject

as

impinging upon photoelectron. If one electron were emitted for each incident photon, the limit of efficiency would have been reached. As it is, only about in ten photons is so effective, but this is one still two orders of magnitude more effective than is the photographic plate.

In a studio TV camera, the image of the scene to be transmitted is focused upon the photosensi­ tive surface by an ordinary camera. In astrono­ my, the conventional telescope serves this pur­ pose, imaging a portion of the sky directly onto the TV tube. Whenever the picture is bright, pho­ toelectrons are ejected from the corresponding point of the TV tube surface; the brighter the image spot, the more electrons emitted. The se­ a

one

of

quence

events

is

then

of

such

interest

and

complexity that I should be remiss in not briefly describing them.

The ejected electrons are focused magnetically onto a very thin material target, deep in the TV camera tube.

Wherever these bombarding elec­ trons strike, they leave a positive charge rather than the expected negative charge, because they in turn eject secondary electrons, a process which, therefore, leaves a "minus negative," or a posi­ tive residual charge.

At this stage the target has "painted" on it, with "positive electricity paint," a faithful image of the sky. The great trick in the image-orthicon TV tube, in its commercial application, is the successive "wiping off" of this electric paint many times a second and translating it into an electronic signal that can be transmitted to the home TV set and re-tr ansforrned into the pic­ ture we view.

In

its

application, the target is integrate incoming feeble light (we part company here completely with the un­ comfortably high light levels used in the TV studio) and to build up its electronically painted picture for a matter of seconds or minutes. Fur­ thermore, when the time comes to "wipe the target," this can be done more accurately than allowed

astronomical

the

to

need be done in the TV studio.

in­

stead

by

of

being transmitted,

"closed television" or, stored

on

more

The picture, can be viewed

profitably, it can be

video tape, where its millions of

Winter, 1962

"in-

bits"

formation

can

remain

safely

or

be

can

played back and analyzed repeatedly.

All this raises a point of considerable philo­ sophical interest. The telescope, originally regard­ ed as a direct aid to human vision, has effectively bypassed the human eye, which is now used mainly as a monitor of the operations involved in processing, transforming, and interpreting the information bits, or elements, inherent in the electromagnetic radiation from space intercepted by the earth (or by a satellite of the earth). It is now ready to by-pass the photograph, too, for our

be

"cosmic information" need not at any time presented to us as a picture. It is often more

profitable

to

the

store

information

on

in

tape,

the form of magnetized particles, and to interpret and

use

the information

oscilloscope

screen,

of

the

an

of

of

pen

by means of wiggles

on

the scratching on paper electronic recorder, or as a

an

readings, which quantify, or as­ sign numbers to the integrated information. Num­ bers! These are the coinage of science, needed to buy one's way into prediction and further theories.

And numbers can often more easily be obtained by by-passing the pretty picture of a galaxy or star field and going directly to the numerical questions: how much, how bright, how displaced, set

meter

how distributed, etc.

The two

new

great techniques of balloon and

satellite astronomy, and of "TV astronomy" are such "naturals" that marriage is inevitable a -

"high altitude marriage,"

call it. For

might great break­ in information through availability and quality the smashing of the atmos­ represented by pheric opacity barrier, with the companion break­ through in information recording, storing and use, represents a promise of "astronomical di­ mensions" as apt a phrase in this context as one

it is obvious that the union of the

-

one

could wish.

we dare predict what this great new com­ posite window to the stars will do, when we are a scarce dozen years removed from the opening of the last great window, which has in so short a time exploded our perspective on the universe?

Do

No words

of

dedication have been

said

on

the

occasion of the opening of this window, which has

happened, and is happening, quietly and unsung.

Let us rather borrow once again from that earlier dedication. Speaking of the promise of the 200-

inch, Fosdick continued: "The search for truth is the noblest expression of the human spirit.

Man's insatiable desire for knowledge about him­ ...

self,

about his

environment

and

the

forces

by

surrounded, gives life its meaning and purpose, and clothes it with final dignity

which he is

..

9

There is nothing which so glorifies the human race, or lends it such dignity and nobility as the gallant and inextinguishable urge to bring this vast, illimitable

complexity within the range

of human understanding. In the last

mind which

encompasses

analysis, the

the universe

is

more

marvelous than the universe which encompasses the mind."

It

is are

we

highly probable that we shall find that not the only ones who are attempting

There may well be other civilizations that are now engaged in launch­ to

encompass

the universe.

probes and guiding them by radio relatively long distances. If so, there is a chance that with radio telescopes placed in orbit around the earth, or on the moon, and thus away from ,the "noise" of the earth, we may be able to sift out of the general random cosmic radio noise background, systematic even though not understandable signals. This was indeed the ob­ ject of the pioneering "Project Ozma." So far no "intelligent" signals have been received. But this was only a preliminary earth-bound attempt. ing

space

over

Should future surface

of

"patrols,"

the

made

away

from

the

(the permanently hidden side of the moon is ideal for the purpose), we shall be plunged into the midst of a new Coper­ nican revolution of astounding proportions. thing quite definite to say about the statistical distribution of intelligence in the universe. It can be summed up in a homely manner: Why should this tiny "mote in the eye of the man in Kansas City" be the unique speck of sub-dust in the United States? On the face of it, confronted with a universe which so utterly incapacitates our most vivid imagination, what possible reason is there to believe that we hold a unique place in the universe? Statistically, it is unthinkable that other solar systems should not exist, and likewise unthinkable, if life developed on this "mote" that it shouldn't have developed else­ where. We once thought and a very short time that the earth was physically ago at that unique in the Universe, a uniqueness that vested interests fought long and bitterly to justify. Will we have another such fight and another "trial" for the Galileo who tries to put earth intelli­ gences into their proper place as once Galileo -

-

tried to put the earth in its proper place? The devastating impact on orthodoxy and to "cosmic provincialism" of a clear indication that "we are not alone" is an awesome thing to contemplate.

Consider the issues! If there them

10

did the Son

too?

Did

Son to

God

of

God

so

are

many inhabited

save

love

everyone

man

on

of

planet

it? And what is the cosmic schedule

save

world

for

saving? How

Bethlehems

many

and

how many crucifixions per annum?

Twain, who

called the light year "without doubt the most stupendous and impres­ Mark

once

phrase that exists in any language," clearly plight of man and his cosmic provincial­ ism. In his "Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven," perhaps the first literary work to make use of the "new" perspective offered by the astronomy of the turn of the century, Twain has the doughty sive

the

saw

old

captain

sea

and

course

race

land

at

a

comet and

a

gate of heaven intended

thereby go off

for "sky-blue men with seven heads and only one leg." His turn in line comes and the conversation goes something like this:

"Well, quick! Where are you from?"

"San Francisco."

"San Fran I

"Oh,

what. Is it a planet?"

-

beg

California.

Put

pardon.

your

...

me

down

for

"

"I don't know

such

any

planet

is it

-

a

con­

stella tion ?"

And

earth

The present astronomical perspective has some­

worlds,

X 397221 Z that He also gave his His only begotten

so

until finally the clerk says, "Once

on,

and for all, where

unless I

the world.

are

-

you

from?"

-

don't know anything lump things, and just

I

"Well, -

-

to

more

say

say,

I'm from

"

now that's something like! What world?"

"Ah, the "Why, world, of course."

-

"The

world

There's

H'm.

-

billions

of

them!

Next!"

...

At last the captain returns, puzzled and hum­ bled, "Well, sir, I don't seem to make out which

world it is I'm from. But you may know it from this it's the one the Saviour saved."

-

The clerk bent his -

of

head, and then said gently,

"The worlds He has saved are like to the gates heaven

What

in

number

astronomical

none

-

system

can

is

your

count

them.

world

in­

perhaps that may assist."

How

neatly Twain got around this particular

dilemma One

of

wonders

the

plurality

how

he

of

would

inhabited have

worlds!

treated

the

many others, themselves like the gates of heaven in number!

friendly attempt to help Stormfield get his bearings, the clerk has an assistant take a balloon (how appropriate) and sail up in front of a map "as big as Rhode Island." He "went on till he was out of sight, and by and by he came down and got something to eat and went up again. To cut a long story short, he kept on doing this for a day or two, and finally he came In

down

a

final

and

said

he

thought he had found that

NORTHWESTERN

TRI-QU ARTERLY

solar system,

got

a

but it

might be fly-specks. So he

microscope and

better than he feared.

went back.

It turned out

He had

out

rousted

our

system, sure enough. He got me to describe our planet and its distance from the sun, and then he says to his

chief, 'Oh, I know the

one

he

means

now, sir. It is on the map. It is called the Wart!'

"

Twain was intrigued by the findings of astrono­ my and by the fulsome naivete of the religious

thought of the day. He would have been pleased that modern astronomy makes his map not the size of Rhode Island but of the entire United

States, and the earth invisible in the most power­ ful microscope.

Like a literary Copernicus, he too feared to publish his work until death was close. "Captain

and coming light of the new astronomy, provided, always, that man does not relinquish his right to think under political

give

way

in

the

-

-

and religious pressures.

A

misanthropic cynic once said, "What is man organic scum on the surface of an in­ significant planet that goes around a tiny star, but the

one

of billions of

is but

one

suns

in

a

system which itself

of billions of other such systesm ." At

the dedication of the view

was

mate

wonder

taken,

and

200-inch, quite an opposite have seen. Yet, the ulti­

we

as

mystery of the universe lies

immensity (a multiplication table can lead us to equally impressive numbers) but in the overriding fact that, after long ages of evo­ handful of in­ a lution, this "organic scum" sensate chemical elements was able to develop not in its

-

-

Stormfield" lay in a basement for forty years and,

finally advised publication he also advised, as Copernicus was advised, that an en­ dorsement be obtained from a high prelate to "draw some of the teeth of the religious press." when

a

friend

And now, in our present decade, we have spi­ ralled around to a new round of astronomy versus man's

cosmic

egotism

-

and the result

appears

just as certain as it was in the Copernican-Gali­ lean round. Faced with an expanding universe of

galaxies (Yes, our U.S. model must be a stretch­ able one, so that San Francisco is receding from on our scale Kansas City at the rate of t50 -

-

inch per

year,

corresponding

to

served recession of about half the per

an

actual ob­

speed of light

second), man's cosmic provincialism

must

the

ability to wonder about itself, to write poetry

and to compose symphonies, to ask questions of its environment, and finally to guide its own

evolution, its

future

to "build

more

evolution.

And

stately mansions" for in

how

many

other

places has this happened, and with what diver­ sity? Here is the great wonderment, and herein lies the embryo of new world religions perhaps as many as there are individuals in which gods made in man's own image will give way and grow with man's expanding image of his own nature. Perhaps we will discover someday that the distinction the awful gaping void between the two, man and his gods, has vanished as shadows in a dark corner when daylight comes.

Perhaps in us He moves and has His being.

-

-

-

-

The Tri-QuarterZy would like to publish, in each

issue, by undergraduates and graduate students on aspects of the collegiate experience. We have in mind something a little more formally considered and less locally directed than letters of protest to the Daily Northwestern about campus affairs, but would welcome spirited expressions of opinion that would be of interest to readers both on and off the campus. Students who would like to say something about college and the ed­ a

set of short articles

ucational

process

are

invited

to

contribute.

The

r-ight

length would be about four pages of double-spaced typescript. Please address your manuscripts to The Editors, The Tri-QuarterZy, University Hall 204D.

Winter.

1962

11

James A. Hazard James Hazard, who lives in Whiting, Indiana, first attended Butler University and the Calumet Center of Indiana University. At Northwestern he majored in American Literature and Civilization, and received his B.A. in 1958.

Intruder

City: Late Autumn

This morning I walked along the channel

Gardens are brittle and brown.

of weeds, lined left and right by railroad tracks, that separates this factory town from lake and beach. Often I've seen a hawk hunting there. As I walked something stirred at the edge of my sight: a man running hunched, cautious; then (not seeing me) he fell to the ground and hid himself, tensely, from some thing. A bird-watcher, I figured, and passed him by quietly, invisibly as possible, to respect the privacy of his purpose.

Past him a few moments I felt the silence break wickedly with the blam of a man's

Wind strips trees of counterfeit domesticity.

gun. I turned and saw a scatter

Even the little lawns turn wild.

I like these days.

Unruly clouds dim, and make clear that despite all the disguises we contrive, we

stitz live

(a raucous wedge of geese enters our attention

honking seriously in the same speech as last year) within the thought that spawned us.

of pigeons pulling up away, One puny laggard. beating

weakly behind. Twice more the gun.

The laggard stopped suddenly in air and tumbled gracelessly dead, downward.

The man scurried from his weedy shelter and ratlike grabbed his prize.

12

NORTHWESTERN

TRI-QUARTERLY

Robley Sundmacher Robley SundmacheT was born in Chicago and went to school in Park Ridge, graduation for a quarter in the Gradu­ ate School. His interests are literature, phiLosophy, and various aspects of the theater and television. He believes that film is the art form of the twentieth century, and that it should receive the kind of attention now usually reserved for playwrights and novelists. He is presently at work on a study of the film critics of the past two decades.

Mr. Sundmacher (Speech '60) is on the Public Relations staff of Ford Com­ pany, in Dearborn, Michigan.

Ill. At Northwestern he remained after

THE PERSONAL VISION

OF INGMAR BERGMAN AS

A RELIGIOUS ARTIST in a thoroughly secu­

lar welfare state,

Ingmar Bergman is something compelling in­ fluence today is not its social philosophy but the films of her leading artist who is using the cinema for undistinguished metaphysical inquiry.

Bergman has won world-wide acclaim and four­ teen major film prizes while denying what his countrymen affirm: that man's fundamental prob­ of an anomaly. Yet Sweden's most

lems are social and that the millenium is at hand.

He claims to have no social conscience nor do his films reflect No

concern

for social causation. for

cocktail conversation, Bergman has been enthusiastically received by thousands of filmgoers the world over who have turned from the intellectual gymnastics of Pound and Kafka to the obscure symbolism of the strange Norseman.

Fifteen years after Bergman wrote his first screenplay he was given a gold plaque honoring him

mere

as

subject

Sweden's finest film-maker. "Now I have

received all the prizes that exist," said the forty­ one year old director; "all that remains to do now

is

for

in

showcase in

someone

to

stuff

me

and

place

me

film museum." But Bergman is in no danger of becoming a relic, at least not in his own time. The world-wide public and critia

Winter, 1962

a

cal enthusiasm which has

accompanied his career is not likely to abate for a long while to come.

The crowds that willingly line up for a Bergman premiere, together with the success of a book con­ taining four of his screenplays in English, testify to his

popularity.

But what of the strange genius behind the films?

writer, editor and director, Bergman is able an expression of his personal for better or vision; worse, his films are his alone.

Ernest Ingrnar Bergman was born July 14, 1918, in the Swedish university town of Uppsala. His youth was characterized by stern restraint and rigid moral discipline. His father was a Lutheran minister, and the sensitive Ingmar became well acquainted with the sin-theology of orthodox As

to make each film

Protestantism.

In the

Bergman home the display of emotions an everyday reality and was commensurate with the stringent moral de­ mands of the Church. According to Luther, sal­ vation hinged upon faith, consequently the great­ sin. Guilt became

was

a

est

threat

to

salvation

of

an

was

sin

doubt. in

Doubt

was

that

original religious something community. To the extent that man doubted, he was sinful, and to the extent that he sinned he was beset by guilt.

13

"I

really

am

I show

day. "When

film I

a

Bergman to­

says

guilty

am

of deceit

imposter or, when the audi­ is willing to be taken in, a conjurer." This

I ence

conjurer,"

a

am

either

an

conception of the artist as a charlatan reaches its fullest expression in Tile Magician. where Berg­ man

examines with some ambivalence the role of

society. The magician's psychic but legerdemain is presented as obvious fraud his power to influence others is real. The artist, Bergman is saying, must be all things to all people and though his means are "illusion" the end result is often "truth." But the artist viewing himself is capable of seeing only the fraud. He is behind the scenes, knows his techniques, and

the

in

artist

-

denied the comfort of illusion which

is

he

im­

parts to others.

There is

dispute

to

as

just how original

Bergman really is. Certainly he owes much to the Swedish film tradition, and his producer sees as

and

present

joins the past

"a link in the chain which

in

film

Swedish

history." Early Swedish cinema drew from novels, legends, and myths for its thematic content. The saga-like novels of Selma Lagerlof served as a basis for many films. Certainly Bergman learned a great deal

the

from

Stiller

with

work

regard

of

directors

the

to

technical brilliance of his

Seastrom

and

pictorial beauty

and

pictures.

The Swedes were quickly aware of the power of

they turned to serious immediately. The peculiar dual­ ism native to that country found expression in her movies, and such classics as The Outlaw and His Wife (1917), Arne's Treasure (1919), The Phantom Carriage (1920) and The Legend of Gosta Berling (1923) probed deeply into the nature of existence.

the

new

themes

medium

and

almost

Because

of

of

the

the

antagonisms climate, metaphysical complaint often takes the form of polar forces locked in conflict. The Swed­ ish Weltanschauung is influenced by the elemental Swedish

powers of

an

unsubdued nature. This influence is

not to be found in the

Anglo-Saxon or Latin tem­

perament, where nature has been met and The Scandinavian identifies his

over­

spirit­ ual turmoil with the turmoil of the elements, and this identification is felt in his art. To the degree come.

own

that this world-view has affected the substance of

Bergman's films it

may

be

said

that he

is

an

extension of Swedish film

history. But while the

impact of history

denied, the test of ultimately with his de­

an

cannot be

artist's work must lie

parture from tradition rather than his conformity Bergman's case, departure is the signifi­

to it. In

cant fact.

14

Richter for

use

all of whom chose surrealistic devices

-

in their films. There is

influence in

remarkable

that

the old

Professor

in

no mistaking this Borg's weird nightmares

film.

The

walking down

first dream

finds twist­

unfamiliar, ing, and empty street. Borg glances at his watch and finds that it has no hands. Similarly, the hands of a clock on a nearby store are missing.

He approaches a man whose back is to him and man

when the

some

him

Bergman's eclecticism derives less from Swed­ ish film than from certain influences usually asso­ ciated with literature, painting or theatre. When he released Wild Strawberries in 1957, the critics were quick to point to the obvious surrealism of the highly subjective dream sequences. He. was compared to Cocteau, Murnau, Vigo, and Hans

is

turns around

man

bloated

an

we

see

that his face

like

that of a recognition, drowned corpse. When Borg touches the man the latter shrivels up like a punctured balloon and evaporates into the gutter. Suddenly an unattend­

beyond

ed horse-driven hearse rounds the corner,

a

wheel

lamp-post and the coffin spills out onto the pavement. The Professor leans down to

catches

on

a

peer inside and finds himself face to face with his own

The hand of the dead

corpse.

man

reaches

and takes hold of his

living counterpart. As the hand begins to draw Borg into the coffin he mercifully awakens. This macabre prologue states a prevailing theme of Bergman's and is done, in this instance, within a surrealistic framework.

All the elements which characterize the Berg­ out

man

dilemma

Thus

we

see

are

contained in this brief

the isolation of life

scene.

represented

in

the empty street; man's inability to communicate with his fellows is symbolized by the faceless by­

stander.

Urgency is lent to the old man's plight

by the death symbols that time has

run

-

the clock which indicates

out, the approach of Borg's own

corpse, whose mute insistence that he occupy the

coffin

professor's belief that in a Subsequent dreams play variations on this theme and probe into his past to explore events which have contributed to his essential meaninglessness. The watch symbol has long been a motif of the surrealists, as has the penchant for distortion of human features. But more important, the emphasis of surrealism upon the subconscious, the insistence that a higher real­ ity can be achieved through subordinating ration­ ality to imagination and free association, is the points

sense he

to

the

is already dead.

view which has influenced Bergman in this A

friend

of

case.

Schopenhauer: "'Dreams are a kind of lunacy and lunacy a kind of dream.' But life is also supposed to be a kind of dream, isn't it?" Everything relevant to Borg's

quotes

NORTHWESTERN

TRI-QUARTERLY

Borg's story is told by his subconscious, and vn: gain greater insight into the nature of the mun through this method.

Told in first person narrative, Wild Strawberries points out that essential truths of the human con­ dition cannot be apprehended through reason and are reducible only to the symbols common to the free association in dreams. This view would have been all but

impossible prior to Freud's psycho­ analytic theories, and the surrealists are the first to point to his influence upon their art.

A critic

with

observed that

once

"Bergman shoots

foot in existentialism and the other in

one

Isolation

is not caused

by

any

act

of will.

It is

determined by one's psychological make-up.

It

seems

natural, then, that Bergman should

borrow from surrealism to

explore this thesis. As approaching man's non-rational essence, surrealism offers decided advantages, notably the continuity of imaginative symbolism.

Consideration of the social causes of Borg's dilem­ ma must involve an objective, rational inquiry­ such as is found in the social protest films of de a

means

of

Sica. But to Bergman, lems are not of

as we

have seen, the prob­

social nature but of

a

a

psycho­

logical one.

psychoanalysis," but the Swede has been less in­

*

*

*

fluenced by Freud than by Eiona Kaila and his

Psychology of the Personality. He writes of strictly according to his needs negative and positive," that it was "shattering to me, but terribly true. And I built on this ground." On the surface, such a thesis is any­ thing but shattering and might be considered a commonplace fact of life. But if man lives strictly according to his needs, and if his needs proceed from factors external to himself, then he is no longer a free agent. The thesis implies a psychological determinism. Man is what he is and his needs control his actions. He is incapable of moral choice. "There is nothing which can be called right or wrong," says Evald in Wild Straw­ berries. "One functions according to one's needs." book

Kaila's thesis that "man lives -

As the symbolism of Borg's life unravels in his dreams, we see a man victimized by his own in­ difference. His isolation and mental suffering de­ rive

from

passion

no

crime

greater

and his

inability

than

his

lack

to communicate.

unable to love but must nevertheless

of

He is

suffer the

consequences reserved for those who refuse to love or who are actively cruel. Without love his life is

meaningless. Even his great success as a (for which he is to receive an honorary degree) pales beside the despair that medical researcher

has

come

not

the

to fill his dreams. Yet his condition is

result

of

choice

but

of

chance.

In

his

youth his love for Sara is frustrated because she finds

him

"cold"

and

undemonstrative.

She

love, and the union ends in disaster. The turning point in Borg's life occurs when Sara rejects him in favor chooses

another.

He

of his brother. This is

marries,

a

not

for

circumstance

over

by nature, he is made to suffer. Thus if man lives according to his needs and his needs do not allow for the understanding and sympathy one

Winter,

1962

But the term

"expressionism" has only doubtful Bergman. One could, with some

application justification, claim any artistic distortion of real­ ity to be expressionistic in one sense or another.

The highly stylized Magician is intensely subjec­ tive and has overtones of German expressionism such as is found in The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, but to claim Bergman as an exponent of a par­ ticular school implies a parochialism, an impli­ to

cation which would be difficult to defend. Strind­

berg's dark preoccupation with subjective experi­ ence made conventional theatrical techniques an impossibility. Bergman, too, has rejected many of the conventions of his predecessors, and his de­ parture from film tradition closely parallels Strindberg's departure from certain stage tradi­ tions. But Bergman is careful to point out that he is no mere extension of Strindberg. "Film," he says, "has nothing to do with literature; the character and substance of the two art forms

are

usually in conflict." ...

*

*

which

he could not possibly exercise control. Since his "needs" do not call for warmth, since he is distant

must have for communication with

Bergman has also been identified with expres­ sionism, particularly the sort found in the German theatre of the 1920's and in the plays of Strind­ berg. This latter influence is freely admitted by the film-maker. "It is completely natural," he says, "for artists to take from and give to each other, to borrow from and experience one another.

In my own life, my great literary experience was Strindberg." It is his amibition to mount a pro­ duction of The Dream Play.

others, man's

In his essay

symbolic action, Kenneth Burke

on

speaks

of the "ritual" which the writer undergoes

in

creation

the

of

may be conscious

literary work. This ritual unconscious, but the work of

a

or

art becomes a "strategy" for handling or control­ ling the writer's own problems. The symbolic ac-

15

represents the artist disguising his identity

tion

with

associated

monly

the

existential

"move­

participate in the ancient ceremonies of initiation, rebirth, and purification through the primary ritual of creation. Thus Burke advances

ment." The most striking example of such a par­

the thesis that "if

Dane

in order to

we

try to discover what the

work is

doing for the artist, we may discover a set of generalizations as to what works of art do for everybody."

This

approach bears greater fruit the closer

come

we

to writers

whose extreme

subjectivity

makes a careful consideration of their lives neces­

interpretation of their work. religious artist, through the aesthetic mask, performs a symbolic act of expiation through the creative process: he achieves redemption through creation. Much of Kafka's symbolism remains hopelessly cryptic because of the intensely per­ sonal use of the purification ritual. For this reason pages of dialogue in The Castle seem to bear little sary to

an

accurate

The

if

any

relevance

fashion,

much

of

the

to

the

context.

confusion

In over

a

similar

Bergman

personal use of visual symbols.

The fact that his symbols are visual permits the casual observer to ignore them, and the chance that they will detract from or cloud the film's stems

from his

theme is remote. It is therefore easy for the critic to discuss the central thesis without

acknowledg­

ing the peripheral symbolism used to support it.

This accounts for the charge sometimes leveled at this film-maker that his view, while compel­ ling, lacks enough logic to develop an idea fully.

While not questioning the author's right to ex­ plore his own imagination, critics have been slow to see the totality of a film because its richest symbolic content is visual and therefore beyond the reach of logic. "I am a film-maker," Berg­ man

protests, "not an author." ..

*

*

Speaking in honor of the late Victor Seastrom, who played the role of Borg in Wild Strawberries, Bergman noted that "His glance is forever trying to pierce through the darkness. He is forever try­ ing to catch the sound of a reply to his terrified questions and despairing prayers. But the silence is complete." The words could have been attrib­ uted to

anyone

of

a

of

number

writers

of

an

existential persuasion. Certainly they call to mind Kafka's driving obsession with the inaccessibility of God. The

writing of existentialism's progenitor, Kierkegaard. Bergman shares with the

allel is the

Soren

an intense awareness of life's pervading darkness, a sense of suspense resulting from that awareness, and a consequent fear of all life-a "pan-anxiety" typified in the brooding stories of Franz Kafka.

Kierkegaard postulated three of the which life illustrate his phases complete existential position. The first phase was the aes­ thetic, the second ethical, the third religious. In order to approach a full awareness of God, man had to evolve through these progressive phases by conscious effort premised upon faith. Berg­ man's magician, hence the artist, is unable to transcend the first, or aesthetic phase. He is in­ complete. Bergman has written that, in the past, an artist's humanism was assured through ano­ nymity, he was removed socially from his crea­ tion and assumed a normal place in society. "To­ day," he says, "the individual has become the highest form and the greatest bane of artistic creation. The smallest wound or pain of the ego is examined under a microscope as if it were of eternal importance. The artist considers his isola­ tion, his subjectivity, his individualism almost we stand and bleat about our loneliness holy without listening to each other.

We walk in our that we limited own anxieties circles, so by no can longer distinguish between true and false ." The modern artist, then, is isolated from the human community by his own genius. He is prevented from assuming his ethical responsi­ bilities-Kierkegaard's second imperative-and is thus emasculated as a total human being. He is blinded by his own vision. The magician, sensing his marginal qualities as a meaningful member of society, assumes the burden of spiritual guilt. The same Lutheran discipline which led Kierkegaard to formulate his three imperatives has left its impact on Bergman's work.

But where the religious existentialists make faith the necessary prerequisite to essence, Berg­ man's fundamental religious position is doubt. In The Seventh Seal, Bergman's knight says: "Faith ...

.

.

is

a

.

torment, did you know that? It is like loving

someone never

who

is

out

no

there

in

the darkness

matter how

but

loudly you call."

appears, To Kierkegaard, "God does not think, He creates;

position of

God does not exist; He is eternal." And the deity

the film-maker and supports the view that, artis­ tically at least, Bergman's vision of the human

is not to be approached through reason alone but through the insights born of faith. To Bergman, "the religious problem is an intellectual one the relationship of my mind to my intuition." To Kierkegaard, man is in a state of "becoming";

phrase illustrates

a

basic

condition is existential.

There are distinct parallels between Bergman's view of man and that of certain writers most com-

16

.

NORTHWESTERN

.

.

TRI-QUARTERLY

Bergman's characters simply are: they able to alter their basic identity.

The

are

un­

spiritual suffering is one as­ pect of life shared by all the existentialists, and Bergman is no exception. But while the religious existentialists hold that suffering produces insight, and the atheistic school sees it as something to be overcome by the exercise of will, Bergman sees suffering merely as an unpleasant fact of life dic­ tated by circumstance. "I have no respect for suf­ fering of the soul," Professor Borg advises his daughter-in-law, "so don't come to me and com­ plain. But if you need spiritual masturbation, I can make an appointment for you with some good quack, or perhaps with a minister, it's so popular these days." concern

Both

with

religious and atheistic existentialism pos­ as the hope of suffering mankind. To

tulate will

Sartre,

a

man

may exercise his will in order to

free himself from the

prejudices and restrictions of his religious bondage. Sartre's essential dilem­ is how to cope with man's new freedom and isolation it implies. For Bergman, man's estrangement is less from his fellow man than ma

the

from the

source

of his

identity as postulated

own

free will as an by religion. Kierkegaard instrument by which man could transcend himself saw

and approach God. To Bergman, as we have seen, free will is

largely an illusion. Man lives strictly according to his needs, and this psychological de­ terminism precludes the exercise of an independ­ ent choice. His characters often realize the source

of their unrest but

unable to change their cir­ personality. Man's predica­ ment, according to Karl Lowith, is that science has produced the view that "an infinite universe of indefinite limits has no definite place for a finite man." It is in confronting this truth that Bergman closely identifies himself with the cumstances

or

are

their

particular viewpoint. The aesthetic effort, though, is often conceived of in religious terms.

"Art," he argues, "lost its basic creative drive the moment it was separated from worship." In for­ mer days, an artist created "to the glory of God." While Bergman does not identify himself with for­ mal Christianity, his major concerns correspond to basic church questions. "To me, religious prob­ lems are continuously alive. I never cease to con­ cern myself with them; it goes on every hour of every day." He explains that he has rid himself of religious emotions and "religious sentimental­ ity" but that the question of man's spiritual na­ no

ture is very much alive for him. The Seventh Seal

exploration of the relationship of picture he has written: "My intention has been to paint in the same way as the medieval church painter, with the same tender­ ness and joy." Tenderness and joy, however, is

brilliant

a

man

to God. Of this

come

off second best.

story opens in 13th century Sweden. The knight, Antonius Block, has returned from the Crusades to find his native land in the grip of the Black Plague. His first encounter is with the hood­ ed figure of Death, who informs the knight that his time has come. "I have been walking by your announces the specter; side for a long time "I grant no reprieves." But the knight engages him in a chess game to prolong the inevitable and perform "one meaningful deed."

As the knight and his squire travel inland they meet a variety of characters each of whom is rele­ vant to the knight's search for meaning. But as he travels, Block sees less meaning than chaos.

Sweden is torn by famine and disease, the Church The

"

....

seems

more

anxious to toll the bell of doom than

comfort; and everywhere he encounters de­ spair and brutality. In a church confessional he

offer

asks:

existentialists. *

*

How can we have faith in those who believe when we can't have faith in ourselves? What is going to happen to those of us who want to believe but aren't able to? And what is to become of those who neither I want want to nor are capable of believing? knowledge, not faith, not suppositions, but knowledge.

I want God to stretch out his hand toward me, reveal Himself and speak to me..

In our fear, we make an image, and that image we call God.

*

.

Swedish critics have reproved Bergman for his

preoccupation with religious questions. says the film-maker, "I will never give

"But," up

this

discussion." An agnostic in terms of organized re­

ligion-which, as one of his characters observes, "has for a long time and with great diligence worked

for

the

success

of

the

Devil"-he

nevertheless devoted the greater part of his

has crea­

tive life to trying to explicate the mystery of man's relationship to an inexplicable universe. It would probably be improper to speak of Berg­ man's religious "position" since he has accepted

Winter, 1962

He

confides

the

strategy by which he hopes

to

prolong the chess game and thus lengthen his life.

But the hooded figure on the other side of the is Death, not a priest. The Church is clear­ refuge. Later he encounters a grisly pro­ cession of flagellants led by a monk who strikes fear into the townspeople by warning them of the screen

ly

no

17

of God's vengeance, the magnitude of His wrath, and the inexor-abilitv of man's fate. The life-size crucifix borne by the p rocess ion pictures Christ's suffering in graphic dot a il : the features terror

are

contorted in anguish, the corners of II IS mouth

are

pulled down in despair. The image is not that triumphant Savior but of the suffer­

of Christ the

ing

Nazarene

mask.

The

whose

face

is

tortured

a

death

young girl sen­ tenced to be burned at the stake for having sexual

knight

encounters

a

union with the Devil. Her wrists have been brok­

and the child is paralyzed with fear and pain.

Enraged, the knight's squire demands to know

en

"who watches

over

the Devil,

that child?

Is it the angels,

the emptiness?" He

God, only is helpless to save her and the child dies-in the name of the Church. Running throughout the pic­ ture is the idea that if God can be made meaning­ or

or

or

place in the past. It seems likely that his affection history relates to the religious nature of his

for

central

concern,

The paternalism of historical Christianity has been replaced by the bureaucratic paternalism of the modern welfare state. In the confusion, Chris­

tianity has been reconceived as a body of simple moral preachments loosely abstracted from the old orthodoxy. Humanism and the religion of man as deduced from Christ's teachings become mere matters for legislation. The traditional Christian concern for sin, guilt, and redemption-for ortho­ dox theology in general-are moving progessively to

the hinterland of man's moral consciousness.

In Sweden,

a

land where church-going has largely

been abandoned, Bergman's religious questionings are

viewed with

some

embarrassment

as

the im­

pulse of

an

ful one must look away from the Church-at least

anachronistic sophomore (both The Seventh Seal and The Magician lost money in

the Church of the Dark

Sweden

while

Ages. wandering (Joseph) and his wife Mia (Mary) are the only ones in the picture who are able to see beauty or meaning, and their son will some day do the one "impossible trick": he will suspend gravity by making a ball stand still in the air. Jof sees visions of the Virgin and the Christ child romping happily through a field. In A

actor, Jof

accumulating awards elsewhere). scene provides neither the atmosphere nor the encouragement for Berg­ man's basic inquiry. Inevitably he reaches into The modern Swedish

the past for his

environments-to

a

time when

sequence in which Death leads his victims off into

religious questions had greater vitality. Refer­ ring to his Seventh Seal, Bergman writes: "My beings laugh, weep, howl, fear, speak, answer, play, suffer, ask, ask. Their terror is the plague, Judgement Day, the star whose name is Worm­

the horizon.

wood. Our fear is of another kind, but our words

the end, it is he who witnesses the dance of death The simple contentment of the cou­ ple lends balance to a theme of suffering, mean­ inglessness, and death. But in The Seventh Seal it is the darkness, not the light, which shines through. Humanity, with the exception of those ransomed by love, are doomed to endure the single fact of their own mortality without explanation or answer

to

their

If

prayer.

God

may

be

ap­

proached, Bergman seems to say, this is only possible indirectly through love. J of sees visions, the knight sees only the grinning face of death. *

*

*

are

the same."

Bergman has been asked what his intention is in making films. "I try to tell the truth about the human condition," he replies, "the truth as I see it." As he sees it, the human condition is one of isolation: not the alienation of man from society but the belief that he has

Man's

no

real relevance to it.

reality is personal not social. His dilemma

is indifference to other

men.

Because of his isola­

tion from the human

community man is isolated from God, the source of his own vitality. Love is less of a salvation than an evidence of man's need to escape from himself.

a characteristic of Bergman that his films predominantly non-contemporary settings.

Swedish film history provides a precedent for this in that most of the early Swedish films relied heavily upon legends and myths for their themes.

This reliance can be partially explained by the fact that the cinema in that country got a late start and there was an absence of qualified screen

It is

have

writers at the time. But Bergman writes his

own

screenplays and is prolific enough (he averages at least one a year) to abandon historical themes and comment upon his immediate environment.

Yet most of his films-and all of his best-take

18

Religion has lost its

au­

thority to explain man's fundamental moral ques­ tions about his relation to the world and to other men.

Science, with its implicit determinism, de­

nies him as

an

his fate to

a

agent of moral choice and delivers impersonal and incompre­

series of

hensible laws. "I have prayed just one prayer in my life," says Spegel in The Magician: "Use me.

Handle

me.

But

God

never

understood

what

a

strong and devoted slave I had become. So I had to go unused.

darkness.

But

.

The

.

.

One walks step by step into the itself is the only truth."

motion

Bergman is far from Dostoevski's nihilist.

The fact that he cannot find cause for affirmation

NORTHWESTERN

TRI-QUARTERLY

of life itself does not lead him to conclude that the human condition is

his

hopeless. Throughout films, delicately balanced on the periphery of his major themes, is the belief that some fortunate individuals, through no effort on their own part, are granted the "gift" of happiness and love. Life,

consistently to say, is designed for the elect few. The meaning to the riddle of life is that

he

seems

one

may

hope to have the gift,

faith that he is numbered

Smiles

of a

Summer

may

cling to the

the

among

elect.

In

Night Bergman comes clos­

est to the heart of this theme:

The others, those without the "gift," are left to pray to "a God somewhere in the darkness." Per­

haps Strindberg has anticipated his admirer when playwright offered such a prayer­ which Bergman has quoted-in his last play, The Great Highway:

the famous

Frid: There are only a very few young lovers on this earth. Yes, one can almost count them. Love has smit­ ten them both as a gift and as a punishment.

Bless me, Thy humanity That suffers, suffers from Thy gift of life!

Me first, who have suffered-

Petra: And we others?

Suffered most the pain of not being would be.

Frid: We others

The editor is the

Yes, what becomes of us?

Frid: We invoke love, call out for it, beg that we have it, lie about it.

Petra: But we don't have it.

Frid: No, my sugar plum, the love of lovers is denied to us. We don't have the gift.

Petra:

...

Ha!

to report that in the Fall issue page proof resulted in a garbled number of paragraphs in Harold M.

sorry

misplacing of

a

sequence for a Grutzmacher's article,

"The Teacher

as

Writer."

Para­

graph 15, the first full paragraph on page 46, should have been followed by what appeared as the last para­ graph on that page, and so to the end, resuming with what is now the second paragraph on page 46. The jumbling of the organization of the article is the fault of the editor, not of the author. Our apologies to Mr. Grutzmacher.

what I most

Mr. William T. F'aricy, of Washington, D.C., has pre­ to the University an award to be called the Faricy Award for Creative Verse, as a memorial to his daughter, Jean Faricy Lord. The sum of $100 is to be awarded annually to an undergraduate who shows prom­ ise in the writing of poetry. The award will be made by a committee appointed by the English Department.

Plans for the submission of manuscripts will be an­ nounced later in The Daily Northwestern. Poems pub­ lished in The Tri-Quarterly will be eligible, as well as those submitted directly to the committee. sented

The University Press will publish this Spring a volume Progress, containing the first ten

to be called Poets in of The

Tri-Quanerly's series of articles on living Amer­

ican poets.

Winter,

1962

19

George E. Spink George E. Spink is a junior in the CoUege of Liberal Arts, majoring in Political Science. He transferred to Northwestern this year from the University of California at San.ta Barbara. His home is in Berwyn, Illinois.

Haeccity Today the snow came down and the streets became white,

But when you look at the snowman,

white.

beauty that suggests the simpliCity

Children rolled little baUs

of a little girl

which grew bigger and bigger,

or

do you see an inner beauty, a

and they were white.

boy?

they placed a small one upon a big one

Look!

and another small one upon the smaller one: a snowman.

The snowman was attractive and people liked it, for it possessed a universal quality: it looked like all other snowmen that had been built before

Do you see an inner beauty?

Look!

I awoke at the misty dawn

of who knows what day, but in November, and it snowed.

I saw the beauty of a snowman,

it.

and it snowed.

And it looked like all the snowmen

But soon the snow ceased, and it

that will be built after it,

became warmer.

after it.

Where did the snowman go?

20

NORTHWESTERN

TRI-QUARTERLY

George D. Dilts George D. Dilts is a senior in the College of Liberal Arts, majoring in Eng­ lish. He was born in Buffalo, New York, went to school in Madison, New Jersey, and now lives in Alburtis, Pennsylvania. In 1954 he eniisteti in the Navy, trained

Bainbridge, Maryland, and spent the remainder of his three year stretch sea duty aboard the destroyer U.S.S. Hailey, visiting Cuba, the Mediter­ ranean ports, and, through the Suez Canal, the Arabian port of Aden. at

in

NORRIS'S WAKE T HE EARLY DAWN vapor of mist

over

was

cool and slight with a The sun, distant

the water.

itself, stood a few points above the horizon; low-hanging clouds were scored, blotchy, suspended, spired by the masts of the ships and the taller buildings of the town across the bay.

The destroyer in the harbor dangled lightly at the end of its mooring chain like an ornament.

Slow drifts of water pushed under one side of the ship and slid from the other, dull and unbroken. as

the

sea

the

Patches of oil drifted here and there

on

the

sur­

face, gathering and closing and spreading again, undisturbed save by the occasional churning wake of a passing motorboat on its way out from the landing to one of the ships.

stockily-built young seaman dressed in dungarees stood in the extreme bow of the ship, one foot on the chock, the destroyer gradually widening, spreading fan-like at his back. He A short,

smoked

a

cigarette and stared at the naval base

that stretched

along the shore and almost back to

the edge of the town, the buildings a uniform dirty white with

large black numbers painted

on

the

sides. Kaczmarek knew that they'd come again today. And that this time they'd want to talk to him.

cleaning up after the officers' morning meal and getting ready for the one at noon. He leaned back against the hatch-cover and watched the stewa�ds and waited.

"John Kaczmarek He

" ...

stepped into the wardroom and stood,

a

few

steps in front of the long dining table. Behind his

back, he nervously shifted his white hat from one hand to the other. He looked at the two officers

sitting behind the table.

"Kaczmarek," one of them said, "this a Board of Inquiry. My name's Lieutenant Neuburger. This is Ensign Calucci." He indicated the officer sitting at his right. Kaczmarek shifted his weight to his other foot. The Ensign was drawing circles on a pad of lined yellow paper.

"Kaczmarek," Ensign Calucci said, burying his nose in the pad of paper, "you probably know we're here.

We're why investigating the disappear­ ance of Norris, one of the seaman." The Ensign suddenly looked up and stared at him as if he expected Kaczmarek to say something.

"Yes, sir," Kaczmarek said.

The Ensign bent his head again and drew a circle on the pad. "Tell us what happened that night," he said. He sounded bored as hell, Kacz­ m arek thought.

Kaczmarek "Well," he said, "well, I "

helped wash down the decks. He and Romano worked together, but neither of them said anything about it. He ate breakfast and was paint­ ing over the side when at nine-thirty they called him and told him to go below and change into his Later he

...

hesitated and looked at his feet.

"We want to try and clear this thing up today," the Lieutenant said. "As a matter of fact we have to clear it up today because

whites.

have

waiting outside the ward­ room. The stewards were still busy in the pantry

you

At ten o'clock he was

Winter, 1962

other

things

the last

man

some

were

...

to do.

to

see

well, because we We

suspect that

him, and we need

to know what happened back there before

we

can

21

come

to

\\'PH'

both

kind of

some

"Yl'S,

looking

conclusion." The officers

Kaczmarek

sir,"

knew what

a

at him.

said.

He

wished

he

Kaczmarek made

a

wished he could sit

visible effort to relax. He

down.

"We

at

were

way back from the Mediterranean.

sea

on

I had the

fantail watch. Norris was my relief. He came back talked for

we

a

while and then I left

and

"And in the

morning he was missing," Ensign

Calucci finished for him.

Why didn't they

ask him

some

questions, Kaczmarek thought. Why did they have to play games?

"All

right, Kaczmarek," the Ensign said, "if we have just a few questions and then you can go. All right?" The Ensign smiled insincerely at his pad of paper. that's the case.

"Okay," Kaczmarek said.

The Lieutenant selected a yellow file folder from the stack of papers in front of him and, looking through it, took up the questioning. "Stiles, Boat­

swain's Mate Second Class, the mustering petty

officer,"

he read, "reported Norris missing at 0130, Monday, 25 August, 1956. Norris was pre­ sumably washed overboard. That was the night

"Yes, sir, that's right," Kaczmarek said.

"No, sir," Kaczmarek said, turning his head toward the table again.

"You all

sleep

in

the First Division compart-

ment?" sir."

"Was Stiles in his rack?"

"I

don't

know, sir, I sleep

over

on

the other

"

"No, sir," Kaczmarek lied. He had spoken to that morning in the mess hall. Stiles had come up to the table and said, "They're gonna be talking to you this morning." And Kaczmarek had nodded his head, saying nothing, but knowing ex­ actly what he meant.

"Kaczmarek," the Lieutenant said, "we know a few things you evidently don't think we know."

He paused and Kaczmarek watched as Ensign him

Calucci hesitated in mid-circle to look up at the Lieutenant and then return to his pad. He finished

drawing the circle. It wasn't quite as well formed as the others, but it was almost perfectly round.

The Ensign moved his whole arm when he drew them. It must have taken a long time, Kaczmarek

thought, and a lot of practice to draw circles like "We think," the Lieutenant said,

"that

there

feud running between Stiles and Norris. For

"Why did Norris have that particular watch?"

was a

"Sir?"

that reason, we suspect that Norris might not have been lost at sea. That is, lost accidentally. We

"I want to know why Norris had that particular

watch.

"

think he

"I don't

.

.

might have been pushed. We also think that Stiles might have done the pushing. However,

."

"Stiles makes up the watch bill, is that right?"

"Yes, sir," Kaczmarek said. How much do they know, he wondered.

"Kaczmarek," Ensign Calucci said, as he com­ pleted a perfectly round circle on the pad in front knife does Stiles have?"

him, "what kind of

a

"It's

With

just

a

knife.

"Have

lately?

you

seen

that

knife

were

no

witnesses. Stiles has been aboard

ship for two years, and so far has

record

as

a

a

perfect

petty officer. We don't want to get

the wrong man," he said quietly. "You can under­ stand that."

"Yes, sir," Kaczmarek said,

"I

can

understand

wrapped

that." That's why they wanted to know about the knife, he thought. They think he killed him. The

around

anywhere

Lieutenant

"

"I think Stiles said he lost it."

The Lieutenant wrote

there the

line

some

around the handle."

something on

a

piece of

paper and put it in a file folder. Ensign Calucci got up and walked to the end of the room. He

opened the two glass portholes and came back to

22

your way forward after

that.

the storm started."

of

on

the Lieutenant asked.

All three of them realized that that wasn't all he

about it.

Stiles

"Has Stiles spoken to you about this matter?"

"And that's all you know about it?"

knew

SE't'

you got off watch?" Ensign Calucci asked.

side.

"Yes, sir."

distant

gull hanging motionless above the bay. Its head

"Yes,

went up forward and went to bed."

a

turned slowly from side to side.

"Did you

know about it."

and

up in the pantry and the wardroom was very quiet.

Kaczmarek looked through the hatch at

tht'�' wanted.

"Suppose you start with the night in question," Ensign Calucci said again, "and tell us what you

our

the table and sat down. Nobody said anything for a few seconds. The stewards had finished cleaning

started

talking again. They think he killed him, Kaczmarek thought.

"And you can help us, Kaczmarek," the Lieuten­ ant's voice droned on. Kaczmarek was furiously thinking. "I'm afraid there's a difference between a man's being lost at sea, and his being mur­ dered." They've got it all wrong, he thought. Don't

NOIiTHWESTERN

TRI-QUARTERLY

they understand? "You were Norris's best friend

should I tell

and if any friends. ". know and we at all about think it, you anything you do, at least more than you've told us, because

to me? Not a damn thing.

you've told us this morning we knew about after we started the Investigation." I an hour know plenty you don't know. "It's your duty, Kacz­ marek, as Norris's friend.. "To hell with you and your duty. to help us get to the bottom of this thing."

his locker. I'll

.

."

.

He

didn't have

.

,

what

them, he thought? What was Norris

Kaczmarek thought about his house on Bedford

Street in Pittsburgh. Then he tell

never

lay down on top of them, he thought. And

all the time he knew that he would. *

*

*

"

....

One of the

ship's officers stuck his head around

the corner of the hatch leading from the passage­ way.

said, and

he

"Oh, sorry,"

went out

again.

"I think we'd better break this up until this aft­

ernoon," the Lieutenant said. "They're getting ready to eat." Kaczmarek noticed for the first time the noise of rattling pans and dishes coming from the adjacent pantry.

"We'll want to starts

this

see

you

afternoon,"

again

the

as

soon

as

Lieutenant

work

said

to

Kaczmarek.

"That's about one-thirty," Ensign Calucci added

unnecessarily, his head still bent over his collec­

The sound of chipping hammers and paint scrap­

striking the metal deck of the destroyer drifted faintly back to the wardroom through the heavy ers

September afternoon. From the after part of the ship came the soft, slow chugging of a whaleboat.

"Kaczmarek," Ensign Calucci said, as if he hailing him from a great distance. Kacz­ marek stood directly in front of him.

were

"Kaczmarek," the Ensign said again. By the voice, he had evidently gotten him within normal speaking distance. "Why don't you tone of his

take one of those chairs over there?"

Kaczmarek got a chair and sat down facing the

officers. Here we go, he thought.

"Kaczmarek," the Lieutenant said, "it's not too

tion of circles.

"Yes, sir," Kaczmarek said, and stepped out through the hatch. He stood outside the door to the wardroom for a while looking at the bay.

The sun was higher but seemed to have gotten no brighter than it was when he'd looked at it earlier in the morning. He turned away and walked to­ ward the bow of the ship.

Stiles was waiting in front of the gun mount.

"How'd it go?" he said. He was smiling.

"Okay," Kaczmarek said.

"You didn't tell 'em anything?"

"No."

The grin abruptly faded from Stiles' face. For just an instant he looked bewildered before his features hardened again into an expression of con­

fident contempt. As Kaczmarek turned to go, Stiles

caught his arm.

He was smiling again. "You've got three more years to do on this ship," he said. "Don't cross me.

I have ways of finding out."

Kaczmarek didn't say anything. He turned away and walked forward and went

strange an occurrence for a man to be lost at sea.

Especially during a storm like the one you people experienced a few days ago on your way back from the Mediterranean. But someone, I can't say

who, was suspicious enough to call us the base to

over

from

if there

might have been more to this than a man's simply being lost overboard. see

"These things can sometimes get very compli­ cated," the Lieutenant went on. "For example,

grudge against Stiles might one of the officers, said enough to make the officer suspicious. This officer might have gone to the Captain and he might have ordered an investigation. I say, that's what might have happened. having

someone

have said

a

a

few words to

"Someone might have seen a perfect opportu­ nity to get rid of Stiles, by spreading some rumors about him in connection with Norris's death. One of the

might have done it. I happen to some people on the ship here that dislike Stiles. Maybe even hate him. seaman

know that there are

"But there's usually some bad feeling for boats­

through the hatch he

wain's mates among the seamen. That's natural.

The same kind of feeling there is among. say,

wasn't and so he went into the First Division com­

marine recruits for their drill sergeant. They tend

partment and sat down on his locker. Nobody was around. They were probably all eating or waiting

to focus

in the chow line to get into the mess hall.

up at the Lieutenant

on

the

looked

foc'sle.

He

to

if

see

Kaczmarek

went

down

Romano

was

looked

at

the

the

ladder

around, but

rack

where

and

Norris

used to sleep. He knew that Stiles didn't kill him.

He knew that. Stiles

Winter, 1962

was

too smart.

Why the hell

on

him

"What I'm

as

the

cause

driving at, son" -

the whole story before

we

bad

as

letting

a

an

guilty

can

we

have to know

take any kind of

innocent one

problems.

Kaczmarek looked

"is that

action. And to condemn as

of their

man

is just

go free."

23

Calucc-i

Ensign

"Lieutenant,"

something

have

"I

said,

"Just a second,"

the Lieutenant said

on

Kaczmarek looked at Ensign Calucci, who was over his pad. He had a fn'sh sheet of

the top and he seemed to have given up drawing circles. This afternoon it was boxes.

Kaczmarek was fascinated. First the Ensign drew on

a

then

square,

a

little above and to the left of

the first square he drew another one, then he con­ nected up the very

sides, added

top, and printed

a

under each of the

carefully

completed fig­

ures, "This is a Box."

The Lieutenant

still

was

the watch before Norris, which the last person to

see

"You had

speaking. means

you

were

him," he said rather arbi­

trarily. "As nearly as we can figure out you were his only friend ." Kaczmarek wished he'd stop saying that. Who the hell could have told him that, .

the

Lieutenant

said,

we're stymied. You're our last hope

" ...

"frankly Oh boy,

Kaczmarek thought, listen to this.

what you have to say will get no further than this wardroom." Who are you trying to kid, Kacz­

marek thought. Do I look like

a

dope?

The Lieutenant sighed profoundly. "We're going

depart

he said. tions

little from

a

"We're not

except

a

few

the normal procedure,"

going

to

ask you any ques­

may come up. "We're We've got all afternoon."

that

to let you talk.

going

who

the quarterdeck, and I had to sign them all in.

remember doing that. A lot of the guys that had duty were sitting around eating ice cream I

and stuff and watching these boots

"The last

one

come

to come over from the

aboard.

pier was

this tall, thin guy, who was Norris, and just then Stiles came wandering up from somewhere and he

grabbed Norris and

" ...

"Grabbed him?" Ensign Calucci interrupted.

"Well, you know what I mean, sir

" ...

"No, I don't know what you mean, sailor," the Ensign said, tearing the top sheet off his pad.

After carefully wadding it into a tight ball, he threw it neatly into the wastebasket in the corner.

"What do you mean, Kaczmarek?" the Lieuten­ ant said.

"What I

mean

is, sir, that Stiles came up and

asked Norris if he'd like to help carry some gar­ bage cans from the fantail off onto the pier," Kaczmarek said elaborately.

"So

we

all watched while Norris went back to

the fantail and stood there. him too. And Norris

Stiles

was

watching

just stood there while these

other guys did the work. He looked like he was in kind of a daze.

"Finally· Stiles went back and took Norris by the

arm and walked him up to one of the cans and showed him how the handle worked and point­

ed to the

can

and then

pointed

out

to

the

pier.

Then he got some other sailor to get on the other

The Lieutenant sat back in his chair.

side and they started walking up toward the quar­

Ensign Calucci surfaced from his pad after com­

terdeck with Stiles

three

pleting

perfect

boxes

in

a

Both

row.

he

and the Lieutenant were staring directly at Kacz­ He had to do

marek.

something.

All right, he thought. All right. What difference does it make? In his mind he stood defiantly facing Stiles. And Stiles, for once, wasn't smiling.

"Where do you want me to start?" Kaczmarek

asked.

Ensign Calucci retrieved his pad of paper and prepared for a long siege. "Suppose you start by telling us how this feud between Stiles and Norris got started," the Lieutenant said.

Kaczmarek thought for a little while. He looked at the Lieutenant's feet that stuck out from under

the table tenant

as

was

he slouched in his chair.

The Lieu­

staring at the

the

corner

of

room.

"Norris first came aboard ship," Kaczmarek be­ gan,

"when

been

on

24

guys

"Go on," said the Lieutenant.

you're hesitating for fear of reprisals from Stiles, or anybody for that matter, don't worry; "If

to

bunch of other

.

Romano?

"Kaczmarek,"

a

"It was on a week-end, I think. I had the watch

impatient­

frowning

aboard with

just out of boot camp.

were

ly, "just a second, Ensign."

paper

came

..

-

we

here

a

were

down

in

Florida.

I'd

just

little while myself. Anyway, he

make

sure

following right behind them to they got all the way out to the pier

with the stuff.

"But Norris

tripped just

as

he

stepped off the

and the can spilled all over the quarterdeck.

ship Everybody laughed and Stiles looked pretty dis­ gusted. Norris was just standing there looking at the garbage all over the deck. He looked like all this couldn't possibly be happening -to him. So Stiles got some other guys to clean it up and told Norris to just stand somewhere and not to get in the way."

"Why did he get Norris to carry the garbage?" the Lieutenant said.

"I don't know, sir."

"Did Stiles get any of the other new who'd just come aboard to help with it?"

people

"No," Kaczmarek said, "he just got Norris."

Norris probably never forgave him, he

And

thought.

NORTHWESTERN

TRI-QUARTERLY

"I think

"And you think that this incident is what start­

ed the feud between them?" the Lieutenant said

skeptically. know, sir," Kaczmarek said. "I just

"I don't

he never said

"Go on, go on," the Lieutenant said. looked

out

at

"Romano. His name's Frank Romano," Kacz­ marek said.

"Oh, yes, Romano," Ensign Calucci said point­ edly, "I remember."

"Go

the

up -." I

said.

Lieutenant

strange guy. He was the kind of just around; you know what I

a

was

that

guy

was

Nobody noticed he was there and if he wasn't, well, nobody noticed that either. Norris was just always around.

"Anybody that reads books around here is thought of as being a little weird, and Norris read quite a bit. He had some book called Being and Nothingness that he read all the time. I asked mean.

him

what

once

it

about.

was

'Great

book,' he

said, 'you ought to read it,' but I don't go in for that stuff as a rule.

"He had

a

book about

astronomy

too.

Some­

at

you'd

see

Norris

times

when

sitting

all

at the

stars, learning

said

were

we

by

sea,

himself at

night. He'd be looking the constellations. If you

anything to him, he'd get up and go

some­

where else.

"A lot of times we'd shoot crap in the com­ partment and we'd talk a lot at night about girls and what we used to do and Norris would usually

reading this Being and Noth­ ingness stuff. He had a whole locker full of books.

In fact he had two lockers, one for his books and be over in his rack

the other for his clothes.

"I

never

cause

liked

bothered much with him

Norris wasn't the kind of

friends

with.

He

friends.

And

don't

he

never

he'd done before he he

nice

was

I

him, but

talked

guy you made

enough,

think

he

talked

came

a

myself, be­ everybody

had

about

any

real

anything

in the service. In fact

anything at all.

"The rest of us were always passing around pictures of our girls and telling lies about them, and telling stories, you know how you do, every­ never

about

body trying to top the other guy's story, don't know if Norris

even

So

attention

nobody paid

while.

any

We asked him

stuff

and I

listened to any of it. at

to

him,

first, tried

after to

a

get

him in the crap games and everything, but after a while we let him alone. He was just there.

Winter,

1962

on,

-"

Lieutenant

said.

Ensign Calucci looked

Romano used to kid Norris

mean

times about him

the

Kaczmarek,"

"Anyway, the Guinea

"Kaczmarek?"

"who's

Ensign Calucci said,

that?"

concerned Norris.

"Norris

Guinea?"

"The

the

bay, trying to remember. Different scenes flashed through his mind, things that had happened a few years ago; a man he'd met in a train station, a girl he knew in high school, a ride he'd taken on the Staten Island ferry one afternoon when he'd been visiting a friend in New York.

None of them remotely

a

anything about it. The Guinea used

to kid him about-"

remembered it."

Kaczmarek

actually," Kaczmarek continued, "that

the guy had gone to college or something, which was why he had all these books. But if he had,

some­

all the time. He used to ask

reading why he never went over on liberty with the

rest of us.

"The Guinea used to tell-

"

"Romano," Ensign Calucci corrected. He'd stopped drawing boxes long enough to get an­ noyed. "His name is Romano."

"Yes, sir. Anyhow, sometimes at night he used to

try to get Norris to put away his books and

come

over

to

town with

the

rest

of

us.

Norris

usually wouldn't go, but one time we talked him into it. We were going over to the 'Y' to see if we could hustle a few of the town boys into a game of pool. Guinea was a "

-

"Goddammit," Ensign Calucci exploded, "Ro­ R-O-M-A-N-O," he shouted, leaning aggres­ sively across the table. mano.

Kaczmarek

was

startled.

shoved his chair back

Unconsciously he sorry,"

few inches. "I'm

a

Kaczmarek said. He watched with relief

as

En­

sign Calucci propped his chin on his fist and started drawing a box on the pad. "Christ," the Ensign muttered and, ripping off the top sheet of paper in disgust, started a fresh one.

"He

good pool player," Kacz­ marek continued. "We got a couple of the local boys in a game that night and Norris watched but I don't think he us for, about ten minutes, understood the game or something because he was

a

we

didn't

when

we

went out and

hours.

And

pretty

see

him for two

got ready

to

go

or

three

back

to

ship we had to scout around for Norris for a half hour or so. We finally found him way off in a corner by himself writing letters or something. the

"And until we

got to Greece, that was the only know about that Norris left the ship, time except maybe to go out on the pier for some ice cream or candy or something like that.

I

"What

about

Stiles?"

the

Lieutenant

asked.

"Let's get back to that."

25

"I don't think Norris

got used to Stiles.

"Well,

Ever since the first time he came aboard down in

anchored

Florida, there

beautiful there." Kaczmarek

ever

between

something

was

them,

I

we

out

don't know what.

out at the

"Stiles has always been hard on the new guys.

He gives them a lot of trouble at first just to see

over

they'll take it. If they take it all right, then

how

he let's them

alone.

But he

got used to

never

Norris. Stiles used to get him for all the toughest jobs. and Norris never complained, not even to us.

I

think

Norris was a fairly sensitive guy, and Stiles,

well,

"But

could

you

"

you know

tell

he

hated

Stiles.

Kaczmarek's voice trailed off.

..

"Stiles isn't too bright."

"Romano," Kaczmarek said, "stopped kidding Norris. It wasn't much fun really, because he'd never say anything. Everybody kind of forgot about him. You know how it is with these quiet guys. They don't talk and after a while people tend to forget they're around. Even now, it's hard trying to realize that he's dead, because you hardly noticed him when he was living with us down there in the compartment.

Stiles, Stiles never let up on Norris. After

"But

he found out that all he liked to do was

read, he

He took away his other with books in it, because he said

kidded him

about that.

locker, the one that you're not supposed to have books and stuff around on the ship. And you're only allowed one locker, he said. A lot of other guys had two lock­ ers and Stiles didn't care, but he only let Norris have

one.

books

1

after

reading

any,

don't that.

know But

it

where

Norris

didn't

slow

he must have found

so

"Stiles used to get drunk

someplace.

lot and he'd

a

his

come

nights and then he'd really give Norris some trouble. You know, just trying to provoke Norris into saying something.

Trying to make him mad. That was when he back meaner'n

hell

put his

down

some

started this queer business. He used to say Norris was

a

queer because he

with the other guys,

never

and he

went

never

over

to town

talked about

"But old Norris wouldn't pay any attention. He'd up there in his rack and go

Didn't

even

bother

to

answer

think Norris could have

right on reading.

Stiles. Myself, 1

saved himself

a

lot

of

if he'd just once gotten mad and said something back. But you see, by ignoring him, all he did was antagonize Stiles all the' more.

By trying to get Norris mad, Stiles would get so mad himself you could hardly stand it in the compartment sometimes. It just never let up."

"1 see," said the Lieutenant. "What's this about trouble

Greece?"

26

in

dirty

over

the

and

the

ship

Piraeus.

It's

very

Greece

to

bay

at

paused and looked bay. "The water

of the

water

there is real blue when the sun's

on

and

it,

you could see Athens from the ship. You could see those three hills with the old ruined build­

ings on them. They stuck way up above the rest of the town. One of them's the Acropolis. I forget the other two. Norris told

me

once, but I've for­

gotten.

"You see,

Norris

had

a

couple of books that

had pictures of these ruins in them. And right after the ship anchored, he dug these things out and started going through them.

"I

was

down in the compartment shining my

shoes the first day we were in Greece and Norris

sudden leans out of his rack and says, 'Johnny, come ovah heah a second.' I was the all of

only

a

one

around

and

1

guess

for

once

Norris

somebody to talk to. 1 went over and he said, 'My boy, I'm afraid you've been neglect­ ing youah classics.'

wanted

"'Yeah, that's quite possible, Norris,'

I

said.

"'Well, theah's no time like the present,' he said, and we started looking at these pictures with Norris talking all the time and telling me stories about them. He seemed to know quite a bit about it, and 1 have to admit that a lot of it was over my head, because as a rule, 1 don't go in for that kind of thing.

"1 think 1

was

more

interested in

finding

that Norris could talk than in what he

was

out

talk­

ing about, but I stayed there and looked at these ruins and listened to him because he seemed to be

having a good time, although as I say, it was pretty much wasted on me. 1 mean, these legends and things. "

'Listen, Norris,' I finally told him, 'I have to go right now, because I've got the watch, but 1 hear they're going to have a tour over there tomorrow for the guys that don't have the 1 know how you hate to leave the

girls or anything. lay

got

duty. ship and all

once you could force over and look at the real thing and go yourself instead of those pictures.'

that, but maybe just this

"'Say, that's a good idea,' he said. 'I think Right then he jumped out of his rack and went over and dug his camera out of his locker and some film and started putting it in the camera. Then he got out his liberty whites and threw them over on the bed and 1 said, 'Hey, hold it Norris, we aren't going till tomor­ row,' and he said, 'I know.' He was really ex­ cited, 1 could tell.

I'll do that.'

NORTHWESTERN

TRI-QUARTERLY

"The next the rest of

up before any of You'd have thought he was

morning he were.

us

was

going to call on the King or something. Every­ thing had to be just right. I guess when you stay on the ship for months and months at a time, it's a big deal when ypu do finally decide to go off.

morning we were all ready ready since eight and had been hanging around the quarterdeck waiting for the boat to come. He had a couple of cam­ eras and light meters slung around his neck and I told him that if I had to carryall that stuff around I wouldn't even bother leaving the ship, but Norris said, 'That's all right John, my boy, don't worry about a thing. We'll take 'em by surprise.'

"About nine that

to

Norris had been

go.

"We rode the boat we

to the

over

supposed to go in

were

pier

and then

bus with the other

a

I mean Ro­ guys from the ship, but the Guin mano and I had a little deal of our own cooked

riding the bus, because we were the only sailors there, al­ though there were a lot of tourists. fore the

rest

of the

that

guys

were

"Everybody was taking pictures and Norris was running around like a big director getting his lens settings or whatever it is they do. Myself, I could understand why you had to bother taking pictures of something like the Parthenon because

never

buy them on any newsstand. But I guess good enough if you're a camera fan.

you can

those aren't

"So Norris took a lot of pictures of other people taking pictures, and once in a while I guess got a column or two in the background. Then we got

Norris gave some more direc­ and Romano and I just sat

back in the cab.

tions to the driver

back and looked at the scenery. We rode out to Eleusinian fields. I think that's what Norris

the

it

said

was.

There's

theater

a

and

there,

a

-

up. So

we

got in

a

got over to the edge of the crowd and

cab. We didn't think

us, and then Norris

anybody had

the door

opened side and jumped right in with us.

"Romano

and

said, 'Norris,

I

looked

I think

other guys on the bus.

our

own,

a whole

other

and

I

go with those

you'd better

going to have a tour but I don't think we'll be looking at

"'I don't want to

go with

those

Norris said, and he just sat there,

other

so

there wasn't

"I hated

to on

tell

Norris

that

this thing for was

figure that

guys in

a

we

game

can

get

and win

a

all Romano

and

that we could

so

some

of these

few dollars.

local

If you

along that's all right with us, but what we're that's going to do.' Then Norris all of a sudden says something to this cab driver in Greek and away we go and I could tell by the want to

look some

on

come

his face that

we

were

going

to look

at

"Nobody said anything during the ride over to Athens, because Romano and I were a little mad at Norris to tell you the truth. I mean, coming along with us when we don't particularly want him, and then taking command of the whole operation.

"We went to the Acropolis first and

Winter,

1962

stones set around the mouth of the hole. "

'No kidding,' Romano said, 'it looks like an old

well

me.'

to

He

dropped

down

stone

a

into

it

and we didn't hear anything.

"Romano and I walked was

up the hill.

on

Norris

still poking around the well. We went through

open space where the theater used to be, where the Greeks used to hold these mysteries.

Nobody

ever

found

out

what

we

we all got got there be-

actually

went

on

there. That's what Norris said anyway.

"We went into this

and looked around

museum

things they had in there, statues and things in glass cases. There was a house next door to this museum and after a while a girl at

some

came we

of the

out of the house and into the museum where

were. She went

corner

over

to

a

glass

case

in the

and started taking these little stone figures

out of it and putting them on the floor.

"Romano and I stopped looking in the cases and started

watching her. She was worth

black hair and she smiled at

ruins after all.

out and walked around. I guess

carried down to the center

was

this

get out of work for the day. I said, 'Now look, Norris, Romano and I are going to get a few drinks and then we're going to look for a pool hall if they play that game around here, because we

Demeter,

of the earth by the King of Darkness.' There were

guys,'

much Romano and I could do.

I had gone

stopped and started poking around this hole in the ground. 'That's where Persephone, the daugh­

are

lot of ruins.'

walking up

the hill toward the theater. All of a sudden Norris

They're going on a regular

tour and Romano and I

of

seen

the other

"We got out of the cab and started

ter of

each

at

on

museum.

found out

we

were

looking

us

at her.

most beautiful teeth I've ever

it. She had

once

when she

She had the

seen.

"It was only about ten in the morning and there wasn't anyone in the place besides us three. A little later old Norris wandered in and took one

look at the

girl and we didn't hear another word

of English for five or ten minutes.

Finally we got

Norris's attention.

27

..

'Listen,

Romano

Norris,'

'ask

said,

her

if

there's a bar around here.'

"Norris

asked

'Theah's

her.

the road from where

across

we

down

one

then'

left the cab.' he

out in front all along the harbor where the

museum.

"Of

said. _,

'We'll see you later,' we said. "Romano and I

went back down and

all went

got the cab driver and

to this bar

over

and had

a

we

few drinks.

They had this old-fashioned juke box in there and Romano got the barmaid and started dancing.

The cab driver wasn't such a bad dancer himself,

although he was a pretty lousy drinker, We had

a

good time. Finally Romano and 1 got worried about getting back to the pier so that we could ride out to the

ship with the rest of the guys that had gone on the tour. We hadn't seen a sign of

only way he'd leave was if we drove back to Piraeus. We finally got him out and put him in the back seat of the cab, and went up the hill to get Norris.

"We couldn't find him were

lot of other

a

in the

people

There

museum.

in there

that

by

time,

but no sailors. We went up over the hill and down the other side and there

Norris and this

was

girl

sitting looking at the water way down below. I've never

seen

water

as

blue

it

as

was

there.

"Norris saw us coming towards them. We stood and waited more

while he

and

the

talked

girl

and then he got up and we went back up to

top of the hill and

over

and started

down to where the cab

was.

We left the

back

to

the

ting

some

there.

with

her

us,

walking girl sit­ looking at

the water.

"The old Greek cab driver

was

still

sitting

in

the back seat. 1 drove all the way back to town.

Norris just sat and looked out the window the

whole way. Once Romano asked him what he and the Greek girl had been talking about for

so

and Norris said, 'Her name's Anaris. She's

intelligent girl,' new

girl.

very

but that's all he'd say.

"Romano kidded his

a

long,

him all the

We got lost

a

way

couple

back about

of times

and

made it to the pier just in time to catch the boat going out to the ship. Before we got out of the cab, we stuffed a had to ask directions, but

we

few bills in the driver's pocket. He was still sleep­

ing in the back seat.

"It was a funny thing. For the rest of the time the ship was in Greece, Norris went over to town every night except the ones he had the duty, and on those nights he'd try to get somebody to stand his watch for him.

found

28

of the cafes in Piraeus.

so

interesting over in Piraeus.

"One night Romano and I saw Stiles and a bunch of his cronies sitting

a

few tables down from Nor­

ris and his girl. We were pretty far away from them, but it wasn't too hard to tell, even from that distance, that they ris.

course

wasn't

were

making fun of Nor­

hear

them

laughing.

Norris

paying

any

attention.

He

could

We

of

didn't

bother to go sit at another table.

"The ship stayed in the harbor at Piraeus for

night before we were going to leave, seeing Norris in the compart­ ment getting ready to go over to town. 1 asked him if he was going to say goodbye to his girl and he said he was. 1 was sitting in the mess hall when Norris came in, and asked Stiles, who was sitting at the next table, for his liberty card. weeks.

two

The

1 remember

"Stiles got

bunch of cards out of his

pocket going through them like he was look­ ing for Norris's and then he said, 'Don't you want a

and started

to

eat

before you go over,

Norris?'

"Norris

said, 'No, 1 haven't got the time.'

"Stiles went on looking through the pile of cards. Then he said, 'Oh, 1 forgot to tell you, Nor­ ris, you've got the watch on the quarterdeck tonight.'

"Norris looked like he'd been hit over the head, the

same

way

he

looked

when

he

first

came

aboard the

ship, down in Florida. 'I have some­ body standing by for me,' he said. 'Romano's going to take my watch.'

'No, 1 really want you to stay aboard tonight, Norris,' Stiles said, 'because I've been hearing stories about that little girl of yours. 1 hear she's Well, you don't want to catch anything like got that, do you?'

"Norris just stood there dazed. Then he said in this very quiet voice of his, 'Stiles, 1 never asked you for anything before. 1 have to go ovah tonight.' "

-

"

Norris,' Stiles said. 'I want to protect your reputation. 1 don't think a high-class 'I can't let you,

guy like you should be

seen

around town with

whore like that.' Stiles put the liberty in his

a

cards back

pocket. There wasn't a sound in the mess­

hall.

"Stiles sat there grinning down at the table wait­

"Romano and 1 would usually one

Stiles found out about Norris's girl.

Every night he went over to town he had to ask

"The cab driver didn't want to leave. He said the

course

Stiles for his liberty card and 1 suppose Stiles began to wonder what Norris all of a sudden

even

Norris.

fishing

boats pull in. Norris would be sitting there and he was always with the girl he'd met at the

see

him sitting at

They have tables set

ing for it to start. But it never did. Norris turned around and went back into the compartment and

NORTH WESTERN

TRI -QU ARTERL Y

I could see him from where I was sitting. He was taking off his liberty clothes and getting rvudy to go on watch.

"Stiles was still looking at the table in front of

mumbling to himself. 'You queer sorrofabitch,' he said. Then he said it again.

him. He

was

kind of

"'I never thought about it that way before. 1 always thought you were afraid of him.'

"Norris laughed then for a long time and it was the most terrible laugh I've ever heard in my life.

'Johnny,' he said, 'let's go back and sit down for a while. I feel like talking.'

He said it over and over."

"We walked back near the lifelines. Norris sat

Kaczmarek stopped talking and looked around him. Both of the officers were staring at him. En­ had

Calucci

long

since

stopped drawing boxes. The pad of yellow paper lay face down on sign

the table at his elbow. Out of the corner of his eye,

Kaczmarek saw someone walk by the open hatch.

"Is

that

all?"

the

Lieutenant

said

at

last.

"No, sir."

"Go on," he said. left

"We

Greece

the

next

straight to Gibraltar where we fore

steamed

stopped to fuel be­

started back for the States. I didn't talk

we

to Norris or even we

day and

much of him until the night

see

talked about earlier. The night Norris relieved

fantail watch.

me on the

"He

came

back there about quarter to twelve phones and gave them to him.

and 1 took off the

I was pretty tired and I'd just started walking for­ ward to go to bed when Norris arm

and

just stood there

grabbed me by the staring at me.

"

'Johnny,' he said, 'do you remember the last night in Greece? The night Stiles wouldn't let me go over to town? I'm pretty sure you were in the

of the bitts and I leaned up against the charge rack. 'I like to sit back here some­

on

one

depth times,' he said, 'don't you?'

'It's okay,' I said.

'She was a nice girl, Anaris. We talked about a lot of things the day you and Romano left us alone on the hill by the museum. I never met any­ body before that I could talk to like I could to that girl. When we used to sit in the evenings in "

"

of

front

of the

one

cafes

near

fishing boats come in, we everything.

and

talked about

'

"N orris

looking over the back of the ship one of those very clear, was calm, starry nights. The only time you see the ocean as calm as it was that night is just before the

at

a

was

It

wake.

storm. "

'Did you ever hear of a man named

Schopen­

hauer, Johnny, my boy,' Norris said. "'No,' 1 said, 'who's he?' "

'He's a writer,' Norris said, 'a very disturbing a while without saying

writer.' He sat there for

"

'I remember,' 1 said.

anything. I didn't feel tired any more for some reason. 'Johnny,' he said, 'when we sat on that hill together, you know what the waves looked

"

'Stiles came back drunk that night.'

like down below?'

"

'He always does,' 1 said.

"

"

But he came back and woke me up.'

"

mess

hall when 1 asked him for my liberty card.'

"'So what, Norris?' "

'No.'

'They looked like little pencils. They came up straight as pencils, one right after the other. It was so quiet there that afternoon to the beach

'He woke me up to tell me that he saw Anaris

with a bunch of sailors at one of the tables by the

that

harbor where we used to sit.'

wouldn't have wanted to. It's

"'Norris, don't

you understand why he

does

that?' "

didn't let "He that

"He sounded like he wanted to he reassured

said, 'She wasn't

a

whore, Norris,

so

you know

that.'

we

me

could have heard the a

waves, we

good thing Stiles ever coming

go that night. 1 wasn't

was

wake

still .

.

staring at the wake. 'You know, .'

he

said.

'Ever

since

we

left

Greece, it's all 1 can think about. The wake of the ship. That would be

a

nice

title for something,

wouldn't it?'

"

'Yes, 1 know,' he said.

"

'But if 1 had been down there in the mess hall

that night, and Stiles had said something like that about

if

even

back.'

'He said she goes out with sailors all the time.

Lots of sailors.'

I

the harbor

watch the

a

girl that 1

' ...

'You'd have hit him,' Norris said.

"

'That's right. You're damn right 1 would have.'

exactly what he wanted me to do, Johnny my boy. And by not doing it, 1 beat him. "'That's

the ship.'

Winter,

ever

since 1

why he talked to me anyway. I started walking away.

'Johnny,' he said. I turned around. 'I'm sorry 1 made you and Romano go sight-seeing the other stood "

"

I've been beating him

"I could tell from the way he was talking that he didn't need me there any more. 1 never under­

came

aboard

day.' He put

the

phones and turned around, a lot right then."

Kaczmarek stopped talking and shifted himself on

toward the wake. I liked Norris around in his chair.

1962

29

The

two

officers

looked

at

one

another.

"Is

there anything else?" the Lieutenant said.

"What do you think?"

"I think he killed himself. 1 think that

they found

he

left him

some­

and the time

gone a couple of hours later, he stood up and climbed over the lines and walked off the end of the ship into the wake."

"And

out

clusion?"

was

led

what

you

that

to

brilliant

just think that's what he did. thinking about it for a long time."

I've

been

"You don't think he

washed overboard in

was

the storm?"

"No, sir."

"If you thought he was going to kill himself that night, why didn't you do something about it?"

"1 guess that's what I'm trying to do now," Kaczmarek said. little late," the Lieutenant said. "That'll

be all, Kaczmarek.

are

you

Kaczmarek stood up, put the chair back against the wall and

out

stepped

the open hatch for

a

deck. He stood

on

near

moment, out of sight, the

voices trailing out to him from the wardroom.

"That wasn't

would

exactly what I was expecting." the Kaczmarek Lieutenant,

be

drifted

out

to

Kacz­

air, "Say, did the Yan­

kees win today?" *

*

*

made

Kaczmarek

his

way

aft

to

the

fantail

leaning his back against the depth charge rack. The afternoon had gotten suddenly hot. The air was thick and oppressive as if some huge unseen hand were pressing It Close down about the ship.

Kaczmarek felt tired. It had all been for noth­

ing. But he had known that before he started.

It didn't make any difference. He wondered what Stiles would do, He would have had one of the stewards

spying from the

pantry next to the by now everything

wardroom. He probably knew

saying for the last few hours

to

back

him.

toward

"What

happened?"

Romano

said.

"Nothing much."

"Stiles says he wants to see you."

"All

right."

"Right now," he says.

"Yeah, okay," Kaczmarek said. He stood

and went

over

to the lines.

up He looked down at

garbage and at the drifting gulls floating in the bay in back of the ship. Kaczmarek stared at these things for a long time.

The ship had swung on its mooring, and when he raised his head, instead of facing the town he the wood and

thought.

"There's not much to go one."

No witnesses. Not

on.

"I'm satisfied that he was lost overboard." The "It

seems

this

on

Lieutenant's voice again. was

out to

hang

this kid Kaczmarek.

Take

a

look

ords." The voices

to

Stiles. at

me

that

Perhaps

Stiles'

rec­

stopped momentarily. "Several letters of commendation from the Captain of the ship. As a person he may leave something to be desired, I don't know, but there doesn't seem to be much question about him otherwise. He's evi­ dently a hell of a good sailor. As for Norris' com­ mitting suicide, we have no earthly way of telling whether he did that

30

warm

Kaczmarek looked up and saw Romano walking

going to do?"

"I'm afraid that's up to us, Kaczmarek. That'll be all."

someone

voice

Lieutenant's

the officers from the base.

"What is it?"

a

The

marek through the

that he'd been

"Sir?" Kaczmarek said.

That

lulu. It happens all the time."

and sat down,

"No, sir."

"What

year

con­

"You don't think Stiles killed him?"

a

a

Ensign Calucci said.

"I

"It's

Ensign was speak­

ago. The ship 1 was on lost two kids just out of boot camp. That was on the west coast. Wl' hit a storm on the way to Hono­

"No, sir," Kaczmarek said.

time between the time I

"I remember one time," the

ing, "about

or

not."

mouth of' the harbor, to­ ward Gibraltar and Tangier, and toward the hill

looked off toward the

in Greece where Norris and the

watched the

girl had sat and

washing up on the beach far down below them; waves that from that height had looked like pencil-thin lines of white against waves

the incredible blue of the Aegean.

Kaczmarek turned at the sullen

slowly and, after glancing

rainclouds, walked toward the bow

of the ship.

NORTHWESTERN

TRI-QU ARTERL Y

Ralph Mills, Jr. In

first issue, Fall, 1958, Ratph Mills Jr., then a graduate student and teaching assistant in the Engtish Department, began THE TRI-QUARTERLY'S series of essays on tiving American poets with his "Towards a Condition of Joy: Patterns in the Poetry of Theodore Roethke." He now contributes a new an especially timely article, eteventh in that series, upon Denise Levertov Levertov her since Miss read at the recently poetry University, and many one, of our students were able to hear and to meet her. our

a

-

Mr. Mills is presentty

University of Chicago, book

on

-

Wallace

a

member of the Committee

where he also teaches He

has

contemporary poetry.

Edwin Muir, Dylan

Stevens,

a

published

Thomas,

on

course

Socuii Thought at the -

and is

reviews

preparing

and

Edith· Sitwell,

essays

Rene

a

on

Char,

William Faulkner, Samuel Beckett and others.

DENISE LEVERTOV:

POETRY OF THE IMMEDIATE The richness of the propositions con­ tained even in the slightest thing is so great that I have not yet conceived the possibility of giving an account of any but the simplest objects -Francis Ponge

CERTAINLY,

if

one

asked to do it, there

were

would be some difficulty in classifying the Ameri­ can

poetry of the last decade.

We

have

seen

the hardening of the once revolutionary techniques of

modern

into

verse

a

set

or

official

poetic

years of the classroom, their writings quite un­ scathed. Still, academicism is widespread in liter­ ture

today and many of its practitioners

idiom that prevents many younger poets, whatever

at the other

their skills and gifts, from developing in their own

of the kind

fashion. The idiom is there

form, tingly

-

in

diction,

manner,

and the writer may unwit­ walk into it as he would into a carefully

and attitude

laid net. When content to

a

-

poet remains entangled and is

sing within his snare, I guess

we

could

call him the prey of a new academicism. The net shuts him off from any further communion with the world. Academicism

also, though not neces­ sarily, includes the poet's absorption by the uni­ versities, which is frequently a very unhealthy state of affairs yet one that does provide a wage and some free time. And it goes without saying that a number of excellent poets have survived

Winter,

1962

are

bar­

ricaded behind college walls.

If we have at one extreme the academic poets, we face a violent literary anarchy exemplified by Corso, Ginsberg, and

McClure. The academic writer fails because he takes his material from the

history of literature polishes its surfaces; the 'hip' poet be­ cause he mistakes the release of hysteria, invec­

itself and

tive, and exhibitionist leanings for poetry. Whit­ man and Rimbaud, the masters of the 'hip' writer, had the genius and the literary power to ride the currents

their

of

emotion

and hallucination

in

which

drown. Between these

self-styled extremes lie among many other groups and sin­ gle figures, several members of the American po­ etic underground who began to receive attention at about the same time as Ginsberg, Kerouac, and successors

31

company

around

-

1957

-

who

and

even

were

and correspondences." Miss Levertov has learned

loosely associated with the 'hip' poets, though they

this lesson well, and it is the identical

bear no resemblance except in their opposition to

teaches us.

idiom.

accepted literary

an

whom

among

are

Robert

toninus,

Robert

Of those poets­ Duncan, Brother AI1-

Snyder

Creeley, Gary

Levertov stands out

as

one

-

Denise

of the few whose art,

original and compelling, convinces us of her genuine rapport with the reality she presents as the core of her work. Her poetry is often a tour through the familiar until its unfamiliarity strikes us: an imaginative scrutiny of the smaller realm of objects we usually treat as insignificant append­ ages to our lives; a persistent investigation of the and

Some poets make their poems the battleground style; and the reader can witness the efforts,

for

their

success

or

failure.

Levertov, there is

an

In

the

unseen

case

of

Denise

conflict which

oc­

curred somewhere in the eleven-year span between

her

first

book, The Double Image (1946), pub­ lished in England before she came to the United States, and her next, Here and Now (1957), issued

by Lawrence Ferlinghetti's City Lights Bookshop in San Francisco. Kenneth Rexroth, who antholo­ gized her work some years ago in his New British

of

outer

in the language of her own time and place,

nee-romantics of the war period; but his more re­

and completed in the forms natural to those events

cent statements about her writing indicate that he

as -

-

poet's

own

life

-

inner

she

events

the

both

one

they seek translation into words. Miss Levertov in the spirit of Martin Bubel' always says -

"Thou" to the persons or occasions or locations of her

experience: that is her imagination's

essen­

tial humanizing gesture towards the very stuff of existence. With the French poet Rene Char, she

plumbs

the

depths of the proximate, charts the

possibilities of her individual circumstance.

Along with some of her best associates and con­ temporaries, Miss Levertov has departed radically from the post-Symbolist literature of Eliot, Joyce, Yeats, and Auden; she has also broken with the tradition

of

verse

which has

grown

up

in

this

country from the artistic revolution caused by these pioneer modern authors. In other words, her

poetry starts out in a direction very different from the

established

one.

Miss Levertov

has

had

to

confront, in accomplishing this departure, the job of grappling with the literary heritage bequeathed her by two generations of predecessors. And she a way for A strug­ her. job which few would envy

has confronted it in order to open up

herself, gle of this sort normally makes or breaks a writer that is, if he dares to undertake it, as many do not and it is a real sign of Miss Levertov's a

-

-

abilities that she has returned victorious. But the

struggle

for

a

voice

and

style

of

one's

own

nothing unless it has been prompted of human experience itself, all the conditions by that is cast into the poet's field of vision in the amounts to

Poets, placed her

believes

-

as

I do

as

one

myself

of the most

-

promising

Miss Levertov's full

gift burst forth after she had been in America a while and, as Rexroth says, had come "to talk like a mildly internationalized young woman liv­ ing in New York but alive to all the life of speech in the country" (Poetry, XCI, 2, November 1957).

The poems gathered in The Double Image exhibit

readily enough a true poetic talent in the author, though they are not marked with those character­ istics of thought and rhythm and speech which would insure them as her handiwork, and hers alone. I don't mean by this remark that the poems are imitations; rather, they seem to par­ take of a general mood in English poetry of the time, due, no doubt, to the war. Here is world­ weariness, disenchantment, a flirtatiousness to­ wards death and the twilight regions of the spirit.

Somehow a vein of uncertainty runs through the poet's voice in these pieces, as if she almost suspected herself in what she was doing. I am sure, on the other hand, that I could never gain such an impression if Miss Levertov had published only that one volume or if she had continued in her initial style. She served her poetic apprentice­

ship in dim countries of emotion filled with whis­ pers of mortality and unrest, the damp vegetation of England, and murmurs of perishable love. I will quote just a few lines from one of these early

Aspects of Fear," so that we can more central productions:

poems,

"Five

proceed

to her

living. Poetry, if it will earn its name, must never begin with experience at second hand but with an unflinching gaze at what surrounds us everywhere and always. As the French philoso­

In fear of floods long quenched, waves fallen, shattered mirrors darken with old cries; where no shot sounds the frightened birds go flying

pher Jacques Maritain says in his Art and Scholas­

each country left is full of our own ghosts

course of

ticism, "Our art does not derive from itself alone what it imparts to things; it spreads over them a

secret which it first discovered in them, in their

invisible substance

32

or

in their endless

exchanges

over

heights of autumn soft as honey:

in fear of floods quenched, waves fallen.

Rags of childhood flutter in the woods and each deserted post has sentinels; bright eyes in wells watch for the sun's assassin: the regions bereft of our desires are haunted, rags of childhood flutter in the woods.

NORTHWESTERN

TRI-QUARTERLY

Something of the Georgians clings on in this pns­

must

sage with its rural withdrawal from contemporary

renovation of her poetic values. But this revolution

affairs, but the strongest and most obvious pull is towards Surrealism, which had, after all, crossed

of the heart, the head, the senses, how worth while

the channel in the nineteen-thirties and

was

still

strong influence during the war. Miss Levertov

a

tries, by means of dream-like associations and in­ definiteness of imagery, to render as nearly as possible the purity of her emotions, unsoiled by

it

all

come

a

common

on

world.

Her

sculpture.

are now

start

from

and that meant for Miss Levertov the

-

the yellow grass.

-

arching its glittering back.

The sound of more

water

pouring into the pail almost quenches my thirst.

Surely when flowers grow here, they'll not

"Pleasures," recent poem,

a

to

complete

flashes each time you make it leap

materials as a Giacometti or a David Hare senses she calls them in the title of

compelled

was

a

The water

atmospheric: the words, as I guess, are supposed to bear a cumulative weight of feeling apart from any denotation. How different from our present Denise Levertov, who senses her

as

than

bucket after bucket of water thrown

are

the materials of his

She

less

no

What a sweet smell rises when you lay the dust

to know

the essential poet in her, the poet we really love whose sleeves are rolled and who wrestles up to her elbows in the dust of

was!

scr atch ;

as

Here the effects

demanded

happenings of her own life. What she noticed so shrewdly was that the ordinary is extraordinarily mysterious:

the concrete or the particular. And that vagueness is far removed from what we have

have

quite altered:

smell sweeter than this wet ground,

I like to find

suddenly black. ("Laying the Dust")

what's not found at once, but lies

Of course, in his

within something of another nature,

Kenneth Rexroth further remarked

as

Miss

essay,

Levertov

came

under novel

in repose, distinct.

influences in America that

Gull feathers of glass, hidden

like any

in white pulp: the bones of squid

writer from whom she must have learned

occurs

completely

un­

English ones. He names the poet who to us at once as the real example, the

a good deal, without, however, sacrificing her own ca­ pacities. That poet is, obviously, William Carlos Williams; though it is likely she learned some­ thing from Rexroth's manner and preoccupations as well. Let us look at a brief but fairly .rep're­

which I pull out and lay

blade by blade on the draining board

were

-

tapered as if for swiftness, to pierce the heart, but fragile, substance Or a fruit, marney, belying design.

sentative poem of Williams to remind ourselves of his qualities; it is called "Between Walls":

cased in rough brown peel, the flesh

rose-amber, and the seed: the seed a stone of wood, carved and

the back wings of the

polished, walnut-colored, formed like a brazilnut, but large,

hospital where

large enough to fill the hungry palm of a hand.

nothing will grow lie

The reader will not be wrong if he sees in this poem, behind its fascination with the beauties of small objects and concealed things,

an

cinders in which shine

allegorical

the broken

statement of the poet's own concern WIth material

reality. In forcing tangible things to disclose their truth, she makes the human situation yield some of its secrets and covert analogies and predilec­

bottle

Clearly, this

tions.

The change which takes place between her first and

pieces of a green

second books

-

in

a

decade

that

saw

Miss

poem has little relation to the kind

of poetry in the ascendency during the first half of the

twentieth

century:

the

influence

of

French

the American novelist Mitchell

Europe, meet Goodman, marry

Symbolism has not much to do with what we see in these lines. Again, if we try to apply the sort of

him and settle in this country

is remarkable and

exegesis

Levertov leave

Winter, 1962

England,

travel in

-

to Williams'

poetry

-

or

to Miss Lever-

33

for that

tov's

Eliot's

matter

and

which

do readily

to

vulnerable to that kind of charge-and the poems

Valery's, look like tools. Ingenious explication

But, in addition, we need only cite the comment she supplies for Donald Allen's The New American Poetry 1945·1960, where there is no mistaking her distaste for sloppy verse: "I long for poems," she writes, "of an inner har­

Rilke's

or

-

or

we

shall miss the

we

point will bury the meaning of the poem; we should do better to contemplate it as we would a painting.

Williams'

attraction to the

membra

disjecta

of

the physical world, particularly that of the modern urban

firm

Miss

precedent setting, gave Levertovs own poetic venture. We should not for­ a

to

get, either, Williams' insistence that the moral responsibility of the American poet lies in the task of using his native tongue "to represent what his mind perceives directly about him" (Spectrum, III, 3, Fall 1959), because this endeavor is also Miss Levertov's.

Williams

has

been

for

bit

a

champion of States, sometimes

years

younger writers in the United

a

indiscriminately, and, further,

a

hardy

op­

ponent of the post-Symbolist literature of Yeats and Eliot, as well as of what he thinks is an out­ tradition of English verse forms and meters.

worn

It is not

by accident, then, that such poets as Levertov, Charles Olson, Robert Creeley, and Paul Carroll, in search of a way past the official poetic idiom we have already mentioned, turned sympathetically to Williams' writings and his viewpoint. The rejection of conventional for organic form; the refusal of set metrical patterns Miss

in

of

favor

what

Williams

"the

calls

foot"; the return to the spoken language of

the

notable

variable -

these

some

most

attempt to preserve some of the dying civilization, values for which Mr. Shapiro has, I gather, nothing but contempt, was

a

heroic

values of

a

preferring instead "ignorance" or the theories of Reich. We can be glad, however, that though Miss Levertov does not belong to Shapiro's culture­ poets, she has

none

of this

animus.

In

contrast

the poetry of the earlier half of the century with its heavy freight of symbolism and external to

knowledge,

I should like to call the work of Miss

Levertov, and most of the others tioned, a poetry of the immediate.

This term

requires

some

I

have

men­

explanation. I do

not

by "the immediate" an art without crafts­ manship, an art which fixes on the disorder of tov

34

impulse

has

or

never

emotional notation. Miss Lever­ allowed

her

utter

contrast

to

the

in

chaos

which

shapeless rep­ they exist." Poetry must not be things but an organically-formed transfiguration of them in which the transfigura­ tion, rather than poetic convention, determines the form. What I call "the immediate," then, signifies the complex of relationships between the a

lica of exterior

poet and what is close at hand in her personal experience. The things, the happenings, the thoughts which are personal events in themselves

-everything that constitutes the circumference of the poet's life as an individual-turn into the poetry. The author's intimate circum­ explored, its potentialities drawn out; but no matter how far her speculations lead her, Miss Levertov never oversteps that circumfer­ ence.

Instead, she is more likely to assimilate center of stance

is

outside elements: To sit and sit like the cat

and think my thoughts through­ that might be a deep pleasure: to learn what news

persistence might discover, and like a woman knitting

poetry

make something from the skein unwinding, unwinding, something I could wear or

something you could wear

when at length I rose to meet you outside the quiet sitting-room

(the room of thinking and knitting the room of cats and women) among the clamor of cars

and people,

the stars drumming and poems

leaping from shattered windows. ("Something to Wear") In

this

instance,

mind's self-reflexive

a

to

become

poem

activity.

grows around the While poems about

poetry, the act of composition, or about the mind

contemplating its own powers

and processes are rather usual in the literary history of the last hun­

dred years

-

Mallarrne and Wallace Stevens

pended much of their

mean

sheer

in

mony

results.

Again, few of the poets I have named, and certainly not Miss Levertov, are what Karl Shapiro has so scornfully tagged "culture" poets: their poetry is not, in general, a repository of intellectual history, learning, and fragments of the European cultural heritage. I am not trying to disparage that poetry as Mr. Shapiro does so unsuccessfully and by so much false argument. "Culture" poetry are

prove it.

themes

jects

-

artistic

ex­

energy

on

these

treat

such

sub­

Denise Levertov does

in a more personal way than most poets do.

Mallarrne,

in

his

famous

"La

vierge, le aujourd'hui," depiction of the poet's failure of imagination through the vivace and le bel

sonnet

offers

NORTHWESTERN

a

TRI-QUARTERLY

remote

but

trapped

in ice and earthbound:

lovely symbolic image

of

a

swan

with Miss Levertov, for whom the poem be­ comes an instrument of personal measure, of tests is

Un cygne d'autrefois se souvient que cest lui Magnifique mais qui sans espoir se del ivre Pour n'avoir pas chante le region ou vivre

and balances,

Quand du sterile hiver a resplendi I'ennui, (A swan of former times remembers it is he

Magnificent but who without hope gives himself up For not having sung of the region where he should have been

estimating and preserving the valu­ able in the teeth of a public actuality that grows day by day more hallucinatory and unreal. A poem like "The Instant" exhibits just such an individual experience and the depth of genuine emotion at­ tached to it by the author. As Miss Levertov's own

testament, the poem

space her

resplendent.

-

translated by Wallace Fowlie)

But however sharply the poet has felt the anguish of impotence in his art, he has removed the latter from the sphere of his own life and embodied it

well

her

some

or

as

she

third

mushrooms," says my mother.

Early, early: the sun risen, but hidden in mist the square house left behind sleeping, filled with sleepers;

Levertov does not recognize these barriers and refuses to hide her life from her imagination. What as

poetry creates around her life

or

aura

"We'Il go out before breakfast, and get

poetry, Stevens is less private; indeed, he wished to make his theory of the imagination into a cosmic view that could be shared by all men. Nonetheless, Stevens' poetry is impersonal and almost totally divorced from the important details of his existence as a man. Miss

up the dewy hill, quietly with baskets.

Mushrooms firm, cold; tussocks of dark grass, gleam of webs, turf soft and cropped. Quiet and early. And no valley,

as

is that poetry can be thoughts involved in the activity of the mind as it goes after its daily business of registering and inter­ preting and responding to the reality that sur­ rounds it. The poem "Something to Wear" de­ scribes the preparation of the mind or the self to encounter this reality (" the clamor of/cars and people ") and to perceive in it the sub­ stance of art and of beauty ("the stars drumming and poems/leaping from shattered windows"). The contemplating self of the beginning of the poem does not keep to solitude but goes out to en­ own

refuted

book, Overland to the l suuuis (1958), in its entirety; to cut it would be to destroy the form of experience as she has realized it:

in the symbolic universe of his

-

be

has lived it. I reproduce the poem, which is taken from

she may have learned from Stevens

cannot

denied because it stands well inside the

When the boredom of sterile winter was

from her

exists, chooses and asserts value. So it

which he

-

no

hills: clouds about our knees, tendrils

of cloud in our hair. Wet scrags of wool caught in barbed wire, gorse

looming, without scent.

Then ah! suddenly

...

the lifting of it, the mist rolls quickly away, and far, far

...

counter the

world and

of its

art there.

poetic

come

upon

the

"Look!" she grips me, "It is

Eryri!

It's Snowdon, fifty the voice

miles away!" a wave

material

falling.

as

of eagles, resting-place of

for certain of her

Merlin, core of Wales.

contemporaries, it is sufficient, even imperative, that the literary enterprise should concentrate on assigning judgment and worth to the particularities

Light graces the mountainhead for a lifetime's look, before the mist

of their lives within the limited range of individual

draws in again.

observation and knowledge. If such

writing lacks ambitious scope, it compensates by a penetrating and scrupulous honesty. Younger writers today, of almost every allegiance or group, have withdrawn their efforts from the elaboration of symbolic sys­ tems and mythologies; the Cantos, The Waste Land, and The Duino Elegies, while they are still greatly admired, apparently are looked upon as remote accomplishments. Now the poet feels he must use his art to define the space he inhabits

permitted

Winter, 1962

-

rising to Eryri,

Snowdon, home

Thus for Denise Levertov,

if I may be

-

the

figure

-

-

the space in

This poem is both matic in

an

abbreviated

character, and

a

narrative, dra­

.spiritual revelation of

nearly ineffable sort. Within the tradition of post-Symbolist literature such a private illumina­ tion would be objectified into the order of a larger which is not to say that metaphorical universe a.

-

its value would be sacrificed but that the value

would be transmuted. Here the experience stands

alone, is viewed in its own terms. Miss Levertov molds the event into art and yet

never

abandons

35

the

quality

of direct utterance

01'

To the multiple disordered tones

the domain of

of gCilrH changing, a dance

her

existence. The instant to which the poem's title refers is the moment of enlightenment that when mist and clouds

occurs

to the compass points, out, four-way river.

part to expose the

Prospect of sky wedged into avenues, ll'ft at the ends of streets, wr-xt sky, east sky: more life tonight! A range

mountain peak resplendent in till' ea rly of light day. Still, the poem remains a poem of

distant

of open time at winter's outskirts.

fact, rising out of ordinary circumstance and im­ mediate life, and returning there. We are ac­

quainted with this kind of illumination in Blake or with them it

Rilke, though

gives

foundation to

a

whole

("February Evening in New York") the rest of us pass by noise, and the ability to Marianne Moore does, a poetic vic­

attention

This every

day

achieve,

what

to

trivia

as

or

mythological scheme: the world of things ablaze with the eternal Being they mirror. But

tory

to have this revelation in Miss Levertov's art

talents Miss Levertov has at her disposal without

must

she as

enter

the

precincts

of the

poet's life,

we

for

justifies her art in terms of that life as well her life in terms of artistic perception.

exaggeration to say that

In fact, it would be no

Miss Levertov's primary concern is not to proffer

its

details-her

instincts

the stubble field, "Look,

I want to speak to you.

the flowers are dancing underneath the

To whom else should I speak?

tree, and the tree

a

is looking down with all its apple-eyes."

world to speak of.

In your warmth the

Without hesitation or debate, words

all the fruits ripen apples and pears that grow on the south wall of my

used and at once forgotten.

-

("The Lesson")

head. If you listen it rains for them, then

While I find it impossible to imagine Miss Lever­

they drink. If you

tov

speak in response

upon the

the seeds

city's winter streets and the fragments of

talk overheard in them: As the stores close, a winter light opens air to iris blue, glint of frost through the smoke,

grains of mica, salt of the sidewalk.

As the buildings closed, released autonomous feet pattern the streets

should

we

with crooked heels says to another

integral part of living. In

while they step along at a fair pace,

-

hearing.

never

have

known.

And

that

is

no

achievement for any poet. I cannot think better way to conclude than by quoting the

a

lovely title

"You know, I'm telling you, what I love best is life. I love life! Even if I ever get to be old and wheezy or limp! You know?

concreteness, her art opens new

object and situation that but for it

mean

of

woman

." Out of

an

monplaces and instants of grace, but it is, too, a world made rich and different by this poet's wise and clear apprehension of it, her abundance of imagination. Poems do more than leap from windows; they emerge from the humblest, most mundane things. The quotidian reality we ignore or try to escape Denise Levertov revels in, carves and hammers into tight, precise lyrics.

dimensions of

As the lights brighten, as the sky darkens,

I'd stiH.

musing abstractly

her poems, we cross into a world very like our own, with the same ornaments and refuse, com­

of life in its true

drift and dive above them; the bodies aren't really there.

-

theorist

As celebrations and rituals lifted from the midst

in hurry and stroll; balloon heads

Limping along?

aesthetic

an

poetry is, for her,

("The Marriage, II")

a woman

as

rightful function of poetry in a hyper­ industrialized society, I am sure that in practice

jump into the ground.

Speak or be silent: your silence will speak to me.

the

and

Nik, at 4, called

It is you who make

36

the

are

Martha, 5, scrawling a drawing, murmurs "These are two angels. These are two bombs. They are in the sunshine. Magic is dropping from the angels' wings."

over

or

prosaic

of her children:

business of life in search of what she calls "the and

the

thinking of them. She is totally alive to each fluctuation, each breath and vibration of the at­ mosphere through which she habitually moves.

Poetry speaks to her with the innocent tongues

visionary experiences, which she does only on occasion, but to probe doggedly all the normal authentic" in its rhythms marriage, for instance:

as

amidst

poem

at the Back

of

of her recent book With

OUT Heads

Levertov takes for

a

Eyes (1959) in which Miss

theme the

ability

to

bring

to focus two dimensions of

distant but

realty which appear somehow participate in one another.

NORTHWESTERN

TRI-QUARTERLY

She gives us here, as she does increasingly latest work,

parable phorical representation a

of the inner

in her meta­

life, spiritual process

of

the individual. The heart of the poem

a

seems

in

para­

doxical, but important truths, we know, can spring from such incompatabilities: the way for­ ward and the way back, in this case, are the same. into

Movement

the

realm

of

appearances

de­

mands alteration of them and transformation of self which ends, finally, in regeneration and unity,

path to an interior state of blessedness cor­ responding to the paradisaical image of the moun­ tain. Like Rilke's dictum, "You must change your life," Miss Levertov's poem suggests the in­ the

ward and outward routes order to

we

need to travel

see:

With eyes at the back of our heads we see a

mountain

in

too narrow, and one is set high with no doorsill. The architect sees are

the imperfect proposition and turns eagerly to the knitter.

Set it to rights!

The knitter begins to knit.

For we want to enter the house, if there is a house, to pass through the doors at least

into whatever lies beyond them, we

want to enter the arms

of the knitted garment. As one

is re-formed, so the other, in proportion.

When the doors widen when the sleeves admit us the way to the mountain will clear, the mountain we see with eyes at the back of our heads, mountain

not obstructed with woods but laced

here and there with feathery groves.

green, mountain cut of limestone, echoing

The doors before us in a facade

with hidden rivers, mountain of short grass and subtle shadows.

that perhaps has no house in back of it

The Tri-Quarterty gratefully acknowledges the courtesy of Miss Levertov and her publishers for permission to quote, in whole or in part, the following copyrighted

"Laying the Dust," "Something to Wear," and from Here and Now, 1957, with the permission of City Lights Pocket Book Shop, San Fran­ cisco; "The Instant" and "The Lesson," from Overland to the Island, 1958, with the permission of Jonathan Wil­ liams, Publisher, Highlands, North Carolina; "Pleasures," "February Evening in New York," and the title poem, from With Eyes at the Back of Our Heads, with the per­ mission of New Directions Press, New York.

"Between Walls," by Carlos Williams, from Selected Poems of Carlos Williams, 1949 is reprinted with the permission of New Direction Press, New York. poems:

:'The Marriage,"

Winter,

1962

37

Ingeborg Hough Both the style and insights

by means oj which Ingeborg Hough could create

the persons of this story were possible because, like the exiles who are por­ trayed (and betrayed) in Artists, she knows both pre-Hitler Germany and the

United States of today. Born ill Hamburg, she came with her family to the United States in 1939, whc1I they left their home because of Hitler. She attended Western College, Oxford. Ohio, and received her M.A. in French at Northwest­ Since 1945 she has lived intermittently in Evanston and in Cambridge, England. She has held several teaching posts in the Middle West, and is at

ern.

present working toward her doctorate in German Literature

at Northwestern.

ARTISTS CRYING IS NOT

THE ANSWER, Lulukind. It is, is it? Think of what Father used to say.

Tears are water, and not enough of it to do any good."

But in spite of her efforts to regain her com­ posure, the younger sister could not stop sobbing.

never

The convulsions in her throat seemed to have

a

lace-edged bolster. An ob­ by the strength that the frail-looking middle-aged woman ex­ hibited in laying her sister back to rest. The latter looked frail, even brittle, but the will radi­ ating out from her was visible, obtrusive even, back into server

the large,

would have been amazed

in the tension of the muscles. But Lulu's muscles

rhythm their own.

It did seem just too cruel that after her long and tiring day at the hospital the new radio should be broken, just when Beethoven's Pastoral Sym­ phony had been planned as this evening's rec­

had been

reation.

hand. Then she said breathlessly:

volition of their own,

"But

how

it

can

"German fabrication if

a

hectic

broken?"

be

and

practically

buy it second-hand!"

"Dearest, dearest baby, you we

Lulu

new,

even

afraid

your

nerves

must

are

"Gerda, what

are

you

doing?" she said, sud­

denly completely calm. "Please go back to bed!

You must go back to bed this instant!" was

at the foot of the bed in

no

time,

gently urging, then frankly pushing, her sister

38

At first Gerda

of emergency.

just gasped; her sister held her

"I have

a

surprise for you. A nice surprise for

ing and felt

so

Schmidt

came

this

morn­

found that the radio didn't work, I sorry for me, and for you, and for all the we

world!

And then I thought that we deserved a something. I was going to get it, but I sup­ posed you cruel jailer wouldn't let me get up. 0, a sister is a cruel jailer, but it's really me who is your jailer, I know! Go to the wardrobe, dear­ est. Look under the black skirt, by the over­

little

shoes.

"

Lulu went to the brown wardrobe,

bed.

And she

case

you, Lulu. When Mrs.

did

I'm

in and out in

sobbed.

dry your giving way.

And it's really my fault, my fault for lying here day in day out, forcing you to do all the work just to keep alive an old wreck like me!"

And now something happened that made Lulu stop crying in a matter of seconds. She saw her sister, for weeks prostrated by a pain around the heart, rise like a ghost from the large white tears.

strengthened, as she had spent half her life as hospital nurse; this had included moving patients around in their beds, even lifting them

a

mahogany

edifice of the heaviest German manufacture, and she opened the gleaming door, as always a bit fearful lest the whole thing topple over on her.

Then she bent down and extracted a bottle from the musty insides.

NORTHWESTERN

TRI-QUARTERLY

"Pussy, you angel! Sherry! And the very best, too! Tio Pepe! Tio Pepe! How it sounds l How grand! How grand!"

And the

frail, tall woman danced around the bottle, clutching it like a baby. The tracks of her tears were still gleaming on her room

with

a

cheeks.

The older sister raised her head from the bol­ ster. A serene smile spread over the fine features;

her dark eyes were tesimal wrinkles.

"Let's

have

what do you

aglow in circles

of

infini­

glass and forget our worries, say? Father always wanted us to a

be Lebenskunstler, artists of life,

as

else's

bloom

like

that.

So

we

have

green

fingers with flowers and with life, don't we, Lu­ lukind?" sisters claimed that

they were tipsy, quite tipsy. *

*

*

Girded by silent chasms There is a place so fair Wrapped round by airs and perfumes, We all, we all played there.

Since then we've all been straying And in the world must roam, The growths of weeds enmeshed us, None ever got back home.

entertaining; three tenants in the big, slightly dilapidated building (which was in a formerly distinguished section of town, however) were being treated to a German meal. In spite of their modest circumstances they often entertained, mostly to keep their spirits up, Tonight

the

sisters

were

for their new country, the United States, had not enough Kultur, as they called it, to suit either one of the

sisters

kunst,

all their life

tolerable.

One

required all their Lebens­ artistry, to make existence the guests, the helpful Mrs.

and it of

Schmidt, long retired who had come with her parents from Germany at the age of two, had kept up a nodding acquaintance with a few words of German. Even though she could not understand every word of the verses Gerda had declaimed, in German, at the beginning of the party, she smiled with appreciation, Lulu thought. What she did un­ derstand and enjoy most, however, were the pic­ tures on the walls of forests and lakes, delicate water-colors and silhouette-cuttings executed by the sisters themselves. Yes, she too had heard of Miirchen forest in Germany, and it was one of her oft-proclaimed sorrows that she had never found the time in her busy life to go over to the old country, to connect with her roots. Dana Sweet, the second guest, had a more tangible appreciaa nurse

Winter,

1962

in

where

Germany

had

he

made

girls who had taught him the lan­

guage.

Gerda was afraid that Ruth Roscoe, the third guest, usually so full of life, was bored. She was a young wife who had accepted the sisters' invi­ tation with enthusiasm; it seemed that her hus­ band had had to stay at the office tonight. But Gerda must have been wrong, for Ruth suddenly roused herself and admired Lulu's new grey Gerda

dress. sewn

also

proud of it

was

as

she

had

it for her sister.

"I made it out of 47

pieces-completely

out of

she said proudly.

scraps,"

"That reminds

of Joseph somehow," Ruth

me

otherwise you don't strike me as Biblical. You know, when I see you in the street, "But

mused.

part of the twentieth cen­ And yet they're not tury-your clothes, or Victorian old-fashioned, twenty-ish or so, either.

You know, when I see you two coming, in your fitted coats, your veiled hats-you know what I think of? Country gentlewomen from my old story­ books, like the mother of the Little Colonel, country gentlewomen who live on big estates I

After a substantial glass of Tio Pepe each, both

recitation, for he had done some mili­

service

friends with

he was, and

are, you know. Look at our white African violet; Mrs. Schmidt says she's never seen any­

we

one

bon of the

tary

think you

never

are

I

mean.

where time somehow stands still."

smiled

sisters

The

What

curtsey.

a

nice

and

each

compliment

gave a little this was, and

how penetrating the young woman had been! More admiration was to come.

"Look, Ruth," the nurse said, "aren't those pic­ stunning? Look at the way those leaves are drawn! You could actually touch everyone of them. They look so real!" tures

Ruth

got up to look

exclaimed that she

at

could

the

watercolors

never

have

and

produced

anything like that. Dana Sweet also rose to ad­ pictures, commenting on their German, romantic atmosphere. mire the

"I guess you two aren't Prussians," he chuckled.

"You're more the medieval, lady-bountiful type, both

of you.

But

then I

guess

that's

what you

were, over there on those big estates in the east."

Just then Lulu, who had been flitting in and out

of the

cooking niche

on

noiseless nurse's

shoes,

announced that dinner was ready. All sat down at

mahogany table, which was covered very white and heavy linen cloth, and Gerda, using the large silver ladle with delicacy and precision, filled the gold-rimmed soup plates

the

round

with

a

with

a

rich brown broth.

"What

marvelous

plates,"

Dana

Sweet

ex­

claimed. "I guess they're from your heirlooms in

Europe?"

39

Both sisters smiled with

certain slyness, nod­ at each other. a

ding and winking "May I tell? May I tell?" Lulu said. suddenly becoming a mock little girl.

"All right," Gerda said quietly, her hand deli­ cately pointing the soup-spoon in the air.

"Well, when we were working as maids, you when we first came to this country? When know we had lost our property to the Poles and western Germany wouldn't recognize our diplomas? Well, -

did work

we

country

-

to

this

wonderful about this country that

one

as

when

maids

do that without

came

we

off

breaking tiny particle from one's reputation the family we worked for gave us this set of china in gratitude. We were

can

a

sister, was less sentimental about her pro­ fession, but she was resigned to it and the hard

to her

work was

elementary school teacher in Germany, the step downward socially from professional to clerical help had demanded courage and dedication from

day to the next. But it was their hobby, drawing, which kept their souls alive and con­

one

nected them with the great world of art, and as long as one had a connection with some higher

world,

touched. Then

found out later, as we went shopping one day, that it's a Japanese set and can or, rather, could, be bought at Woolworth's. we

one

is

constantly pacing

a

moment

cheated and let down. And then

grace;

fine

one

day we

The guests

profundity

were

as

silent, no doubt in awe at the

that had been uttered.

Dana Sweet asked

suddenly.

The sisters

replied

that they had had, from earliest childhood, chant for

drawing,

since they could

ever

a

pen­

remem­

ber, it seemed.

"But you know, it was

strange," Gerda said in whisper. "You know how children always draw houses, and the sun, and a tree, and invariably the house has a chimney, and the sun has rays, and the tree is the umbrella kind an elm, I I we never did that. drew Well, always suppose? a castle, a very big castle with lots of battlements a

-

and little towers all over. Lulu at first drew houses

and sun-rays and umbrella-trees, too, but she soon learned to imitate up,

you

me.

know, since

I

practically brought her

our

mother died

so

young.

And then she also drew

castles, except that she always put people into her pictures, such as fowlers and hawkers and a beautiful princess look­ ing out of the garden gate."

Lulu smiled as she silently collected the soup plates, the tureen. Then she brought the main

I

an

animal that still for

never

Look at my

finally

succeeded

real

sheet of paper out of lying on the window sill.

portfolio

large

a

a

There were "oh's" and "ah's" all around, then

"Portrait of Lulu

saying:

lady, done by

a

that he

thought

a

lady artist."

sounded annoyed, oddly

enough; she wondered why. He was a person she could always count on to be pleasant; she often thought that he must be marvelous in his capac­ ity as public relations director, which was un­ doubtedly a very responsible position requiring the highest education and finest character. But per­ haps it had been her imagination that he had seemed cross; far from sounding annoyed now, he was praising the fine detail of the hair and teeth of the animal. Suddenly he pointed his finger at both of the sisters.

"Ladies," he said, "I'm going to make artists out of both of you. How about going back to school

and

becoming art students?"

Both age,

laughed and protested. At their

sisters

and

students,

But Dana

seemed to

persuade

their

with

meagre

not to be dissuaded.

was

funds!

His mood

get gayer and gayer, his desire to and

more

sisters about

dish.

paper

a

Dana Sweet's voice

"Where did you two learn to draw like that?"

on

and moving,

that is

-

And she drew black

stronger!" Lulu sighed. "I one of my favorite places

challenge. in capturing his what do you think of my big pussycat?"

cheetah!

plates had remained just beautiful, in spite of all that. Funny, isn't it?

were

often go out sketching; is the zoo. To capture

It's not there any more. At first we felt frightfully discovered that the

safe.

was

"If only Gerda

-

so

gratifying, there was no doubt about it.

Both seemed grateful that they had got anything at all, even though for Gerda, who had been an

more

earnest.

He

told the

art school which

correspondence

a

did

would not be very expensive, he was sure, and which had as directors several famous commer­

Gerda

cial artists. He would not bother mentioning their

The conversation drifted to the sisters' jobs. How

they find working conditions in this country? spoke enthusiastically of her great respon­ sibility in having charge of the filing department in the small but distinguished publishing house in which she worked.

The fact that she

often

names,

he

told

them, thinking that the sisters

would be unfamiliar with them.

The

party

ended

on

consulted where a knowledge of foreign languages

banter.

The

sisters

were

was required

was

of particular

gratifica­

their

tion for her. Lulu, the angel of St. Giles,

according

exceed their old

40

was

a

source

new

life

in

a

note to

the United one

in

of

affectionate

become States

artists­

would

even

Germany in beauty and

NORTHWESTERN

TRI-QUARTERLY

dignity. Dana guaranteed it. How m arvelous that life should hold surprises still at their age!

The next several months

the

spent in

sisters

saving their money at every opportunity. They saved as only they could save, for since they had lost their

possessions in Germany they had be­ in the field of saving, too. Their little indulgences, such as having coffee on Satur­ day morning, making a pleasant break in their shopping, the little inexpensive but carefully chosen gifts they had a habit of surprising each other with periodically, the occasional bottle of Tio Pepe, all disappeared from their life. Only the radio, long ago restored, remained with its artists

come

great music.

pointed out to them the fact, necessity, of having a live

letter with the directions

desirability,

in

model for their sketches

in

human figure was be attempted, in any style or medium. The sisters of course were lucky in having each other; the one would model for the other, feeling through the boredom of holding the pose the thrill of anticipation as she waited for her allotted drawing-time. the

Figure drawing and a complete course in anat­ requiring the additional purchase of an ex­ pensive book delighted and sustained the sisters for many months. They were looking, looking, in­ creasing their "visual vocabulary," as it was called, from day to day, and their enthusiasm for omy

small sum of money had accumulated, they sent for a talent test from the school Dana Sweet had recommended. They could not hide from

the human anatomy knew

each other the disappointment they felt when they

the window.

When

a

confronted with

small stock of

pictures (banal according Lulu, plain vulgar according to Gerda) to be copied and analyzed. However, giving each other courage, saying that all be­ ginnings are difficult, they drew and analyzed, hot with effort, forgetting at the end that at first they had taken comfort in the fact that. they were were

a

to

not yet committed.

A week after

mail, to

they

had sent the tests off in the

representative

a

them

see

from the art school

came

that this

He

personally. explained done, but that he was just pass­

usually ing through the area and that he wanted to tell them that they had both done exceptionally well in the test. A great future in commercial art lay before them, he felt sure. not

was

all instances where

to

no

bounds.

"Lulu, I saw the most marvelous musculature

today; I was watching the garbage man through He's

new

a

one,

splendid Negro

a

I the heat glistening I and grabbed my sketch-pad captured, think, those shining shoulders and the way they're joined

almost

and

violet

in

-

to the back."

Gerda showed her charcoal attempt, later to be

meticulously copied in pencil with the dark areas stippled in various degrees of black.

"You know, Pussy, every day I deplore that I they would make such patients

can't draw the

-

trying to develop what so when I see memory' a particularly enticing physique or paintable pose, I make a thorough mental note and draw it dur­ when we're not too busy ing my lunch hours perfect

models. But I

am

Mr. Raffa calls 'visual

-

-

and I

can

take one, that is."

Animal anatomy followed, and it was here that

The sisters could not hide their delight and in spite of the considerable increase in fees of which the representative informed them, they became

the younger sister, able to go for walks outside, found great satisfaction. She renewed her trips to

enrolled in the Perma Art School then and there.

models in the animal kingdom were still the mag­

After the representative had left them,

nificent and ferocious

they were high spirits, dancing around the room and singing, like young girls. Now that they were true and legitimate art students they could take in their stride the mediocre roles they played in the in

very

world.

In

a

short while the first

assignment from the required the pupil action sketches in outline only, without

art school came in the mail. It

to draw

taking mass or dimension into consideration. The examples which were sent in the envelope were again something of a shock to the sisters cheap, but why worry, facile, yet undeniably competent this was technique only and their own style could and would develop according to their own choos­ ing: their nobler conception of life was bound to show later in the more difficult assignments. The -

-

Winter, 1962

the

zoo

with

zeal

freshly kindled;

her

favorite

big cats. The Latin names delighted her and she would, after labeling her drawing with the English name, add, in neat italics, the Latin alternate. It was sad for Gerda that she could not also go to the zoo. Her heart condition, according to her doctor, had improved

quite a lot and she had long ago gone back to her job, but now her stomach and digestive system had been declared very sensitive, requiring a diet consisting of the gentlest and choicest items. The little

salaries

dwindled

even

further

And yet there was satisfaction in this queen-bee diet. additional

strain.

under a

this

certain

"Pussy," said Lulu, "you are just finer, more delicate, than other people. Sweets to the sweet, and fine to the fine. It somehow suits you to eat sometimes I think you were al-

scraped pigeon

-

41

meant

to

eat

scraped pigeon. Do you re­ member your old admirer at the McCarthys, old Mr. Rex? Well, he said to me one evening: I r-un­ ways

imagine rooms, wearing

sister

in

the

but

finest

deep. Of course he did pay us pliment.

great com­

a

very

"

"About England, you mean? When he said that

any but the finest silks, tasting in fact, I think he said any but the finest foods

maybe magazines for the English aristocracy, like or the London Illustrated News might like our drawings? Yes, I know. What he means,

viands, a word I had to look up in the dictiona ry ."

of course, is that

not

your

any

-

Gerda smiled.

"Oh yes, Mr. Rex. If I had married

him, what

would you have done? Then you would have had no

one

to take care of you.

would have lived with

us.

Well, of

course

you

Mr. Rex died so hor­

ribly, didn't he? All my beaux seem to die, don't they? Of course most of them were soldiers."

Gerda seemed to thrive

her

diet, and when it was discovered that the zoo disposed of commodious bright orange wheelchairs, Lulu would wheel her sister, armed with a sketch-pad, to the animals she loved, and the two got more and more adept at putting on paper the attitudes of the lordly cats.

But their drawings were found too detailed and not lively enough by the invisible mentor at the art school. In fact, the grades of the sisters were a constant challenge for improvement. They had been told by the representative that if their final grade were a B, they would be guaranteed a job­ on

new

referral in the field of commercial art at the end of the

course.

Neither

one

of the

sisters

could

the T'atier

we

would feel at home with

an

aristocratic, refined audience and they with us."

"But maybe I should cut down detail and imi­ tate Raffa just a little, just to learn something," said

"After

Lulu.

all, Toulouse-Lautrec

was

an

aristocrat, and he painted the demi-monde! And his pictures

loathsome though his subjects are, have life, haven't they, Gerda?"

Almost every evening ended with a discussion about art, and the sisters would concentrate on ways and means to meet the for a final B.

challenge, to work

The three years required to finish the course at first. passed with the slowness of

an

eternity, but

then speeded up, in fact accelerated to an uncanny

degree as each day was filled with sketching, see­ ing and thinking, thinking visually. The remains of their tiny savings had long ago gone into paints, sable And the sisters brushes and postage. learned, learned, learned. Even though they fell into bed dead tired every evening, their life had a center and a goal and they were happy.

"Lulukind, do you rem em bel'," Gerda said in

progressing? In their own eyes they were, building up their visual vocabu­ lary as their mentor admonished them to do, in­ creasing their knowledge of anatomy and composi­

one night, "on cousin Harald's estate, when plough-horses of the Polish laborers slowly drew the carts, their enormous legs oh, I can still see the hair on those legs stepping so pa­ tiently, plodding and plodding along? When there would be a stone in the road, or the load would be so heavy? How the horses would pull, pull, even when the laborers stopped to bow as we came by?

tion both.

And how the horses

quite understand why their first drawings, the out­ line sketches, should have merited an A- each when subsequent drawings done with much more should have fluctuated between C- and B- at

care

best.

Were

they

not

Dana Sweet had moved to another town, but not

before

paying a call on the sisters. He inspected their portfolios and they had a heart-to-heart talk about the drawings as they, still taking the laws of hospitality seriously even though they were now

really poor, treated him to a repast of lobster

bed

the

-

-

never

gave up,

allowed to give up? Well, I feel we old

were

are

never

those good

and we will get the harvest Think of the triumph in the end!

enduring horses,

into the barn.

We will be

self-employed artists, living the way should, in the company of esthetic and literary people, the leaders of society, as Father would we

meat and white wine. They often quoted him later,

want us to be."

repeating and interpreting bits of their conversa­

color, allowed after one and a half years, was a source of great delight to both sis­ ters. And then came specific projects directly an­ ticipating future assignments in the field of com­

tion with him.

"What did he mean by 'life'

exactly, Lulu, as he

looked at Mr. Raffa's corrections and sketches?"

Gerda asked, not for the first time.

"Well, I think he meant that Raffa's seem

figures don't,

Being man, and an American, he doesn't notice the superficiality of these hasty sketches a

that

look like

But

maybe he does! These people are sometimes

42

advertisements

and

use

of

mercial art.

to move and I suppose he thinks ours

Gerda.

The

nothing

else.

Here Lulu had occasion to

admire

her sister's wit and ingenuity.

"Draw an ad for a handbag firm in brown, black and white

or

any mixture

thereof, using Winsor­

Colors

unit size 5" x 61,2" Designer's the assignment had specified. And Lulu had mar­ velled at her sister's cleverness, the latter having Newton's

-

NORTHWESTERN

TRI-QUARTERLY

produced a dinosaur holding an alligator bag in its

ison to her

ineffectual, pathetic little hands. Every scale, ('V­ ery epidermal effect on monster and bag had been scrupulously filled in. A ruler was not allowed, and

the poppies, were pink here rather than blood red.

Gerda would not cheat

-

no

one

in their

family, Ages,

which had been traced back to the Middle

but Lulu feared knowingly cheated that Mr. Raffa might think that Gerda had used a ruler in her rendering of the little handbag, so straight were its edges.

had

ever

*

project, Mr. Raffa's grade was a C+.

The drawing came back slightly stained, and en­ closed was a sketch of a plastic bag, very large, with a bamboo handle; all this was indicated in a few very large charcoal strokes.

"Stay big!" the

red note in Mr. Raffa's very large handwriting, by

*

When the three years

-

On this

European sister. And Papaveraceae,

came

*

were

from the Perma Art

almost up, there final big

School the

project on which much was said to depend. An project it was, one that filled Gerda with

odd

apprehension because figure-drawing, she had al­ known, was not her strength. They were to

ways

draw

"Mr.

and Mrs.

bathing costume,"

America

on

the

beach in

the instructions had indicated.

"Unit size: of your own choice. Colors: any num­ ber of your own choice."

Drawing a man's figure had always been a prob­

sisters, design said. "Don't outline, and don't fill in! That's why no B this time. Think big, draw big!" And not a word about the reptilian wit and whimsey, the delightful anachronism, of her con­ ception. Gerda cried and stuck the drawing into a

lem to the sisters as a male model was not readily

cardboard box at the back of the brown wardrobe

tenant,

now

familiar to the

so

at the bottom of

Gerda's

which contained similar casualties. She could not

was

to be the

vious

efforts,

good

-

it

grand, grand finale of all their pre­ a

great delta into which all rivers

merged. So in view of the gravity of the situation, Lulu mustered her courage restaurant

and asked the

new

called Mr.

Anadop­ oulos, to come up and pose for them in return for a

owner

a German meal- the young man had testified to his love of what he called "Munich cooking" ear­

bring herself to destroy it. drawing took time, oh so much studying, learn­ to ing, learning see, compensated for the toil and For a time Lulu reduced her work deprivation. schedule at the hospital in order to devote every precious spare minute not spent in cooking and cleaning to drawing, but when they could no longer afford Gerda's special foods, in fact, began to feel hungry, she worked full time again. The rage, the intensity which was the other side of this life of deprivation began to show in her drawings and the straight B's became more frequent. There was even an A-for a sketch of her sister, exces­ sively ugly, she thought, showing the bone-struc­ ture of face and torso. And Gerda, now that they were not always restricted to specific subjects, found that her old way with flower drawing was coming back. The white African violet was a pa­ The

available to them. But this had to be

endless

time. But the intense pleasure of

lier in their acquaintance. Bill Roscoe, who earlier on

had

once

in

shoulder blade

a

while

supplied

a

willing male

had moved away long ago with his wife and two children. But J ohn­ or

upper

arm,

ny Anadopoulos came, laughing and charming, not at all embarrassed at posing in very abbreviated

quets drawn then, there had been grain. Some­ thing else seemed disturbing, though Gerda won­

bathing trunks on this winter night, bringing Greek pastry to boot, to cheer everyone up. His torso was magnificent, his hips narrow and steely, and his excessive hirsuteness the sisters, as tacit withheld from though by agreement, simply their sketches. For a female model they used a magazine photograph of a bathing beauty, a girl of anonymous features. For a background they used an old favorite photo of a vacation scene at the Baltic Sea where they had gone as children. which showed them collecting amber. Each sister then worked out her own composition which, as always, turned out completely different one from the other. Lulu had exaggerated the width of Mr. America's shoulders and the bronzed healthy glow of his skin. She had altered the bathing beauty's rather boyish figure to give it more contrasting curves, filling out and rounding the brittle breasts and widening the hip line. The legs she shortened slightly and widened considerably, wanting her conception to embody grandeur, monumentality,

dered whether she might only be imagining it: the

that great roundness

tient model which could be counted upon to pose furry leaves would stand

for hours, and later its out with

botanical

pages.

And

bought

at the

exactitude

the

on

Gerda's white

corn-flowers

and poppies, by the train station, corn-flowers and poppies calling back childhood

then

corner

stand

in the wheatfields of East Prussia! But in the bou­

American

corn-flower

or

bachelor

button,

Cen­

taurea montana, seemed wishy-washy in compar-

Winter,

1962

so

much admired in the best

of the sculpture of the ages. Her sea had foaming waves, her beach-growths odd fairy tale shapes.

43

Gerda had tried at all costs to inform her fig­ ures

with life but she

was

happy, really happy,

only with her meticulous beach vegetation. She always admired DUrer's touching patches of weeds and flowers, and this sea vegetation ap­ proached his loving care in rendering the delight­ ful little forms. Her vegetation rose against a calm, sun-reflecting sea. But her figures of Mr. and Mrs. America, after all the most important areas of this project, remained ugly, got uglier and uglier, no matter how hard she tried to im­ prove them at each attempt. Her days were spent in misery and frustration; finally, on the day be­ fore the assignment was due to go, she spent all night feverishly spreading the uncooperative paint over and over again as she tried to render her last sketch. When nothing pleased her, she made a

had

sincere congratulations on the work you have done in the

course.

Your conscientiousness,

un­

your

flinching honesty and your punctuality in sending in assignments has made you absolutely marvel­ lous to work with. I feel that both of you have profited a great deal by the course; it's been a

pleasure to have you as students. Now I will be as honest with you

as

you have been with

me.

While

firms who might hire you now, with the training you've had, they wouldn't be the there

are

some

type firm you ladies would be interested in. Take my word for it. The reason I can give neither of you a final grade yet is because I want you to, do

something for me first. Miss Greta Steingreve, I'd like you to take our special botanical drawing course for illustration in the scientific publications field. You have great talent in this area, but it to be developed. You may also find the

wild and angry new sketch. This one seemed freer

needs

than any she'd ever done, so she rendered it in color and sent it off along with Lulu's project. She

greeting-card industry a good field, but I feel it's only fair to warn you that it's a vastly over­ crowded field, of course. But we want to make

thought it was ugly and vulgar. But maybe Mr. Raffa would like it because it was so big and so free? You could never quite predict his reactions; after all, things she'd liked he hadn't, and vice versa.

The next week was spent by the sisters in wait­ ing feverishly for the mail. So they were finally to receive the

grade on the last project and, more important, the final grade for the course. When nothing had come by the end of the second week, Lulu sent a postcard telling a little of their under­ standable anxiety just a little, not too much.

Three days later a letter came, saying that the school had just. lost some clerical help, that Mr. Raffa had gone to Europe and that the grades -

hadn't been tabulated yet. But

sured

that

the

they could be

grades would be

as­

automatically

mailed to their homes in the near future. So there was

nothing

made

for it

now

but to wait.

The

sisters

pact prohibiting them from talking about

a

sure

that

our

students go into the fields where

their real talents lie.

be­ Steingreve fore I can recommend you for placement, I strong­ ly recommend that you take our course in lettering. Potentially your lettering is excellent, but you need to learn more about the subject.

When you've got a firm grounding in that, you'd be surprised how many things will open up to you in the whole field of advertising.

Miss Lou

Swamped with work,

I

-

haven't

even

chance to look at the latest project yet.

had

a

Apologies.

Please let me hear from you regarding my advice

future.

for the

By the time

I

have, as I hope, signed you up in the courses indicated I'll be able to give you my evaluation of the last project, as well as a final grade.

Our district manager will drop by shortly to tell you

more

about the

courses

I've indicated,

as

he

their anxiety, to make art taboo, until the day the

happens

letter would come.

wishes for a happy holiday season. Very sincerely

A week and

a

half later

the letterhead of the

a

Perma

letter

came

Art

School

bearing on

the

envelope. Lulu, wordless, having flitted down to the mailbox when the mailman was out of sight, handed her sister the envelope; the latter, who had turned pale, cut it open with the pearl-handled fruit-knife. But they found inside not the expected grade-card but a personal letter written by Mr. Raffa, dictated to a secretary. She had made two spelling mistakes in their names, Gerda perceived somewhere at the bottom of consciousness.

"Dear

Misses

Steingreve:" the letter began.

"First, opportunity to extend to on of the Perm behalf a Art School staff, my you, let

44

me

take this

yours,

to

be in your

Bronislav

H.

area

right

now.

My

best

Raffa, Director of Studies,

Perma Art School."

For several minutes the sisters

were

too horri­

They sat motionless, feel­

fied to speak or to cry.

ing as though the floor had dissolved away from under them. Then Gerda said, blushing del]ply: "I feel as though I'd been slapped.

Oh, my poor

Lulu!" And she took her sister's hand.

But Lulu "Three

withdrew her hand

years!"

she

and

exclaimed

sobbed.

through her

tears. "Three years! Oh, Gerda, I can't go on. The

humiliation is

simply

too

much for me."

NORTHWESTERN

TRI-QUARTERLY

By evening,

the

sisters had regained

some

of

their composure. They had decided to have a ("01)1-

deprivation tonight before an increased dose of it would be necessary as they'd continue their studies. After they had made their plans, which included Lulu's working on Saturdays as well and their moving to a smaller room so that they could pay for the new courses, they cleared away portfolio, letter, paints they got out of to do with art. sight everything They ordered a bottle of Tio Pepe to be sent and their saturnalia began when it came. At the end of it they felt their cheerfulness returning after all, wasn't the real-

plete break

with

-

-

ization

of

their

dreams

postponed,

only

not

shelved?

"It was good of Raffa to be so honest," Gerda said. "Now we will be steered into the right field.

And you know, I'm already the first assignment!"

looking forward

Lulu confessed that she felt like tears had dried,

stantial

glass

a

of

child whose

peculiar happiness. After a sub­ Tio

Pepe

claimed that they were tipsy,

both

sisters

quite tipsy.

And at

each,

eleven o'clock they went to bed; was

a

to

a

heavy work-day

ahead of them tomorrow.

Patricia A. Rabby Rabby is a sophomore in the College of Liberal Arts who plans English composition. She was born in Mobile, Alabama, and now lives in Houston, Texas. She has done some free lance writing for a local newspaper in Houston, and this summer will be working at the city desk of the Houston Post. She is a member of Zeta Tau Alpha sorority.

Patricia A.

to

major in

For the Benefit of Her Biographers:

My Roommate at Eighteen Wildly, passionately indifferent.

In favor of everything-once carefully thought out and impulsively decided upon.

A little in love, a little bit lovely, and always building little minutes into Great Moments in time.

Still wondering if blondes really do have more fun.

Recently converted to tennis shoes (fortunately had an old pair of her mother's around with enough holes and frayed laces) and started polishing her loafers.

A sign that the Texas is taken out.

Wanting to be a junior, sophomore, and freshman at the same time.

Wanting to be much and wanting to work periodically, say, once a day, week, quarter.

Undefinable energy when an Idea carried her downstairs to the typing room.

Gonna wash that man right out of her hair, Then she'd let him run his fingers through it.

She was medium height, too tall for the decidedly short boys, level with the thinkers, and tiny to the jocks.

Hair about the length of a Biblical prophet's and the color of Revlon Color-up "Gold" with natural highlights ..

...

Winter,

1962

A Game:

to

the Limit

Squeezing taut the sides of a paper cup until the thin malt crescents and almost drips Releasing it.

Putting four fingers on the paper pattern and thumb on the pattern, tracing the rim, and Tightening the grip together

.

to draw malt to the top and

Turning loose quickly, tipping One drop.

45

Nineteen Is a Lady Dewey-fresh or dubiously frank, a nineteen-pronged attack on adulthood, ironicalLy the world of nineteen already.

Great pride, great faith, great problems, greett

plans, and Great Scott-

Only twenty-four hours a day.

Nineteen has learned the art of calm and order in appearances:

by

(Come into my box and play with me) "but I was wrong again.

(Am I not always wrong, my friend?) "now I've researched and read up and

spoken to intelligent friends,

(Was there anything we could not talk about?)

"I know exactly where you stand, uiorui. you don't even know I exist.

Can mend socks and patch emotions, both rent

(Boxes have hds. As do I.) "then I thought you were for me,

stress.

Dry sobs

As long as you stay neutral, perhaps I stand a chance."

After all, friend before.

Dry humorAnd high Jinks on the dampest day of the season.

Anne

Friend Be/ore I want to sit here and draw a box and carefully

black it in with the pencil stub, Then draw another box and another box

until the page is covered with seven dark and angry boxes, Then label them in furiously neat printing.

Words that say FRIEND

She swoops along the ground like a kingfisher who skims up his minnows. She sits

...

majestic,

pathetic, sexy, sincere. The prism of appearances-but not quite sweet.

Polyglot of personalities become her friends.

Self-contained, group oriented. Tlwughts that scramble over one another around the margins of Cosmos and History,

Singing songs that slide along a blues tune: basic songs of men, passion, and regret.

BEFORE, AND ALL

NOW

Physical, but careful; psychic at bridge; certain that her perceptions are clear. A casual vigor capped by golden energy.

AFTER

Anne.

THAT,

To think of FRIEND as a dark box and a

melancholy blotch on a white and open page,

BEFORE, a wince of reflection on the ladder we built and helped each to climb, AND-the progressive dinners with soup at

Alfred's, salad on the Ship Ahoy, juice at the Health. Bar, catsup at Price's, potatoes at the Cellar Door,

THAT conditions were such and weather and

days, that we swam in the Gulf, watched stars and sang with the summer symphony, waded in strange rocky waterfalls, NOW is the dawn and the Dance on

Woodwind Street:

"we greet the world with a smile, Good at first I thought you were

morning world, against me.

(In a dank, musty box with shrinking sides) "but I was wrong.

46

Way Home

Between two buildings, in a cold and empty lot, I stopped.

And even though I continued cold,

cloudy breathing, and dug into my pockets,

ALL this and more:

of the Bathrobes

On the Long

my hands

deeper

It was no longer my world.

Sadly detached-and more than removed, I stood drawing shivering cold draughts of air and stared at a street

walked before by steady feet, many feet, But mine upheld me and had never walked before.

A leaf marked in its crisp descent the passing

of wind and time, But I stood between two buildings shivering­ Neither mine.

NORTHWESTERN

TRI-QUARTERLY

And This Could Be the Start

0/ Somethin' Big

.

.

.

And this could be the start of somethin' BIG

Causes that I can't explain:

Sweltering heat preceding a rain, splat on your feet; stepping into a gutter puddle of snow, and wet and wetter and now the socks are cold, the tennies cling, and you wish you had new dry boots or at least those partially-dry loafers from

yesterday's walk.

except burning and letting the wax run in erratic rivulets down the side of the bottle,

following the curves of the bottle, crossing, colliding, and CrashThe white hits

a

part of the metal cross-tie

on

the window, and some of the snow manages to reach the candle

...

it sputters like a

professor of European history whose guest lecturer was better than he expected.

It sputters and dries the cold water thrown on

the Light of Knowledge and Knowledge

wins

.

.

.

and the wax runs down with a

shush to spread the word:

Pepsi-Cola, Teem, bottled by the same company­ take a candle, light it, and stick in the tip of an empty bottle so that the wax can drip like the Light of Knowledge and drip like Bohemian cafe candles and

Knowledge won, won, again And the candle burns and flaunts its wick

longer longer and black with a flame halo a warped halo

Stick the candle, bottle, flame, and drips in the window,

And all the interrupters that come into your room while

the QUIET Is Requested For The

BeneiitOi Those Who Have Retired sign is up,

Parfait

All these wiLl walk over to the window and

She needed only a cherry tassle

stand and wonder what you are up to.

to top off her sundae image:

Some will stand and say 0 great goddess and will make obeisance, and bow a deep

turkish-from-the-toes

bow.

And the candle burns, not

granting any petitions, not hearing any prayers, not doing a thing

Winter, 1962

White fur beret, creamy blonde hair and skin; smooth dark furry collar;

light coat; black gloves: warm, dark sauce on her hands­

A luscious coed parfait.

47