3

Perhaps he morbidly feared the invariable tendency of criticism of translation -- and he is an extreme example of the practise -- who concentrate on a few small details of rhyme and meaning at the expense of total accomplishment. Mr. Wilson is no such critic, but his comment on Nabokov's strictures on his own translating, which has been mentioned above, points up this unfortunate practise: "When I say, for example, that 'the caravan of loud-tongued (КРИКАВЫХ) geese stretched (ТЯНУЛЯ) toward the south' it is almost as literally accurate as and a good deal more poetically vivid than Nabokov's 'the caravan of clamorous geese was tending southward.'"

Mr. Wilson's searching and appreciative criticism of Nabokov's amazing commentary amounts to a positive contribution, such as his proof of Nabokov's mistaken notions about Pushkin's knowledge of English. Perhaps misled by the variant transliteration from Russian of stuss for stoss, Mr. Wilson is at a loss to know what Nabokov means in his notes by speaking of Pushkin's "addiction to stuss." Of course, stuss is a form of faro which Nabokov tells us, in a delightfully learned little essay on Russian gambling, one of the many on relevant subjects in the commentary, was "called Stoss (Stuss, shtos) or stuss...."

For years serious translation has suffered from a lack of expert reviewing which has something of consequence to say about the quality of the translation as well as about the contents of the work. To state that the translation ought to be a form of art is simply to repeat an old observation. But an informed body of critical criteria is a first essential if the highest standards of performance are to be achieved and maintained. In this connection and at a time when various new factors are encouraging and supporting translation in the United States, I regard it as a welcome sign that our foremost literary critic has undertaken to review in such detail and with such authoritative and sympathetic understanding a translation of one of the world's great literary masterpieces.

NEWSPAPER ENTERPRISE
Association

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NEW YORK, N. Y. 10017
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Editor, The New York
Review of Books
250 West 57th Street,
New York, N.Y. 10019

July 7, 1965

Vladimir Nabokov is a Russian whose knowledge of the English language is almost perfect but not good enough to translate Pushkin. However, Edmund Wilson's erudite review of Nabokov's erudite translation of Eugene Onegin only proves that Wilson's knowledge of the Russian language is, alas, only fair.

Of course, Nabokov is right when he writes that the word nietu (HETY) is "an old-fashioned and dialect form of niet (HET).) Is it possible that the clerks in the Soviet bookstore in New York also speak Anglo-Russian or American-Russian?

For Mr. Wilson's information the Bessarabian city of Kishinev is actually pronounced Kishinev and not, as Wilson claims, Kishinyov. But he is right in insisting that Mogilyov should be spelled with yo and not Mogiley.

I agree with Mr. Wilson that there can be "no really simple way of transporting" the Russian alphabet into English. Why, then, does he object to the American spelling of Khrushchev's name as Khrushchev and not Khrushchyov? Since the ex-Kremlin leaders is a native of the Ukraine it is possible that, until he came to Moscow, his name was always pronounced Krushchev. Or is Mr. Wilson a pure Muscovite and a Great Russian imperialist? Etc, etc...

Anyway, what has all this to do with Mr. Nabokov's translation of Eugene Onegin which, unfortunately, does little justice to Pushkin? According to tradition, Pushkin had a great sense of humor and he loved to write pornographic poems. (I can still recite some of them.) How he would have laughed at pundits like Nabokov and Wilson!

Only those who know Russian can really enjoy Evgeni Onegin. Otherwise, Professor Walter Arndt's translation is still the best of the lot.

10514 Birnham Road
Great Falls, Va. 22066

July 22, 1965

The New York Review of Books
250 West 57th Street
New York, New York 10019

To the Editors:

What surprised me about Edmund Wilson's review of the Nabokov translation of "Eugene Onegin" was the revelation that Mr. Wilson does not use Webster's unabridged dictionary - unless it's the third edition, of which I have no direct experience. Mr. Wilson asks, "And what does he mean in the commentary when he speaks of Pushkin's 'addiction to stuss'?" The reviewer goes on to complain that it is not an English word. But Webster's recognizes it as one of ours and defines it as "a gambling game like taro, the cards being dealt by hand. The banker takes all bets on splits." This may not give us the reason for Pushkin's addiction, but it does explain its nature.

Mr. Wilson describes "lunes" as archaic. Webster's does not. He says that "loaden" can not be used as a participle. But it occurs in this same dictionary as an entry of its own, directly above "loaueu, v.t.," and is designated as "past participle and participial adjective of LOAD. Dial." All right, so it's dialect. It's also a participle.

Now we come to "seme on," of which Mr. Wilson says, "This is a Greek word that is not to be found in the English language. It usually means sign or signal, but ..... one finds that it has also been used by one Aristoxenus, a fourth-century B.C. writer on music, to mean a 'unit of time, a note.'" But once again Webster's is less exclusive. "Semeion" is admitted to the English language as an English word whose first meaning corresponds to that of "mora:" the unit of quantitative meter, a common short syllable.

If all of this misunderstanding has indeed come about through the use of Webster's third, I can only repeat - bad cess to it!

NEW STATESMAN 5 JANUARY 1968

old age, though even here, I suspect, there
may be more disputes over posteriority than
over precedence.

To qualify as a genuine pass, words without deeds must be both unexpected and dramatic, leaping an apparently unspannable gap between generations, fortunes, ranks or reputations. What would be a serious, flat-tering invitation from a film star, a royal duke or an archbishop might be dismissed as a frivolous, boring joke by your husband's best friend or your father's colleague, especially if the talk was unaccompanied by action. To make a pass worth boasting about to your chums, the male explorer must surely touch flesh at some point - but which one? At what moment does the frontier become violated and an act of aggression have to be officially recognised? Is holding hands at the theatre or in the taxi enough to oblige her to decide between appeasement or rearmament?

What about a kiss, in front of her husband, under the misletoe or on the doorstep, which becomes noticeably prolonged and thrusting? Or does she have to wait for the hand down the blouse before considering a degree of general mobilisation? Around the coke stove in the barrack room, we used to have long, serious, tactical conferences on the advantages and disadvantages of beginning at the neck or the knee. The above-the-waist men claimed that a gradual Fabian approach was more likely to lull the defences into false security. The below-the-waist men, or Bolsheviks, believed like Marx in scorning to conceal their aims and driving openly for the citadel. I was an around-the-waist man myself, a pragmatic Social Democrat, preferring to keep my plan of campaign flexible and opportunist. I do not imagine that women categorise degrees of passes quite so practically but rather see them in terms of guerrilla battles instead of trench warfare.

Yet, once over the age of consent, they must have some kind of Home Guard training drilled into them which can contain border incidents by a mixture of diplomacy and show of force. A man, faced with a threat of occupation, I realised I possessed no defences capable of withstanding a determined siege. Once the Maginot Line of formal politeness had proved soluble in alcohol, and undermined by vanity, it seemed only a matter of time before her panzers were racing up the boulevards of Paris. I was conscious too that a sizeable minority of the inhabitants were displaying disgraceful signs of disloyalty to the marital status of the city, running out into the highways and byways weaving garlands for the conqueror. A majority, I'm proud to recall, were still determined never to surrender but seemed incapable of agreeing on the efficient means of counter-attack. The best they could suggest was ignominious flight. The rest of the guests at the party, blind and deaf to the rape of Gallant Little Brien in a far-away corner of which they knew nothing, pursued a callous policy of Non-Intervention.

If it had been one of those unlit, somnolent parties in several rooms, with bodies stretched out like Henry Moore's wartime sleepers in the Tube, I might not be here today. (They don't seem to invite grown-ups to those any more.) But only a score of people were standing up under what appeared to be kleig lights, shouting gibberish in each other's faces, and there was this girl, peering through eyes like mascaraed key-

holes, gluing herself to my middle-aged
spread, telling me the most awful, marvel-
lous lies about how gorgeous I was. I be-
came incoherent, burbling the first thing
that came into my head as I tried to keep
her back to my wife's friends.

Eventually, my hostess rescued me just when my face was about to split and fall off with the effort of preserving two incompatible expressions - regret, gratitude, calm and inviolability for the girl, and embarrassment, reluctance, despair and vulnerability for the rest of the room. When my admirer had left, it turned out that everyone had known what was going on all the time. And I was denounced and pilloried by all the women for ghastly male hypocrisy in pretending to be unnerved by an experience I

Letters to

Wilson in Australia

Sir, When President Johnson announced his intention of going to Australia for the memorial service to the late Mr Holt, it had to happen. All the 'allies' in Vietnam had to appear in strength and it would have appeared churlish and most certainly would have been unwise had Britain not sent a top-level team as well. Nevertheless the most apt description of the whole show was that it was a mass emotional orgasm. Mr Holt was undoubtedly a popular, well-extroverted politician; but had he died peacefully in his bed with the absence of the prolonged and very costly search for his body, there would have been shoals of telegrams and letters but not such a gathering of international celebrities. Melbourne went on its usual way paying little regard to the ceremony but well aware of the complications it caused to the transport facilities. Even the TV cameras were unable to disguise the great gaps along the short mile and a bit from Government House to St Paul's Cathedral and, apart from ex-hibitionists, there were relatively few demonstrations of any kind.

Some important confusion arose over the
proper precedence for Mr Wilson. His arrival
and departure at Government House went
without any real press, radio or TV coverage.
With a good watch I checked the amount of
time given on TV and he got exactly one
quarter given to the self-appointed leader
of South Korea and much less than the repre-
sentatives of Saigon. Neither he nor Prince
Charles got as much coverage as did President
Johnson. As far as the press was concerned,
even the highly conservative *Sydney Morning
Herald* gave the President's decision to arrive
and his subsequent arrival banner headlines
with a small two quarters of two columns at
the foot of the page for Mr Wilson and Prince
Charles. A sign of the times? Of course.

Mr Wilson was allotted a few five back
from the front in the Cathedral, amongst the
unimportant rulers of backward Asian nations.
But whether by accident or by design he ar-
rived earlier than scheduled and took what
most considered his rightful place in the front
pew behind Prince Charles and at the end of
the pew occupied by President Johnson and
some of his aides. Certainly he was shown
to this seat and many thought it only proper;
but it was not the relatively lower pecking
insider given to him in the official handout. If he
insisted upon this he was very wise because
in snob-ridden Australia these things count for
more than one wishes they did.

The decline of British influence is not a
result of devaluation, or of cutting costs
East of Suez, or even the fact that Australians
do not get the priority treatment they expect
in Britain. It is an amalgam of all these things
plus the lower standing of the British exporter.

NEW STATESMAN 12 JANUARY 1968

41

Why then the need for boutiques and special
merchandise? In fact the Underground will in
the end prove no more effective than the Beats
and their many predecessors. The need to opt
out of a sick society is very real and compelling
but the means requires far more more insight, disci-
pline and love than any of the modern
bohemian dissenters have ever revealed in pri-
vate or in public.

SARAH FARRAND

35a St James Gardens, W11

Sir, When are our self-appointed youths (is
one a youth at 25 or 26 or 27?) going to get it
through their hair and into their heads that
they, themselves, are secondary effects and not
primary causes? What makes Richard Neville,
disguised as the wizard of Oz, think that he
and his companions are innovators in the in-
terests of peace, social justice or internationa-
lism? Every single idea of every single flower-
child is a debased (and money-making?) ver-
sion of all the liberal notions of the past 200
years. And those of us who spent our teens
and twenties getting educated do not need to
be re-instructed by the stentorian voices of the
Underground. (By the way, I thought an under-
ground was underground, and did not pop up
on every television screen, pop out of every
colour supplement, pop through every party
given by the 'old weirdies'). As for the power
of youth, a strong recommendation for today's
lot would be to give up carping from the news-
stands and to write poetry like the 19-year-old
Rimbaud, compose symphonies like the 21-
year-old Mozart, or even direct governments
like the 23-year-old Pitt. So, Mr Neville, please
stop confusing activity with action, movement
with motion or thoughts with thinking.

DONALD LEHMKUHL

26 Coniston Court, W2

Unfair to Wilson?

Sir. I agree with Paul Johnson that the PM is
being unfairly abused but, having taken on the
job, he is responsible. James Cameron suggests
in the memorial book on Vicky that Vicky des-
paired, because there was no positive alterna-
tive to the present government. When the
Tories were in power, we hoped for a Labour
government, but now there is no hope.
Churchill gave us a moral lead, as Nehru gave
to India and Kennedy to the United States.

Mr Wilson tells us that the Americans are
doing the right thing in Vietnam and he calls
for sacrifices from the workers but not from
the managers. Those are not the principles I
voted for, and this is the reason why I shall
not cast my vote in the next election.

GERALD A. ELLIS

78 Priory Road, NW6

Sir, I am not sure what company Paul Johnson
keeps. I have heard Wilson referred to pithily
enough - tricky? yes; shifty? yes; malignant? yes;
a monster? no. Most people seem to think
that being a monster needs a little bit of some-
thing or other, and opinion is rapidly reaching
the point of regarding Wilson as having no-
thing. Personally, I regard him as a statistical
curiosity. If one tosses a coin and calls 'heads'
then at least one is sometimes right. Wilson
defies all known laws of average by never being
right.

LAWRENCE MURFITT

5 Stanley House, NW6

The Aged Non-pensioners

Sir. The London Diary (29 December) rightly
draws attention to the continuing injustice suffer-
ed by the Old Age Non-Pensioners who
were excluded from the National Insurance
Scheme in 1948. In fact Parliament will soon
have a fresh opportunity to remedy this, as I
was fortunate in the recent Private Members
Ballot and have introduced a Bill similar to
that originally sponsored by Mr Airey Neave.
The second reading debate will be on 16

February and the heavy mail I have received
from all parts of the country suggests that it
will have widespread support in the House.
The case for awarding these old people the
part of the National Insurance pension not
covered by contributions is overwhelming and,
as you imply, it would be quite wrong if the
government put on the whips in order to
defeat such a bill again.

The cost of awarding pensions on the lines
proposed cannot be precisely estimated but
clearly it is far less than when Mr Neave's bill
was introduced - probably about £25 million
in the first year but substantially less later.
It is easy to understand why many of these
people feel that the government is just waiting
for them to die instead of helping them. No
doubt in the present economic climate it may
be argued that now is not the time to extend
benefits and that all parties are moving towards
selectivity in the social services. But these
people are as entitled to that part of the
National Insurance pension not covered by
contributions as existing pensioners, and I
have yet to hear a politician of any party sug-
gesting that National Insurance pensions should
be cut or subject to a means test.

TERENCE HIGGINS

House of Commons, SW1

National Businesses

Sir, Mr H. D. Hughes writes (Ns. 29 Decem-
ber) as if I have invented the problem of
management incentives in our national busi-
nesses. Can he have read Command 3439, the
white paper on railway policy based on the
recommendations of the steering group, under
the chairmanship of the Joint Parliamentary
Secretary, Mr John Morris MP? Section 4. 32
says this:

We are seriously concerned about the current
level of remuneration and other conditions
of service for members of the Board, and for

Chief Officers. This is so vital a matter that
we have concluded that we should make de-
tailed enquiries, and we intend to make re-
commodations in a subsequent report. In
the meantime, this matter is of such impor-
tance that it would be wrong for us to make
general recommendations about the structure
of the new Board without making it plain
that, in our view, substantial improvements
will be required in the level of remuneration
and in the other conditions of service (in-
cluding pensions) both for Board Members
and for Chief Officers.

Of course, the value of a job is never simply
the money. Of course, buying management is
no substitute for leadership. Of course, no one
can justify the baffling differences of pay bet-
ween industrial managers, trade union leaders,
teachers, doctors, civil servants, social workers,
soldiers, spacemen, bishops, cabinet ministers
and pop stars. Of course, in giving efficiency a
high priority in our community, we must be
on our guard against highly privileged mana-
gerialism. But with that said, we are still left
with the problem posed by the sheer fact of
large-scale organisation in industry, which in-
evitably means multi-tiered managements:
specifically, what do we do about creating
constructive incentives for managers in the big
national businesses? Mr Hughes insists on
bringing up the railways. BR has over 7,000
managers. Presumably he does not conceive of
this organisation as a management without
tiers. Therefore, there must be differentials and
our argument then is about the extent of these.

My case is that the concertina of differentials
in our national businesses has been so squeezed
that it has become difficult to provide signifi-
cant and stimulating incentives. And unless the
top management pay structure allows proper
headroom for the senior- and middle-manage-
ment grades, how can we expect our national
businesses to succeed in fairly rewarding and
retaining their managements as a whole, and
where necessary attracting the best new blood
available? Even the Cooperative movement.

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NEW STATESMAN 2 FEBRUARY 1968

141

Might he not have given the Ibos credit for a
passionate patriotism, all the more intense
because it was so violently wrenched away from
its original focus, which was Nigeria? One of
the tragic ironies is that it was originally the
Ibos who insisted that Nigeria should be
something more than the loose union advocated
by the leaders of the North and West. The
soldiers who are now killing Ibos to 'keep
Nigeria one' were killing Ibos in 1966 in order
to break Nigeria up; only when Lagos had
fallen into their hands did they cease to be
secessionists.

Even the massacres did not bring majority Ibo opinion to the point of secession. It reached that point only when they were followed by demand for ruinous political concessions. The Ibos had reacted to the tragedies of 1966 by saying that, since their presence as migrants aroused such murderous resentment, they would in future try to make a living in their own region. But since their agricultural resources are very poor, their only hope of doing this lay in the oilfield – and much the greater part of that which was in the 'Rivers State' which Ibos was determined to create. (Attempts to incite rebellion against Enugu began long before the secession.) Hence they felt themselves to be denied any tolerable future. By contrast, the prospect of new states in the North was of little interest to them, since all sections of the North had joined in the massacres. In November 1966 Gowon suspended the inter-regional conference which was trying to work out a *modus vivendi*, and announced that he would impose his own political scheme, if necessary by force. This disastrous statement naturally aroused intense anger; thousands of normally pacific young men began to nerve themselves to die rather than be pushed around by any more. Mr Brown praises Gowon for his 'subtle awareness of the need not to smash one's enemies so badly that they can not parley without a total loss of their self-respect'. But, so far as I am aware, Gowon has consistently refused to parley except on the basis of unconditional surrender.

C. C. WRIGLEY

29 Temple Street
Brighton

Sir, I question John Hatch's statement that 'The British government has been wise to avoid involvement which could only bring condemnation from both sides.' Alas, if only that were true, Britain would have more friends today in West Africa than she has, and she would be in a stronger position to play the only part she should have played in this conflict – that of mediator. It is precisely because the British government hasn't been wise enough to avoid involvement in a civil war that it is possible for credence to be given to the rumour of transportation of British troops that led to the recent anti-British riots in Port Harcourt. Rumour can only be killed by the clear and categorical presentation of the true facts, and it is sad that such statements have been singularly lacking until now. The Minister of State for Commonwealth Affairs visited Lagos early in July 1967 and had discussions with the federal government. The way was open for him to go to Enugu too, but he chose not to do so. The answer that the regime in Biafra was a 'rebel' government not recognised by Britain was no justification for such a display of indifference. Rhodesia's government is not recognised, but that did not stop the British Prime Minister holding discussions with Ian Smith.

Following the Minister's visit, there were
weeks of conjecture about Britain sending
military aid to federal Nigeria. The silence of
the British government on the supply of
military equipment was not broken until August
1967 when an admission was drawn from the
Commonwealth Office that 'a limited supply of
arms' had been sent. Isn't this involvement in
a civil war? Isn't the principle the same whether
planes and tanks are sent or just one rifle?
Subsequently, the British government found its
conscience and, on moral grounds, refused to
sell arms to South Africa. Some of us were still
singing their praises for this laudable decision.

when a BBC news item told us that two planes
had left. Britain loaded with small arms for
Lagos. What had happened to the recently ac-
quired 'moralities'?

This is a war that need not, and should never, have begun. Britain had a very special responsibility because of her unique position within the Commonwealth. She should have been doing everything in her power to give fullest support to the peaceful endeavours of the Commonwealth secretariat.

JOAN MELLORS

5 Tynley Road
Sheffield 2

Tea-room Revolt

Sir. My attention has been drawn to the
reference to myself, in last week's issue of your
journal. The statement by Mr Watkins is quite
untrue, but you may be consol ed by the fact
that I did not vote for Mr Wilson for the
leadership of my party, and this is known to
Mr Wilson.

FRANK TOMNEY

House of Commons

De Gaulle and Afro-Asia

Sir. The answer to Paul Johnson's question to Mr Suree of Bangkok is, surely, yes. We 'pathetic Afro-Asians' prefer unequivocating South Africa as an adversary to mumbo-jumbo 'socialism' which can't see the similarity between Judeo-fascism in the Middle East and Rhodesian bossmanship in Southern Africa.

ANANDA RAVU

40 North Parade
Chessington

Sir, Let me remind Tara Suree of the follow-
ing statement by Mokhtar Ould Daddah,
President of Mauritania, quoted by Smith
Hempstone in *The New Africa*.

As for the black states we hope to be
friends with them, too. One should not dis-
guise the fact, however, that there are strong
racial feelings in my country which are not
dispelled overnight. We have always been
the white conquerors from the north bring-
ing both civilisation and religion to the
Sudan. It is not natural that we should be
expected now to submit ourselves to a Negro
majority under a system of government
which gives power to the majority . . . For
the moment any sort of political federation
is out of the question.

The author points out that the Mauritanian

'regards the Negroes of the Sudan with the attitude verging on that of Governor Faubus'. Mauritanians are Arab speaking, similar in race to Moroccans. Mauritania has a large Negro minority, who, like most of the Negroes of the Sudan referred to, are also Moslems. I believe these quotations to be adequate comments on suggestions that 'Israel should become a Middle-Eastern state' rather than a Jewish state, and for the benefit of those of your African Moslem readers who adopt an anti-Israel attitude on religious grounds.

FRANK TUTNAUER
54a FitzGeorge Avenue, W14

Sir. As letters from Afro-Asians to the NS can give some indication of what other Afro-Asians may feel, may I reveal to you, Sir, that on learning that the Israelis had won the war, I had an instant visitation of relief and glee. However, it was promptly rebuked and made to feel ashamed by that part of me which tries to be holy: I was told that relief, however silent, and glee, however inward, did not constitute a proper reaction to a tragic and extremely difficult situation which had led to a further loss of lives. That part of me which tries to be practical countered by saying that any people, however underprivileged and however sinned-against, should not start making belligerent overtures in a war which they cannot win. That part of me which conducts a running psycho-analytical clinic on me as I go about reassured me that there was no need to feel over-guilty about my predisposition to the Jews: unlike General de Gaulle, I have always considered the Jew as the underdog; this bias had been reinforced during the period before the war - by the apparent military superiority of the Arab forces.

The official Afro-Asian attitude, as far as I
can see, is support for the civilized request by
George Brown in his UN 'territorial aggrani-
disement' speech, calling literally on the Israelis
to be good brown and to hand over occupied
territory. Though the call to Israel may be un-
realistic or even comic, for anyone to have
made the contrary motion – that is to say: ‘You
Arabs have been naughty again; you
should not make war noises until you are sure
of winning. What you have lost will be kept
away from you until you make amends’ –
would not have been funny, but overtly cruel.
I submit, therefore, that it is possible to have
Afro-Asians – and Britons for that matter –
who support Israeli withdrawal but are not
necessarily anti-Israel.

In West Africa, we have managed since in-
dependence to maintain the closest coopera-

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142

NEW STATESMAN 2 FEBRUARY 1968

tion and the most friendly relations with both
Egypt and Israel; and I do not think that re-
cent events have significantly changed the situa-
tion.

SANDO AKIBA

Financing Concubinage?

Sir, I find the penultimate paragraph of your
article 'Divorce by Consent' fascinating. It
seems to suggest that when a man deserts a
wife and several children in order to make a
home with a more attractive female and pro-
duce several more children, he is not likely to
be able to maintain all of them reasonably,
therefore the state should do it. The financing
of concubinage out of public funds is an ex-
tension of the welfare state to which hitherto
the most advanced left-wingers have not sub-
scribed, but, as in the past, we look to the
NEW STATESMAN to lead the way.

JOHN A. YATES

64 Old Church Road
Coventry

Pushkin's English

Sir, In the second line from the end of the
first paragraph of my letter in your issue of 5
January, "Byron" should of course be 'Pushkin'.
I said in my letter about Pushkin that Tur-
genev's written English was 'perfectly sound',
but since then the twelfth volume of the Soviet
edition of his letters has come to hand, and I
find that this is a slight exaggeration. After a
letter in English to Henry James which is not
always quite correct, he explains in his next
letter that he is taking the liberty of addressing
him in French - which he habitually spoke
and wrote, and did know much better than
English.

And, now that I am correcting and carping, I

might as well make some complaints. One of
my causes for annoyance with the NEW STATES-
MAN, I am glad to see, has been removed: that
the titles of books reviewed are now printed
at the top or the bottom of the article. In the
past, if they happened to be mentioned in the
article, they were left buried there, and one had
to read the review in order to find out what the
book was. But there is still no table of con-
tents, and one has to go through a whole issue
in order to look something up. And then there
are the organisations that are designated by
three or four capital letters. I suggest that in
the case of such organisations, the whole name
should be printed when it first occurs. This has
been done in certain articles, I find, for the
AEA, the CARD, the DMK, the NLF and the
FDL. The TUC, the EEC and the BBC I can
recognise. But what are the CEGB, the NCB,
the AGR, the CBI, the DEA, the PLP, the IPC,
the OECD and the ICA - all of which I find in
recent issues? Since the NS is circulated so
widely and is aimed more or less at an inter-
national audience, it ought to be intelligible
outside England.

Another point of editing: I sometimes read-
reviews that deal with parts of the world of
which I have never heard and which the re-
viewer does nothing to identify. In one case, I
never even found out in what continent a cer-
tain people lived - I guessed but could not be
sure it was Africa.

And is there nobody, by the way, in the ns
office who can explain to Mr Desmond Mac
Namara the difference between titillate and
titulate?

Wellfleet, Mass.

EDMUND WILSON

Birth Control & Ecumenism

Sir, Thank you for your excellent dispatch from
Rome which shows that Cardinal Ottaviani
was dismissed because he opposed the Pope
on birth control. In other words, Ottaviani
has refused the pill prescribed by my dis-
guished friend in Boston, Dr Rock, to whom
the words have been applied 'On this Rock
will I rebuild my church, - after its founda-
tions have been shaken by the population
explosion. The Vatican has now accepted the
arguments of Archbishop Roberts, and the
English Roman Catholic bishops will have
to adjust their ideas; this must have a great
effect on ecumenism.

ROBERT SENCOURT

RAC Club
Pall Mall

Omar Khayaam

Sir, General Ali-Shah's reply to a somewhat
ill-informed letter from Major E. Bowen,
printed by *The Times*, was refused by the cor-
respondence editor on the ground, I under-
stand, that too many more important things
were happening in the real world to allow room
for niceties of Persian scholarship. Mr Symons's
quip about 'meditation' is therefore off the
mark. May I be allowed to intervene? The Fitz-
gerald 'transmogrification', as he himself called
it, of the *Rubaiyat* had its place in Victorian
anti-Puritan literature, but has, I think, out-
lasted its uses historically. People prefer original
texts nowadays. It is almost impossible to trans-
late a poem and keep its native quality as verse:
but one can, with loving care, indicate its
quality as poetic thought. Fitzgerald attempted
the former - unsuccessfully, I hold; we were
content with attempting the latter.

The whole subject of the Fitz-Omar Cult has
been complicated by the appearance in 1952
of a verse-translation by Major Bowen (who
received the Shah-Graves translation in *The
Times*) from a 13th-century manuscript authen-
ticated by Professor Arbery of Cambridge -
which leading Persian scholars in Persia reject
as spurious. Major Bowen now keeps silent
about his connection with this manuscript, but

suggests that the 1153 AD 'Jan-Fishan-Khan'
manuscript, which has been in the Shah family
ever since it was presented to them by the then
Sultan, must be itself spurious; and that
General Ali-Shah (whose native language at his
father's Afghan court was classical Persian and
who has translated Saadi's *Rose Garden* into
French) is no Persian scholar.

Proud of the '100 years of orthodox English
scholarship in Persian', Major Bowen criticises
General Shah's sample verses printed in one
book, on the ground that the 'Jan-Fishan-Khan'
manuscript in question must have been written
in *nastaliq* script and therefore, etc. This script
form was not, however, developed until the
15th century by one Mir Ali Tabrizi. He also
complains of being asked to believe that a 12th-
century scribe could foresee the sequence of
verses in which a 19th-century Englishman
(Fitzgerald) would arrange the jumbled verses
of the *Rubaiyat*. Nobody has asked him to
believe that. It is perfectly plain that Professor
Cowell, Fitzgerald's *fidus Achates* at Cambridge
and a mediocre Persian scholar, sent him from
Calcutta a purloined copy of the original manu-
script; Fitzgerald's version being far closer to
the Jan-Fishan-Khan manuscript than to the
centuries-later Ouseley manuscript at Oxford,
from which he is supposed to have worked -
as can be simply proved.

Mallorca, Spain

ROBERT GRAVES

Roy Jenkins's 'R's

Sir, Paul Johnson (London Diary, 19 January)
refers to Roy Jenkins's difficulty in pronounc-
ing the letter 'r'. Can any reason be given
for my not having heard working-class people
being unable to pronounce 'r' (although Irish
and Scottish people never seem to have any
difficulty)? Is it related to class?

23 Keston Avenue
Blackley, Manchester 9

ELLEN HOLMES

Encounter

The February issue, just out, includes

John Vaizey

DISENCHANTED LEFT

John Morgan

INTERVIEWS IN MOSCOW

Michael Howard

ON RAYMOND ARON

John Beavan

LONDON'S PRESS REVOLUTION

Kathleen Nott

KOESTLER'S CRITICS

"O Jerusalem ..."

Middle East Symposium: Bernard Lewis, James
Morris, B. H. Liddell Hart, Walter Laqueur,
Christopher Sykes, John Mander, Nora Belaft,
David Marquand,

5s. ($1) from newsagents or the publishers

SPECIAL OFFER

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Quotations

£1 prize for the first correct solution opened.
Entries by last post on Tuesday.

Come for a walk in our pleasant land:

We must wake up early if we want to
understand

The length and breadth and depth of decay
Has corrupted our vowels and

clogged our bowels,

Impaired our breathing, eaten pride away.
What do they believe in -

these yellow yes-men,
Pansies, politicians, prelates and pressmen,
Boreless wonders, unburstable bouncers,
Back-slappers, cheer-leaders,

bribbed announcers

Broadcasting All-Clear as the raiders
draw near;

Would mend a burst dam with sticking-
plaster

And hide with shocked hand
the yawn of disaster -

What do they believe in? A god of gold,
A gilt-edged proposition; but it seems

they've been sold.

The author?

Last week's solution: Edward Gibbon, in
*Memoirs of My Life and Writings*, popularly
known as *Autobiography*. Winner: P. E.
Sillis; 48 correct entries and a bizarre crop
of incorrect ones including Bertrand Russell,
De Quincey, Charles Darwin, Montaigne,
Rousseau, Gissing, Vladimir Nabokov,
Trollope, Goldsmith, Anne Brontë and Lady
Mary Wortley Montague.