SPEAKING OF BOOKS

By J. DONALD ADAMS

TODAY'S column is prompted by a paragraph in a review which appears in the current issue of Poetry: A Magazine of Verse. For a long time now I have suffered an accumulating irritation caused by the hyper-intellectual character of much contemporary discussion of poetry. No form of literature has been so badly mauled by the critics, at whose door, I think, can be laid much of the confusion and stupidity in modern verse.

The type of writing I have in mind employs a very scientific terminology; it is both muddy and pretentious, and it bears about as much relation to the essence of poetry as surgical technique to the nature of religious ecstasy. Most frequently it is to be found in the more esoteric literary quarterlies, but it is by no means confined to them.

THE paragraph which acted as bellows to my smoldering disgust is in a review of Kenneth Burke's "A Grammar of Motives." It reads: "Burke is the first American writer on esthetics to conceive of poetry as 'action' and to treat the poem as a magnetic field filled with mutually attractive or repulsive forces. Heretofore all talk about structure has been couched in stationary or at best semi-dynamic terms, such as 'movement' or 'tension.' Burke replaces this phraseology by a wholly dynamized dialectic, applicable to both rhetoric and style. No other critic is as subtle as he in interpreting an oxygenmoron or any other device involving a paradoxical relationship. See for example his analysis of the 'suspended action' in the second stanza of Keats' 'Ode to a Grecian Urn,' or his remarks on the action—stasis—arrest problem in a sonnet of Wordsworth."

Now this paragraph has at least the merit of being clearly

written, which is more than can be said for a great deal of writing in the same category. But what about the application of the ideas with which it deals to poetry? Is it helpful to our understanding and appreciation of a poem to conceive of it as "a magnetic field filled with mutually attractive and repulsive forces"? Why should a poem be so treated? What is gained by analysis of the "suspended action" in the second stanza of the 'Ode to a Grecian Urn'?

When we read,

Fair youth, beneath the trees,
thou canst not leave

Thy song, nor ever can those
trees be bare;

Bold Lover, never, never
canst thou kiss,

Though winning near the goal
—yet, do not grieve;

She cannot fade, though
thou hast not thy bliss,

For ever wilt thou love, and
she be fair!

is there anything we need to have explained, anything that can intensify our pleasure in those lovely lines? Their meaning, and their beauty, are apparent to a child of 10.

POETRY today carries science on its back like the Old Man of the Sea, and with an effect equally strangling. You will observe the inevitable reference to "structure" in the paragraph I quoted. This is one of the key words of the cerebral poetry critics; they magnify beyond all measure the importance of structure in poetry; they talk about it in terms of physics.

If I may repeat an illuminating, more than half-truth, Robert Frost pointed to what is most deeply essential so far as the structure of poetry is concerned, when he said that a poem "be-

gins in delight and ends in wisdom." It ends in "a clarification of life—not necessarily a great clarification, such as sects and cults are founded on, but in a momentary stay against confusion. It has dénouement. It has an outcome that though unforeseen was predestined from the first image of the original mood—and indeed from the very mood. It finds its own name as it goes."

THERE is no "stay against confusion" in these strangely hybrid critics or in much of the poetry which they foster. They worry at poetry like a terrier with a rat. They are bleeding it to death, and if their domination of the field of poetry criticism continues, the revival of poetry in our time will be retarded. One of them has been described as preferring poetry to science "because he judges that poetry is capable of the nicer structures."

Commenting on this, Van Wyck Brooks has wisely remarked: "Very few great poems have as nice a structure as the greatest bridge, and moreover there is this difference between them—if the structure of a bridge is not nice, the bridge is worth a great deal less than nothing, for not only will the bridge collapse but people will be drowned, while a 'poem' like 'Hamlet' can be, as Eliot says, a 'failure,' because it is not like a bridge, and yet remain one of the world's greatest poems. A critic who prefers poetry to science for this reason only, or chiefly, is therefore one who really prefers science; and this is undoubtedly the truth about all these critics. They have made literature a training-ground for science, as science, in the last few decades, has been a training-ground for literature."

enormous and my scope of knowledge pitifully paltry. That is really
all there is to be gotten from college-- some vague outlines, and an
overwhelming sense of what there is to be learned, perhaps even the
schema of how to go about learning it. It should be stimulus enuff-
let us hope so.

Well darling I certainly had no intention of bringing you over onto
this page and then deserting the ranks, but there seems to be naught
else, and I am unholy tired. I have stopped couting weeks now and be-
gun to count days, there really aren't so terribly many of them at
that. All my love to you sweet, for this another day-

Hart

T-4 Victor M. Kumik, 31469229

SED, P.O. Box 180

Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Saturday

Darling Vic:

It's so peaceful and quiet about here on a Saturday night when the freshmen are out on the town and only old fuddy duddys like Mack and Joan and I are about.. we have been playing records all night long; Beethoven 9th, Brahms violin concerto, variations on a theme by Haydn, Dvorjak's New World, Stravinsky's Firebird, and even Tschai's 1813 overture which I haven't heard in years. I now feel very surfeited, at least until tomorrow. The Beethoven of course was magnificent; we did not play that but rather heard it late this afternoon, courtesy of the Dallas symphony orchestra.

This morning I somehow got embroiled in a long discussion with Joan about the Jewish refusal to accept the divinity of Christ which while it seems perfectly logical to us after long years of habit, naturally seems most strange to her and was a cloudy notion at best. From that we got to talking of comparative religions and religious morality and I began to argue about morality's being autonomous and we had quite a time. It's funny to me, because I haven't puzzled with these thoughts for a few years now and I was a little rusty on what I do believe but it is beginning to grow more clear.

I am afraid this is not going to be a very light or amusing letter. I haven't done anything today but think and I haven't been whimsical at all, so I can't even try. Spencer outdid himself today in a lecture on Yeats which I enjoyed tremendously. It was the best lecture of the year because he began to talk about the purpose and the business of poetry which is something after all, you can hardly avoid if you are giving a course in poetry altho I understand it has been scrupulously avoided many times. I look forward to the next four lectures on Eliot, as I have been re-reading bits of Eliot this week and begin to think more of him. Spencer said today what I have privately subscribed to for a long time, and what I would not have subscribed to ever had I been really bright or extremely well-educated. I do not think the poet, especially the modern poet, has the right- and it is practically a moral right if you get incensed about it- to employ his personal allusions which are to a poet what personal idiom is to a

Laplander or an Italian or an American, simply because it requires an index or dictionary of these personal allusions, myths and images to unravel the thread of meaning of the poem. There has got to be some sort of balance between the "poetic image" and the common speech.

Where a cold classicist like Eliot would attack a man like Shelley for his emotional transports and rhapsodizing, Shelley were he here, would haev every right to accuse Eliot in turn for employing the most esoteric of allusions that the layman can't possibly understand to express a philosophy of life which is not at all uncommon.. the best Eliot I know, and I know I am wrong because the later Eliot is better is the earliest Eliot- Joan's and my favorite The Lovesong of J.Alfred Prufrock. It is a little of what Adams said in that little article I sent you- that we ask for too much, much too much from our poetry- we expect simple language to convey a great many complex emotions and ideas that it is incapable of conveying. The quickest way to kill poetry is to write it only for the phd in classical allusions. But this I know bores you, so let's talk about something else.

I know I am easily influenced by what I read; you have heard me get impressed by a book before, and you will hear it again many times, I suppose, and this is just another one of many books. But right now I am caught in the web of it and until I have finished it entirely, I won't be able to think of anything except in relation to it. It is called "Proud Man". It is an English book, written by a person who I am convinced is a woman, under the pseudonym of Murray Constantine. It calls itself a novel but actually it is a piece of reflection and philosophy masquerading as a novel. The book was lent to me by Bob N. who received it from a French countess with whom he was friendly in Europe and between us we are now setting up a chain of reactions from people on whom we force it. I will try very hard to get a copy of it for us to own, or to contrive somehow to get it to you so that you may read it. It is hard to tell you about it, as it deals with human natur4, entirely and exclusively, and human nature seen from a very detached point of view- from the fictional standpoint of a creature from another world- the world of tomorrow. In some respects, it is brave-new-world-ish, or as the jacket blurb says, it mirrows in a

strange unemotional mind the complex life we lead today. I would say
that it was a psycho-analysis of why we live and act as we do. I wish
we could read it together; if there is any one aspect of our being sep-
arated I resent most, it is this coming on things separately and hav-
ing to try to talk about them to each other this way. It really isn't
fair to be deprived of this; I think it is robbery. How can we be
anything when we don't even know what each of us is thinking about?

I did do something else today, I bought you something and I
won't tell you what, but will give it to Mom to put away until you
get back. It is not khaki or does it resemble khaki in any way, so I
hope that at least in that, it will please you, though it is so hard to
know what you will like and what you will not. We shall see.

I hope I did not miss very much in skipping Forever. I love
your cryptic comments, but I object to your saying that it would
have more allure for a woman than a man. It thought it had been just
the opposite. I'm sure Amber's promiscuities must have some basis
in the authoress, or else the woman has a vivid imagination. The trou-
ble is that the worth of Newgate, Alsatia and the London plague succ-
umb to the interest of the bawdy, and ¹ bet half the people that readd
it, skipped the former in favor of the latter.

The enclosed cartoon is exactly what happened today to a minor
spring snowstorm no longer in evidence, followed by real thunder...
And they call this a temperate climate? Temperamental, mebbe.

Well honey, I can't keep my nose out of this book and it will
probably keep me up all night, chatted with Edy for a few minutes
this ayem.

and tomorrow is Sunday, another week is past at last. another
crossword, perhaps another phone call..

and another night of love--

Aug and it's a bit much to ask, don't you think? I drooled all day over the travel ads in the Times and Globe of Canada. It is calling YOU, did you know that? It would be ideal if we did have a car and could simply drive up thru Canada as far north as we'd like, stopping wherever we want and staying for as long as we want. The question of a car-- is a big wan. Have a friend who'd be willing to lend you his for the summer?? What do you think we might do? Or don't you? Or have we talked about this before and decided that we can't decide yet?

I've about finished Proud Man- sat up late last night reading it-and have decided that it is really a woman's book, as the male sex takes an awful panning, and one that is not entirely just. The idea is such a good one, and so much of the book is good, but had the author concerned herself with other questions, and especially more closely with religion, it might have been a better book.

Today was Palm Sunday and a sunny one for a change. All my good Catholic friends went to church and came home waving fronds. One gal went in town in search of a Presbyterian church she had been told to attend, couldn't find it, wandered into an Albanian Orthodox one instead and regaled us at dinner this noon with the tale of their service, the five collection-passings, the candles, ikons and bearded priests.

We are talking again about going to Vt. this coming weekend- it fell thru last week as the Rabbit had no 46 license plates, but they'll be ready this weekend. If we do go, I should know tomorrow, and will send you the phone no. there, so if you'd like, you can call station to station next Sunday ayem.

There is the loveliest old man in the employ of the college on the "maintenance staff" here. His name is Dick; he is Irish of the auld clan and he has the most whimsical sense of humor I have struck yet. I first encountered him when I hit two tennis balls over the backboard into the locked courts about two weeks ago and went in search of the key. Repeated that process twice again, and that cinched the friendship. Well, he said, that will

Thursday, Wednesday

Vic darling:

It seems at tho it has been a very long and busy
day but a rather more interesting one than usual. For one thing,
we had a special reading by Spencer, with interpretation, of
Eliot's Waste Land which was by far superior to anything that
has happened previously in that class. For another, the Idler-
HDC rum punch party was a whopper of a success and we all had
a fine time. It was held at the home of an arty friend of Mrs.
Howe's, and the house was a complete surprise to me. You walk
down Hawthorne St. which is between Brattle and Mt Auburn, a
quiet commonplace resedential street with large shade trees and
a very unobtrusive outlook.. and then you discover that no.
37 just isn't there. All of a sudden, you see the number on a
wooden fence by a driveway and you follow the arrow around the
driveway behind the house into the Garden of Eden. There is
the tiniest of gardens with a terrace and flagstone walk lead-
ing to a small white frame house, barnlike in shape. Only one
or two windows in the entire downstairs... But the whole upper
story is glass enclosed. You go up a set of steep steps into
this studio-north light wide room with blue walls and bamboo
kuxx shades at the windows. There is a fireplace and a double
nook on either side. Bookcases galore, a grand collection of
American lit with complete coverage of the modern scene. A
scroogy little kitchen with not-modern but adequate appliances,
and that is all to the top floor. On the ground floor there are
three small rooms closed off from the hall and the steps lead-
ing upstairs that serve as bedrooms, no doot a john as well
which I did not get to see. I was so enchanted with the house;
it is the perfect modern house, designed for healthy living,
for reading and thinking and lots of light thru high windows
at all seasons. I'm sure it's not the House Beautiful concept
of the house beautiful; it wouldn't suit very many purposes,
I suppose, except the good ones- or what to me are the good ones.

I could be happy in that big wide room with the books and the
light and the window seat running all around the sides. It's
not particularly "gracious", but I certainly fell in love
with it. When you get back, let's go look at it again. The nice-
est woman lives in it; she talked all afternoon about drama
at Amherst which I gather is her alma m. Idler is full of the
damnedest interesting people. There is Miss Huntingdon, a
slender wisp of a Beacon Hillite whose family dates back to
Boston of 1664. She wears British tweeds and little scarfs and
the Sensible Oxford shoes you detest so heartily. She designs
and sews costumes for all the plays, and has a pleasant absent-
minded way of saying "yesss, yess" in an out-of-this-mundane-
world tone with soft sibilants; everything about her is quiet
and sweet and withdrawn. She looks like the most innocent of
women and yet at the same time as tho she had known some deep
sorrow. I shouldn't, I know, get melodram, but I like to think
of her as havingn been very young and eager and beautiful which
she undoubtedly was, and having loved some handsome promising
youth very deeply and having remained faithful to his memory
thruout. She was arrested, during the Sacco and Vanzetti case,
for parading in front of the State House with a placard; was
sentenced, went to jail, and was later acquitted. Then there
is Mary Maloney who has taken on the un-enviable task of direct-
ing the chorus in its moves. She is *Irish, would be a match for
that mad Irishman. Timmy Horan, if ever I saw one, has the most
caustic and delightful wit. She does superb imitations of det-
estable people like Mildred (Dean) Sherman and can mimic anyone
and everyone to a t. As a result we spend half of our rehearsals
so convulsed that we are too weak to caddy on. Lou Osborne is
another- she is in the chorus, a definitely character gal. Att-
ractive in a severe way, wears her hair either perfectly straight
or bun fashion in the back, was kicked out of college two years
ago for spending the night in a frat house at MIT- where I gather
nothing more transpired than that she was too drunk to go home..

She has been in and out of scrapes previous to that and ever
since, is branded by her family as a fallen woman, and by the
college authorities, likewise. I am quite convinced that she is
nothing of the sort, and probably more puritannical than most.
Her parent were divorced, she has seen the family fortune
sink and rise twice, attended school in France, went to the
notoriously strict St. Tims (near Balto.) and was bounced for
smoking, and recently fell in with a married man to no good.
All this was poured out in an impassioned soliloquy tonight
over some coffee after rehearsal. I suspect she had just reached
the point where she had to talk to someone and justify herself,
because she is by nature very withdrawn and far from gregarious.
I listened and encouraged her to talk about it, thinking most
of the while how relatively uncomplicated my life has been,
even though so many times I have railed against it. Lou I really
sincerely think would be better off with some p.a.- she is
struggling round trying to find what makes her go off and do
these insane rebellious things, and though she knows it is just
a gesture of defiance designed to anger her family, she only
knows it rationally and that is not enuff knowing to correct
it. I think, from talking to her and to Mack, that I know only
too well what has made me do so many stupid things in the past
and very near-present in the same spirit of rebellion when the
gesture of defiance becomes far more important than the rebell-
ion or the reason for it itself. But knowing it doesn't make
me any the less so; I do think very much that once we are on
our own together I will stop caring a fig about my family or my
family's reactions, censure or praise, and then stop trying to
cross them whenever I can. It's funny to look at it this way;
people are supposed to look on marrigae as a period of settling
down and making ties; I look on it as setting myself free and
sitting straight for a change. In fact we both do, and we will.

It was good to hear from you today at long last; it seemed as
though it had been more than just a day's lapse; more like a week.
I'm sure now that you have invited Herbert to be an usher, Mom
I'll be glad to

to include the Rosenfelds as guests. I really want to meet them.

I loved your tale of midnight horror a la old Ireland, and think it was a great hoax. Blood in the moonlight... what a title! Your barracks sounds a little like a college dorm, equally as infantile, anyway. Wish I had been there, really. We had a forest fire too, this week, near Plymouth, nyah. Hope you hid out the detail successfully.

I am so glad, darling, that you have several pairs of pjs (I shall snitch them), but if your innumerable sets of shorts and under-shirts are that charming khaki color, you can get another wife. They are, understatement, hideous, and I'll be damned if I'm going to look at them. I don't know anything about men's under-shorts, or what do you call them, just plain shorts, but if they are khaki, take them off... I mean substitute some nice candy stripe ones, or something, anything. Gimber's advertised sum lovely white shorts fer men which have elastic around the middle and they are nylon and you know what that means; they wash and dry in split second time and they don't ever have to be ironed. (Don't shoot!)

It's all relative, that is my thought for tonight, analytic, aint it. Life is that way. Eternities too must have a conception and a finale, and this is the last of eternities for us forq uite a while. Darling, youse is noble, you're holding up beyootifully, except for an occasional dream here and there, and I love you not only madly, at times sadly, but gladly and emphatically and forever as well. Soon twill be May flowers and the prison term will be about ended. It will be good to hear in a few weeks more definitely when you get repreived. Tonight I could wait forever for you, I am that much at peace. But I am glad it will not be forever, that it is only a question of weeks, a few weeks at that. I get hedonistic every time I think about it, which is not just often, but always. But to sleep, sweetheart, or to vie with the moon, I don't rightly know which. Till tomorrow then, yr lovin

of

T-4 Victor M. Kumin, 31469239
SED PO BOX 180
Santa Fe, New Mexico..

It's hard to say, isn't it, whether what we do we
do for right or wrong. I can no more tell about the
scholarship than about a lot of other things, but
I am not yet sorry. I would like to stay as close
to Cambridge as we can for a time, and I'm so happy
that you feel that way and are willing to try it.
But even that is not an arbitrary thing-- too much
depends on our mutual job situations next year, and
too much-- here I do mean overly much-- on whether
Max can really write or just has a loose tongue in
her haid. That can't quite be determined now, or
for a little while yet. So we will put down our roots
wherver the soil is most fertile for a time, but not
so deep, even in our own minds, that we cannot pull
them up and move on whenever we want to. I still
know nothing of the pending research job with Langer,
nor of the other possible one with Mackay but within
the month, I hope that I will. I will have no com-
punction about accepting a good offer right now, and
giving my word on it, even tho we may move on sooner
than we think. It's the old Darwinian law right
there, and if I don't take it IF I can get it, some
one else surely will. I do love this town- but as
I have said before, I could learn to love any place
where you are, darling, and I do mean that. Believe
it-- and let's keep that in mind whenever we plan.
I will now plagiarize from one VMK- but never have
I meant anything more sincerely... I am frankly not
sure that I can realise my own goals, but I am pos-
itive that you can reach yours. And more than that,
my chief ones will reach fruition only in yours.
That is what makes man different from woman, andsome-
thing I am glad of. I hope to have a try at writing
that novel within the next three or four years; I
know that you are on your way to your self-success.
Those arms around your neck, darling, are my own,
and they are not there to strangel, but to encourage.
My god, Vic, nothing can touch us as long as we keep
hold of this thing that we have- and THAT is my am-
bition, even more than the printed word.

I'm sending you tonight- a few things to
read if you'd like- and you know I will welcome what-
ever you have to say about them. I'm sorry the
rough draft of the long story is so rough- a good
many changes have since been made and all in all,
it's been polished a bit. So overlook the jagged
places, but do see if you like the general feel of
it, if you think there is something in it worth work-
ing on.

All right, snooky, let's write our own exposé
of Time, and send it to the Nation as our contrib-
ution to chaste journalism.

I shall be as a pale (face) next to you, un-
less there is a good deal of sun and more opportunity
to stay in it between now and June. I think you are
so demure (and thoughtful) to keep a little part
of you to get tan with me... thy lily white wrist, I
kiss thee.

I hope you are noticing Oscar's bran' new feet- don't
they walk nicely across the page? Not as nicely as
might, but he typed 20 caron pages today not to men-
tion various odd chores in this communal society. Oh
the money I will save on t'writer ribbons next year!

Jerry's new lighter is both a blessing and a curse
to me. Now that I have the omnipotent lucifer, I
smoke a leetle more-- insted of being an intermittent
chimbley, I am a constant one, but it's no small joy
to be able to let up and light up without subserv-
iently and constantly bumming lights hither andthith-
er.

I even wrote to Dolly tongith- such virtue in one
so young! tonight, that is above, that garbled message
und zo, my sweet- I don't seem to have told you
very much after all- but imagine a soft May night and
my pleadant if wayward thoughts of you. Did I say
I was as calm as ever? It would be heresy to say it
again- I'm really not; I'm beginning to get into the
spirit of this thing. Even as I sit here, one tennis
sneaker and white sock with foot inside it upon the
table, I am Brahmin in contemplation- and always of
the same things. Happy days, darling- dreams, hopes,
fond love and adoration, and a sweet goodnight-

ise of course that Eli 9230, 1, 2, and 3, correspond to lines 1,2,3, and 4. Incoming calls to 9230 come in according to whatever line is free, but the line four paybooth is on fourth, and that line is 9233. Now by gar, if you don't take heed next Sunday, I'll, I'll... well, I won't. I really won't talk to you. Zis time I mean it.

I suppose I cud go on forever, but nay, noentheless, rehearsal begins in but ten minitts and I have got to transport muhself down to Agassiz. I hoped you noticed the perceptible change after lunch in this letter- we had donuts! Till tuhmorra, sweet, I love you-

Mat

Sunday

Vic dear; A Sunday even fraught with quiet and restraint
for in every nook and cranny there lurks a senior of
some brand or field studying for generals which are on
the morrow. Macko has that enviable ability to cram,
cram, cram for days on end, which she has been doing
this entire week, tho not without frequent bursts of
self-pity and feigning ignorance which annoy Joanie
and me extremely. However, we know all too well how
she feels; that terrible consciousness of knowing so
little of what there is to know, of having such an in-
adequate command of the subject-- tho when the final
reckoning comes, you discover that you knew quite
enough for the academic standards. Thus an A can mean
one thing to the general public and still be an express-
ion of inadequacy to the gainer. But Trudy, Jane, hun-
nerts and thousands of them, all biting nails, smoking
cigarettes, worrying, worrying.

Just after I spoke to you this morning, we
were re-invited by Jeannie to the wedding, and tho it
did rain all day, we put on dresses and stockings and
hats, yes, hats (I borrowed one for the occasion) and
piled four deep into the Rabbit and drove to the Somer-
set. It was a very small wedding, and very simple--
and very touching- a little sad. Mrs. R. especially
was deeply moved and seemed to cry with more than the
passing tears that mothers bestow on their children
taking the vows. Jeannie looked as lovely as I have ever
seen her, in a street length dress of pink silk, with
a pink hat and veil that matched. Sid gave her away-
and Bob looked quite soberly dashing- if that is poss-
ible- in a navy business suit and a yellow and navy
tie. The one touch that detracted from the beauty of
it for me were the men's hats-- if hats arenecessary
in a conservative ceremony, I do wish they'd all wear
yarmolchas, as nothing looks sillier than a fedora or
derby worn indoors. Rabbi Landau performed the ceremony.
He's a kindly old man with a permanent benevolent smile
on his worn face, snow white hair, and a tall, stooped
gait. The service was mainly in Hebrew but all the im-
portant parts were translated. Rather than saying the
Hebrew, he chanted it, and far from being as ludicrous
as it sounds when brother Herb tells a Jewish joke, it
had a poignancy and beauty to it that suddenly made me,
for all my cynicism, violently proud of our tattered her-
itage. He delivered a short sermon which was entirely
without slushy sentiment, and because of its simplicity,
really lovely. I don't think I could bear to hear another
wedding march before our own. After it was over, we stayed
for the reception and a few drinks, taosted Bob and Jeanny
and they and Mack and Joan toasted us and the 29th of
June... god, darling, it seemed then as tho our day will
never come, as tho every day we live, we are only living
the same day over and over again, and I had a bad half
hour of feeling as wretched as I can feel without you--
which is as wretched as I ever want to feel in my life.
It has past now, after a sup at Al's and back in blue
jeans and to Proust again, and I can contemplate the next
few weeks fairly calmly. Time can be such a slow river,

tho how can we complain of it? I think these last few
weeks will be the hardest of all, altho it wasn't that
way last fall waiting for you! Once I got back to school,
it seemed as tho the days just dropped away, thru Oct.
into Nov. Now the situation is reversed and in little
over a week I must go home again, then Dolly will come
back here, then I shall go back to Philly again, again-
and then at last you will be here. At any rate, I en-
visage your coming this time with a great deal more
calmness ( and certitude ) than before. I am
anxious, but not nervous-- and surely, four more weeks
and a little-- that is practically no time at all when
measured against time future.

I took the latter half of yesterday afternoon off
to play tennis with Lou Osborne (the gal in the chonus
of Oedipus I wrote you about once). If it can be called
tennis-- I play at it, rather than play it. Lou is tre-
mendous; hits the swiftest ball I ever did see. Net re-
sult was that in returning a particularly rapid one, the
ball almost went thru my racket, ping! went the strings,
voila, a real bona fide hole in my racket! It needed re-
stringing anyway, so it doesn't really matter. Gee, I
wisht I could play a good game of tennis-- I like it al-
most as much as riding or swimming, but I just never
learned how very well. I am beginning to discover what
makes a backhand shot-- discover in this sense in not
synonymous with achieve, but perhaps in due time.

Last night Joanie and I played Beethoven and Tschai
and read-- she Sholokov, Quiet flows the Don, and I, Proust,
Swann's Way. I am very impressed with the book but find
it terribly stiff going, very slow. And you have to be
entirely alert and absorbed in each sentence because if
you miss the thread in any one place, it nullifies the
entire pgh. for you. Proust's stream of consciousness
dissects the intellect and the sensed with all the met-
iculousness of a mortician working over a cadaver. He
knows how to pluck every possible note and combination of
chords in the human consciousness. What strikes you most
as you read is hitting on precisely those conditions of
the mind and the body that you yourself have experienced
but which have always eluded your powers of expression
or else have been so trivial or passed so quickly that
you barely had time to note them down. Proust believes
that since everything and every sensation is so transient,
nothing has full consciousness or life except in recol-
lection of it. In other words, man lives his life only
in the memory of it-- and Proust the author has a tre-
mendous intentive memory for states of mind and childhood,
that while we have probably equally experienced them,
our recording apparatus is not as delicate as his and
the events have passed over us without a shadow. To him,
every modern event calls up some former experience, and
all his words are only evocations of some past state,
detailed and outlined with such conscientious detail that
when there is nothing common in the recollection, it
grows tedious. This is not very often, tho I do think he
should only be read in small doses and at leisure, not in
one big gulp as I have been doing yesterday and today.

T-4 Victor M. Kumin, 31469239
SED PO BOX 180, Santa Fe,
New Mexico

58 Cabot Hall

May 7, 1946

Dear Vic,

Your long and sweet letter deserved a much prompter reply
than this, but as you may know that peculiar spring virus known
as Reading Period has set in, as of yesterday, and I am in my
usual desperate predicament of not having enough hours in the
day to accomplish all which should be done if I'm to live up to
the record my two dear friends are going to set this term. The
good old American spirit of competition you know! But enough of
such useless apologies -

As Max has probably told you, I haven't heard from K.C.C.
in over three weeks. The last letter I had was written April 10
from Tientsin saying he'd been bumped off the plane three hours
before it left for Frisco. Some brass with higher priority came
along at the crucial moment. Since then there has been an ominous
silence from the Far East, and what it means I have no idea.
According to my calculations he should have been in Pearl Harbor
a week ago, and very close to the West Coast by now. But who
knows in this mixed up world of ours. He'll probably come roaring
in here one of these days when I least expect it. But he's just
got to be back by that all-important date in June. You're very
sweet to ask him to be one of your ushers, and I certainly shall
tell him about it first thing, and send you his address when I
ever get one again, so that you can write him yourself. I know
your wedding is one of the things he has most looked forward to
from the first time he met you. We will both of us be more than
happy when that day comes. I know how hard the long wait has been
for Max, and I can guess at your feelings too. But it ain't so
far away now, and if I come down that aisle weeping like a child
as I know I will, please know that they aren't for sorrow! I'm
feeling in a very sentimental mood at present, especially after
Jeanie and Bob's wedding on Sunday, so you must forgive me if I
get this way over yours too - even this far in advance!

Max has probably written you most of the general news of
Fourth Floor, so I have a good excuse to be purely personal! Not
that there's much of interest there either, but I'll make a stab
at it anyway. Last night, after working for a good eight hours
all day, I couldn't face another book, so persuaded Mack to wheel
out the Rabbit and go for a spin. We gathered in Trudy on the way
and headed out the Concord Turnpike with all cylinders hitting
and the wind nearly pushing the poor little beastie off the road.
The sun was just setting over the distant hills, and showed itself
to us for just a moment like some great crimson light trying in
vain to halt the rapid pace of life. It was a beautiful moment
of peace, all the more loved for being so rare. We came back
windblown and rested after an hour or so, and settled down with a
little less reluctance to our books. Sic semper etc.

The freshmen on the floor have been testing all of us of
late for our respective personalities of lack of them. It was
most interesting, and quite comforting to the old Ego as such
things so often are. I find myself being at once above average
in the theoretical, aesthetic, social, and religious sides of life,
with the first and last ranking highest, and considerably below
average in such mundane things as political and economic aptitudes.
Pity the poor man's checkbook or voting ballot I must someday
keep track of! But I'm subtly flattered none the less. The laugh
of the week was that Mack marked far lower in Economics than she
did in Social. Wast thou, dear friend, who oncst made the

10

AIR MAIL

-2-

now classical remark about the naive etc. ?

Friday night Max has no doubt told you about. It was
quite an experience for me as I hadn't seen my little friend for
nearly five years, and a great many miles of the not so blue nor
Pacific Ocean have gone under the proverbial bridge since that
long ago summer's day when I thought it was just so long for a
few months. We talked of old times when we were kids in high
school and living in a world bounded by the farthest range of
New Hampshire mountains and our own good times, until we were
both dropping a tear in our bourbon. The old pleasure-pain
motive is yet with us. It seems a dream now, and yet as though
it happened but yesterday. Life goes by as quickly as a summer's
day, as Comrade Sholokhov remarked in his book *The Silent Don*
which I have just finished reading. But to you and Max I guess
it can't go by too quickly just now, so I will cease my melan-
choly remarks on the brevity of human existence. Some day when
we are all old and gray and the children are out God knows where
in the family heliocopter, we will sit down by the fire and drink
our vodka and talk of many things. Till then may the 29th of
June not tarry overlong. Do I hear a pious Amen to that?

Mack has just come in to say that it is five of one,
a fact, which varying rumbling sounds from my innards has made me
only too aware in the past half-hour. So this must be all for
the present. Max is holding up well under the strain of orals,
papers, our griping, and the preparations for June. She tells us
that you may be heme within the next month. Bottoms up to that,
and now to lunch.

Love as always,

AIR
MA

Tuesday

My darlin'- can you smell the noxema all the way to

New Mexico? I'm quite smothered with it, and feel
almost human, tho a little while ago I was really
quite ghost-like and grey, grey from tip to toe again.
We're inured to the whole procedure now, and don't
even bother to take off our makeup before we come
back... I hate to think of the traumas of a hundred
tiny tots that must now rest on my soul. People take
one look at us, and fall into swoons, screams, and
assorted gasps of terror. We have decided that we
are the sixth race-- the only six living descendants
of the grey peoples of Afghanistan, members of King
Odious' harem...

I've been delving all day into Bakunin again,
like beevor of sorts, and really, am fascinated. Of
all the chequered careers in history, his tops all.
May I bring unto you some of the details?? His biog-
bapher (EH Carr of the Conditions of Peace) claims
on every third page that sweet Michael was sexually
impotent, nay even incapable-- yet, the man possessed
some strange perverted ideas. He delighted in break-
ing up homes, and preaching the emancipation of woman-
kind from the tyranny of marriage as well as his pec-
ular brand of universal revolution and anarchism.
He had a terrible imagination and considered himself
the head of dozens of secret societies in oppressed
nations all over Europe that never even existed. He
wrote letters in code and sent them into Russia-- en-
closing the code in the letters. There was a prize
on his head, he was a myth and a source of divine in-
spiration to thousands of malcontents. He was finally
seized in Saxony, condemned to death, hadned over to
the Austrians who reconfirmed the death sentence,
then extradited him to Russia where it was re-invoked,
then commuted to life imprisonment, then mitigated
to life exile in Siberia... off to Siberia he went,
while his friends in exile held masses (well, not mass;
cabals, then) for his death. There he married (he was
43) a Polish lass of 18, who didn't know any better
and apparently thought about the stork.. he was grad-
ually pardoned more and more, got a job as a commer-
ial salesman in Siberia, ventured to the Amur river,
supposedly on business, climbed aboard a Russian
freighter going to Yokahama, switched there to an
American vessel. On baord her, this amazing man who
never made an honest nickle, lived 43 years from the
pennies of his sacrificing family and the acquaint-
ances he sponged from aboard, borrowed -- pounds from
a Chinese missionary and his American bride, dis-
embarked in Frisco, shipped to Panama and then to
New York where he took time off to visit Agassiz,
then teaching at Harvard, wired Herzen in London for
funds; Herzen couldn't believe it, tho't him dead,
and 11 years after his arrest ('61) arrived in London
where his followers were so overwhelmed to see him that
they got up a subscription fund to support him for the

rest of his ludicrous life. God, what a man! Then off
he went to meddle in the Polish insurrection of '63,
fuss around Sweden and Finland-- and that's as far as
I have gotten. I'm enjoying muhself, no end..

Sent Mom a corsage of two little yellow orchids
from us and Dolly two pottery pitchers (little ones
for flowers) that I would love to have myself, from
us-- aha, which squares us, doesn't it? For once,
snooky, I have chunk ahead- almost a whole week
ahead at that. Note it well, for it may never happen
again.

It's been raining all day today, a kind of nice
misty drizzle which makes me think with a small yawn
that I shall sleep well tonight if you but give me
leave for that now, darling. Golly but I'm tired; and
it's been just a day like other days, no more nor
less good or bad. Steady is the ship, and steady the
two pilots- and steady as the foundations of the Em-
pire State itself, my love, my dearest- so goodnight,
sweet, be good and sleep well, and catch a small kiss
and a big hug from your loving

me

T-4 Victor M. Kumin, 31469239,
SED PO Box 180, Santa Fe,
New Mexico.

T-4 Victor Kumin 31469239
SED PO Box 180 Santa Fe,
New Mexico

interviewing displaced persons-- largely Jews-- who are trying to obtain visas to get out. Mostly to America, though Janie warns that very little publicity will be given their entry as a precaution against adverse public opinion in this country, where God knows they are no more wanted than anywhere else. You may count on Janie to see the truth. She reports that the undercurrent of anti-Semitism among her co-workers in the office is disheartening and that she has been rabidly outspoken on the subject which has not won her any extra friends. I think that in her place I would end every day with a horrible depression-- I don't think I could take it. She interprets German, says she hears mostly Yiddish all day long, interspersed with German Russian-- but we are of course, treasuring all the letters and you can read them yerself one of these days. We were so glad to hear from her that we sat down immediately and wrote her long letters. I poured out several pages of the most dismal philosophy and conjecturing but it was good to get it off my chest for a change.

We had a real summer storm very early last evenign, and when we we down to the performance, the air had just cleared. The rain was still heavy on the leaves but it had brought the lilacs out, almost magically in a few short hours, and both the sight and the smell of them was wonderful. Today is bright and lovely again, and P'raps I will doze over Russia on the roof this afternoon. today too is the 10th of May which hardly seems possible.

Bob and Jeannie went to Montreal and then to the Chateau Frontenac for their honeymoon. They were most worried as it reined their wedding day and they were afraid the planes would be grounded, but about 9:30 that night I heard them overhead, so we trust they got off safely. Then they're flying down to Newark to spend a week with Bob's fairly-- and then I suppose they'll start looking for a place to live here. Mimi and George, by the way, got an apt at last, so I suppose there are some to be had. When I think how little any of us ask for satisfaction compared to the pre-war notion of setting up housekeeping, I think more and more that we'll get an apt or bust in the attempt. Still haven't talked to Gitty any further but mean to see her tomorrow, if possible.

Well snooky, things ta do and I must really fly.
Till tonight, then, wiff lots 'n lots of loff- your

m

T-4 Victor Kumin, 31469239
SED PO Box 180 Santa Fe
New Mexico

you anyhow, and that's better learned sooner than
later. Baby, I love you, you're so goddam stubborn.
But don't let anybody else tell you that.

The Bureau of Motor Vehicles and I are having
a terrible fight. I lost my '46 license and am trying
to get a renewal and they keep sending me forms and
things that would require a Supreme Court Justice
to figure out. So today I wrote and told them they
could take their bureaucratic mechanisms and...
and please to explain to me in one syllable words
what they expected of me. I will probably be impeached
by the gov'n and exiled to Mass. (I hope)

You and your sunburn, of course you are all to
blame-- I am peeling now-- great huge sheets of use-
less, seared scorched skin, grey with makeup, pink
with old Sol. Now I will probably peel all summer
long-- and no mouth but your own has laid this dread-
ful curse upon me.

Well, sweetheart, how long can we prolong this
idle chatter? I must alas, to other things. Laundry
for one. And still it rains, it rains. Horses come
to the end of their tethers, but we are coming to
the end of the trail. It's the inside of one month
now, isn't it? I'll be seeing you soon, darling.

LOFF,

called this ayem and she was delighted with the Mothers
Day present I sent from us. She also said a very gracious
thing-- that what thrilled her above all was seeing our
names together on the card. Oddly enuff-- me too, tho
I shud be used to it by now, don't you think?

And so my darling, the weather may be grey but not
my soul-- it is all patience and sweetness and light
against the very few weeks that remain-- and the last
days of college that are left to me now makes that pass-
ing of time all the more precious. Reluctant and yet so
anxious.. now I have brought you over onto this page
with nothing more than the malicious intent to leave
it only one third filled. But to tell you too that I
love you very dearly-- all-ways.

may

T-4 Victor Kumin, ?1469239

SED P.O. Box 180

Santa Fe, New Mexico

T;4 Victor Kumin 31469239
SED PO Box 180 Santa Fe,
New Mexico.

Tuesday

Darlingest wan, shall we go back and take that again,
department. Or what brought that on, Max... haven't written
to you since yesterday and it seems as though several
hundred light years have rolled off my shoulders since
yest. ayem. Yes, of course, I am thru, thru now, free
now, done now. The outcome yet unknown I wallow in
blissful ignorance.

No words, darling, could recreate for you the diabolical horror of that oral, were I to give it the gas and start in on it. It was a very refined torture... the victim was allowed to cross her legs and smoke cigarettes and even blow her nose should she feel so inclined. Karpy was on the whole, kind. He was at least fair about the thing. Brinton said nothing except-- the butter's spread too thin... no, he said, ten minutes are up on that section etcetera. Levin leered. That was where I go'er uh, really yes, i know, screwed. Everytime I said yes I should have said no and conversely. Everything I said was true could have been false and conversely. In short, Miss Winokur, you are a moron; worse than that, you have certain arbitrary tendencies which are the downfall of the scholar. Even wusser is the fact that you are laboring under some grave misconceptions. When Levin asked me what Turgenev and Tolstoi quarrelled about, I smiled at him sweetly and asked, did they quarrel? You see, we learn something new every day, don't we. Levin and I got at loggerheads about Schopenhauer and it was reduced to an argument about whether you consider the abnegation of the will a positiveor a negative philosophy. Levin knows too much too well, and what little I know I do not know well enuff. sobeit. It could, I suppose, have been worse. In a submarine in the Pacific. Or chained to the wall of a damp dungeon. Came out to find Perk sitting on the steps of Grays... hat in hadn't. how was it, queried he-- it was BLOODY, quoth me. gleefully did he rub his palms each to each and dived inside to consult with the three inquisitors... i to swoon gracefully into Nusbaum's waiting arms, immediate reparation to St Cs where we downed two rye and gingers before you could say "over 21" twice backwards. Then sherry dans son chambre, then met me Uncle Mike (Barbara's mother's husband, and a right guy) who is here for a surgeon's conference, we three had more drinks, dinnaire, thence to the party for Pris where the punch was one third grapefruit juice, two thirds Schenleys. I leave the rest to your vivid imagination. I do remember insisting on riding my bike down Shepard Street, three sheets and a pillowcase in the breeze. After that, thankfully, oblivion. I woke up this morning, here I am. Enuff said? Hell, it was good- not too refined, do you think, but good.

This morning I saw Profs Cross, Brinton and McKay
all too noo avail. A Mrs. Miller at the Law school
Lib, patent and position still pending, Len Langer
for more dope on Sir Langer's new research project
this fall. All, so far, to no end at all. Yes, I am

PAR AVION

AIR MAIL

CORREO AEREO

T-4 Victor Kumin, 31469239
SED PO Box 180 Santa Fe, New Mexico

Yes, I know why you quoted the "compiling" one. I roust
met a society novelist in a fashionable drawing room
one evening during a ball, and in mock astonishment,
greeted him with-- what are you doing here? The other
took off his monocle, polished it a bit, and said
gravely, I am obser-r-ving.

today is a nasty old grey day here, too. And
tonight we shall have to stop our ears while t'others
frolic thru the spring formal in the rooms below. To-
morrow is the last of this, and then to Philly. If
the tone of my letters degenerates over the next week,
you can guess why. And then soon there will be no more
of this.

maybe more later, sweet, but for now, enuf.
oh, yes, I heard from Shambroom today, he will be in
NY by the 1st of June....

and Jill came tumbling after.

you know, there is nothing the matter with
either of us that... well, that in the course of
human events won't be set right. And you better stop
going around confusing bodily passion and honest acc-
laim. How do I know what bodily passion is any more?
Who am I, Houdini? That was honest acclaim, you old
thoth.

all right, darling. chin up, and not in..
and this above all. ILOVEYOU.

m

I haven't done any of the peaceful contemplative things I was going to do with these three days interim between finishing and filly.... but then there will be ten days more when I get back so perhaps there'll be time for them then.

's hot hyar now, and today I ventured into the realm of hair up on head, off tha heck which may or may not be considered a success, depending on your point of view. There are all kinds of pDDS and cons in the pigtail school... now look at whose just talking and not finding very much to say, at that.

but Macko just came in and wantsta go to the corner and since I skipped supper tonite it sounds good to me, so sweetheart, scuse it pliz, allons I must, love you I must, I do, and send you hunnerts and thousings of hugs and kisses which comes right under the heading of bodily passion, darling....

lots 'n lots,
max

t-4 Victor Kumin, 31469239
SED PO Box 180 Santa Fe, New Mexico

t-3 Victor Kumin, 31469239

SED, PO Box 180, Santa Fe, New Mexico

AIR MAIL,

t-3 victor kumin, 31469239
SED PO Box 180, santa fe, new mexico

sweetie this is an horrible letter, but it is much much
late and I am sleepy with sun and replete with dinner and
grow lazy and uncaring about it. I have been thinking all
nite that tomorrow is Sun and according to your predictions,
I will see you again in but two more weeks- 14 little days.
I have to pinch myself to ascertain the meaning of it all-
and when it hits me, yes indeed, I writhe under the impact.
I gues I've got the jitters again, and you may as well
know it- but god how i long to see you again, and how much
i love you, my darling!... the one you see does not necess-
arily preclude the other.

but i'm so sleepy now I shall really sleep- upper
deck or not; and sleeping, dream of you, and awake send
you all my love, honey, and a big kiss.

max

Everyone of course is fine and Dolly is leaving
tomorrow at noon and I have a millyun 'n one things to
do e'er a week from Wednesday.

baby, i can't think of a thing to tell
you. Shall I write you a sonnet about the hats that
appeared at the tea? Shall I tell you about the calamity
of the ice cream that didn't come packed in dry ice
and melted away to nothingness? Shall I tell you that
Dolly was very favorably impressed with the coterie and
the manner in which the festivities were conducted? Or
shall I tell you that I love you my darling, and want
you to come home turrible bad and yearn, long, pine for
the day two weeks mebbe hence from now when I can look
at you and know that you are there, touch you and know
that you are real- and kiss you, and know that it is
heaven.. that's quite a eulogy, but it is only half of
it. The larger significance escapes me, meaning that
it is too overwhelming for a letter. I can't do it,
darling, I can only say that I love you and that I
am very glad you ever asked me to marry you and that
i wish you were here tomorrow- and this is an awfully
BIG week and next week will be even BIGGER

and I am not A CALM AS EVER at all,
you know- i send you all my love, Vic, that is such a
meagre way of expressing what I feel-

XXXXXXXXXXXX

m

t-3 victor kumin, 31469239

SE PO Box 180, santa fe, new mexico

t-3 victor kumin, 31469239
sed po box 180 santa fe
new mexico

12

# We Beg Him to Insult Us.

By ERNEST O. HAUSER

For some reason beyond human ken, Americans keep on encouraging Red Prof. Harold J. Laski, a London hot-house brain, to tell us why he doesn't like the way we live.

LONDON.

EVERYONE knows what happens to prophets in their own country. Prof. Harold J. Laski, prophet of socialism, arch foe of free enterprise and currently chairman of the British Labor Party, has for years attracted far more attention in the United States than in his native England. It still amazes the people of this island to hear some of their American visitors, asked what prominent Englishman they'd most like to meet, request an introduction to "that famous Red professor, Harold Laski." Indeed, not a few American soldiers, coming to England during the war, beat a path to Laski's study in the London School of Economics as soon as they got off the boat, much in the manner of a tourist who, upon his arrival at Cairo, sets out to view the Sphinx.

In his endeavor to save the world, and especially the United States, from old devil capitalism, Laski has sent a steady stream of arrow-sharp words across the Atlantic. For thirty years, beginning with a lecturer's job at Harvard University in 1916 and by no means finishing with his recent speech on the atomic age, given at New York, Laski has pitted his radicalism, his exhortations and his whole flamboyant personality against our social and economic system. By his many visits to the United States, by his lectures, speeches and books, by his weekly column, which is carried by newspapers from coast to coast, by his liberally tendered advice and his incredible indiscretions, Americans have come to know him well.

They have not always rewarded him with applause. "Whenever I tell Americans what's wrong with their system," Laski complained after his recent return from New York, "they give me hell. But when an American tells them the same thing, it's perfectly good form!" Last year, when the political grapevine had him appointed His Majesty's Ambassador to Washington, this wholly unfounded rumor caused a variety of reactions, ranging from amusement to indignation. Obviously, when it comes to Laski, nobody can be indifferent.

Curiously enough, "the world's most brilliantly destructive mind," as a prominent British socialist called him the other day, was not much heard of in these isles until the 1945 election campaign propelled him dramatically into the limelight. It so happened that shortly before that campaign, in which the Labor Party sought and obtained the mandate to govern Britain, Laski had been elected chairman of the party's executive committee. As a rule, this job, which changes hands every year, carries little authority. But the combination of Harold Laski and the dynamics of the first general election in ten years was bound to touch off fireworks. Soon the professor was singled out for vicious personal attacks by his Conservative opponents; Laski incidents were making banner headlines; and the crusading scholar, with accustomed modesty, had to tell an audience at Wallington, Surrey, "This election is not about me."

The dapper, slight, smiling professor of political science packs a wallop. Behind his deceptively innocent Groucho Marx façade, a mighty brain works on a twenty-four-hour shift. Seeds from this brain have fallen on fertile ground all over the world—Laski students today hold key positions in six continents. His score of books,

especially the Grammar of Politics, first published in 1925, which established his reputation as a political thinker, are obligatory reading in hundreds of schools and universities. As a teacher, Laski is probably the greatest spellbinder in the English-speaking world today and, as generation after generation of spellbound students passes through his hands, the sun never sets upon Laski's ever-growing realm.

Just how red is the professor? Not long ago, one of his girl students walked up to him after a lecture and informed him that she had accepted the ultimate consequence of his teachings by joining the Communist Party. Laski, without his usual wisecracks and rather in the manner of a Dutch uncle, replied that his lectures could not turn anybody into a communist.

But while Laski persistently denies that he is a communist, the line which separates him from the communist camp at times gets lost in the shifting sands of political repartee. His attitude toward Soviet Russia has been conspicuously devoid of criticism for a mind as critical as Laski's. He mentions, to be sure, the "blunders and fantastic cruelties" committed by Soviet rulers, but broadly-mindedly adds—in Faith, Reason and Civilization, published in 1944—"I accept the ugliness of all these things; and I do not even attempt to excuse them. But those who accept the Christian faith do

DRAWN BY DAVID LOW

"The world's most brilliantly destructive mind" may lurk within, but the exterior is highly unalarming.

not regard the stains upon its record as the disproof of its insight."

Laski has visited the Soviet Union three times to lecture at various Soviet universities, the longest visit lasting nine weeks. He was given the generous Cook's Tour treatment reserved for distinguished visitors, and what he discovered was the dawn of a new civilization superior to the "unplanned society which lives by the impersonal mechanism of the market in the capitalist democracies we know." He found it impossible, he wrote—in Reflections on the Revolution of Our Time, 1943—"not to notice in the Russian worker a pride in initiative, a sense of new horizons," and compared his freedom to the status of a unionized worker in a capitalist democracy, to the latter's disadvantage, in spite of the fact that the Soviet worker cannot go on strike. Somewhat out of step with this attitude was Laski's recent vehement rejection of a proposed alliance of the British Labor Party with the Communist Party, referring to it as a plan to "stab the Social Democratic parties in the back."

Outspoken individual that he is, Laski finds it hard to think of himself as an anonymous member of the herd. "Freedom's his pet," one of his students recently remarked, in explaining the amount of wordage Laski has devoted to that subject in his books and lectures. Under socialism, Laski assured himself rather than his reader in one of his early pamphlets, the individual "would, as now, marry and beget children; he would, as now, enjoy entire freedom of religious belief." Evidently, Laski is concerned with the place of Laski in the socialist state. He has been known to observe that if he had to live in Russia as a Soviet citizen he would be liquidated after six weeks.

One of Laski's favorite topics, discussed with advanced students in the intimacy of the seminar, is the "place of the intellectual in society," and no one present ever doubts that what Laski means by "the intellectual" is Laski. With something more than academic interest, the professor, in those hot sessions, will marshal his arguments so as to define the intellectual as one who "seeks to alter the general mental climate" of his time, rather than deal

with a specific situation by firing a gun from the barricades. "If he found himself in the midst of a revolution, with real blood flowing down the gutter, I can't quite see him among the bloodshedders," one of his girl students mused the other day, sympathetically.

True, Laski enjoys thinking of himself as a subversive character, and in his lectures sometimes playfully transports his students to the point where it would not surprise them to see the doors flung open to admit half a dozen plain-clothes men, the next thing being a volley of shots ringing out from the back yard of the school. But when, during an open-air meeting at Nottingham last year, a heckler accused him of advocating revolution from the platform, Laski at once brought a libel suit against the heckler, as well as against Lord Beaverbrook's Daily Express, which had given considerable publicity to the incident. His aim, he insists, is "revolution by persuasion," and he trusts that, when the libel case comes up, the court will rule that Laski is no Robespierre.

Laski's flirtations with the extreme left have occasionally brought him into sharp conflict with the main body of Labor Party opinion. The most noteworthy example of such a difference occurred in the late 1930's, when a small group of socialists, including Laski, joined hands with the communists in advocating a popular front in Britain. Such a solution, which might have knocked the props from under the Chamberlain Government, was opposed by the majority of Labor Party leaders, who profoundly distrusted the communists. When the guillotine fell, Laski happened to be in Seattle, Washington, and his absence probably saved his neck. Three of his fellow conspirators, Aneurin Bevan, Stafford Cripps and George Strauss, were expelled from the party.

During the abdication crisis of 1936, on the other hand, Laski meticulously followed the party line in support of Prime Minister Baldwin.

INTERNATIONAL

Laski has never run for office, and leaves day-to-day politics to others. His own role, as he sees it, is to "create the atmosphere" for success ten years ahead.

BRITISH-COMBINE

Prime Minister Attlee campaigned in 1945 against the advice of Laski, who urged him to step aside in favor of someone with more personality.

BRITISH-COMBINE

Winston Churchill assailed the professor with a bitterness not customary in their country, but no eloquence could halt a Labor landslide.

win, because, he argued, the British Constitution required the monarch to accept the advice of his prime minister, even if it spelled abdication.

Obviously, Laski is so complex a phenomenon that he defies classification; his place "to the left of something" is by no means easy to define. It is true that, generally speaking, he finds himself to the left of his party, to the left of the Labor Government—the mere mention of Indonesia, India and Greece will bring forth an impassioned "J'accuse" from him. But it is equally true that, by heritage and background, Laski is a "liberal" in the word's old-fashioned British meaning. Could it be that his true position is slightly to the left of himself?

Laski grew up in the affluent, up-and-coming, progressive atmosphere of industrial Manchester, where he was born in 1893. His father, a well-to-do cotton merchant, was prominent in the Liberal Party. The Laskis descended from a long line of distinguished rabbis; although the family, after Harold's great-grandparents had come to England from Russia in 1831, turned to the field of business, they continued to think of themselves as scholars. Harold's father wanted his two sons to become men of letters, and they did. Neville, Harold's elder brother, today is a successful barrister in London.

Harold Joseph was the political animal—he made his first public speech on a Manchester street corner at the age of nine. When Winston Churchill first stood as a candidate for the Liberal Party, Laski, Senior, headed the committee which organized the campaign; Harold remembers sitting on the bed in the guest room, watching Winston rehearse his election speeches in front of the large mirror and, to

this day, can render a convincing impersonation of the great man. While studying at the Manchester Grammar School, young Harold used to take his lunch at the Clarion Café and, one day, one of the waiters there introduced him to W. C. Anderson, chairman of the Independent Labor Party. Laski had just listened to a coffeehouse debate on socialism, and Anderson's arguments had won him over to the cause. He was fifteen and a half then, and has been a socialist ever since.

But Laski never wanted to be an active toreador in the political arena; as long as he can remember, he has wanted to teach. He studied medieval history at Oxford and soon identified himself with the small group of leftist students and scholars who somehow managed to thrive in Oxford's conservative climate. He became a well-known figure in the university's debating clubs and joined the Fabian Society. The latter step was of decisive importance. The Fabians, under such leaders as George Bernard Shaw and Sidney and Beatrice Webb, had set out to establish socialism in Britain through a process of intellectual percolation. Their membership was small, for they were a snobbish lot and did not invite the masses into their parlor, but their pamphlets hit the right people, and their debates helped develop the grand strategy which eventually resulted in the Labor victory of 1945.

Laski's position in the Labor Party has remained that of a back-seat driver. He has never stood for election. Speaking from the musty classrooms of the School of Economics rather than from the halls of Westminster, he could remain the educator in the broadest sense of the word. "I'm not a politi-

cian," he'll say, "trying to get votes tomorrow. I create the atmosphere in which Labor will get votes ten years from now." Laski's mission, as he sees it, is to spell out the meaning of general principles, constantly reminding the Labor delegates of why they were elected in the first place.

As an intellectual, Laski is not on intimate terms with the party's rank and file, in particular the union movement, whose broad-shouldered leaders, men of the people, squint at the little wise guy from the School of Economics with suspicious eyes. Likewise, his relations with most of the cabinet ministers in the Labor Government are somewhat strained, largely because of the professor's indiscreet utterances abroad. Besides, Prime Minister Attlee remembers that during the 1945 campaign Laski saw fit to advise him to relinquish his position as leader of the Parliamentary Labor Party because he lacked color. There remain, then, the backbenchers with decidedly radical leanings, who form the extreme Left Wing of the party and who occasionally consult with the professor on important issues. It is worth noting that sixty-seven of the Labor representatives in Parliament once studied under Laski.

Every spring, Laski attends the annual party conference as a delegate of the Labor Party of East Fulham, the grimy industrial suburb of London where he lives. There are some 700 such local party representatives, and it is their vote, cast separately from the trade-union vote at the party conference, which, for the last ten years, has sent Laski up to a seat on the executive committee of the party. At the 1945 conference, held in the Empress Ballroom of the Winter Gardens, at (Continued on Page 46)

46

May 18, 1946

WE BEG HIM TO
INSULT US

(Continued from Page 13)

Blackpool, Laski was chosen chairman of the committee.

What does the executive committee of the British Labor Party do? It represents the permanent machine of the party and can be compared to a general staff sitting in council far behind the front, making strategic decisions, while tactical moves are decided on by the 393 Labor representatives in Parliament—the officers at the firing line. For example, the Labor members of Parliament are now proceeding with the socialization program which represents the party's grand strategy, but whenever the question of socializing a certain industry comes up, they are free to vote Yes or No without first calling Fulham 2444—Professor Laski's private telephone number.

This fundamental relationship between the executive committee, on the one hand, and the Labor representatives and cabinet ministers, on the other, was deliberately confused by the

Conservative Party during the 1945 election campaign. Winston Churchill, in his first election broadcast, pictured the twenty-seven members of the executive committee as a sinister Gestapo, ready to clap "a harsh, clumsy, tyrannical hand across the mouths and nostrils" of the British people. In a later broadcast, as the plight of the Conservatives was growing more desperate by the hour, Britain's great wartime leader no longer could afford to pull his punches. "A new figure has leaped into notoriety," he said of the son of his old Manchester crony. "The situation has now been complicated and darkened in consequence of the repeated interventions by Professor Laski, chairman of the Socialist Party executive. The British people have always hitherto wanted to have their affairs conducted by men they know. Now, it seems, we must refer to an obscure committee and be governed by unrepresentative persons . . . ministers of the crown will appear on the benches of Parliament and deliver orations upon which they have been instructed not from their own heart and conscience, but from these dim conclaves below."

(Continued on Page 49)

THE SATURDAY

*(Continued from Page 49)*

“Said good-by to my friend Leon Blum
in Paris this morning—what a mind!”
Such casual references to Laski’s far-
flung activities make the students feel
that they’re right in the swim.

A natural-born showman and spiritual seducer, Laski has something of the eternal Sinatra appeal, and one does not need to stretch one's imagination far to visualize the raptly listening girl students in his audience as so many swooning bobby-soxers. During the war, when the School of Economics was sheltering at Cambridge, Laski's Saturday morning lecture was a social event—all Cambridge went to listen. Laski is extremely generous with both his time and his money, and often devotes three hours of his busy day to a troubled student's domestic problems. His recommendations have helped many of his graduates find jobs, and he occasionally slips a five-pound note to an undernourished, overworked student, telling him to take a few days off.

Every Tuesday night Laski is “at home” for his friends and students in his modest house in Fulham. Sitting by the electric stove with his slippers on, he talks continuously, entertaining his audience with stories and anecdotes, all of which somehow involve Harold Laski and few of which are believed by those present. Those who know him well gladly swap credibility for entertainment, and are entranced anew by each story beginning, “The Aga Khan once told me —” or “Einstein said to me, when I got through showing him the sights of London —” or “I say, old boy,” Tony Eden remarked one day.”

Laski has a passion for old books—
collecting them is his only hobby. He
spends hours in secondhand book
stores, uncovering rare editions, and
has come to know much about the
personal lives of booksellers all over the
country; recently, upon the death of an
old lady who owned a bookshop up
north, he published an obituary which
can be considered a contribution to the
English language. His students are
used to encountering Laski on a murky
London afternoon, walking down Char-
ing Cross Road with a stack of leather-

bound tomes under his arm and the con-
tented smile of a sleepwalker on his face.

He reads voraciously, omnivorously.
He would consider his own education
incomplete if he had not read Gone
With the Wind, just as he has read the
more obscure writings of the more ob-
scure monks of the thirteenth century.
Laski has been clocked reading at
speeds approaching 360 pages per hour,
but 200 PPH is normal cruising speed.
After finishing, he can discuss the book
intelligently, quoting at length and re-
ferring to the proper pages. Facts once
thrown against the flypaper of his ex-
traordinary mind stick there for life,
and he would, no doubt, be a success on
the panel of Information, Please.

Laski lives comfortably on his uni-
versity salary of 1500 pounds—$6000—
a year, which is augmented by a con-
stant trickle of royalties from his writ-
ings. Mrs. Laski, the former Frida
Kerry, with whom Harold eloped at the
age of twenty-one in the face of pa-
rental disapproval, takes an active part
in the civic affairs of Fulham; their
daughter, Diana, is married to a
teacher at St. Paul's, a well-known
London school. The Laskis are, withal,
a happy middle-class family, conserva-
tive in their domestic habits and rather
set in their ways.

It may well be that Britain's "wander-
ing minstrel," as Laski was recently
called in the House of Commons, is at
heart little more than a middle-class
Englishman of moderately liberal lean-
ings who enjoys startling the public of
a greatly upset world by appearing be-
fore it wrapped in the wolf's clothing
of a dangerous radical. Who knows?
He himself would most indignantly
deny such camouflage. As one of the
most controversial figures of a con-
fused age, Laski gets a kick out of
making headlines, and he likes to think
of himself as a missionary among the
heathen, who, as he recently put it,
"collects around himself a nest of sing-
ing birds which sing his song." It is
worth remembering that he converted
his own father. At the election of 1935,
the old gentleman voted the socialist
ticket after Harold had taken him
down a coal pit.

THE END

AIR-MAIL

T-3 Victor Kumin, 31469239
SED PO Box 180, Santa Fe,
New Mexico.

Mr. and Mrs. Peter Winokur

request the pleasure of your company

at the marriage of their daughter

Maxine
to

Mr. Victor Montwid Kumin

on Saturday, the twenty-ninth of June

at half after seven o'clock

The Warwick
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

with you. Well, we'll see. Boxford is a lovely place, isn't it?
Just looking out over the water enthralls me and then I wish I
were a smooth bottomed canoe gliding almost silently over its
stillness just after sunset, with the paddle making small sucking
noises, and the power of each stroke sending the canoe forward
in a strong easy glide. In the next world I shall ask to be a
canoe-bottom in quiet lakes at twilight. When the water is a murky
green and the breeze is cool.

The Boxford library was built in 1873; Maishe tells me their camp
was standing in 1850. It's run down but worthy of reverence. Wish
you could have seen Petey just at dusk standing in a big white
basin in the middle of the kitchen table while Edy rubbed sudsy
soap all over his little naked body. The light that was left
glistened on him so that he looked like an Indian papoose. I sud-
denly wanted one of those.

Well darling, that seems to be about all there is to tell, except
that it is a lovely cool star filled night and that my thoughts are
all with you. I don't think I could live through many more quiet
summer nights without you; it seems as though an integral part of
my machinery is quite missing. I'll be so glad when you're back.
And now I must return to the utterly mundane and go shampoo the
grimy locks. I shall sing the ballad of Barberry Ellen in the
shower and wish that you were there to wash my back. I send you
all my love tonight, darling, of which there is indeed somewhat
more than a great deal. And a kiss.

Max

MR. VICTOR KUMIN,
39 AUBURN ST.
Brookline, Mass

Mr. Victor Kumia,
39 Auburn Street,
Brookline, Mass.

Mr. Victor Kumin,
39 Auburn Street,
Brookline, Massachusetts

Mr. Victor Kumin
39 Huburu Street
Brookline, Mass.

Mr. Victor Kumin
39 Auburn Street
Brookline, Mass.

After 5 days, return to
HARVARD ALUMNI BULLETIN,
1400 Massachusetts Ave.,
CAMBRIDGE 38, MASS.

(3)

paused, hearing waking noises from her parents' room. She edged her
way around the corner of the hall as silently as an Indian padding
through forests of dry twigs. The door had been left ajar to catch
a breath of air from the windows on the landing. There was the sound
of someone turning restlessly in bed, labored breathing. The girl
craned her neck a few inches forward until she could see into the
room without being seen.

Even the cool wet grass felt lifeless and parched to her touch.
The sun was rising midway in the sky, a great hot ball of redness
and of shame. Her mouth was fuzzy and sour. She ran behind the beech
tree and vomited dizzily, miserable with too much knowledge.

7 Mr Victor Kumin
39 Auburn Street,
Brookline, Mass.