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PARTISAN REVIEW
lack two elements indispensable to the happiness of a well-bred man:
gallantry and devotion." In addition to its wit, its complexity and its
high musical qualities, Mr. Hecht's poetry is notably generous and
open. The gentlemanly virtues are sublimated into gesture. To main–
tain this spirit in our acid atmosphere, a poet needs the gift of radical
irony. All his truths must
be
provisional on the conditions and premises
established in the poem. Early Cummings had this quality, though some–
what desperate and surly. Ransom has it pre-eminently. In no other
young poet has it a wider or more cheerful range than in Hecht,
nowhere is it more blithe or baroque.
KATHARSIS
The king rose up one morning from his bed
Naming his humors, as was his scholarly style,
.And finding above all a viscid bile
Predominated, called for his newlywed,
And with an axe relieved her of her head,
Showing in this that man, however vile,
May through
das Ewig-Weibliche
revile
And purge his foulness by her gentle stead.
On that same morning rose up also he
Whose violence had been of lesser scope,
Yet should by stern and eminent decree
Greet his purgation at an end of rope;
He knew no lady, no devoted she
Whose intercession would fulfill the trope.
I
After Yeats's ear on the dish, we are scarcely meant to be shocked by
this. The tale is grim but the tone is easy. Poise, weight, variety, ease,
wit, economy and unforced distinction of phrasing-all these things are
present in Hecht to an unusual degree. Best of all, I should say, is the
sense of spaciousness and reserve. A poem like "Alceste in the Wilder–
ness," with its Websterian
mortisme,
manages to balance a (probably)
insoluble obscurity against such a rich texture of image and sound that
our normal demands for coherence are satisfied. This is a rare achieve–
ment in any poet and puts Hecht in the highest modern company.
Vernon Watkins is a Welshman, a friend of the late Dylan Thomas.
New Directions has previously published a
Selected Poems
(from his
first two books) and an admirable translation of Heine's
The North
Sea,
with German facing. Like W. S. Graham he represents the new
class of brilliant but rather staid British provincial writers. More even
