THINGS TO COME

New Zealand Listener, Volume 21, Issue 528, 5 August 1949, Page 26

THINGS TO COME

Huxley Interviewed | ALbous HUXLEY was recently in- | terviewed by John Davenport for the BBC and recordings of the interview will be heard from 2YA at 8.20 p.m, on Monday, August 8. "I don’t feel I am really a novelist; it seems to be all a slight fraud that I am saying something in fictional terms," he says. He mentions his new novel, Ape and Essence, discusses the genetic effect of radio-activity and the prospect of bacteriological war, and attempts an answer to the question, Do people really destroy themselves for ideas? At 7.13 p.m. on Thursday, "August 11, listeners to the same station will hear a discussion about Aldous Huxley by two local speakers, D. J. Davies and Stuart Perry. Prose Poet "|[F ever there was a man with the soul of a poet, and the senses of a poet, it was Richard Jefferies," says the Reverend A. Elliott-Cannon, until recently of England, and now Vicar of the Hauraki Plains, who will be heard discussing this writer in the session Mainly

| About Books, Droadcast by. 1YA_ on Monday, August 8, at 7.15 pm. The speaker is familiar } with the countryside from which ¢ Jefferies gained his , inspiration, and will give a brief de-

scription of it, hoping that even a slight acquaintance with the writer’s background will contribute to a better appreciation of his work, "For to read Jefferies," adds the Reverend Elliott-Can-non, "ig to be able to smell the wet earth after rain, to respond-with the author-with every nerve in your body to the pageantry of God’s creation." Tongue and Jaw Trouble OST farmers are familiar with the diseases known as "lumpy jaw" and "wooden tongue," which will be discussed from. 2YA by W. Maurice Webster at 7.13 p.m. on Tuesday, August 9. "All domestic animals and man are susceptible to the latter, and although we haven’t heard of a human case, we know ‘one or two people who might benefit from a mild dose of it. It is more likely ‘to attack a greedy feeder who is fond of coarse, fibrous roughage, according to Mr. Webster, who is concerned solely with animals. Symptoms are a constant flow of saliva and, as the disease progresses, enlargement and stiffening of the tongue until it protrudes permanently from the mouth. At this stage thé animal is no longer able to. feed and wastes rapidly. The most effective cure is iodine, injected intravenously. Lumpy jaw is commonest amongst younger animals, but wooden tongue may occur at any age. That ‘Other Eden S there another Garden of Eden? John Rolley believes there is, and he places it on the Pacific island of Hiva Oa, in the Marquesas group, about 700 miles from Tahiti. "By all simple essential standards Hiva is the most civilised place I know," he says. "It is probably

more like Eden than the Garden, for you will look in vain for a serpent." In Pacific Hitch-hike, which will be heard from 1YA on Wednesday, August 10, at 9.30 p.m. John Rolley will describe his life on the island, including such extraordinary achievements as the building of his house within a matter of a few days and at a total cost of £22, and the acquisition of a veritable paragon of a cook-housekeeper for a wage of twenty shillings per month. This young woman was adept with the fish spear, could climb the coconut palms, and set snares for wild fowl. Food cost nothing more than the effort necessary to catch, collect or grow it and to prepare it. Another talk by John Rolley, dealing with games and pastimes in the Cook Islands, -will be. broadcast by 1YA at the same time on the following Wednesday, August 17. House For Sale OOKING for a house? Then perhaps you'll be interested in ‘the NZBS play The Cottage in the Woods. That first spring after the war Rennie and his wife had been hunting for a house for months-flats, rooms, country mansions, anything for a roof-and they’d almost given up hope when they read the ad. in the paper: "Small stone cott. for sale vac. possess. 3 bed. 2 sit. lovely country, small gdn., nr. station, elec. light." It seemed too good to be true, ‘but they éventually managed to buy it. The only catch was that the cottage was in the middle of a wood, a large beech wood that extended for miles. In fact, the trees crowded around so closely that their branches reached right over thé hedge, and seedlings kept. springing up in the garden. But worse things than that were to happen before Rennie and his family had been in that eerie spot for long. The Cottage in the Woods will be heard from 2YA at 8.0 p.m. on Wednesday, August 10. Tales by Poe : "| BECAME. insane, with horrible periods of sanity,’ wrote Edgar Allan Poe of the years following the death of his wife in 1847. But in the previous two decades he had written some of the most remarkable poems and short stories in American literature, and his explorations in a new literary field were

eagerly exploited by the French symbolists, the first to recognise his genius. Poe was orphaned early, and spent three years in the army before starting his literary career in Baltimore, where he lived a friendless, solitary life. He was,

in the quaint wording of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, "afflicted with a strange susceptibility to the effects of liquor, combined with an attraction towards it which he did not always resist successfully," and it was mainly this defect that made it impossible for him to remain literary editor, in Richmond, Philadelphia, or New York, of the magazines which he had raised to prosperity. But his musical gift as a poet and his weirdness and dramatic power as a story teller have secured his immortality. The first of a series Tales from the Pen of Edgar Allan Poe will be heard from 4YZ at 10.0 p.m. on Friday, August 12, New Recordings of "Otello" AMONG the highlights of the American musical world in 1947 was a nation-wide broadcast of Verdi’s opera Otello, directed by Arturo Toscanini, with singers from the Metropolitan Opera Company. The opera was broadcast on two successive Sundays, and recordings made at the time by the International Broadcasting Division: of the Department of State have been lent to the NZBS. The opera will be heard from 2YA at 85 p.m. on Sunday, August 14. Verdi wrote Ofello in 1887, when he was in his seventies, and 16 years after he had produced Aida, It breaks from the accustomed pattern of Italian Grand Opera in that characterisation is stressed and there are no sets or ensembles, every scene fusing into the next without a break. The singers in this new version are Ramon Vinay (tenor) as Otello, Giuseppe Valdengo. (baritone) as .lago, Herva Nelli (soprano) as Desdemona, Nan Merriman (mezzo) as Emilia, and Virginio Assandri (tenor) as Cassio. The opera is in four acts and the libretto is by Boito after Shakespeare. -,