FALLEN BY THE MICROPHONE

New Zealand Listener, Volume 32, Issue 821, 22 April 1955, Page 12

FALLEN BY THE MICROPHONE

AUTUMN SEQUEL, by Louis MacNeice; Faber and Faber, English price 12/6. HE Oxford poets of the ’thirtiesthey were given many labels, but these two points of reference are central -were a fairly compact group once;

now they are squandered abroad. Through the’ war years, Louis MacNeice’s gifts-quickness, deftness, an Irish wit and a North-of-Ireland mental toughness, reinforced by a dogged humanism-seemed to wear better than most; his romantic impulses were ballasted by a classical training, his vision remained clear. Since the war, two things have happened: there has been a recrudescence of literary romanticism, and Mr. MacNeice has continued to work for the BBC. The lamentable results are written large through the 26 cantos of this "Rhetorical Poem." Autumn Sequel as a radio script has many merits. It is almost embarrassingly professional-one can read the comPoser’s notes for the producer between many lines, most clearly at the beginning and end of every canto. As a poem, it suffers abominably: the material is inflated, the most trivial incident is blown up into a radio pseudo-drama which the trained voice may cunningly interpret. Why should this be so disastrous? Professionalism in the theatre never did a true poet any harm; Shakespeare in another day, Christopher Fry in ours, may spin words admirably for calculated effect. The answer here, I think, is that this is really a romantic confessional piece in a minor key, which should have been a great deal less rhetorical and about a quarter as long. Of course, there are good things in itI liked especially the return to Oxford,

the British Museum and the Christmas reverie, though Dylan Thomas’s funeral jars uncomfortably-but the good things are corrupted by a meretricious setting, and by the maddening ticker-tape of Mr. MacNeice’s ersatz terza rima,. If radio has a function today as a patron for poets, let it be for a straight commissioned job of work on a set theme, or an independent reading of a poem independently produced: not, we must ‘beg, for this shameless Third Programme exploitation of private thoughts and feelings.

James

Bertram