ANOTHER RUPERT BROOKE
THE PROSE OF RUPERT BROOKE, edited by Christopher Hassall; Sidgwick and Jackson, English price 15/-. \/HO would have imagined a revival of interest in Rupert Brooke? For a few years he flashed like a meteor across the literary skies. His war sonnets in 1915 made him a public hero. His death on service and his romantic burial on one of the isles of Greece made him a legend, and the frontispiece portrayal of his profile mace him. an idol for a generation that had lost its young men, who in memory at least re-
mained as handsome as Greek gods But Rupert Brooke was a "Georgian." By 1920 the Georgians were out. Eliot and Pound and the Imagists were in. Donne and Hopkins were the new masters, and "Georgian" became a term of literary abuse. Today for elderly men and women Brooke remains an_ idol. For younger readers he is as outmoded as Austin Dobson or Martin Tupper. Both sets of readers, I think, will find the present volume a surprise. It includes familiar material-the first-rate journalism of his Letters from America and the percipient criticism from his book on .Webster-but the new material (uncollected essays and reviews) reveals an unknown Rupert Brooke. Here he is reviewing with critical appreciation Ezra Pound’s first volume, back in 1909, before Pound became _ Eliot’s master. Here is Brooke in 1913 reviewing Grierson’s edition of Donne-and saying the "right" things about Donne. Evidently we must learn to be more circumspect in throwing around "Georgian" as a term of abuse. Brooke had discovered the "modern" masters while Aucen and Day Lewis were still in primary school, (sorry, prep. school). Christopher Hassall both in his selection and in his introductory essay has put
us all in his debt. —
Ian A.
Gordon
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 37, Issue 938, 2 August 1957, Page 18
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298ANOTHER RUPERT BROOKE New Zealand Listener, Volume 37, Issue 938, 2 August 1957, Page 18
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