1948 Book Reviews 59
Bively and has naturally come into contact, with people of many lands.
What has struck him in his contacts with foreign educators is the ardent desire on the part of the latter for un
derstanding of Japan and the Japa
nese. Japan hasoften challenged the study of both Occidentals and Orien tals, but she remains as ever some thing of a mystery to them On the surface,' there is nothing radically different between the Japanese and othgrpeoples, blit thedeep-rooteddif ferences in culture between them ap parently baffle comprehension of the
Japanese by Occidentals.
Professor Osima’s book is an at tempt to interpret the. essentia) dif
ferences between thetwo cultures and toanalyze the intricacies of Japanese mentality that ma. puzzle "he West
erners The present reviewer believes that he has succeeded in this ambi
tious. undertaking remarkably well The English translation, by a graduate of the University of Denver, a Japa
nese artda close friendof the author, is remarkably well written
—Pedro T. Orata
With Harp And Sling
Alfredo Elfren LitiatCo, Effandem, 1943, Manila
T
HISlamentedbook A.E.L. bears the pub-of poems by the late• lisher’S imprint* "Limited Me
morial Edition.” Since the author died but a few days before the book came off the press, the imprint is most appropriate. It is appropriate in quite another sense. As A.E.L.’s first and only book prepared in his lifetime and published in accordance with his express desire (a dying man’s last wish, one might say), it is significant primarilyas a memorial to the man, a testimonial to the es
sential ' qualities of his heart and mind. It is less significant as a me morial to the artist, aS a token of his literary achievement.
That which is revealed in this book is A.E.L.—in many moods, a9 he avers in his ingenuous Introduc tion: “tender and wrathful, sad and flippant, bitter and amused”—A.E.L.
in the throes of love, trying multilo- quently to articulate that which is essentially inexpressible. Here, also, isA.E.L.of the shining bon motand the clever repartee, ever standing upon witticism and quite often achiev ingauthenticwit.
The thirty-three bonnets which take up more than half the volume constitute, by his own touching ad mission, an offering to theftoman he loved. The reviewer is, therefore, constrained to subject them to the scrutiny of impersonal criticism But A.E.L.,as a literaryeditorand critic, enjoyed among his contemporaries a reputation for frank and perspica
cious judgment, and there isno doubt that he would, were he still living, prefer an honest appraisal of his work to either compassionate silence or fulsome praise.
A.E.L. was partial to the sonnet form, (What poet has not', al one time or another, succumbed to the fascinationof thesonnet,hewing and chipping away, with burih or with chisel, patiently, meticulously, loving ly, inordertoachieve the classic per
fection of this form?) In the son* net he saw, as other poets since Pe trarch and Spenser had seen before him, the supreme test of technical skill and poetic inspiration. But if the sonnet is a fascinating medium, it is also tyrannous in its require ments. For this reason there are
60 Philippine Review April
only a few sonnets which, while ful
filling these imperious requirements, nevertheless rise triumphant over them, the lyric fire burning andglow
ing through the outer frame. Be
cause of the self-conscious and often careless workmanship, the majority of the sonnets in this book do not thus glow; they make the reader all too sharply aware that the form, the mould, is there.
Great poetry is invariably touched with the magic of suggestive ambi guity. The burden of thought and emotion is never laid bare in a strict logical sequence, but is bodied forth subtly, intuitively, tangentially. He who speaks in these sonnets is a man in love and, therefore, a poet, albeit a too articulate one. The fullness of emotion has not driven him into that fine poetic frenzy which melts away all distinctions between substance and form and makes them one. His verse flows upon a too even keel, the idiom is often prosy, in places dis concertingly so.
A sonnet sequence of this sort is bound to be tediously repetitive un less thepoet possesses a high degree of technical and emotionalvirtuosity.
A.E.L., who doubtless knew his Shakespeare, Elizabeth E a r re 11 Browning and Edna St. Vincent Mil- lay by heart, fails,except inthree or four sonnets (“We ShouldNot Fear,’’
“Benignant Fates,” “Nor Custom Stale”) to maintain the poetic pitch and the level of inspiration so neces sary to maintain the unityof an ex
tended sonnet sequence. He is too explicit and too voluble; he makes but little useof the deviceof the in
sinuated thought; he leaves practi
cally nothing unsaid.
There is more of the essential A.E.L. in the parodies and light verse for which latterhe makes the not extravagant claim that it is un
equalled in the Philippines. Here is A.E.L.who loved the clean, mischiev*
ous playof wit for its own sake, who concealed, beneath a flippant exterior and the elfin charm of his personal
ity, the sharp stiletto of cynicism with, which he. could carve lines as bitter as those in “Lord of Crea
tion” :
Ground a twig;
Rosesbloom.
Buryacorns;
Oak trees loom.
Sdw:some seeds;
Tendrilssprout.
Plant aman;
Worms come out.
But above all, A.E.L., the poet, shows to best advantage in the three longer pieces that are included under the head “Miscellaneous.” Here is a poet whose sympathy with thecom
mon peoplewas beginning to blossom out in bold and challenging verse (“Prayer for the People”), who per
ceived the deepmystical beauty of a man’s true love for woman (“You Are All Things, to Me”), and who achieved, beyondanything in the son
nets, a supremely felicitous lyrical moment in “I Remember It All, Pa
mela.”
A.E.L.’s more substantial literary achievement lay in the fields of the short story and the personal essay.
One of the regrets that his friends andcolleagues mustfeel over his un timely passingisthathe did not live long enough to lay before the'public a more fitting and more adequate testimonial to his talent. It is to be hoped, in justice to his memory, that the deficiency will sometime soon be made good.
There is something of A.E.L. in this slender volume of verses; but it is not the A.E.L. who will be long rememberedas oneof the mostgifted Filipino writers in English of this generation.
—Salvador P. Lopes
