Tue Twelve. By Alexander Blok. Translated from the Russian with illustrations and cover-design by Michael Larionov. Chatto and Win-dus.
Mr. Bechhofer tells us in the preface of this thin, but sumptuous volume, that two million copies of the poem have been distributed in Soviet Russia. Alexander Blok "'strives to pierce _below the squalor and cant of Bolshevism to those impulses and passions that have made it a worldwide movement." And to do so he has established " new form of poetry, combining words and rhythms "in a manner that has never been adopted before"; indeed Mr. Bechhofer assures us that "many movements in literature have gone to the development of this new process." After these as surances and explanations one is hardly prepared for the introductory stanzas:—
Black evening.
White snow.
The wind! The wind! No one can keep upon his feet.
The wind! The wind! Through all God's earth.
The wind ruffes The white snow. Under the snow is ice.
Tt is slippery, beastly Through. all God's earth.
Why, without the slightest knowledge of the modern movements whose synthesis has produced the above, I can do as well myself. Look here Purple night.
Pink ice.
So cold! So cold! No one can even bolt it down.
So cold! So cold! In all Soho.
The heat melts Inder the ico is It is tinned, bloody Every diner Groans. Ab, poor Melba!
The poem deals with the re volutionary adventures of 12 soldiers. It can be read in five minutes, and I read it twice, as Mr. Bechhofer asked me to do in his introduction. The poet has certainly contrived to convey a horrible impression of cold, mud, squalor, vice, murder and moral collapse; but at the end he makes a tawdry attempt at a tour de force, assures us that the Saviour is leading the filthy twelve With a white aureole of roses, It is difficult to know why this wretched work is presented in a luxurious volume; for its only value is to show the effect of Boishevism on the art of a man who has in the past given us exquisite lyrics.
Among the illustrations is a picture of a dog, which clearly is a dog, and pictures which represent anything or may, for aught I know, be reproductions of overused blotting-pads. The volume ends suitably with a caricature of
the "Ney Witness."
Jesus Christ.—Rothay Reynolds in
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.