' 'Senlin' resists disruption
longer. But the same elements are there. They are better but not
sufficiently fused. The rhetoric forbids, for there is no cohesion in
rhetoric. We have the sense that Mr Aiken felt himself inadequate to his
own idea, and that he tried to drown the voice of his own doubt by a
violent clashing of the cymbals where a quiet recitative was what the
theme demanded and his art could not ensure.
'Death himself in the rain ... death himself ...
Death in the savage sunlight ... skeletal death ...
I hear the clack of his feet,
Clearly on stones, softly in dust,
Speeding among the trees with whistling breath,
Whirling the leaves, tossing his hands from waves ...
Listen! the immortal footsteps beat and beat!...'
We are persuaded that Mr Aiken did not mean to say that; he wanted to
say something much subtler. But to find exactly what he wanted might
have taken him many months. He could not wait. Up rushed the rhetoric;
bang went the cymbals: another page, another book. And we, who have seen
great promise in his gifts, are left to collect some inadequate
fragments where his original design is not wholly lost amid the poor
expedients of the moment.
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