3

Wedriesday; :March: 10, 1960

THE COLLEGE NEWS

re.

Page Three’



‘Crossroads Africa’
Receives Students |

Having assured the manage-
ment that she had a strong stom-









ner

‘having described as “just fantas-

- way of African statesmen, repre-

‘Paris, where for a week there

“cized among the

~ last time felt that his visitors

the.180 students who are going to
West Africa this summer for
three months as a part of the
“Crossroads Africa” program.
Organized by Dr. James Robin-
son of the Morningside Commun-
ity Center in New York City,
Crossroads will send its second

Article By Karl Shapiro Brings Faculty Comment:
Professors Discuss Modern Criticism And Poetry

“Delightful” Music

by Kristine Gilmartin
» A bright snowy Sunday ‘after-
noon and delightful music—what



ach, Jan Douglass became one_of'| In a polemic against contemporary poetry published in the December 13 issue of the NEW

to| \ORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW, Karl Shapiro condemned it on the grounds. that it must be formally
taught before it can be appreciated. “An art which must be taught to adults in its own time is sick
. . . Criticism does not flourish in a time of greator healthy poetry.” Faculty members concerned
with poetry and criticism expressed their views on Shapiro’s controversial stand.

Nahm Considers
Role Of Criticism



theolgical and philisophical beliefs
held at the time. The artist did
not have to invent symbols. His
audience was familiar with them

‘Mrs. MacCaffrey
otes ‘Obscurity’



ward villages and in the modern,
luxurious African cities in a pro-
gram Jan quoted a veteran as

tic.” The diversity of the pro-
gram in store for her requires
her to bring “everything from
work’ boots to formals.”

Good Digestion Demanded

The participants range in age
and experience from high school
to graduate students; they come
from the United States, Canada
and England.. The largest group
is from Yale; it consists of 14 stu-
dents.

The applicants had to go through
an intensive screening program.
Aside from assuring the executive
director, Phillip Wei, that she
has a good digestive system and
has never had stomach trouble,
Jan and the others also had ex-
tensive applications to fill out. She
still has not completed her tasks;
a 15-20 page paper is due on some
phase of African relations.

Feels Like Pioneering

Jan, an Anthropology-Sociology
major especially interested in her
courses.on cultural anthropology
and social welfare, feels that she
will end up going to Africa again
after her school days are over;
“things are happening so fast
there and I feel like pioneering.”
The three-month trip will involve
a condensation in time, but not
degree of this excitement.

A meeting at Columbia Uni-
versity in June dor the partici-
pants will be an intensive session
in informing them on all the im-
portant phases of African life by

sentatives, and scholars who will
guide the activities. The group
will then split in two; one group
will fly to London, the other to

will be further briefing by the
British and French consuls. Both
groups wil] then leave for Africa.

The travellers will go in groups
of ten or twelve to villages in
the particular areas that they
have selected. Jan is headed for
Nigeria. In their new homes, the
tourists will be treated with re-
spect and ceremony but will be
immediately assimilated into the
village activities, including a five
a.m. rising hour.

Their advent will be _ publi-
natives and
among their urbanized counter-
‘parts who share an amazement
that Americans are concerned with
their lives, The Africans who
often greeted the visiting Ameri-
cans with displays of marked rac-
ial prejudice (against whites) ex-
perienced some change of attitude
as they became better acquainted.
with the Crossroaders.

Jan was warned by the charter
members of a few things; not to
make any promises to the natives
for which she might be indebted
to them for life, and to expect
gifts from their chiefs. One chief

merited more than the ordinary
food and beads; he gave them
bottles of prize whiskey.

Among these tribes, the highest
form of compliment in one’s work
consists of a man’s offering his
old wife to aid in the task, Jan’s
friends told her. They themselves
were once approached by one such
old woman as they undertook the
back-breaking task of laying pipes

“Tt doesn’t follow that because
art must be taught,. it is sick,”
stated Mr. Nahm when asked his
opinion: of Mr. Shapiro’s contro-
versial statements. “Isn’t the
kind of art produced a product of
the age?” he asked. “Isn’t the
fact that it must be taught a
comment on our times which are
so concerned with highly abstract
terms and such a complex view of
the world? Present times have
produced the ‘Modernism’; the
times have also produced tht crit-
icism, Both are an expression of
the same wenplexing problems
that we face. Modernism is only
one aspect of the general situa-
tion,

“Shapiro seems to say that,
basically, criticism and poetry
are separate arts—arts that are
mutually exclusive. However, I
believe that wherever you find
poetry you find criticism as well.
Criticism and poetry flourish

because of a common background
that poet and audience shared.
“The world is so complex to-
day that art is subsequently so.
Many find it difficult to interpret
symbolism today because of the
lack of common background. One
can’t go back to the time of com-
mon symbols. Either the artist
today offers his own symbolism or
expresses symbols of science or
mathematics, The poet and critic
may also have been misused. The
common symbols of art today may
exist in the form rather than in
the content of specific works.
Continued on Page 4, Col. 1

Lattimore Argues
For And Against

(Mr. Lattimore discussed points
relating to two articles by Sha-
piro—one on Eliot in the Saturday
Review of Literature, and an earl-
ier one on modern poetry as a
whole in the New York Times
Book Review Section.

Of the article on Eliot he said,
“I would hate to have anyone say
that it is imipertinent of Shapiro
‘to attack Eliot’s intrenched posi-
tion. The comparison of Eliot to
castles in Bavaria (ugly but in-





‘Where you
have civilization based on a com-

at the same time.

plex culture, poetry must concen-
trate .on meaning, symbols, and
significance rather than on style.

“Criticism and poetry’ them-
selves display this distortation of
concentration on specific elements.

The predilection in present per-
plexed times’ is for significance
and meaning and solution to con-
temporary problems. Ewen if this
is emphasized in the poetry that
is being written, Mr. Shapiro sure-
ly has abstracted that aspect from
the genuine stylistic and expres-
sionistic contribution these people
have made.

“He has a just right, however,
to criticize some aspects of con-
temporary poetry. There are, for
instance, some poets who speak
in philosophical terms without
having completely transformed
their theories into poetry.

“The poets, painters, and sculp-
tors of the Renaissance had com-
mon symbols derived from the



pipes and the girls ran nursery
schools for the children, the men
of the tribe sat around and watch-
ed the strange Americans.

Adter the momth’s residence in
the villages, the group will meet
to tour the West African area.
It will visit the seats of govern-
ment, the universities, cultural
centers, and so forth. Their hosts
on this part of the program will
be native students and statesmen.
It is at this point that some of
the most challenging interchange
of the trip will take place, in that
here the Americans will have to
demonstrate their interests and
capabilities to the urbanized and_

destructable) with which the ar-

ticle opens is magnificent rhetoric,

and not without some truth. I
wish he had gone on in that style.
“Unfortunately he is trying to
ittack Eliot simultoneously as a
ritic and as a poet. This he nev-
er really brings off.
“Shapiro’s analysis of individ-

good. In writing about them ‘he
uses the word ‘masterpiece’, or its
equivalent, in spite of himself. If
you acknowledge masterpieces,
why not be grateful? Give poetry
all her right; she’s not to be form-
tied.
“Generally he doesn’t pay enough
attention to whether Eliot wrote
good poetry. He seems to want
all poetry to be like one or anoth-
er of a very few models, These
models—/Whitman, Blake, Frost,
Lawrence and Thomas—all have
something in common: slightly
bucolic, prophetic. In, insisting on
one style, Shapiro is ignoring a
dazzling amount of good poetry.”
Mr. Lattimore denied Shapiro’s
Continued on Page 4, Col. 2

Miss Woodworth
Contradicts Critic.

“When Mr. Shapiro makes the
statement that an art that must
be taught is sick, he is suffering
from a complete misunderstand-
ing of art,” stated Miss. Wodd-
worth when approached on this
subject. “Poetry is an art and art
is never simple. To understand
any great art, it is necessary to
discipline yourself. An objective
understanding comes only after
long training and a cultivation of
taste. As far as the expression a
‘contemporary art’ is concerned
most artists are at least 50 years
ahead of the people.”

In commenting on Mr. Shapiro’s
statement that criticism doesn’t
exist in a time of great or healthy
poetry, Miss Woodworth said that
history just doesn’t bear this out.

ual Eliot poems is at times very:

commenting on GShapiro’s
statement that “an art which must
be taught to adults in its own time
is sick,” Mrs. MacCaffrey said
that it is true that in the past ed-
ucation dealt with the literature
of previous ages: people didn’t
usually study the poetry of their
own time, But in pursuing the
classical curriculum, they learned
to read difficult poetry. We have
to teach all poetry nowadays be-
cause people do not learn how to
read carefully, They are not ac-
|customed to reading poetry. For-
merly, the people who read Mil-
ton had read Virgil.

Concerning the comment that
“criticism is a branch of philos-
ophy and in rare moments a liter-
ary art. In our time it is neither,”
‘Mrs. MacCaffrey went on to state
that she did not feel that criticism
is am art, although sometimes it
may share certain attributes of
art (for example, Sidney’s Defense



of Poesie).

In our time some crities are try-
ing to make criticism a_ science
(an example, perhaps, is Kenneth
Burke). People are interested in
seeing how the minds of their fel-
lows work, and the study of poet-
ry. is one method of doing this.
In considering modern critics and
comparing them with those of the
past, however, we must remember
that only the best of the past has
come down to us. It is true that
many contemporary critics are
poets, but it is also true that
many great critics of the past
have been poets: Arnold, Dryden,
Sidney, Coleridge.

Poetry reflects the whole intel-
tellectual activity of an age. In
an effort to revitalize the medium,
poets employ different uses of the
language. This may bring about
some distortion and therefore “ob-
security.” But Mr. Shapiro has
vastly oversimplified the problem
in his article. Not all the poetry
of our time is obscure, and the ob-
scurity which exists might be seen
as part of.a cycle in the history of
literature, a cycle which has mov-
ed repeatedly from complexity to
simplicity and back. “Finally, who
is to be the judge of obscurity?
Even newspaper poets are obscure
to some readers,



e
_ Notice

Bryn Mawr’s Debate Club will
send a team of four to Brooklyn
College March 11 and 12. The
Bryn Mawr Team, Susan
Gumpert and Miranda Marvin
on the affirmative and Mary
Lou Leavitt and Ginny Copen
on the negative, will debate
the following issue:--Resolved: .
that Congress should be given |}
“i éecisions

more Could anyone askt
wer is, nothing, especially when
the music is as well performed
and as spirited and lovely as it
was in the recital given on March
6 in the Music Room of Goodhart
by music students and members
of the chamber music group, di-
rected by Mme. Agi Jambor.

gram opened with Bach, this time
the Sonata in E flat major for

ine Hoover and Jane Hess. The
first movement} the allegro moder-
ato, was just that—moderate. In
the Siciliano, the flute carried a
lovely, swirling melody. The final .
allegro was a devilish one, full
of swift interchanges of flute
and piano which left the flutist
breathless from exertion and the
audience in a similar state from
admiration.

Mozart’s Clarinet Quintet (the
third and fourth movements) was
just lovely, done by Joan Gettig
and Renata Knoke, violins, Ellen
Magaziner, viola, Marion Davis,
’cello, and Nina Greenberg, clar-
inet. The music was somehow
suggestive of a spring afternoon
in a park, especially the delight-
ful melody of the clarinet bounc-
ing up from the lower register.
At the beginning of the fourth
movement the tempo was a bit
uncertain and rushed, but Miss
Greenberg’s runs in her playful
theme were flawless, and her ex-
cellent work helped greatly in
making the performance such a
success.

Next, Barbara Shoemaker play-
Mendelssohn’s Organ Sonata No.
6, consisting of a chorale and
andante sostenuto of majestic

chords and a charming, running
allegro. In the Suite Gothique by
Boellmann, the chorale was im-
pressive and the minuet was full
of cheerful good nature and dig-
nified high spirits that the organ-
ist made a joy to listem to.

Suite for Viola and Piano by
John Davidson was played by
Marcia Leigh with the composer

Continued on Page 4, Col. -2

Search For Rocks
Yields Cacophony

For those people who have
noticed the hydraulic drill in the
Cloisters and do not ‘know the rea-
son for all this activity, the pur-
pose of the drilling is to find out
if there is rock beneath the sur-
face. A plan is in progress to ex-
tend the library underground to
connect the main stacks with the
stacks in the West Wing.

Overcrowding the library has
long been a problem. Mr. Charles
David, formerly Professor of His-
tory here and later librarian at
the University of Pennsylvania,
was the first to suggest the solu-
tion of building underground, as
there is no land adjacent to the
main building suitable for this
purpose. Mr. Douglas Orr, an ar-
chitect in New Haven, suggested
that it would be possible to build
two floors underground. Connect-
ing the stacks would be a great
advantage as less personnel would
be required to manage them.

whether or not there is rock in
the ground, because the expense
of digging through rock would be
prohibitive.

Drilling is being done at 30 foot —
intervals, and so far no lange ex-
tensions of rock have been found.
If none is found building will
start as soon as funds can be rais-
ed. If the construction is done,
the (Cloisters will remain much as
they are now except that the





iiage. While the
donated wife laid



be ck

educated segment of the native

For example, in two periods of



African citizenry.



Continued on Page 4, Col. 5



of the Supreme Court.







The fountain-swimming tradition
will not be interfered with.

Neary

Reviewer Praises * -

Tne ais=—-—

In traditional fashion, the pro-———

flute and piano, played by Kather- -

It is important to determine ~~

beech trees will have to be remov- =.
Hed and replaced by smaller ones.