Druid Craft, the Writing of The Shadowy Waters ed. by Michael J. Sidnell, George P. Mayhew, and David R. Clark (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 343 car elle est immortelle. Selon Ie critique, toute la perspective dramatique de Claudel est basee sur Ie mystere de la mort et la fa90n d'y faire face. Dans un tres court chapitre Watson termine son etude sur la mort avec Ie Soulier de Satin. II s'attache ala quatrieme joumee qui represente une sorte de delivtance, d'hymne ala joie parce que Ie protagoniste est arrive adetruire tout ce qui Ie rattachait au monde. 11 s'envole detache, libere, Ie desespoir efface par la joie, ayant accepte de nourir car il a senti l'Esprit d'en haut. Ce dernier chapitre est tant soit peu sacrifie car, en plus, il comprend un resume de la trilogie de l'Otage, quelques episodes de cet immense Soulier de Satin, des comparaisons avec les thematiques precedentes et quelques lignes sur la mort de Claude!. II resulte de cette etude que les heros claudeliens ne trouveront jamais sur cette terre que contradictions, hesitations et duperies. II s'agit d'oeuvrer pour que "Ie grand depart" devienne une belle orchestration. L'auteur a demontre la deficience de toute creature, la separation de tout et la mort devenant un choix. L'ouvrage se termine par des notes, une bibliographie selectionnee et un index. LAURE RIESE Victoria College University of Toronto DRUID CRAFT, THE WRITING OF THE SHADOWY WATERS, transcribed, edited & with a commentary by Michael J. Sidnell, George P. Mayhew, and David R. Clark. Amherst: University of Mass. Press, 1971. 349 pp.$25.00 This beautifully produced volume, initiating a series entitled "Manuscripts of W. B. Yeats," assembles chronologically the drafts and tentative revisions of The Shadowy Waters as intermittently set down by Yeats over a period of about two decades and concludes its interpolated commentary and analytical discussion with a consideration of the published versions. By editorial explanation, "The substance of the present volume ... is Michael Sidnell's University of London dissertation ["A Critical Examination of W. B. Yeats's The Shadowy Waters with a Transcription and Collation of the Manuscript VerSions," 1967], supplemented with transcriptions by George Mayhew of the manuscripts from the Huntington Library, the whole work being revised and integrated by the three editors." Professor Clark finds the "principal justification" of the book in its revelation of "a new view of Yeats" (though any essential "newness" is unapparent to this reviewer), showing him "forming his basic conceptions during the most important years of his earliest development as a poet and as a playwright" (a claim somewhat comprehensive , to say the least). Actually, the book seems most useful as an exhibition - with pertinent analytical and historical comment - of, in Professor Parkinson's phrase, a "record of the processes of poetic composition." It adds nothing significant to the essential history of composition and publication, which has had earlier 344 BOOK REVIEWS referential summary. But its editorial interpolations are beautifully written; its "Structure & Plot in the Manuscript Versions" is a particularly lucid summary; and it achieves occasionally acute critical illumination, as when in the discussion of "Manuscripts 1899" - one finds, "In both the birds and the tree we see taking place that process of finding natural symbolism to replace the overtly occult which is an overall development in Yeats's work." Further, it presents a healthy commentary on the "Kiltartan"-tainted "Acting Version." (The fact that, faced by the achievement of the 1906 poem, one may not share editorial regret over the loss of some of the miasma of the occult and the idealism characterizing early "drafts," is neither here nor there.) One result of examining the manuscript material here assembled is of course renewed realization that Yeats's almost incredible achievement in verse was surprisingly often a confirmation of his confession in Adam's Curse: one wonders how many other poets have labored comparably through prose argument and experimental phrasing to reach what finally suggests flashing crystallization. But one need hardly regret on aesthetic grounds the previous general inaccessibility of most of this material. Yeats had a sound instinct for both discarding and transforming. Ultimately, is one unkind to wonder what this record of the tortured genesis of The Shadowy Waters can mean to the mere lovers and readers of poetry who...