In Medias Res

212 UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO QUARTERLY In addition to these themes there are many others to which considerable reference is made: English novelists, Shakespeare, Wagner, the Roman Catholic 'Church, social classes in Britain and the United States, Jews, the lack of humour in the Bihle, the infinite possibilities inherent in "the common man/' the need for a suitable environment, the fruitful result of a mixture of races, psychoanalysis, German scholarship, the future of Europe, the possibility that there are many types of living beings concerning which we know nothing, aesthetics and morality, the plurality of causes for any single event, the importance of music as a form of expression. He also comments on the achievements of Pericles, Augustus, and the "founding fathers" of the American Revolution, on Churchill and Stalin. The greatness of Plato is a frequent theme. William James also receives praise. Aristotle and Dewey are adversely criticized. Whitehead's style, as reported by Mr. Price, is similar to the more brilliant passages in Science and the Modern World and Adventures of Ideas, and sets off some characteristic Whitehead aphorisms. The dialogues contain many brilliant comments, yet, like any human product, the calibre of achievement is not uniform. Further, many will disagree with Whitehead's evaluation of Christian theology and the exalted status to which he assigns Walt Whitman and the city of Chicago. However, whether his dialogues be regarded, initially, as the expression of profound insight or the quintessence of superficial table talk, it seems just to conteod that to a percipient reader many of these comments should function as effective stimuli in the adventure of human thought. If what Whitehead says is profound one can profit from it. If his remarks seem to be superficial they are a challenge to penetrate further. Let it be remembered that a man at his ease among his friends cannot be expected to talk like a volume which required a life-time of preparation. Whitebead's stature is not diminished by what Lucien Price has so ably reported. This man is indeed "a figure worthy of the Periclean age." IN MEDIAS RES' WILLIAM BLISSETT Any review of this book must be an exercise in description. The Anathemata is a beautifully produced thing, a pleasure to hold in the hands. Mr. David Jones was an associate, friend, and son-in-law of Eric Gill and is one of the most distinguished of contemporary British *The Anathemata: Fragments of an Attempted Writing. By David Jones. London: Faber and Faber Limited [Toronto: British Book Service (Canada) Ltd.]. 1952. Pp. 243. $5.00. REVIEWS 213 painters, having an integrity, an isolation, and a sensItivIty comparable to that of the late David Milne. The author has done the lettering on the dust jacket with lapidary power and dignity and has provided nine illustrations reproduced from various media, the effect of which is to make a personal book still more David Jones's thing. The author's preface is a conveyance into the midst of this thing. So that to the question: What is this writing about? I answer that it is about one's own "thing," which res is unavoidably part and parcel of the Western Christian res, as inherited by a person whose perceptions are totally conditioned and lintited by and dependent upon his being indigenous to this island. In this it is necessarily insular; within which insularity there are the further conditionings contingent upon his being a Londoner, of Welsh and English parentage, of Protestant upbringing, of Catholic subscription. Further, in explanation of his strange title, he says that it means as much as it can be made to mean. . .. the blessed things that have taken on what is cursed and the profane things that somehow are redeemed : the delights and also the "ornaments," both in the primary sense of gear and paraphernalia and in the sense of what simply adorns; the donated and votive things, the things dedicated after whatever fashion, the things in some sense make separate, being "laid up from other things"; things, or some aspect of them, that partake of the extra-utile and of the gratuitous; things that are the signs of something other, together with those signs that not...