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Books 167 relationship with his third wife, Harriet Bosse, who appears in the playas Indra's daughter. One findshere certain similarities to the hallucinatory experiences noted by Jaspers in Strindberg's 'Inferno'. The analysis of Van Gogh's illness is based on the painter's self-analysiscontained in his letters to hisbrother and on Jasper's attempt to correlate the chronological order of the paintings produced with the stages of his illness. It was unfortunate that Jaspers had available only the inaccurate and incomplete list of paintings given in the catalog for the 1912Van Gogh exhibition at Cologne. As in the case of Strindberg's late writings, Jaspers considers the paintings of Van Gogh's last period to be inferior to those he painted earlier, a viewthat is not generally supported at present; on the contrary, they are regarded as among his most important works. I found the method of analysis used in the book very interesting and Jasper's approach to the cases considered to be insightful and sensitive. However, the conclusions Jaspers put forward in 1922are now highly suspect. I agree with his viewthat we who are 'normal' must recognize that the world of schizophrenics 'is terribly exciting, but it is not our world'. Collected French Writings: Poems, Essays, Memories. Jean (Hans) Arp. Marcel Jean, ed. Calder and Boyars, London, 1974. 574 pp., illus. Paper, £3.95. Reviewed by Clive Phillpot* This translation of writings by Arp was originally published in the U.S.A. as Arp on Arp by Viking Press,New York, in the series The Documents of 20th-Century Art. This book, in turn, was derived from lours effeuilles that was published, in French, by Gallimard, Paris, in 1966.The contents of the book include not only translations 'of those of Arp's writings in French, but also translations of those of Arp's German writings that were later translated by Arp, and others, into French. There remains a substantial corpus of writings still to be translated into English from the original German. The present translation of both prose and poetry into somewhat Americanized English by Joachim Neugroschel is smooth and versatile, but, however well translated the poems are, Arp's play with language makes them appear far more arbitrary in English than in the original and, thus, often inconsequential. More rewarding are the short pieces in which he discusses his technique, his friends, such as Kandinsky, Picabia and Richter, and, above all, his first wife,Sophie Taeuber, whose presence and influence were crucial to his development. There isan unfortunate tendency in his writing---especiallyfor someone who emerged out of the iconoclastic milieu of Dadato disparage the work of some of his contemporaries, for example, a eulogy for Vordemberghe-Gildewart develops also into a tirade against Picasso. Indeed a certain conservatism, also evident in his later art objects, is made more manifest much earlier in the writings. There is a curious text entitled The Navel Bottle, in whichArp refers to the bourgeois reaction to Dada and to his loathing for the bourgeoisie; but these remarks ring rather hollow in the context of the inoffensive whimsy of many of his own writings and the almost reactionary character of many of his remarks. In a pieceentitled 'The Udders have Run Dry', Arp says, 'I am more and more obsessed with the thought of participating in an unreal dreamworld.' It is no accident that Calder and Boyars have published this book in their French Surrealism series. The fantasy in Arp's writing seems to have much more in common with Surrealism than Dada, indeed he stated in 1954 that 'my admiration for the poetry of Breton, Peret, Eluard and others is what binds me indissolubly to surrealism'. It is a paradox that Arp's economical, silent, but evocative reliefs, particularly those of his vital years (before he turned to sculpture in the round in the 1930s),should co-exist with poetry and prose so overloaded with imagery. Indeed, in his poetry and prose Arp often seems simply to strew colourful nouns about in the hope that some significantjuxtapositions willoccur; in a way *178 East 80th St., Apt. IIA, New York, NY 10021,U.S.A. somewhat analogous to...

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