Harold Pinter by Martin Esslin (review)

338 MODERN DRAMA December Mr. Torchiana argues, of the "haunted remains of Georgian Ireland." The light in which the tree is bathed is the light of hatred and class prejudice and philistinism which, for Yeats, characterized contemporary Irish culture. Two years ago Conor Cruise O'Brien's important essay delivered an observation on the subject of Yeats's flirtation with Irish Fascism which has left a good many of Yeats's admirers in a state of unhappy frustration. O'Brien argued that in looking upon the Anglo-Irish aristocracy as a model for modern Ireland, Yeats made it clear that he favored a despotism of the educated classes and that in search of this he was drawn towards Fascism. How Yeats could have believed that Hitler and Mussolini had anything in common with Georgian Ireland, I find it hard to fathom. Mr. Torchiana argues that Yeats was no Fascist, "though Fascist thought interested him." He was an aristocrat, disillusioned with democracy as he saw it established in the new Irish state. Can he be blamed for believing, perhaps somewhat naively, that the great Irish writers and thinkers of the eighteenth century stood for a code of honor and a regard for intellect which Irish politicians seemed insensitive to? Mr. Torchiana's knowledge of Ireland is profound and he applies it with an easy grace. The only weakness I can find in this important book is that he inevitably is forced to quote Yeats too much. One tires, in the earlier chapters, of the avalanche of quotations, placed before the reader in order to give a fair statement in Yeats's own words of what his convictions were. Certainly one cannot fault Mr. Torchiana for distorting his evidence or for interposing himself between Yeats and the reader. But Mr. Torchiana himself writes so lucidly and with such authority that he might well have depended more heavily upon his own representation of Yeats's position. His superb analyses of Yeats' play, Purgatory, and of that brief but enigmatic poem "An Irish Airman Forsees His Death" make us regret that he did not deal more, or more directly at least, with Yeats's poetry. After all, one is interested in Yeats's art, not his politics. DAVID H. GREENE New York University HAROLD PINTER~ by Martin Esslin, Friedrich Verlag, Hanover, 1967, 148 pp. In a decade of playwriting, Harold Pinter has produced a sizable body of work, and this is the first book-length analysis of that work. Written in German for a series of studies of Dramatists of World Theater, it suggests that such a series is badly needed in English. Martin Esslin follows the prescribed form of the series: Chronology of Life and Work, 'York and its Times, Analysis and Interpretation of the Plays, the Work on the Stage (with photographs), and Bibliography. Esslin's use of these divisions is more intelligent than that of the other critics I have read, and he adds a crucial chapter for the German reader, "The Problem of Translation." Esslin's information on and interpretation of Pinter's work should be consulted by anyone who reads German. It would surprise me were something of comparable quality to appear in English in the near future. Esslin was one of Pinter's "discoverers," and his admiration has grown with the years, since he considers The Homecoming Pinter's finest play. It may be recalled that Pinter was the most important figure in Esslin's chapter on "Parallels and Proselytes" in his Theatre of the Absurd. However, the present study barely mentions the Absurd, ranging widely in interpretation. Esslin's English background information is particularly useful to the German play-goer, and was quite helpful to this reader who thought she knew England (e.g. Lower Edmonton in 1968 BOOK REVIEWS 339 The Birthday Party is an industrial section of North London; Sidcup in The Caretaker is a Southwestern suburb of London.) Of particular interest~ too, in a book intended for the German reader, is Esslin's suggestion that Pinter's intense feelings of menace originated in his childhood as an East London Jew during periods of fascism and war. If Kafka and Beckett are the major influences...