Shaw and Proverbs

Book Reviews where he underwent harrowing operations on his foot: "Henley used his experience," write Thornton and Small, "to explore a metaphysic of pain, and not simply to aestheticise it." Arthur Symons included Henley in his essay The Decadent Movement in Literature" (1893), for he regarded "In Hospital" as the "poetry of the disagreeable." In reprinting his essay in 1918, Symons, having reevaluated Decadence, omitted Henley. Also in this volume, "London Voluntaries," a sequence of poems with musical titles in Italian, as though movements of a musical composition, reveals Henley's interest in the Aesthetic Movement's device in emphasizing the artifice of art by transposing the arts, as in Whistler's titles for paintings by the use of such terms as "nocturnes" and "harmonies." Indeed, Henley was devoted to Whistler's art, which he defended despite his Tory hostility to Aestheticism. The current volumes from Woodstock again provide an opportunity— if one can overcome the prices—to fill in gaps in one's personal library or to order missing volumes for one's college library. One oddity remains in these volumes: the titles of books on dust jackets and Woodstock's title pages as well as in the introductory essays and bibliographies are not given in capitals but in lower-case letters after the first word—a visual irritant that should be attended to in future volumes in the series. Karl Beckson ______________ Brooklyn College, CUNY Shaw and Proverbs The Proverbial Bernard Shaw: An Index to Proverbs in the Works of George Bernard Shaw. George B. Bryan and Wolfgang Mieder, comps. Westport, CT: Greenwood Books, 1994. xi + 286 pp. $65.00 GEORGE B. BRYAN and Wolfgang Mieder exult near the end of their one-page preface that "Although it is customary to acknowledge the assistance of others in the preparation of a book, we so delighted in doing the work ourselves that we jealously fended off any poachers on our private preserve." They should have asked for some help. The book consists of a one-page preface, one-page "How to Use This Book," 31-page essay of disjointed remarks entitled "Bernard Shaw and the Proverb," 21-page key to the symbols used to identify "Shaw Editions Consulted," 203-page "Key-Word Index to Bernard Shaw's Proverbs, Proverbial Expressions, and Proverbial Comparisons," 8-page "Appendix I: Frequency," and 14-page "Appendix II: Distribution." Such a format seems promising since it would be useful for Shavians to know 243 JSLT 38:2 1995 in what sense and to what extent Shaw's style is "proverbial," how he uses proverbs in his plays as opposed to in his correspondence or criticism or polemical writing, what light Shaw's use of proverbs might throw on understanding his approach to various audiences, and so on. However, Bryan and Mieder are content to present a list and let others do the analyzing. As they put it, This lexicographical study of contextualized references, we hope, will pave the way for an exacting analytical and interpretative treatment of Shaw's proverbial usage." Although Bryan and Mieder do make some effort to say something about Shaw, the introductory essay is disappointing. After admitting that they can find no reason for Shaw's use of proverbial wit other than the influence of his "childhood nurses and Irish elders" during his early years, they declare that, "For the purpose of clarity, these remarks have been divided into numbered sections." The purpose seems less one of clarity than of the difficulty of organizing the parts into a coherent whole. More than one third of the footnotes cite Mieder, suggesting that part of the problem of organizing the introduction might have been working in references to those proverbial expressions about which Mieder had published. There is considerable overlap and repetition even among the brief sections. Shaw's "It is as impossible to learn science from hearsay as it is to gain wisdom from proverbs" appears twice, The first time, the compilers comment, "Shaw's inveterate and extensive use of proverbs throughout his long career negates that as his own view." Later, however, they imply that this was "his own view" and comment, "But this is too strong an indictment of...