Arthur Koestler: a Collection of Critical Essays (review)

136 THEMINNESOTA REVIEW critique of the existential language-and-meaning theories of Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, and Sartre which suggests aU three depart from Husserl's pure presuppositionless phenomenology. The later, using water as its touchstone, suggests differences between the characteristics of ethical, scientific, and aesthetic language by analyzing texts from the fifth century B.C., from the Middle Ages, from early modern science, and from twentieth-century poetry. WiU's central concern-language as negotiation and the special self-referential, ikonmaking form of negotiation made possible by aesthetic language-is not introduced until the end of the "water" essay, three-quarters of the way into the book. Although the notion is hinted at in an earUer essay on the difference between fictional language in Kazantzakis' Odyssey and philosophical language in his The Saviors of God, it is only tenuously tacit. And this is the problem with a book that tries to stitch essays together with too fine a theoretical thread; the patchwork faUs apart. The final brief codas, "Literature as Ikonic Language" and "Literature and MoraUty," reflect back on the whole with a conviction arrived at too late, and the phrase "imaginative space" is sprinkled selfconsciously throughout in an effort to convince the reader that the book is all of a piece; it isn't. What Belphagor is, in fact, is a fragmented prologue to a book Frederic WUl perhaps someday will write; the two major essays contained here suggest that it wUl probably be a good one. Charles E. May Murray A. Sperber, editor. Arthur Koestler: a Collection ofCritical Essays. Twentieth Century Views. Englewood CUffs, N.J%: Prentice-HaU, 1977. 189 pp. The format of the Twentieth Century Views series comes into its own when deaUng with writers whose critical reputations are, let us say, problematic. As Murray Sperber suggests in his Introduction to the present volume, Koestler's reputation has suffered somewhat from the radical shift in emphasis of his work in mid-career. It is difficult to know what to make of a man who spent twenty years as a strident poUtical writer, only to repudiate poUtics in favor of extensive scientific and mystical investigations; one is Ukely to become disoriented by the disparities between two entirely different types of work and their respective complexities. Sperber's thoughtful selection of essays goes a long way toward providing a balanced picture of this remarkable writer. Those readers famUiar with Koestler as a primarily poUtical/Uterary writer wiU find much of interest in the essays in Part One, particularly in the more critical pieces by Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Isaac Deutscher and Stephen Spender; but they should not stop with these, for the Koestler oí Darkness at Noon and The Yogi and the Commissar is steadUy being supplanted, especiaUy among the young, by the Koestler of The Act of Creation and The Case ofthe Mid-Wife Toad. The essays included in Part Two of this book are informative and insightful views of this later Koestler. Sperber is to be commended for assembling this interesting and useful volume, a worthy addition to the Twentieth Century Views series. Gordon Y. Tanaka ...