The Bloomsbury Group: A Collection of Memoirs, Commentary and Criticism ed. by S.P. Rosenbaum (review)

414 LETTERS IN CANADA discussion of 'Meditations of an Old Woman' sets up a valuable critical perspective by relating Roethke's structural experimentation to attempts by other American poets in the forties and fifties to discover more comprehensive forms of expression. But elsewhere the book suffers from an insufficiently critical acceptance of Roethke's intentions and a tendency to equate intention with achievement. Sullivan writes that 'Roethke has redeemed formal rhyme for twentieth century poetry.' That may be what he wanted to do, but many of the poems to which Sullivan refers definitely do not create an effect of 'spontaneous elaboration' or 'surprising relaxation.' Like his symbols - treated all too often by him as algebraic rather than literary - his formal rhymes and rhythms could be very mechanical. Nor are such failings confined to the early poems. Professor Sullivan realizes in a general way that Roethke was a 'perpetual beginner' but she seems unwilling to apply this recognition when evaluating his work. In fact, the apprentice always tagged along behind the garden master: even The Far Field contains a large share of weaknesses along with its unquestionable , lasting successes. Roethke's closural difficulties, for instance, continued to plague him, and they cannot be explained away here or elsewhere (eg, 'If one is not familiar with Roethke's severe economy, the climax will appear abrupt and terse'). Why try to excuse them? Stanley Kunitz didn't, in an excellent essay cited by Professor Sullivan in several other contexts. Kunitz wrote: 'I do not always believe in these ecstatic resolutions - they sometimes seem a cry of need rather than of revelation - but I am always moved by the presence of the need and by the desperation of the voice.' Like Kunitz, Sullivan notes how frequently the verb 'rock' appears in Roethke's poems, a sign of their perpetual transformations . But the noun 'tendril' also occurs repeatedly, and it images the unsatisfied need for security at the centre of this movement. To recognize the gap between aspiration and accomplishment is to see in the poems a more affecting image of the man (JOHN REIBETANZ) S.P. Rosenbaum, editor, The Bloomsbury Group: A Collection ofMemoirs, Commentary and Criticism. Toronto and Buffalo: University of Toronto Press 1975, xxi, 444, $25.00 cloth, $10.00 paper When Marinetti issued his first Futurist manifesto in 1909 he started a cultural fad that was taken up by Wyndham Lewis's 'Blast,' by the Dadaists, and by innumerable others. But one cannot imagine the Bloomsbury Group ever advertising itself so blatantly; indeed, when the founding members were asked to define their purpose they were most likely to reply with some quietly self-deprecatory comment to the effect that they never had one. Probably the closest thing to a statement of their HUMANITIES 415 creed would be Chapter VI, 'The Ideal,' of G.E. Moore's Principia Ethica; yet Moore himself was not counted a member of the group. Vanessa Bell wrote that the group reached its prime in the years before 1914, when it was a purely private association, and dissolved altogether after the war, while her husband Give claimed that it never amounted to more than a set of people who disagreed about almost everything but happened to like each other. Such statements remind us that the group grew out of a secret society - the Cambridge'Apostles' - and often seemed to want to remain one. In the Preface to his absorbing collection of documents about the group, Professor Rosenbaum is therefore rightly concerned to mark out his territory as accurately as possible. He identifies the nucleus of the group as a small band of Cambridge undergraduates at the turn of the century, all under Moore's influence: Lytton Strachey, Saxon Sydney-Turner, Leonard Woolf, Clive Bell, J.M. Keynes, and Thoby Stephen. The next ring, connected to the nucleus by various familial, intellectual, or sexual bonds, comprised Roger Fry, E.M. Forster, Desmond MacCarthy, Duncan Grant, and Thoby's sisters Vanessa and Virginia . For Rosenbaum the nature of the Bloomsbury Group is defined by these twelve friends, who had become a close-knit set before any of them (except Roger Fry) had received any public recognition of their talents...