In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

84 Czechoslovakia. This protean Newgate peep into the underworld servesmanyoccasions . Where Gay was light, Havel is existential , psychological, probing into Kafkaesque dilemmas of political and personal controls on society. For Gay, Peachum is a scallywag without trace of conscience in his betrayals. Havel’s underworld figure summons philosophy and complains of ‘‘years fighting crime while appearing to commit it? Do you [Lockit] have the slightestinklingofwhat that means? Wearing two faces for so long?’’Filch, a cockney pickpocket in the original, has metamorphosed into a suicide : ‘‘I don’t want to go on living anyway . I’m not suited to this world.’’ Swashbuckling Macheath lives no more. Now the therapist, he admonishes Jenny the prostitute to be more herself: ‘‘Jenny, don’t you realize that you become yourself only through your relationships to others—and primarily through love?’’ This is not a comic remark . The play’s music, its opera and poetry are also absent, a verismo stage stripped bare like film noir. Erased too is much of the satiric or amusing irony of Gay’s vision, especially the droll reversal of theatrical conventions that appeals to a sophisticated audience. What does Havel have to say? We are all compromised by the forces of society; we all act selfishly,betrayingoneanother. We live with lies and, as Havel’s biographer John Keane has written, the ‘‘individual ’s power to act on the world has been reduced to pure manipulation and self-manipulation.’’ Everyone in this bleak world—an allegory of communist Czechoslovakia perhaps?—must go along with theliesanddenial:Havel’slast line cynically echoes Milton: ‘‘They serve best who know not that they serve. Bon appétit!’’ HENRY FIELDING. Diario di un viaggio a Lisbona, ed. Maria Teresa Ronzulli and Gaetano D’Elia Bari: Ladisa, 1994. Pp. xxxiv ⫹ 105. Lire 15,000. Mr. D’Elia reads A Journal of a Voyage to Lisbon more as a work of art and a spiritual testament than as Fielding’s public plea ‘‘to improve his public image and to campaign for a government pension.’’ This frankly pragmatic stance (quoted from W. J. Burling) is counterweighedby an emphasis on Fielding’s generosity, receptivity and, not least, his will to experiment . Diario di un viaggio a Lisbona records the critical and authorial voices within a sort of Chinese-box structure. The translation of Fielding’s last, posthumous work—to which he appended a formally apologetic Preface and a more personal Introduction familiarizing thereaderwith his latest achievements as a Justice of the Peace and the condition of his fatally declining health—is, mirror-like, preceded by Mr. D’Elia’s Introduction, by a lengthy section of approximately two hundred bibliographical references (where a section of critical essays might have been advisable), and by Ms. Ronzulli ’s Translator’s Note. The Introduction stresses the ‘‘plurality ’’(thematicandstylisticheterogeneity) of Fielding’s text, which Mr. D’Elia relates to travel literature and history writing and to the artist’s own thoughts and feelings. The Journal, he suggests, should beapproachedasatravelbookand a parody of its genre at the same time, as both a touching account of the writer’s troubled journey (to Lisbon and towards death) and the ‘‘telling evidence’’of how art transforms and enriches experience. The Italian rendering is well written and technically accomplished. Although the modern reader is spared obsolete words or unfamiliar constructions, Mr. 85 D’Elia and Ms. Ronzulli catch the author ’s voice and style. The stereotypes of Fielding the old disillusioned artist, finally verging on moral gravity, and of the pathetic in the wake of Amelia (and its aftermath: the announced desertion of the ‘‘gayer Muses’’) are undermined by the utterances of a virile, unabated spirit. Laura Giovannelli University of Pisa Hogarth in Context: Ten Essays and a Bibliography, ed. Joachim Möller. Marburg : Jonas, 1996. Pp. 167. DM68. In one of the three contributions in German to this volume, which is otherwise devoted mainly to a considerationof Hogarth in literary contexts, Werner Busch deals with the openness of meaning following from Hogarth⬘s awareness of a break with the artistic past. The need to choose a form and define an audience makes him a precursor of the problems of the modern artist. As The Battle of the...

pdf

Share