THREE LITERARY FRIENDSHIPS: Byron and Shelley, Rimbaud and Verlaine, Robert Frost and Edward Thomas

by John Lehmann ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 29, 1984

Warm, pleasant, unpretentious sketches, more homage than criticism. Lehmann's pairs of poet-friends are obviously a very mixed bag: too bad that chronological order forces him to begin with the most flamboyant and interesting, proceed to a dismal but sometimes gripping tale of Bohemian misery, and then end with a rather undramatic association between two major artists. Of course, these stories have been told many times before, especially the first two; and for the most part Lehmann simply echoes or interweaves the standard sources. For instance, to recreate the tragic scene when Shelley's drowned body is washed ashore at Viareggio and later cremated on the beach, Lehmann borrows eight pages from the powerful eyewitness account in E. J. Trelawny's Recollections of the Last Days of Shelley and Byron. He describes the sodden, tortured love affair between Verlaine and Rimbaud mostly in his own words; but he quotes generously from their work--Rimbaud's in particular--and he does the same with Frost and Thomas. As a literary critic, Lehmann goes in for straightforward exposition and appreciation rather than analysis (of the song-poems in Saison en Enfer he writes, ""Once read, one returns to them again and again, with them ringing in one's mind never to be forgotten""); still, his judgment is sound and his enthusiasm well placed. Lehmann's poets are an easy group to study in that each listened to and encouraged his counterpart rather than formally influencing him (as Milton did Wordsworth or Pound did Eliot). In any case Lehmann's thumbnail biographies, while neither novel nor profound, competently review some memorable moments of creative interchange.

Pub Date: June 29, 1984

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Holt, Rinehart & Winston

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 1984

Categories: NONFICTION