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TOMORROW MORNING, FAUSTUS by I. A. Richard

TOMORROW MORNING, FAUSTUS

By

Publisher: Harcourt, Brace & World

Over 30 years ago, I. A. Richards, along with Eliot and Pound, created a revolution in poetic theory, but time mellows even the most monumental and, with his ""infernal comedy"" in verse, what we have is less a manifesto than Mr. Richards as the enfant terrible of an English Seminar, full of elliptical wit, energetic whimsy. For Tomorrow Morning. Faustus is a learned burlesque and from the most classic sources (intimations of Marlowe, Milton, Goethe and Valery pop up at odd times). It is also fashionably intended and abstrusely topical (references to the 3rd World War, Automation, Astronauts, Eddington, Genesis, anti-Utopianism, Planetary Responsibility and the like decorate the proceedings). Its Cast of Characters: Faustus, a sort of intellectual Everyman tempted by the Millennium, surrounded by four famous fiends (Beelzebub, Moloch, Belial and Mammon, all as conference room dandies); Satan (Chairman of the Board) and Sophia (the Feminine Principle as Wisdom);-these act out a who-will-save-man-if-he-loses-his-soul charade. Best and most biting scene: a slogan-spouting secretary of the Futurity Foundation wanting the hero's views on Population Control, etc. A lofty, pixillated, vaudeville mixed with some astro-philosophical hi-jinks. A dazzling try.