The late Ss

ung

°Scow school children.

AMUEL MARSHAK ina typical situation — surrounded by

Man who gave Burns

'0 Soviets,

Pes s amuel Marshak, who
the ape in Moscow suddenly at
Soviet yor 76) was one of the
Stary Rion’s most-loved lit-
by million €s and he is mourned
heath = ols. He has been in poor

W teogct Some time and hadon-
Arey, Y entered hospital for
By :

3 hy tough troubled by cat-
Wor, ae been continuing his
Publi Shep had just sent to the
Poems,» 2 Volume of short
®pigrams,

any’
Peorie 2 Senerations of Soviet
Dingent “© Srown up with his
Poems fae humorous children’s
*etderin neluding his excellent
*hymes BS of English nursery
PUblishe he latest of these were;
bis deat, Only the week before

Wi;
of ag & warm and loyal friend
Titish People, Marshak
a Boetry of Burns and
S of Shakespeare into

bis brinet household through

translations,

: his
, Yoon, . Moscow flat, lined with’

Mementoes of many
he and old visitors’

YS welcome — es-
"om Britain, Here, he

thousands of letters
Teaders and was al-
Y to encourage young
ems, help them overcome

> You
a

: :
7{ €n
i ‘ends deared himself to his

he
| 3 ble, Ss, t

@ man of tremendous
act and strong prin-

hen
Sek, T last saw him a few

“Writes °, he was emphatic that
MUst have above all two

ny
CL ae

passes on

qualities — ‘‘a true apprecia-
tion of reality and courage,’

His last appearance in public
was at the Shakespeare quarter-
centenary celebrations in April,
when he recited two sonnets at
a meeting in the Bolshoi Theatre,
Next month he was intending to
visit Britain — a country he has
visited several times,

His autobiography, ‘‘A Life’s

Beginning,’’ has just been pub-.

lished in London,

The son of a factory mechanic,
he spent his childhood and attend-
ed school at the small town of
Ostrogozhsk, in the Voronezh
province, At the age of 13, with
the help of the leading Russian
critic Stassov, he went to study
at St, Petersburg.

In 1912 he travelled to Britain
for the first time and studied at
the London Polytechnic and
London University, returning to
Russia on the outbreak of war
in 1914, :

He ~sometimes spoke of the
kindness of neighbors in Tintern,
Monmouthshire, where he andhis
wife were on holiday before their
first baby was born,

He was awarded many prizes
for his literary work: in 1942
for verse texts to wartime post-
ers and cartoons, in 1946 for his
children’s play ‘‘The Twelve
Months,’? in 1949 for his transla-
tion of Shakespeare’s sonnets and
in 1961 for avolumeofchildren’s
poems,

—Peter Tempest
(Br. Daily Worker)

To ‘
Fron aay 16 till August 8,
Niversity of Victoria
Presenting a festivalof.,

Fd OBCerts, exhibitions

Ci
tithe eres under the general |
Seley, te bakespeare 64 to
Seta 400th anniver-
© birth illiam:
Sears of William

‘gaa
Smeg Plays will be per-

eriog ‘repertory over a
“ast. ae four weeks, The
‘i the vs all local amateurs
nite, Be directors are Carl
Cte, Mt the university, and
at nme, of the Bas-
Ssio atre Studio, both pro-

“iia, With considerable

Shakespeare '64

skill and experience,

Stage settings have been de-
signed by Bill West, noted
local artist, and a new flex-
ible stage with a large variety
of levels has been built in the
Lansdowne Auditorium of the
university,

The theatre holds 250 per-
sons each night, and tickets
are $2.25 each, Bookings may
be mace through the office of
the Business Manager at Uni-
versity of Victoria, or through
Eaton’s Box Office in Victoria,

All events begin at 8:15 p.m,

CICS Ce A ve

“Alice explained as well as she

“ T don’t know what you mean
by YOUR way,’ said the Queen,
‘All these ways about here belong
to ME’!” :

—From ‘‘Alice Through the Looking

Glass,’’ by Lewis Carroll.
e

t was a very strange part
of Adanac that Alicia now

* found herself in, and very beauti-

ful, too.

The only, only thing that she
could find wrong with it was that
instead of the people speaking her
native French (as all the other
nine parts she’d travelled over
had done), they all spoke English,

This new, strange part was
called B.C,

‘‘Now, I wonder,’’ said Alicia
to herself, ‘‘what B,C, stands
for? Perhaps it means ‘Blue
Coast’? or ‘Big Country’,’”” Then
she went on: ‘‘I’ve got it! It
probably means ‘Before Confe-
deration’, That’s it!’’ For she’d
studied her history books quite

well,
* * *
One day, when she was sight-

seeing in one of the cities, she
thought she’d like to visit a park

so she went up to a well-dressed -

young B.C,er and said politely,
“«pgrdonnez moi, Monsieur, Ou
est le parc, s’il vous plait?”’

‘twhat’s at?’ said the young
B.C.er. ‘‘Why don’t you talk sol
can understand you?’’

So poor Alicia tried again, She
even attempted the kind of English
her French Prime Minister used
over the radio and T.V., but still
the young B,C,er couldn’t under-

" stand her,

could that she had lost her way.

‘Aliciain Adanac’

Then Alicia, we’re sorry to
say, got very angry and also a
little rude,

She told the youfig B,C.er — in
French of course, so perhaps it
didn’t matter too much since he

couldn’t understand her—that he
should ‘‘grow up’’ and that if he, :
and all the other B,C,ers, would.

only stop all this silly nonsense
about running their own affairs
in their own way, everything
would be better all around,

By then quite a crowd of
B.C,ers had collected around the
two and Alicia started to feel
a little frightened until she re-
membered that there were over
twice as many of her kind of
people in Adanac,

‘*And anyway,’’ she thought to

. herself, ‘‘they’re only a kind of

hill billy.’’ Which wasn’t very
nice of her,

* * *

Just then, another well dressed
young .B,C,er came up whom she
was glad to see because he could
speak French, although he looked
very angry,

‘Look Miss,’’ he said — in
French, of course — ‘¢why don’t
you Froggies leave us alone?

- We’ve got our own hunk of land

here that we’ve been on a lot
longer than you have yours, And
we've got a bit different way of
doing things, too. But we like it
that way, see?

“Though, mostly, we object to
your Government forever inter-
fering, Can’t you understand that
this is our land with its own legal
system, language and culture?
That our whole background is
different to yours?’’

The Prime Minister of “Before Confederation”?

~ “But,’”? said Alicia, ‘we're
only trying to help Adanac! Why,
we’re even making the children
in our schools learn your funny
old English! And,’’ she went on
hurriedly (for she was getting
quite warmed up to the subject
by now), ‘‘and Prime Minister
Pearsonne has even got a bi-
culturalism commission travel-
ling all over Adanac!’’

(To tell the truth, she didn’t
really know what ‘‘biculturalism’’
meant, though it sounded im-
portant; however, since no one
else in Adanac knew what it
meant either, perhaps it wasn’t
too important),

Well,’ said the French
speaking B.C.er, ‘‘I don’t know
who dreamed up this teaching of
English in your schools, but WE
didn’t, I sometimes think it was
just done to make us madder at
each other,

**As for this bi-what-you-may’
-call-it, in our‘funny’ old English
Bible we’ve got a saying ‘If
your son asks for bread, do you
give him a stone?’ But perhaps
that’s not in yours, Can’t you see
that it’s just old fashioned equal-
ity we’re after?”’

*‘Oh, yes indeed,’? exclaimed
Alicia, for the crowd was getting
bigger, ‘‘Oh, definitely yes, I
think we should put a dear little
B.C, Dogwood right under the
Fleur-de Lis on Adanac’s flag!??

Just as the B,C,erwas starting
to say ‘*‘Never mind the bloomin’
Dogwood,,,’’ the sky was suddenly
darkened and as Alicia looked up
she saw thousands of huge black
eagles swooping down, The crowd
started to run in all directions,
shouting ‘The Usas have taken
over completely now!’’

To keep her balance in the
crush Alicia had gripped the.
young French speaking B.C,er’s
arm, She now looked up to him
and said: ‘‘Why, how ridiculous,
The Usas are our friends!’’ (But
she thought to herself, ‘‘Perhaps
it’s a good thing, as at last
we'll get rid of these trouble-
some B,C,ers’’),

The young B,C,er put his trans-
istor radio to his ear and then
smiled, ‘‘Yes, ‘ridiculous’ just
about describes it,’’ Then he

shrugged his shoulders and went
on:

*fAh, well, we’ve got equality
with you guys at last, I guess we
both fell for the old ‘divide and
rule’ stunt, They’ve taken over
your bunch, too!’’,

YOUTH’S
DREAM —

Youth and love,
Wild and good,
Overtook us
In the wood,

In the twilight
Close we lay,
Whispering plans
For future days,

We were young then,
Strong and proud,
Life a heaven,
Without a cloud,

His child I bore,
He went to war,

He dreams no more,

—Jacqueline Menedez.

1

‘July 17, 1 964—PACIFIC TRIBUNE—Page 9