Showing a mischievous sense humor not commonly asso- lated with him, Yevgeny Yev- Shenko charmed the Decem- fr 6 audience at Toronto’s ork University. Yevtushenko’s it to Canada is part of a cul- Tal exchange program between ur two countries arranged on itchell Sharp’s recent visit to ne Soviet Union. Planned only yo_weeks in advance, the ckets were sold out and pros- ective buyers crowded the bby of Burton Auditorium in € hope of purchasing unused Kets.’ - British actor Barry Boys, a ngtime friend of the poet, tra- els with him reading English frsions of the poetry. The anslated versions read expres- Wely by Boys, retained some | the rolling beat that Yevtu- lenko incorporates into the iginals. It was not clear as to 70 was the translator. ‘Unrestricted by texts, Yevtu- 1enko was superb. Caressing ch poem, showing an enthus- sm which broke the language aIrier, he carried the audience © his world of rolling rhythm. €vtushenko holds the Russian “guage in complete command. 5S Poems flow like waves, bilding to a climax of word tterns than falling, only to Lild up again. _,lere were an equal number ight and serious works pre- *nted, contrasting extremely in tent and force, but both ‘Pes with the same strength 5. Worth. “An Attempt at asphemy” is a farce that de- iets “God” -as an insecure Bure Continually bombarded Mth petitions from “slobbering” ans. The laughter that Yev- Shenko’s performance evoked used Boys to comment that it eared as if only three people 1 the audience did not under- @nd Russian. Both men read English version ‘of a humor- love poem called “From sire to Desire.” “Stolen Ap- Yevtushenko's zea Stimulates audience i i Smt a. afew 9? Se Yann Whi Bory Se ; / ples” was a_ beautiful piece lauding the joys of apples pil- fered rather than bought. It brought back memories of simi- lar adventures which everyone must have enjoyed in his child- hood, A section was presented from the epic poem ‘Kazan Univer- sity.” The poem deals with the lives of former students of this university, the piece recited describing the experience of a woman who was jailed by the Tsarist government. “Dwarfed Birches” attacks countries who give “moral support” to the Soviet Union, feeling pity for what they feel to be a weak na- tion, without seeing the strength which is rooted in the society. “Babiyar,” a poem condemning anti-Semites, suffered in its translation, with the awkward use of “anti-Semitism” through- out. The serious works were powerful and angry, bringing to light the more well-known side of Yevtushenko. Much new material was pres- ented during: the 90 minutes re- cital. An ambiguous broadsheet condemning Yevtushenko as a “lackey of the Soviet hierar- - chy,” which had been distrib- uted before the show, had little effect on the enthusiastic aud- ience.—J.G. BEETHOVEN AND THE AGE OF REVOLUTION. By Frida Knight. 205 pp. International Publisher, New York. Hard- cover $7.95. If any of the arts seems to provide the Marxist analyst with a tremendous number of pitfalls, that art is music. On. the one hand, there is the tendency, with even less success (if-one may call it that) than in the plastic arts, to postulate a one to one to one relationship between society, a composer and his works. Using this formula, unfortun- ately prevalent among Marxist at one stage in history, some bad and astonishing results oc- cur. The favorite example of this reviewer is the title (and the contents, for that matter) of a book written qa number of years ago by one of North Ame- rica’s most respected Marxist critics, author Sidney Finkle- stein. Finklestein’s title is How Music Expreses Ideas, and al- though he makes a valiant ef- fort, his methodology and con- clusions are open to just as many questions as they. answer. The other tendency, more pre- valent these days, is for critics to ignore Marxist musical aes- thetics and subsequent analysis altogether. Little wonder, when in North America one is blasted by the inanity of John Cage’s silence or has his sensibilities reduced to the state of curdled milk by. the whining strains concocted by certain modern vocal composers. But back to Beethoven. Mil- lions of people have been enth- ralled by his music for almost two centuries. Much has been written about him, more or less unsuccessfully, from every pos- sible angle. Two literary giants of the twentieth century, Ro- main Rolland and Thomas Mann, were fascinated by him. Beethoven and the Age of Re- volution, fortunately, falls into none of the categories mention- ed earlier. It neither attempts to pose dogmatic conclusions, nor does it negate in any way crea- tive methodology and analysis. Frida Knight modestly places. the question herself in the fore- word, and sums it up in a thought - provoking conclusion. What the book does do, in her words is “to look at Beethoven and his work specifically in the 1812 “, He was an artist but a man as well, a manin every sense, in the highest. “But to the end his heart- beat warm for all men, in fatherly affection for his kindred, for the world his all and his heart’s blood. “Thus he was, thus he died, thus he will live to the end of time.” etry that reflects a lifetime of involvement context of the social and poli- tical events of the very stirring times in which he lived.” What it does not do, and rightfully so, is to formulate stereotyped (and therefore untenable) opinions as to the technical aspects of the actual music. © There is a considerable differ- ence in looking on the Eroica symphony as a result “of a mass of impressions made by those previous four years of war, ... to proclaim with new rhythms, combinations of instruments, harmonies, phrases, a musical revolution born of social revolu! tion,” than to merely write it off, intentionally or otherwise, "as programme music. Basically, this is the entire content of Frida Knight’s excel- lent, interesting and- well re- searched book, which looks at Beethoven throughout his life as to his feelings about people, his abiding and lively interest in politics and social and economic questions. That such considera- tions influenced his music, his creativity, is talked about at length, and is a fascina'ing and rewarding’ addition to tie volu- “ minous material availat'e (To- vey, Schweitzer, etc.) .n the strictly technical side. What Frida Knight tells us is something new—that Beet 10ven was a human being, creative, attentive and inquisitive. He is not consigned here to the “ivory tower” of music, nor as simply a passive recorder of historical events through the evolved social activity of writing down ideas on five lines and four spaces. Her book is a fuller, more in- teresting and human picture of a great man. For those interested in music, or in an excellent example of one area of Specific sociological and artistic concern, this book is a must: —M. S. i €r peoples is definitely were are other voices Poetry is not measured in fgister receipts but ‘in ‘hat reach out to. the ~ merge it with the fut- Se poetry captures the 2 Country’s people and Be the. aspirations of 4 poet is Harold Griffin atest volume of poetry, Not Now, a collection nS written since his first Onfederation and Other eet in 1966. a nto several langu- riffin’s first volume "of Which spanned three de- Eveloped the themes with icity of imagery and © whose force was in the S of ideas. Now and Ww, in many of its selec- & ne pe ccriation of ¢ ut the imagery is more Be Gndiy sche more assuredly in his Pression with the voice » IS very much a part al reality of which he and the lines reflect his Of ‘involvement, some- N a searing anger in ation of the ae of ometimes with a rich, generous beauty as when he sings of his own country. The title poem “Now and Not Now” weaves the thread that brings together all the poems in - the selection with its opening lines, deceptively simple yet en- compassing in a few lines the breadth of his vision: The time for which I write is now and not now a time becoming .. . On several occasions, Griffin visited the USSR at the invita- tion of both the Soviet Writers Union and the Armenian Writ- ers and two poems in the selec- tion reflect his impressions of that country and give new mean- ing to the friendship between the two peoples that has flour-. ished in the 1970’s. One poem, “Rivers of Peace,” returns to the theme of the common bonds be- tween two continents that found expression in an earlier poem “Cuba,” but is invested with a prophetic sense of the move-— ment of history. Like the rivers, the lines flow serenely at first and then quicken in a torrent of images, touching again on the theme of the merging of past and future: Suspend in this vault of space unhinged from time, I see your Dnieper, ribbon steel across the plains, all that you were and will become... Where my river quickens earth I have communed with eagles, walked the heart of vanished glaciers, stilled my turmoil at its font upwelling from the caverned deep. : Guardian grasses bow their blades to dragonflies in pools the mosses sponge from weeping rock: unburdened by oppressive snows. Alpine flowers spread their gift to color where: its nascent streams splash to the tumult of the gorge. Glowering canyons flank its roisterous assault, a victory of rapids thrust in spume of fury through the rock. » Sandbars quiet its entry to the plain tranquil in the curtained light of dawn. and concluding with its vision of hope and peace: My river spills its flood, like yours upon the history of men a surging flood of dreams a peaceful striving poured into our common sea. Driving his poems forward and giving them life and mean-. ing is a growing political energy and just as some of his lines sing with light and warmth, so others have stripped away the wreath of. imagery to become. direct powerful. statements PACIFIC TRIBUNE—FRIDAY, JANUARY 4, 1974—PAGE7 against oppression like the poem “Goodwill to Men” written some time before the fascist coup in Chile In the night a child dying, the milk ee of human kindness snatched from her lips to sooth the ulcers of copper barons in New York. Dispossessed the former owners still wring the teats of the Andes. There is no goodwill for Chile. While one occasionally senses a certain repetitiveness in form in some of the poems with the use of “you” and “your” in the subjects that Griffin addresses, his poems are a rare achieve- ment. in Canadian poetry; to take the rough dreams and hopes of a-country and its peo- ple and transform them into images of beauty and power. — His new book should find its way onto the shelves o§ every- one who reads poetry. For when the Mordecai Richlers have counted their dollars alongside _ their contempt and have been forgotten, Griffin’s poems will be part of the history and people of which he sings. NAS TO aI