Dominican College of San Rafael - Firebrand Yearbook (San Rafael, CA)

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losses, but no more than life has. In it we find no illu- sions; it shows us what our fate is, what must happen to us before we can become the captains of our souls. Those who like to read and think and analyze have talked much about Mr. Schorer ' s lecture. To many he was no clearer than Mr. Harris ' or Mr. Perry ' s ab- stracts to the uninitiated in modern art; or than the movements of the fugue (to which he compared the play of ideas in Point and Counterpoint) to one igno- rant of music. What new flames may be kindled by Miss Prall and Darius Milhaud we do not yet know; but the thought- ful are aware that the program of The Arts has brought new concepts and given new understanding to those who reach out for them. S. C. M. CANDLESTICK TREE There ' s a candle-stick tree in my dream-drop land, Grace-angled shoots of upthrust sprays Reflect scarf-scarlet of gypsy band In fire-cupped hollows of wheat-white sand. Whirlpools of grains spin in facets till trays Of green light build layers, reality-spanned. I know I am here, but I dream I am free In the scarlet-green land of the candle-stick tree. Marjorie Hansen ' 50 118

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living that are mirrored in so many of the most popu- lar plays on Broadway. His comments on the good acting and good staging did not seem to soothe. Many of the modern students had seen the plays and could not accept this devastating point of view. Those who still live by the old ideals were pleased. Mr. Schorer talked on Modern Fiction, a huge subject, which he limited almost entirely to a discus- sion of British novelists, men whose writings reflect the social dislocations of a world in which the old sub- ject matter is dead, the new not yet born. This new literature, he pointed out, has lost much of what is good in the Victorian novel, so concerned with plot and morals and the relations of character to external circumstances. Yet this literature so barren of plot and of idea, so concerned with the finesse of style, this tumbling out of the stream of consciousness, this fiction that em- phasizes the individual and plays with the new psy- chology that alters our understanding of character, has its gain. The modern novelists, Mr. Schorer re- minded us, have not falsified; they have opened the naturalistic surface and revealed the depths of the human spirit. Their technique is not merely external, it is a deeply organic process that discovers the whole of modern consciousness. Modern fiction has had its 117

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TEMPLE OF QUETZALCOATL From fragmentary wall of temple-ruins project pinioned snake-heads, sculptured. Since bluish, speared magueys first defied rays of zigzag blaze on long lake-floor of the valley known as Anahuac, serpents have coiled and sprung. Darting quickly, they reserve the right to bite lethally only for moments of fright. Hibernating, they draw certainties from root-kens and the zones under stones. Twining slowly, they relinquish, ring by patterned ring, 119