The Midwest Quarterly: A Journal of Contemporary Thought
Contents
Articles
The Dilemma of the Soviet Composer
The Even-Numbered Days
Freedom and Planning in British Agriculture
Farm Surpluses, Exports, and the Common Market
Frost and the Deeper Vision
Jacob Burckhardt: Humanist and Conservative
Verse
Lantern Flowers
A Circus Is Too Mundane
News from Atlantis
Shoppers
The Strong
Of a New World
De Profundis II
The Ailanthus Pod
Fruit and Sympathy
Near Waverly
Mission
Empty Frames
Abstract
in this issue. . .
BEGINNING our fifth year of publication with this issue, we continue our policy of variety in the subject matter of the articles here presented, from musicology to historiography, from Formosa to the United Kingdom, from Jacob Burckhardt to Robert Frost. We count ourselves fortunate in having discovered discussions suitable for inclusion in a journal of contemporary thought and in receiving unsolicited contributions which quickly won editorial acceptance. As in our first four years, we start this new volume confident in the role and objectives of our journal and reassured by continued growth in the number of subscribers, contributors, and exchanges.
Music, like the other fine arts, is supposed to be above ideology and nationality, but from time to time efforts are made to use music and musicians as instruments of propaganda. In our first article, DONALD R. KEY, associate professor of music at Kansas State College, discusses some of the problems encountered by composers in Soviet Russia who are on the one hand blessed by state support and on the other inhibited by ideological control. Professor Key became interested in the subject last winter when the Komitas String Quartet, a state musical organization from Moscow, played a concert on this campus. During a reception for the members of the quartet, he fell into conversation with these Russian musicians, all of whom expressed unwavering devotion to the official communist line with regard to artistic aesthetics. After wide reading on the subject, Professor Key presented a paper on the problem of controlled musical composition before last June's meeting of the Faculty Seminar in Liberal Arts directed by our editorial colleague Theodore M. Sperry. The essay here published is an outgrowth of that seminar paper. Professor Key received the bachelor of arts from Millsaps College, Jackson, Mississippi; the master of music degree from the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston, and his doctor of philosophy degree from Boston University. He joined the faculty here in the fall of 1960; prior to that he had taught at Hinds Junior College in Raymond, Mississippi; at Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts, and at Western Maryland College, Westminster.
ALTHOUGH his home field is American history, MARK A. PLUMMER, assistant professor at Illinois State University, Normal, became more than casually interested in Far Eastern affairs while a graduate student at the University of Kansas where he studied under Professor George Beckmann. During the summer of 1962, Professor Plummer was one of a clutch of American educators who enjoyed a six weeks sojourn on Formosa under the auspices of the Fulbright program. One major result of that experience is a delightful and illuminating contribution to this issue, "The Even-Numbered Days. A native of Missouri, Professor Plummer earned his bachelor and master's degrees in history at Kansas State College, writing his master's thesis on the American institutional economist, Thorstein Veblen. After several years of European duty with the United States Army and high school teaching in Kansas City, Plummer proceeded to the University of Kansas to earn his doctor of philosophy degree. For the past two years he has taught American history courses at Illinois State. He has previously published in The Kansas Historical Quarterly.
CONVINCED that the European and British experience with agricultural problems parallels our own in many respects," MERLIN D. GUSTAFSON of Kansas State University, Manhattan, prepared a paper on British agriculture to read at the annual. meeting of the Kansas Association of Teachers of History and Social Science held at Kansas State Teachers College, Emporia, last April. Fortunately, your peripatetic editor heard the paper, liked it, and secured it, then & there for this journal. Professor Gustafson earned his bachelor's and master's at Kansas State University and his Ph.D. in political science from the University of Nebraska. He has also studied at the University of Chicago and at Notre Dame and has taught political science for a number of years in and around the Chicago area, at North Park College and at Northern Illinois University. In 1960 he returned to his alma mater and to his present teaching position. He has traveled and lived in Britain during World War II and as a private citizen several years ago.
IT IS NOT unusual for news stories on both Britain and American farm questions to appear in adjoining columns in our newspapers (see for example The Kansas City Times for September 12, 1963), and it struck us as highly appropriate to run a discussion of American farm surpluses as they relate to the Common Market in the same issue with Professor Gustafson's article. Accordingly last June we dispatched KENT I. TOOL to England to make an on-the-spot study and report back. Mr. Tool, instructor in economics here is a 1960 graduate of Grinnell College with a year's advanced study of economics at Manchester University in England and a master of business administration degree from Indiana University in 1962. His article on the farm export problem grows out of his strong interest in international trade and finance and is strengthened by his extensive travel and study in Western Europe. This past summer, "our man in Surrey" actually concentrated more on British cathedrals, particularly those most recently erected, than he did on economic problems.
EVER SINCE his death last winter, the American poet Robert Frost has been the subject of an increasing number of manuscripts submitted to this Journal. BARRY D. BORT, assistant professor of English at Central Michigan University, Mt. Pleasant, has analyzed Frosts attitudes toward nature and twentieth-century man's relation to it. Professor Bort did his undergraduate work at Depauw University and received his master of arts and doctor of philosophy degrees from Brown University. His fields of interest include Romantic, Victorian, and contemporary literature, and he is at work on a scholarly study tracing the changing concept of the hero in Charles Dicken's novels.
JACOB BURCKHARDT in his humanistic versatility has always been one of the great models for FELIX M. WASSERMANN of the Division of Humanities at Kansas Wesleyan University, Salina. On his frequent trips to Europe, Professor Wassermann always visits Burckhardt' s home university-town of Basel as well as his own university, Freiburg, sister institution to Basel. Two years ago (summer, 1961) Professor Wasserman contributed an essay, "Thucydides: Our Contemporary," to our journal. At Kansas Wesleyan, he teaches advanced German, Spanish, ancient and renaissance history, classics, humanities, the Bible as literature, and political geography. In his spare time he writes articles, reviews, and papers on such varied subjects as Roman portraiture, ancient historiography: the voice of Sparta in Thucydides, and the later novels of the nineteenth century German, Raabe. His articles and reviews have been widely published in European as well as American Journals.
ONE DOZEN poems grace this issue, and it is our hope that subsequent numbers of THE MIDWEST QUARTERLY will maintain the high standard set by the ten poets here represented. Only two are new to our pages: LEONARD GILLEY of Denver, Colorado, and FRED MOECKEL of Naugatuck, Connecticut. The other eight have appeared at least once prior to this issue and some have become regular contributors. Mr. Gilley, Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Bowdoin College who afterward took his master of arts with distinction in the Writing Seminars of the Johns Hopkins University, is currently Creative Writing and University Fellow at the University of Denver and is working toward his doctor of philosophy degree under Dr. John Williams. His poetry has appeared in The New York Times, The Denver Post, and Verb. Next year Prairie Schooner will publish a Shakespeare poem of his as part of the 400th anniversary celebration. He has completed a book of 218 poems (2,708 lines) entitled "Our Town Is A Thirsty Town," and at the moment is searching for a publisher for this solid work. In progress he has many poems and a novel. . . . Fred Moeckel earned the bachelor of fine arts from Hartford Art School in 1959 and the master of education from the University of Hartford the following year. He is employed by the state of Connecticut as counselor for its program for education of the blind. His poems and stories have been published or accepted by American Weave, The Husk, The Minnesota Review, New Frontiers, The New Yorker, Quicksilver, and Targets, in addition to The New York Herald Tribune, The Denver Post, and The Saturday Evening Post.
Our double quartet of other versifiers hale all the way from the next room to Japan: WENDELL B. ANDERSON of Taos, New Mexico, first appeared in our last (summer) issue. . . . JAMES BINNEY of West Chester, Pennsylvania, has contributed to our summer issues for the past two years. . . . A. D. FREEMAN of Wellesley, Massachusetts, was included in our January and July numbers this year. . . . EMILIE GLEN of New York City is a frequent contributor to THE MIDWEST QUARTERLY, for which we are grateful; her poems were included in our last two issues. . . . MYRON LEVOY of Rockaway, New Jersey, had two poems in our last (July) issue. . . . HOWARD SMITH, JR., of Brooklyn Heights contributed "Winter Woman" to last January's number. . . . TRACY THOMPSON, "America's most prolific poet," is currently teaching English at the University of Kyoto, Japan, and a Japanese culture course at Yobiko's intermediate college; weather permitting, he will continue there for three years before returning to his home base of San Francisco. We published four of his poems in our January and April issues this year. . . . DONALD ATWELL ZOLL, our house poet and colleague in political theory, appeared in our issues of January and July this year.
Recommended Citation
Key, Donald R.; Plummer, Mark; Gustafson, Merlin D.; Tool, Kent; Bort, Barry D.; Wassermann, Felix M.; Moeckel, Fred; Thompson, Tracy; Freeman, A. D.; Binney, James; Anderson, Wendell B.; Zoll, Donald Atwell; Smith, Howard Jr.; Gilley, Leonard; Levoy, Myron; and Glen, Emilie
(1963)
"The Midwest Quarterly; Vol 5. No. 1,"
The Midwest Quarterly: A Journal of Contemporary Thought: Vol. 5:
Iss.
1, Article 1.
Available at:
https://digitalcommons.pittstate.edu/mwq/vol5/iss1/1