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Memorials

a professional reason to phone him, namely to discuss the meaning of the word‘dichten’: earlier that morningI had re-readthepagesonBasilBuntinginPound’sABCof Reading , in which BBis quoted as having discovered the equation ‘dichten=condensare. . . whilefumblingaboutinaGermanItalian dictionary’. This, we are told, was Basil’s ‘prime contribution to contemporarycriticism’. ‘Dichten’ involves one wordwhereEnglishinvolves three: ‘tocomposepoetry’. The implied poetics underlying the equation – ‘condensare’ obviously meaning to condense or to compress – was immediatelyinfluential andhasremainedsoeversince. SomethingIsaac Rosenbergwrote ina letter (I knowthe quoteoff byheart) suddenlycametomind: ‘Iamdetermined that this war, withall its powers for devastation, shall not master my poeting; that is, if I amlucky enoughto come throughallright’. Heused the verbform ‘. . . my poeting . . .’, whichcouldonlyhavecomefroma non-existentverb‘to poet’. Isitpossiblethat, knowingYiddish, whichemploysthesame word‘dichten’ as inGerman, Rosenberginventedtheverbin English, ‘to poet’ being the one-word literal translation of ‘dichten’?IthinkIhavemadeadiscovery. A final gloss: Wittgenstein wrote somewhere that ‘Philosophie düürfte maneigentlichnur dichten’: ‘Philosophy ought to be composedlike poetry’ or ‘philosophy ought to be like poeting.’ Having recently published a book by Christopher Middleton, I decidedto runthis past him. He happens tobeinEuropeat themoment, makingit easier to reachhimonthephone–because ofthetimedifference–than at homeinAustinTexas. Hecameupwithanimprovement: ‘philosophising should be like writing poems.’ He also confirmedone’s suspicionthat theItalianlexicographer, very convenientlyfor Bunting’s standingas acriticintheeyes of the Gaffer, was perpetrating a false etymology, whether deliberatelyornot. I once wrote that if Donald Davie was the exemplary poet-critic and Jon Silkin the exemplary poet-editor, then