Letter to a Comrade

by Joy Davidman, Stephen Vincent Benét (Foreword)

Here is what an intelligent, sensitive, and vivid mind thinks about itself and the things of the modern world. It will be obvious enough, to anyone who reads _Letter to a Comrade_, that the heroes of the Twenties are not Miss Davidman's heroes nor their demons her demons.

Because of her power, her vividness, and her sharp expression of much that is felt and thought by many of her own generation, I hope that Miss Davidman's book will reach a rather larger audience than that generally reserved for first books of verse. For sometimes you may learn almost as much about a generation by reading its poetry as by making graphs and collecting voluminous statistics. This is a generation that knew the Depression in its 'teens, the War not at all. It is just now beginning to be articulate. And you will find plenty of indignation here, but not a willingness to accept frustration.

Genres: Poetry, Classics

94 pages, Hardcover

Published January 1, 1938

About the author

Joy Davidman (born Helen Joy Davidman; 18 April 1915 – 13 July 1960) was an American poet and writer. Often referred to as a child prodigy, she earned a master's degree from Columbia University in English literature in 1935. For her book of poems, Letter to a Comrade, she won the Yale Series of Younger Poets Competition in 1938 and the Russell Loines Award for Poetry in 1939. She was the author of several books, including two novels.

While an atheist and after becoming a member of the American Communist Party, she met and married her first husband and father of her two sons, William Lindsay Gresham, in 1942. After a troubled marriage, and following her conversion to Christianity, they divorced and she left America to travel to England with her sons.

Davidman published her best known work, Smoke on the Mountain: An Interpretation of the Ten Commandments in 1954 with a preface by C.S. Lewis. Lewis had been an influence on her work and conversion and became her second husband after her permanent relocation to England in 1956. She died from secondary bone cancer in 1960.

The relationship that developed between Davidman and Lewis has been featured in a television BBC film, a stage play and a cinema film named Shadowlands. Lewis published A Grief Observed under a pseudonym in 1961, from notebooks he kept after his wife's death revealing his immense grief and a period of questioning God.

Reviews

[Annie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Joy Davidman isn’t a popular poet; I only heard of her via her significantly more famous husband CS Lewis, who wrote a book after her death where he attempted to process his profound grief over her death.

She’s lovely. She's also notably less overtly Christian (at least in her poetry; I’ll be reading her more popular and more theologically oriented book, Smoke on the Mountain, later this year. (Davidman was born Jewish but converted to Christianity.)

The best way I can describe Davidman’s poetry is “ripe.” It’s plump and juicy and irresistibly present, pleading with you to sink your teeth into it, deeper, deeper. It fills your mouth with flavor, hard to describe but definitely tart, making the insides of your cheeks tingle.

Davidman is very much an American poet. She has a love-hate relationship with her country. She loves it the way one would love a mother, but also feels keenly its dark history of colonialism.

Below, as usual, some of my favorite excerpts:

I will not have you tainted by my pain;
I am scarred and sculptured to a hollow mask
Of vivid torture, yet I am not slain
By sharp contrivances of your disdain;
And for your gentle silence I shall ask
My bitter lunar love to leave you sane.

************

This is New York,
our city; a kind place to live in; bountiful; our city
envied by the world and by the young in lonely places.
We have the bright-lights, the bridges, the Yankee Stadium
and if we are not contented then we should be
and if we are discontented we do not know it,
and anyhow it always has been this way.

************

When I am born again
I shall come like the grass-blade;
I shall be fertile and small
As the seed of grasses.
Rain shall breed me;
Earth shall bear me;
I shall smell of the sun
Over green fields.

…

When I am come again
I shall be clean
Of the taint of sorrow;
I shall grow lightly
Without any pain;
All that was weariness
Is less than the shadow
When the clouds pass.
I shall come whispering
Together, and breathing
Together, and wordless
Speaking of peace,
And die in winter
And rise in summer
And conquer the earth
In the shape of grass.




~~~BOOK RIOT’S READ HARDER CHALLENGE 2019~~~

#9: A book published prior to January 1, 2019, with fewer than 100 reviews on Goodreads

[Jason · Rating 4 out of 5]

When I watched Shadowlands and heard Joy recite her poem Snow in Madrid, I knew I had to find the book it was in and read more. I can see why C.S. Lewis married this woman.

[Tessa · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not for me.

[Jennifer · Rating 3 out of 5]

“You may learn almost as much about a generation by reading its poetry as by making graphs and collecting” statistics. “Here is what an intelligent, sensitive, and vivid mind thinks about itself” and the world.

WARNING: “There is a richness of imagery here, a lively social consciousness, a varied command of forms and a bold power.”

“Never transcend the armored brain,
Never let in the universe…
Therefore be guided; love yourself
And show the pleasant world your teeth.”