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BOOKS IN REVIEWEryn and his gesture of negation in a"homeless" world.In symbolic terms, this preoccupationwith identity is mirrored in two houses:one, owned by Valdez, represents everythingmoney can buy; and the other,owned by Lidia, serves as a hideout forthe Sandinistas. Both houses are describedin terms that suggest, either ostentatiouslyor obliquely, an earthly paradise. In thefinal analysis, both prove futile. Valdez'smansion is opulent, but maintained by abrute power that creates an atmospherein which one hears "Chopin wanderingbewildered in the palm trees." Lidia'shome is a place of mutuality and passionatelove, but is watched over by a cynicalEduardo and is totally defenceless againstthe wrath of the National Guard. Inboth cases, the metaphor of paradise iscreated, tested and finally dissolved.Sandinista offers no comforting solutions.At best, it stresses the urgency ofthe quest. What is certain, however, isthat for the author of the tendentiousnovel The Mind Gods, this work marksa new phase, a welcome change ofdirection.C. KANAGANAYAKAMCOLUMNS OF DARKGEORGE FALUDY, Selected Poems: 1933-1980,ed. & trans. Robin Skelton. McClelland &Stewart, $12.95.IN I933, WHEN GEORGE FALUDY wastwenty-three years old, "The Ballad ofGeorge Faludy's Only Love" appeared onthe front page of the Sunday supplementof Budapest's leading liberal newspaper.It marked, we are told in a brief biographicalnote, his initial literary success.One can see why the poem would haveappeal. It is very much a clever youngman's somewhat cynical view of love.There is the assumption of a worldwearypose as this young man, who isidentified by the initials GF, living inVienna, "that desolate city," has his firstpassionate encounter with a girl calledNatasha "in the grey room of a pension."Natasha murmured at dawn, as they laytogether,"Well, now, you are not a virgin either!"Very shortly GF ran out of money;even on red-letter days his shirt collars weredirty,but she, a student of medicine,shrugged off all those who asked questionsabout him,washed his shirts, and brushed his coat,and listened to everything he went onabout.In bed they sometimes discussed Chekhov,her each small breast like an orange cut inhalf.Eventually they come to a parting of theways. GF, showing not the slightest emotion,sees her off at the railway station."On the way home he bought chestnutsand forgot her."Two other women, Metta and Fritzie,serve his needs for awhile, then areabandoned and quickly forgotten. Thefourth woman he meets, Eva Scherff, ensnareshim, but she is "cold, capricious,and wholly mean." She tortures andteases him, and withholds "her dearbody, tight-sheathed in its silken dress, /which every other idiot could possess."But it is this woman, a typical belle damesans merci, whom he can never forget,"never, never, never."All kinds of echoes in this poem remindus of the fin de siècle poets of England,France, and Austria. One can imagineBeardsley illustrating it, though Beardsley'sline was perhaps a bit too elegant.Faludy's poems of the years 1933 to 1935all have the aura of decadence aboutthem. Even the titles of many of thesepoems, "To Celia, My Faithless Love"and "Danse Macabre," for example, remindus of the melodies we first heardin the 1890's, although now somewhat272