Link with the Past

Anywhere but at Oxford it would have been considered a very odd election. Only holders of M.A.s were entitled to vote, and each voter bowed as he handed his ballot to the vice chancellor. There had been no campaigning, except over teacups. The rival candidates never showed up at the polls, and the ballot was printed in Latin. Oxford M.A.s were electing a professor of poetry.

They could choose either Caecilius Day Lewis ("e Collegio Wadhami") or Clive S. Lewis ("socius Collegii Beatae Mariae Magda'enae"). Of England's two distinguished, unrelated Lewises, they picked Cecil (C. Day Lewis, the poet) over Clive (C. S. Lewis, the Anglican theologian, author of the Screwtape Letters), 194 votes to 173. Neither candidate seemed to be pining for office. C. S. Lewis (TIME Cover, Sept. 8, 1947) was off on a long hike; C. Day Lewis was having a drink in his London flat.

Up the Practicing Poet. No one at Oxford knows exactly what Henry Birkhead had in mind when he endowed a chair of poetry (established 1708) with the proviso that its occupant be elected every five years by convocation, i.e., popular vote. It is the only chair of its kind at Oxford or Cambridge. As the 33rd incumbent, C. Day Lewis will be one of the few practicing poets ever to occupy it. In the past, historians and theologians predominated. His most distinguished predecessor, Matthew Arnold, held the post two terms in a row (1857-67).

The professorship carries a stipend of -L-250 and few duties. Poet Lewis will have to deliver three lectures a year, judge one play and one essay contest. He has plenty of other work of his own to keep him busy. A prolific poet (ten volumes published), he also writes mystery thrillers ( The Beast Must Die, Minute for Murder) under the pseudonym of Nicholas Blake. He is translating the Aeneid for the BBC's Third Program, will shortly publish a long travel poem, Italian Visit.

Up Tennyson. A lanky man with deep-set eyes, C. Day Lewis, 46, was born in Ballintubber, Ireland, the son of a Church of Ireland clergyman. "I wrote poetry before I could read it," he says.

In the '30s, along with Stephen Spender and W. H. Auden, he adopted a militant left-wing position, wrote lines like:

It is now or never, the hour of the knife, The break with the past, the major operation.

Today, though still a Socialist, he feels that "the one thing is to try to find out the truth about one's self." In his Oxford lectures, it will not be "the break with the past," but the link with the past which he intends to emphasize. He believes it is time to arouse people's interest "in some poets like Tennyson; they've heard enough about Eliot recently."

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