SHIV A'S COMEBACK

To the Editors of the CRIMSON:

For some mysterious reason I found myself at the premiere of the new Old Howard last week and awoke long enough to take in the act of Shiva and Her Snake, described in Saturday's CRIMSON. I feel compelled to point out one inaccuracy: your writer said that the orchestra accompanied Shiva's act with "something Arabian," whereas it was actually Persian music. A petty correction? Yes. But in the present aura of international discord, it ill behooves us to lay ourselves open in any way to charges of anti-Persianism.

As a matter of fact, the Persian music used there was composed by an Englishman. But since the Persians can claim so little in the cultural output known to most Westerners, we ought not to grudge them title to this music any more than the English grudge the Edward Fitzgerald (or we begrudge the English their claim to Handel--for poor old England has produced so few great composers to swell her national pride).

At any rate, this music--Perversion or no--did not seem to bother the Arabian dancer; this Queen of Shiva was more interested in sending shivas up and down the spine with her snake than in the musicians' shivarce. Besides, for all her profound Islamic symbolism, she was content to have a Hindu name.

But why should any who cannot knit up the ravell'd Shiva care? Caldwell Titcomb '47