May 29, 1983

Syria last week pursued its spoiler's role against the recently signed Israeli-Lebanese accord. Syrian MIG's, in action for the first time since last summer's cease-fire, launched air-to-air missiles against an Israeli reconnaissance drone and Syrian ground missiles tried to hit an Israeli helicopter over the Bekaa region of Eastern Lebanon. Yesterday, Israeli planes encountered antiaircraft fire, possibly from Palestinian forces stationed with the Syrians. Lebanese security sources said the Israeli drone had been shot down, but Israel denied any losses to its planes and held its fire.

With a display of Colonial pageantry, President Reagan opened the summit conference of major industrial democracies today and held an extensive dinner discussion with the allies on arms negotiations with the Soviet Union. After greeting the participants in three hours of arrival ceremonies, Mr. Reagan held separate meetings with President Francois Mitterrand and Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher of Britain at Providence Hall, a beige clapboard house that is his residence during the meeting. Senior Administration officials said Mr. Reagan came away with renewed support from them for the American negotiating position on nuclear missiles. Reaction to Soviet Threat Earlier today, the United States reacted sharply to a Soviet threat to deploy new nuclear weapons in Eastern Europe. The State Department accused Moscow of seeking ''military superiority and thus global hegemony.'' (Page 15.)

THE BIRTH OF THE PEOPLE'S REPUBLIC OF ANTARCTICA, By John Calvin Batchelor. 403 pp. New York: The Dial Press. $16.95. Novels used to be named after people or places, or their titles were literary allusions. But now they often arrive wearing elaborate disguises - ''The Floating Opera,'' ''Why Are We In Vietnam?,'' ''The Crying of Lot 49,'' ''The 158-Pound Marriage'' or whatever - as if we have no business knowing what's in them until we've bought and read them. Doris Lessing is the current champion of this art, but with ''The Birth of the People's Republic of Antarctica,'' John Calvin Batchelor (whose first novel was ''The Further Adventures of Halley's Comet'') looks like a strong contender. But you can't judge a book by its title. Like Doris Lessing's, Mr. Batchelor's game is anything but whimsy, and though his new book several times calls itself a ''comedy,'' it is so only in the Dantesque sense. Mr. Batchelor's people wear odd labels: The Swedish-American narrator and hero is called Grim Fiddle, and other characters carry such given names as Peregrine, Cleopatra, Lazarus, Mord, Germanicus, Elephant, Increase, Charity, Learned and Christmas. Yet these are not jokes but (as seems understandable in a writer whose own Christian name is John Calvin) ways of creating at least the atmosphere of moral allegory. And as in all but the finest allegory, their names are the most vivid thing about these figures, who are remarkably hard to keep straight as the story proceeds.

PILGERMANN, By Russell Hoban. 240 pp. New York: Summit Books. $14.95. RUSSELL HOBAN, a 58-year-old American living in London, has written dozens of books for children, but his fiction for adults reveals a sensibility anything but childlike. Two years ago he startled readers with ''Riddley Walker,'' a haunting portrayal of life in a post-Armageddon landscape. Now, in ''Pilgermann,'' the scene shifts dramatically from imagined future to historical past, but the harrowing vision remains essentially unchanged. The world according to Pilgermann is a brutish place where bodies are boiled and devoured and human heads are used as cannonballs. ''The heads slung into Antioch by the Franks were the heads of Turks killed in battle but the heads slung out of Antioch by the Turks were not those of Franks; they were the heads of Syrian and Armenian Christians of Antioch.''

TRENTON ENROLLED Democrats and Republicans will go to the polls June 7 to select candidates for 120 seats in the Legislature - 40 in the Senate and 80 in the Assembly - and although many incumbents are running for renomination without opposition, there are several heated contests. The primary-election winners will figure in the important general election campaign in November, when control of the Legislature is at stake. Democrats hold a 20-to-19 edge in the Senate, with one vacancy, and a 43-to-37 majority in the Assembly. Governor Kean is expected to play an active role in promoting Republican candidates this year in the hope of getting what eluded him when he won the governorship in 1981: a Republican Legislature that he can work with instead of a Democratic Legislature that he has had to spar with.