Book Reviews
There are two classes of men who attain a piercing perception of the fundamental truths beneath the mantle of social usage which is loosely termed culture, a mantle which only serves to detract the senses from the real goal of human activities. One of these types is the stoic mentalist, to whom everything is mind and reason. The other is the emotional, uncontrolled realist, who lives for pleasure and dreams of ideals. Both of these divergent types are able to see clearly the foibles which permeate the life of mankind; the first because he realizes human weaknesses and thereby refrains from falling into indulging in them, while the second delves into the experiences and pleasures of the senses and comes to a realization of the futility of it all.
Mr. Walpole has taken this antithesis as the principal theme in his latest work, and the result is Canon Ronder and Davary. The power of these two characters, however, is suggested rather than described, and Mr. Walpole’s genius of omission is as commendable as his power of description. The perpetual controversy of the Church—between that which was once new and that which is ever rising to become the newer—is treated dramatically by attaching the teachings of both to human characters and having them live lives according to their interpretation of such teachings; the relative superiority of the opposing doctrines is thus put to the test. The splendor of the Church is seen by eyes from under different points of view, and discord arises between the officers of the Church. Worldly ambitions and thwarted passions are well depicted by Mr. Walpole, while an intensely dramatic strain is refreshed by the youthful love affair between the Bishop’s daughter and her sweetheart. “The Cathedral” is a work of fiction which deserves to be ranked among the best—because it is so unlike fiction.
H. H. S.
This book is new only to the American public. Since its first appearance in England a number of years ago, its popularity and power has grown phenomenally; Knopf could scarcely have left it out of his collection of best modern books. It is sure to make a lasting impression here upon all those who are able to love and appreciate the remarkable beauties of a real prose style.
But, withal, I believe the book to be weaker than Carl Van Vechten would admit. I believe it to be weak in the same manner, and for the same reasons, I am inclined to decry the theses of many modern writers. In a way, “The Hill of Dream” is a study in the Psychology of Insanity. In a way, books like “Ulysses” and “Babbitt” are studies in Sociology and Psychology and whatnot. And, frankly, I do not like my science with my literature.
All this sort of intellectualism strives honestly for the truth; “The Hill of Dreams” attains a unique and unrivalled beauty, but any plot which selects one human specimen, and insists upon our microscopic interest in him, following the author’s experiments to the bitterest of ends, asks of us a little too much. These things are like too-lengthy poems, which cannot sustain our emotions through all their tomes, howsoever clever and beautiful they may be. Our complex minds require more complexity in our literature, more variation, less study and more story, than they give us. Personally, again, I prefer “Vanity Fair” to the most beautiful “-ology” ever to be written.
But that is far afield from “The Hill of Dreams”, and I should be truly sinful to lose a reader for it by rhapsodizing. Itisbeautiful prose, itis—after its own fashion—an interesting story, and it is certainly true to a peculiar little minority of human life. In these days when dramatic value must be subjective to be great, it is a great book.
D. G. C.
Reading “A Hind in Richmond Park” is like going on a long walk over rolling fields and hillsides in the face of a stiffbreeze. There is a tang and freshness in the book which is exhilarating. You feel as if you were with Mr. Hudson in his wanderings. As you open the book he smiles at you and takes your hand and you are his. He takes you walking in England or riding across the Argentine pampas and talks to you about the sights and sounds en route, rambling smoothly from one thought to another.
He calls himself a field naturalist, but he is much more than that word implies even in its best sense. He is a poet of nature; a sort of modern Chaucer in his whole-hearted delight in and appreciation of the minute details in nature. The reader will find scattered through the pages many of his own inarticulate musings set down with charming simplicity and depth of feelings. Mr. Hudson talks to you about smells, winds and sounds and you find that you are listening to an expression of many of your own thoughts.
The material of the book is a strange admixture of anecdotes, science, and common sense which every now and then reaches an almost poetical plain of thought. It is neither a collection of essays, nor a journal, nor a narrative; it is really a set of printed conversations—a member of that delightful species that may be picked up for a half-hour’s reading, and laid aside again without the charm being broken. Nor is this because the subjects fail to arouse interest. Anyone who has caught nature off her guard, who has walked abroad after a thunder shower in dry weather, or who has tramped past newly-ploughed fields, or lain among the cowslips on a crystal-bright May morning with the fresh south wind in his face, will find a source of quiet pleasure in “A Hind of Richmond Park”. He will forget that there is ice and snow outside and too much tobacco smoke within, and will shut his eyes and dream of pleasant summer days of long ago.
M. T.
Any poem hailed by most of the really important critics of this country and of England as “the most significant of thegeneration” would naturally compel our attention. “The Waste Land” does not cease to do that even after constant re-reading. Although we are eventually convinced of the opinion just quoted, our peculiar conception of its significance may vary a great deal. It would seem to me it lies in its relation to the future of poetry. Mr. Eliot has led poetry to the cross-roads and offered her a choice. She must either follow him along the path which he has demonstrated with eloquent conviction is disfigured beyond hope by the tracks of many centuries or else branch off to a new untravelled road. The poem is enormous and epochal by virtue of its aesthetic implications. It is pathetically foolish to find justification for its vast incongruities and obscurities in its broad design or in isolated passages of beauty. Those who are doing the latter give it an interpretation which its author manifestly did not intend. If his purpose had been to create simple lyricism there would be little sense in drowning it in a maelstrom of references to over thirty books, written in several languages, and ranging from Sanskrit maxims to American “rags”.
There can be no denial, however, that there is a definite and organized pattern in the crazy-quilt. Even such lines as,
“When lovely woman stoops to folly andPaces about her room again, alone,She smooths her hair with automatic handAnd puts a record on the gramophone.”
“When lovely woman stoops to folly andPaces about her room again, alone,She smooths her hair with automatic handAnd puts a record on the gramophone.”
“When lovely woman stoops to folly andPaces about her room again, alone,She smooths her hair with automatic handAnd puts a record on the gramophone.”
“When lovely woman stoops to folly and
Paces about her room again, alone,
She smooths her hair with automatic hand
And puts a record on the gramophone.”
are an integral part of the general plan. Superficially, that plan has to do with the sterility of emotion in modern life and the futility of human aspirations in all ages. But his most subtle proof of the latter is to be found in the very form of the poem itself with its concrete negation of all the most cherished ideals of aesthetics. Eliot has shown us in this, as in his other work, that he is capable of writing perfect verse in any number of conventional modes. In “The Waste Land” he gives us a sample of each with the implication that there is not one of them but is as worn-out and vulgarized as the London desert.
This is my reason for believing the most profound significance of the poem consists in the threat it throws in the face of poetry. Will she continue to adorn herself in motley made up of thebattered fabrics of past triumphs? Or, on the other hand, will some one come offering her what she most needs to survive, something beautiful in its very freshness? Perhaps we should be thankful for “The Waste Land”, as we are always thankful for a warning signal. But we have no need to desire another.
W. T.
Reading Mr. Zangwill we are often reminded of a rhyme which Olive Herford appended to a cartoon of that author in his “Confessions of a Caricaturist”:
“This picture, though it is not muchLike Zangwill, is not void of worth;It has one true Zangwillian touch—It looks like nothing else on earth.”
“This picture, though it is not muchLike Zangwill, is not void of worth;It has one true Zangwillian touch—It looks like nothing else on earth.”
“This picture, though it is not muchLike Zangwill, is not void of worth;It has one true Zangwillian touch—It looks like nothing else on earth.”
“This picture, though it is not much
Like Zangwill, is not void of worth;
It has one true Zangwillian touch—
It looks like nothing else on earth.”
In “The Forcing House”, the ever-original “Izzi” has attempted an even more impossible task than the one he set for himself in “The Cockpit”, to which it is the sequel. He has attempted to dramatize the main feature of the Russian Revolution and the confusions of an attendant Bolshevism. The dramatist has proceeded in the conventional style of an allegory, but an allegory peculiar to Mr. Zangwill. Though the whole is vastly confused, each impression is clear enough and we finally emerge from the long, bewildering maze of plots and counterplots, anarchies and despotisms to find to our astonishment a remarkably precise and clear understanding of the political and social conditions of present day Eastern Europe. The chronicler offers no illusions. The whole is plainfully plain.
At the very beginning the author scents the weakness of the radicals. The Jewish Banker and the fanatic Riffoni are talking:
“Gripstein: ‘But why is printing so dear? See how these trade unions cut one another’s throats! So the proletariat won’t pay for your ideas.’“Riffoni: ‘They can’t afford to.’“Gripstein: ‘Not four soldi? But think what they spend on cinemas and cigarettes!’”
“Gripstein: ‘But why is printing so dear? See how these trade unions cut one another’s throats! So the proletariat won’t pay for your ideas.’
“Riffoni: ‘They can’t afford to.’
“Gripstein: ‘Not four soldi? But think what they spend on cinemas and cigarettes!’”
But it is not until the third act that the Duke D’Azolls lays bare the full misconception of the Doctrine Lenin: “Not a paradise of blossoming brotherhood, not a natural growth under God’s heaven, but a Socialism ripened prematurely under the heat of compulsion and watered with blood; a Socialism under a sky of glass, unstable, sterile.... And forced—good God!—from what seed? Constricting figs in greenhouse pots will precipitate them artificially, but there is high authority for doubting if they can be gathered from thistles.”
Mr. Zangwill has taken upon himself a monumental task. That he has had any success at all is remarkable.
M. W.