Book Reviews
“The Story of Mankind” by Hendrick Van Loon is an original and valuable contribution to education. Those who have read little or no history will find here a well-drawn picture of the life of the world and its people from the earliest times we know of. And those who have read much of these things will find the book an acute survey of the whole—a survey which sets off individual races and periods and changes in definite perspective.
Mr. Van Loon’s viewpoint of history and its presentation varies very radically from that of the average historian. History to him is no long list of wars and kings and papal edicts; it is primarily dramatic. Here before you are the greatest plots, intrigues, heroes, heroines, villains that you could ever imagine—now playing a comedy, now a tragedy, now a farce. No wonder you are startled to find your attention so completely held by “an old history book”.
But beneath this we find a more fundamental viewpoint. In the author’s own words you are to “try to discover the hidden motives behind every action and then you will understand the world around you much better and you will have a greater chance to help others, which (when all is said and done) is the only true satisfactory way of living”. Here we have Mr. Van Loon’s ideal as an historian; and the spirit which runs through the book proves how well he lived up to it.
As I turn back over the pages the treatment of three or four subjects is particularly significant. Another of the author’s precepts—“it is more important to ‘feel history’ than to know it”—perhaps explains why the chapters on the religions of the world are so impressive. That on Joshua of Nazareth, when the Greeks called Jesus, is indeed a unique presentation of the story of Christ.And for the first time in my life I feel that Mohammed and Buddha and Confucius have ceased to be names—have become very wise men who actually lived and whose words one may well listen to. Napoleon is criticized very severely, but with unprejudiced insight into his character. The last chapters—those on the Great War and the New World—sum up all that has gone before. Mr. Van Loon turns from his backward glance into the ages and looks with all his optimistic philosophy to the greater drama that is still to be enacted. In all you feel the man’s sympathetic touch; he believes in mankind—in its past and in its future.
W. E. H., JR.
In these enlightened days when the past is a memory only and life but the illusion of our daily experience, it is rather startling to have a “grown-up person” talk to us of fairies, and magic spells, and the beauty of an apple orchard. Such things are all very well in the nursery, but really, now that we have grown wise enough to put away childish things—. So let this be a warning to all who by chance might read the first page of “Martin Pippin”, for he who once exposes himself to the magic spell of this fairy tale may well find himself an object for mockery by his scornful companions. At least, here is one man’s experience, and he speaks for many others. Mr. J. D. Beresford, who read the manuscript, writes in the introduction: “Before I had read five pages ... I had forgotten who I was or where I lived. I was transported into a world of sunlight, of gay inconsequence, of emotional surprise, a world of poetry, delight, and humor. And I lived and took my joy in that rare world until all too soon my reading was done.” A better expression could not be found for the fancy, the whimsy, the delicate beauty of this fairy tale. Its spirit touches in us a chord that is rarely awakened in our modern environment or in the literature of to-day.
To clothe her richness of imagination, Miss Farjeon possesses a richness of language most worthy of so high a service. Quite unconsciously you run across striking metaphors, most subtle bits of philosophy. You may look far before discovering quite as beautiful a combination of language and imagination as this:
“‘I am not so old, young shepherd, that I do not remember the curse of youth.’“‘What’s that?’ he said moodily.“‘To bear the soul of a master in the body of a slave,’ she said; ‘to be a flower in a sealed bud, the moon in a cloud, water locked in ice, Spring in the womb of the year, love that does not know itself.’”
“‘I am not so old, young shepherd, that I do not remember the curse of youth.’
“‘What’s that?’ he said moodily.
“‘To bear the soul of a master in the body of a slave,’ she said; ‘to be a flower in a sealed bud, the moon in a cloud, water locked in ice, Spring in the womb of the year, love that does not know itself.’”
There will be few who will not find delight in this fairy tale; and there shall be some, even, who will see beyond their illusions for a day and an hour and follow Martin Pippin where his fancy may lead.
W. E. H., JR.
These two volumes are similar in intention and to a certain extent in method. Padraic Colum is attempting to communicate some of the nuances of Irish character and life, more especially as it is lived in the farms and villages of the countryside. Mr. Weaver, substituting the subway for the lonely roads, is performing the same service for America. Both poets use the language of the people with whom they are dealing, either because they believe it beautiful in itself or because it adds to their effect. The sole but enormous difference between the two men is in the measure of their success. Mr. Weaver, in choosing the American language, was admittedly under great disadvantage at the start. He was forced to assume a defensive attitude and as a result lost sight of most of the important things which constitute poetry. He seemed to think that the fact he was writing in a new language was sufficient, that he need use no fine discretion in the choice of his words in that language, or the manner in which those wordswere arranged. We imagine he is trying to write in metrical verse, although few of the lines have meter. In short, the novelty of his medium was too much for Mr. Weaver. He was so overcome by the thought of writing in American slang that he forgot the essential elements of poetry. Moreover, if Mr. Weaver fails in his language, there is little other interest to be found in the book. His themes are as sentimental and inconsequential as ever.
But Padraic Colum is primarily a poet and only incidentally the exponent of a new form of expression. He does not take the speech of his people as spoken in the dull hours, but only when it is lifted to eloquence by the vision and poignancy of rare moments. He is a master of the words in his language, their sounds, their colors, their subtle shadings. Furthermore, the things he writes about, however local they might at first appear, have always something permanent and universal in them—death, poverty, thwarted heroes and remembered queens. Perhaps the first lyric, To a Poet, is the most significant in the book, both in its relation to the author and in its expression of the ancient problem of the artist and his race. He is speaking of his own people:
“White swords they have yet, but red songs;Place and lot they have lost—hear you not?For a dream you once dreamed and forgot!”
“White swords they have yet, but red songs;Place and lot they have lost—hear you not?For a dream you once dreamed and forgot!”
“White swords they have yet, but red songs;Place and lot they have lost—hear you not?For a dream you once dreamed and forgot!”
“White swords they have yet, but red songs;
Place and lot they have lost—hear you not?
For a dream you once dreamed and forgot!”
Despite the many fine things in the present volume it is greatly inferior to the earlierWild Earth. Every lyric in that collection was cast in the same mood and attained the same high degree of perfection.Dramatic Legendswould almost make us believe that Mr. Colum has abandoned the particular type of poetry which he can write so much better than anyone else in the language.
W. T.
“The Interpreters” is a product of the present-day groping for an explanation of man’s purpose on earth as conceived by the Creator and the instrument of government—or non-government—best adapted to fulfill this purpose; as A. E. has put it, “the relation of the politics of time to the politics of eternity”.Like the rest of the world A. E. is not able to completely pierce the mist which conceals our conception of things eternal, so that this book is rather a seeking along a path illumined by the white light of a superbly analytical reasoning, and the path seems to lead somewhere.
It is A. E.’s belief that there is a spiritual law operating above all intellectual and physical laws in such a way that our affairs are linked with the vast purpose that the Creator has for His universe. This is not, however, a doctrine of fatalism, for A. E. believes we have control of our own destinies in proportion as we work in harmony with the Eternal—“I think it might be truer to say of men that they are God-animatedrather than God-guided”. In this sentence he has precluded the possibility of interpreting his doctrine as a disguised fatalism.
A. E. is moving in an extremely rarified atmosphere in his discussion. To keep the book somewhere near the ground, he provides a simple mechanism. During a revolution against an autocratic world state two centuries hence a number of revolutionary leaders are brought together in a prison, where they devote the night before their death to a discussion of their ideals for the union of world politics with the spiritual Will. Each one takes a different stand as to the methods to be employed, one supporting socialism, another nationalism, a third individualism, and it is in the arguments over governmental forms that some of the finest logic comes out. The following quotation is an example, taken from Leroy’s statement for individualism: “You and I see different eternities.... It is our virtue to be infinitely varied. The worst tyranny is uniformity.”...
It is possible to call A. E. a visionary. Doubtless, “The Interpreters” was written under the press of an immense surge of inspiration, for there is much of poetical fervor in its pages. But it is for this very reason that it can hold us with the spell of its sincerity and the intensity of its philosophy. The world of the world has been inspired by visionaries, and there is a place for a vision to-day.
S. M. C.
This fine volume, whose thrillingly beautiful format is alone enough to recommend it to any collector of unique books, is a reprint, with a few addenda, of a work of the same name issued in 1913. It is to be doubted whether the former copy could have been as effective as the present one which, with its clear, round type, and profuse illustrations, and magenta and purple covers, make up a volume that no true book-lover can afford not to own.
Mr. Jackson, intimately connected with British periodicals of note since 1897, the author himself of such noteworthy pieces as “The Eternal Now” and “Romance and Reality”, is admirably qualified to write on “The Eighteen Nineties”, a creative period in English literature, which for the quality as well as the quantity of its output, is second only to the Elizabethan era. He knew intimately the men about whom he writes, and whose work he appraises. In the admirable introduction he sets forth his aim as “interpretative rather than critical ... to interpret the various movements of the period not only in relation to one another, but in relation to their foreign influences and the main trend of our national art and life.” The following passage exemplifies as well as any the illuminating quality of mind that makes all Mr. Jackson’s comments valuable: “Anybody who studies the moods and thoughts of the Eighteen Nineties cannot fail to observe their central characteristic is a widespread concern for the correct—that is the most righteous, the most effective, the most powerful mode of living. For myself, however, the awakening of the nineties does not appear to be the realization of a purpose, but the realization of a possibility.”
The book deals in twenty-one chapters with every important phase of art and life that came into the crowded hour of the last decade of the last century. To the present reviewer, at least, the most substantial and most unusual interpretations are those in the cases of Francis Thomson, Rudyard Kipling, and George Bernard Shaw. “Consciously or unconsciously,” the author says, “men were experimenting with life, and it would seem also as iflife were experimenting with men. It was a revolution precipitated by the Time Spirit. Francis Thomson represented the revolt against the world. He did not, as so many had done, defy the world; he denied it, and by placing his condition beneath contempt, he conquered it.” Of Shaw he says, “he strove to add to the heritage of the race a keener sense of reality.... To look at life until you see it clearly is Bernard Shaw’s announced aim.... His sense of reality does not take reason for its basis. The basis of the new realism is the will.”
The predominating trends of the decade are summed up under the discussion called “Fin de Siecle” under the three headings, “The So-called Decadence; the introduction of a Sense of Fact into life literature and art; and the development of a Transcendental View of Social Life”.
Each chapter, with its astounding collection of facts, never pedantically, often brilliantly, and always intelligently presented, are brightened by comment that is often epigrammatical: “Wilde was the playboy of the Nineties.” “Aubrey Beardsley’s art would have been untrue had it been imitable or universal.” “The decade began with a dash for life and ended with a retreat—but not a defeat.” Speaking of Shaw’s wit, the author says, “It was the sharp edge of the sword of purpose.... Although the majority of those who go to his plays go to laugh and remain to laugh (often beyond reason), many remain to laugh and pray.” It is a sane book, carefully written, and clamors to be read—and read again.
F. D. T.