Fiction
Some Foreign Novels
7s. 6d.) Two Symphonies. By Andre Gide. (Cassell. Is. 6d.)
IN England foreign novels are still slightly suspect. The reading public has not quite recovered from the shock it received a few years ago, when its senses were numbed and its self-respect withered by the storm of German War novels. The echoes of that tumult are still with us, as are the tinklings of tea-cups which in the lustre after the War not unnaturally passed in this country for literature. The difficulty of readjusting a critical balance is formidable. We have had economic upheavals in this country as well as on the Con- tinent : but they have been less startlingly ingrained in the social fibres of the nation, and consequently have caused a less glistening reflection in literature. Certainly Alexanderplatz could not have been written in this country. Structurally, conparison with James Joyce's Ulysses is inevitable : there is a like use of classical metaphor, interpolation of ideology, delving into the subconscious : there is a recurrent fugue theme pulsing through the book, in which the main motive alternates with the varied systems of imagery that are employed. Two years ago, Mr. Eugene Jolas, the translator of this book, published in transition (the magazine in which, incidentally, portions of Alexanderplatz first appeared in English) the statement that " the novel of the future will use telegrams, letters, decrees, fairy tales, legends and dreams . . . will produce the new myths of the dynamic movement of the century." Certainly Alexanderplatz does all that and more. The author is a doctor, and the book is generously bespattered with the formulae of his profession. Franz Biberkopf, the hero, is released from prison, where he has been doing time for manslaughter, and finds himself facing the blank wall of a changed world. No one wants him and he wants everyone ; he becomes involved with criminals, sacrifices the ideals which he periodically conceives as soon as they are born, goes from depth to depth of sordidness and depravity, loses an arm, comes within striking distance of death, recovers, finds himself for once on the right side of the law, and finally slides into the unforeseen respectability of " assistant door-man in a medium-sized factory."
This book is a grim portrait of the underworld of Berlin ; in this, his secondary task, the author is without doubt successful ; in his primary object of attempting to pile a vast superstructure on to the conventional novel form he is less fortunate. By comparison with Ulysses, though less distant from immediate comprehension, Alexanderplatz lacks the highly-organized unity produced by the precision of draughtsmanship in Mr. Joyce's book. Though the sequence of events is more straightforward, there is less continuity : the uneasy mass sprawls and wobbles, collapses and readjusts itself. If its author had possessed a little more sense of humour and balance, together with a keener nose for the distinction between drama and melodrama, Alexanderplatz might have been a very great book. As it is, it remains a brave attempt, without doubt important, but lacking the crown of entire success.
Maxim Gorky introduces Leonid Leonov, the author of Sot, with the assurance : " I place him with the greatest figures of our old literature." Such a commendation is as unusual as, in this case, it is justified. For Leonov is a first-class artist, and, as is as essential for an artist, a philosopher as well. Ills theme is the economic reconstruction of Russia under the Five Year Plan, a subject which could have been as tiresomely dealt with by an inferior craftsman as it is absorbing when treated by a master. The enthusiasm of the present generation contrasted with the apathy of their fathers and the clash between the hypotheses of visionaries and the prejudices of the tendentious are personified in the fortunes of a paper factory by the banks of the Sot. If there is any fault to be found with the book, it is that the pace of the opening chapters is too slow, that we can appre- hend the characters only collectively ; not until we have journeyed three-quarters way through the book can we begin to perceive them individually, and their identity is not clearly established before the end.
An opposite impression is produced by Shishkov's Children of Darkness. The author is concerned with the droves of piratical children disgorged on Russia by the Revolution, living by their wits and untamed. by officialdom. Here the individual characters stand out as clearly as poplars on the skyline, strikingly distinguished by their own particular forms of lawlessness. They are, however, far more than emblems of nuisance : the author has an acute understanding of the minds of children, and there are some passages of great sympathy and beauty ; but the difficulty is to compre- hend his picture as a whole and not as a series of detached sketches. Nevertheless, the book is ripe with interest and moves at a tremendous pace.
Harm Wulf is a novel of a more orthodox nature than the preceding volumes. Structurally less pretentious, it is more consistently successful in its gruesome presentation of incidents in the Thirty Years War. It is not, in the accepted sense of the term, a " historical novel," but portions of it are in all probability adaptations of fact. The book has been a success in Germany and deserves to be read here.
Markus the Fisherman is a slight affair dealing with the life of a Norwegian fisherman. The book was originally published in Norway at the end of the War, and has been translated into four other languages. It is, for the most part, a plain chronicle of an undistinguished fisherman's life and contains many pages of rather banal description, which are all too infrequently illuminated by manifestations of an uncommon appreciation of natural beauty. The simplicity of the translator's language is irritatingly over-emphasized : certain passages would provoke the remonstrance of any reasonably intelligent infant.
It is unlikely that M. Gide's reputation in this country will be much affected by his latest translated work. Two Symphonies contains two short stories, the first of which, Isabelle, was published in France in 1911, and the second, The Pastoral Symphony, appeared in 1919. Isabelle is the woman with whom Gerard Lacase falls in love on being shown by her son her portrait in miniature : for a year he remains hypnotized by this dream, which is only ended by his meeting with the original. The Pastoral Symphony describes the emotional conflict introduced into a clergyman's family by a blind girl on whom he takes pity. His son falls in love with the girl, she loves the clergyman himself, and he in turn begins to love her. Her sight is restored, she realizes that she loves the son in place of his father, is moved by his wife's anxiety, and attempts to commit suicide. She fails, but dies of pneumonia. Both stories are characteristic of M. Gide, who is frequently at his most subtle when he is apparently artless. But the translation is hopelessly unpunc- tual. M. Gide's talents have ripened considerably during the last twenty years. It is a long call from Isabelle to Divers : and M. Gide is a writer whose importance should ensure for him immediate translation.
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