THE AMAZON.*
Owniu to the harshness of the Dutch language, and yet more, owing to the tiny area wherein it is spoken, the literature of Holland is, to all intents and purposes, a terra incognita to English readers. Yet this little sea-rescued land can boast a contemporary literature, and in a way no mean one. That modern Holland has done much good work in the department of exegetical writing we all know, but do we know anything of her belles lettres, her poets, novelists, and essayists ? Who among us is acquainted with the remarkable poems of Van Lennep -and Bilderdyk, the charming verses of De Genestet and Tolleus, the creations of Miss Opzoomer, the romances of that imagi- native, warm-hearted judge of human nature, Mrs. Bosboom- Toussaint ? And among these writers Carl Vosmaer takes a lead- ing place as poet, novelist, essayist, art historian, and also as editor of a weekly paper, which is the Spectator's namesake, and which has been not inaptly described as the nursery-garden of young Dutch talent. In England, Vosmaer has hitherto been known only as the author of two valuable books on Rembrandt,—books which he wrote in French that they might thus appeal to a European public. But in his own country he is known for his tales, poems, sketches, critical and descriptive essays, all redolent of fine culture and wide reading, his exquisite Greek idyl "Nauru)," and above all, for his charming aesthetic novel, of which an English translation, made from the third Dutch -edition, lies before us to-day. Throughout his works Vosmaer pursues one central purpose, which is the cultivation of beauty. Like Keats, he holds that "Beauty is truth, -truth beauty ;" like Keats, he has steeped his soul in Greek * The Amazon. Translated from the Dutch of Carl Vosmaer. By E. J. Irving, with Introduction by Georg Bbers. London: Fisher Unwin. 1884.
grandeur and repose. He accepts and gratefully assimilates the highest results of modern thought and science, but he con- tends that these can be made to harmonise with a belief in and pursuit of the matchless forms of ancient classic art. Art is for him the highest of human expressions. "Philosophy and his- tory," he has elsewhere said, "must help art, but the only scope and design of art is beauty, and so it must remain." Holding these views, Vosmaer has become the leader, or perhaps it is even more correct to say the founder, of the msthetic movement in Holland, a country in which msthetics have hitherto taken little root.
In the present novel, The Amazon, he has laid down his artistic credo—on it he takes his stand. The rock whereon Dutch authors are apt to split is neither the Scylla of romanticism nor the Charybdis of ultra-realism. It is rather that of didacticism, utilitarianism, domestic common-place, a tendency to regard the subject and sentiment of a book as constituting its only value ; in fact, an exaggeration of the common German literary faults. Both nations equally forget that form is an indispensable requisite- Against this wide-spread heresy Vosmaer has now for some thirty years past waged a fierce war, which, like all such warfare, is tardy of results. Yet signs of such results are at last forth- coming in his native land. Meanwhile, The Amazon is the richest and maturest of his efforts. It is not a story of incident, neither is it a modern, morbid study of psychology. Nothing could be simpler than the plot in which, with one exception, we find only healthy-minded, normal men and women, men and women of whose inner life and spiritual conflicts we are afforded delicate pictures. But art takes the upper hand of character studies. A profound student of ancient as well as modern art here takes us by the hand and conducts us from Paestum to Naples, and thence to Rome, making us participators in the highest and greatest the Eternal City can offer to the soul of man. The theme one might think was threadbare. There is no young-lady novelist, however feeble, who, if she has visited Italy, does not deem it her duty to lay the scene of one at least of her works in that "city of the soul." But well-worn themes can take new aspects under the hand of a master, and such is our Dutch writer. In a way, his work has a certain resemblance to Hawthorne's Transformation. We do not mean for a moment that it has that magician's subtle grace and delicate aroma, but it has his peculiar power of looking with fresh eyes upon the familiar, and making us see the well-known from new points of view. And, moreover, it is saturated with the very atmosphere of Italy, redolent of the breath, the art of that "land of lands," whose fascinations, once felt, can never be shaken off.
The hero of Vosmaer's novel is a certain Aisma ; it is he who represents the writer's simple creed of beauty, a beauty which includes, as a matter of course, the true and good. Rumour whispers that the character has been sketched direct from the life, and that its prototype is a great Dutch artist living amongst us, whose art views are here embodied and set forth. Be that as it may, the Aisma of the book is first introduced to us on the broad, straight highway to Paestum. Here he falls in with a party of compatriots and fellow-pilgrims to the shrines of Hellas, and they join their forces. The party are Van Walborch, a retired Dutch Minister of State, a humanist in
the good old-fashioned, sixteenth-century sense of that too much discarded word, an ardent lover of Horace, of Latin literature and Roman art ; his widowed niece, Marciana van Buren, and a most irritating and namby-pamby lady of un- certain age, Ada Ebers. An acquaintance is quickly formed amid the ruins of the ancient Sybaritic colony, that later on improves in Naples, and ripens into friendship in Rome. To more than friendship in the case of Aisma and Marciana, though neither the one, suffering from the smarts of mis- placed love, nor the other, who still winces at the wounds
struck by an ill-assorted marriage, will acknowledge the existence of this new-found feeling. " Amazon " is Mr. -Van Walborch's pet name for his niece, and in calling her thus he has hit the keynote of her proud, independent nature, that resolutely re- fuses to bend to the will of another. How her will was bent at
last, how both she and Aisma love and marry happily, con- stitutes the romance of the novel, but neither its originality nor its claim to rise above the general. This consists in its felicitous description of scenery, and yet more in the suggestive and thoughtful conversations on art with which the book is inter- spersed. Literature and art, ancient and modern, Hellenic and Latin, are subjected to searching and acute analysis by critical and cultured minds, and many new ideas are put forth, many
disregarded side-lights thrown upon familiar themes. Among these an interesting discussion on the Amazon in plastic art takes a foremost place, as also a skilful analysis of the causes of the powerful attraction that Japanese art has for us in these latter days. The book unquestionably is one to read and ponder, not one to be rapidly skipped for its story, and then thrown aside. No person who thoughtfully peruses it can lay it aside without having gained something, for it is rich in obser- vations and shrewd remarks, in profound thoughts and Beauti- fully conceived situations. As a whole, the author has really succeeded in ridding himself of the faults into which the Teutonic nations are so apt to fall. The more, therefore, does it strike us when he does thus stumble, as he does once or twice, by no means to the general injury of the whole work, but certainly to the detriment of its complete artistic harmony. It is quite laughable, when every now and again the coarser- grained Dutchman peeps out to view, as though he were a person rigidly suppressed, who ever and again insists on asserting him- self. When he comes to the fore there are little lapses of good taste, such as no Frenchman, for example, could have committed in a work of this class,—a certain downrightness, an emphasis- ing of the obvious, that strikes all the more incongruously because, as a rule, the author is above these national weaknesses. A word of especial praise we must still accord to the character of the heroine, Marciana, who, with her sound sweetness, her strength combined with grace, her wholesomeness and grandeur of soul, is a figure such as we encounter but too rarely in novels, though happily prototypes are not wanting in real life. Ada, on the other hand, must be pronounced a failure. The author clearly intends us both to like and pity her; but his descriptions do not lead to this result. In her he has sought to work out a tendency ; and carried away doubtless by his philo- sophical idea, has paid less regard to flawless workmanship. We have, we trust, said enough to show that the book, though not faultless, is yet beyond the common. A word of recognition is due to the publisher for furnishing us with an English version, and for the manner in which the volume is got up.
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