NEW BOOKS AND PUBLICATIONS.

Press, Volume LXVII, Issue 20328, 29 August 1931, Page 11

NEW BOOKS AND PUBLICATIONS.

MODERN SfcUtPTURE. The Art of Carved Sculpture. By Kineton Parkes. 2 Volumes. Chapman and Hall, Ltd. ' (Each 2ls not.) Mr Parkes is the author already of a comprehensive survey in two volumes of the sculpture of the twentieth century—the most exhaustive work on the subject at present in print, these two volumes are supplementary to those two others.. They give a full account and a critical review of "the older and purer method of glyptic work as distinct from plastic," bub Mr Parkes is too wise to suggest that one of these arts is greater than the other, or mote creative, or rriore personal. His purpose is simply to show that they are different. The essence of sculpture, he points out (quoting Eric Gill), is th o takmg away of superfluous matter aiid so revealing the desired form; the essence of modelling is putting matter together—building up a copied form bit by bit. there is the lurcher difference, in practice, that .the direct carver is more constantly under the influence of his material. It is not true, or nearly true, but it is not mere nonsense to say that "the artist goes to the quarry not so much to Select a book for a subject, as to allow the block to find a subject for him." The modeller is entirely free. He is the complete realist, and Mr Parkes thinks that one of the- causes of the decadence of Greek sculpture was the fact that naturalism became tod easy. "There is no wart on the nose of a Cromwell, no monocle in the eye of a Joseph Charnberlnin. ■no button on the waistcoat of a Senator, no crease down the trouser leg of a financier, but may be readilv and realistically reproduced in clay." The danger i p that an over-statement of truth is often as misleading as a lie. Beauty will out —it is Mr Parkes's constant theme —but if it comes out too easily, too mechanically, too much as, and where, and how evervhodv wants it, the result may be uninsp'red repetition. Tn this case, as in bis first two books. Mr Parkes includes the work of twentiethcenturv artists otilv. and he also repeats the method of making them, explain their own principles. No other study gives so much information, personal and national, about living or recently living sculptors, especially the vouneer men of whom so little i 8 known. But it seems toninke no difference when art is practised or where. If the nrt : st is left to himself he treads a via dolorosa:

Glob Derujinsky was born at Smolensk in 1888, and studied art at St. Petersburg and at Paris. The Russian, revolution interfered with his career, but, after work ,in Swth Russia, he escaped and reached the United Stntes in 1919. Kai Nielsen was but 42 when he died of a lingering disease, after paying ma a visit on the last day before ho returned to Denmark. Jan Stursa, Czechoslovakia's greatest modern sculptor, committed suicide in 1925. The most important of the Austrian wood sculptors is Ludwig Penz, who was born at Lumies, Stubai, in 1870, and died suddenly of influenza at Schwaz, Tyrol, in 1918. Gustinus Ambrosi is ono of the most interesting figures in European art. He was bona in 1833 at Eusfnstadt. He wan a student at tho Vienna Academy and afterward at Amsterdam, Berlin, and in Switzerland. But he is deaf and dumb.

And when ho is not left to himself wo get the state of thing of which Rodin complains in one of his Notes:

There »re no more sculptors; no more painters since they took to giving them prizes. That is what kills art and artists- To gam those prizes, they try to do something new, something original, and the}' turn out that Cotist stuff, that filth that sickens me. The whole of art lite In tho human body. Bernini ttok a man's body for tho door of a palace; he tool: flowers for ornamentation; and the trees gave liin) pillars. The whole of architecture comes from the earth, from man. It can at least be said for nearly all the sculptors represented in these volumes—East European. West European, English. American, aiid Japanese—that thev fiiid all they want m the human body.

RELIGION AND LITERATUttE. Some EoM clous Elements in E»*Ubli literature. Bv Rose Maeaulay. HogartH I#ectnreß. No. 14, The Hogarth Press. (3s 6d net).

The editors of this admirable series chose well when they asked Miss Macaulay to contribute the present volume. To treat such a subject with any adequacy within the limits imposed by the scheme of the Lectures was iio trifling task to set anybody, especially if." religion "is to be. interpreted, as Miss Macaulay would interpret it; in the widest serine, as the reaching out of man's mind, or ."soiil" .to powers undefined, mysteriously other than himself. S'or Such an interpretation embraces most poetry, and, in ft serise, the greater part of prose as well —such poetry arid such prose, that is, as may be included iii the other term ''literature"; and the very, gifts that express themselves in literature are, as we acknowledge when, perhaps clumsily and without much thought,, we spfeak of a poem or of a poet Ss of the same mysterious origin. Obviously a narrower interpretation of the word is forced upon the writer as she considers .the. main currents in the great stream of religious literature, flowing from the mist-encompassed regions of Anglo-Saxon writings towards the seas arid oceans of the present day. Miss Macaulay is always sometimes provocative, and she carries her very considerable erudition with a lightness of heart that is altogether admirable. It might be wished, perhaps; that the space allotted to the earlier writings had been less disproportionate to the whole. Two-fifths Of the book are used up before we reach the Elizabethan age arid the beginnings of modern literature, so that the later chanters , seem overcrowded and the ending ..abrupt. It may of course be retorted that the first chapters deal with eight centuries, th? later with oftly three .(Miss Macaulay bfcgiiis with . the Sth century and ends , with the 18th) J also, that the earlier period is fine less well-known and therefore demands more attention. Misii Macaulay's delay in these earlier times is approved, further, by the fact that here, having few?* examples to distract, she gets ..her opportunity to talk round her subject} but as her territory becoriies more familiar become iriore obvious, though possibly they are not tiiore obvious than necessary. Besides", Miss Macaulay disarms such criticism in her prefatory note, referring to herself as one who "randomly diving into an ocean, .should return with a handful or two of seaweed or of pebbles,, and proceed to make thereon a scattered kind of a commentary." It is inevitable that ther6 should be. among liar readers those who will , wish she had coirirnented ; on ; this piece, of seaweed or ihat. pebble which she Has. bean obliged, to Jet slip through, her fingers urinoted. For. th.e rest, the modepty with which she insists on expressing her own opinions; with* irierely sufficient deference to tr&ditioii and authority; her own distinction of rrianner, and the spirit with which she handles her subject, make this Hogarth Lecture ah eiriinently readable one.

SNOW. Sno-w Sfiin. liy Malcolm Waldron. Jonathan Cape. (10s 6d net.) . The quest for novelty that Has beeft a characteristic of post-war literature has been responsible for attempts iti every department of letters to present the truth that is stranger than fiction. Mr Waldron's book about an expedition into the sub-Arctic lands of Northern Canada may be one of these things and it may be the other. Mr Waldron was not a member of the expedition. But he is a master of the simple narrative style that has always succeeded since Defoe first wrote "Robinson Crusoe," and we are to assume either that he has had access to peisonal diaries or that he has procured much of his matter from one of the two men who made the trip. These were Jack Hornby, an English public schoolboy and a member of the Lancashire cricketing family, and Captain J. C. Critchell-Bullock, a British Army officer. They decided to strike into the Barrens—the tundra region of North Canada—from Edmonton in Alberta, .spend the winter in the snow near the centre of the frozen territory, and in the spring strike across country to Chesterfield Iniet at the north of Hudson Bay. This was in L 924-25. The} succeeded in their object, and eventually regained civilisation safely, if only in the nick of time. Mr Waldron gives a vivid account of the privations suffered and the psychological changes the men underwent as the days iii the cave in thn snow became more weariBome. He explains how there are no shadows on the scow; how the caribou migrate in, the spring with a noise like thunder (La Foule); how the blizzard is a bully; how the skin turns black when you cannot wash for months on end. And lie dissects the character of Hornbv, who is the supreme egotist, and reveals his alternating moods of Napoleonic satisfaction in himself and childish disregard for even the rudiments of fair play. The strange part is that this HornbyBullock Expedition actually took place. Scientifically, as Bullock is made to say. it was utterly useless. As good a purpose could be served by a Christchurch man if he deliberately chose to spend_ a winter in a cuve dug out of the side of the Tasthan Glacier—a better purpose, if oidv he hfcd scientific instruments, which the Hornbv-Bullock Expedition did not have. Some snapshots of, the almost extinct musk-oxen were obtained, but that was about all Hornby's whole purpose was to demonstrate his hardiness and fitness to survive anywhere without anything.

EDWARD CARPENTER. Edward Carpenter. Essays In Appreciation. Edited by Gi'be r t Beltli. Alleii and TJnwin, litd. (7s 6d net.) Edward Carpenter Las now Keen long enough dead to have taken sblriethihg like his true proportions. For a few years before his death (June, 1929) he had suffered an undeserved eclipse, but hb had been very much overrated before the reaction began, and it is well that this is not an attempt to restore him to that false glory. Of the twenty-eight tr.butes included only three or four are adulatory, and quite six or seven are very sharply critical. Henry S. Bait, for example though he is careful to disclaim any intention of really "estimating" Carpenter, emphasises the unpleasant contradictions in his nature, especially his autocracy, and the trick he never dropped all his life of teasing and humiliating his inferiors. "He was a member of a family that. had long been connected with the lloyal Navy, and he as little brooked to see his orders neglected as any of his relations who s had walked the quarterdeck." Mr Havelock Ellis, on the other hand, who knew him for forty found him "always calm, self-possessed, and gravely hutnorbtis over Jiiiiiistti weaknesses" What no one really Attempts to establish again—no one, that is, who regards him merely as a man —is his place am one: the prophets ahd gre&te? poets. If one appreciation ends with the strange remark that "his wisdom extended, like B the roots of » mountain, to the archnir rocks, to the foundations of the woHd," the effect of the volume as a wli"le is to get riil of the mysterv and divinity and put Carpenter in h?s proper, place as one of tlie tnirior Etiglish sages.

TIN AND RlfcE. Magical ikaiiH. Siy Amhtow Pritt. . Bbfcerk son and Mullens, Ltd. (8s 6d net.) When Mi Pratt left Melbourne to go on a tour of the Malay Peninsula and Siam,. be \was entrusted vritli two irnportaht On behiilf of Australian tin dredfeiHfe interests be wai to petition the Siamese Government tjiat, without prejudice to their titles, the various companies be allowed to curtail operations until prices rbs6 to & more profitable level; and for the Commonwealth Government he was to study Malayan and fc>iame§e methods of ridii i cultivation. Both were successfully accomplished, and when he returned to Melbourne h 6 wrote this quite airestirig ttook. Normally the "pull" of a plain _account, of how a dredge works for, tin in a muddy harboijr, or 6f a visit to fo a rather unvkrnishfd Government office in Siam, would depend upon the reader's degree of sophistication. But Mr Pr&jtt's a(> count. is not plain. The high-lights are all stressed, the rosy tints accentuated, with the result that a truly "magical Msilaya" iis revealed; and the jaded reader is excited against his'wilh It id partly Mr Pratt's style, but always elegant, but chiefly his interest in human h&tiirej his good ahd his kindliness. In other words, it is a personal book: and the personality of the author every page.

THE DEPENDENTS. ! Challenge to Clarjtssa- By B. .Mf Delafieltf. | Macmillan and Co., Ltd. I Miss Delafield's comedy is most competently schemed and briskly , carried out. Clarissa Marluy '<s money 1 and her temperament Made heir a | tyrant. Her husband, whom shS had j acquired from Aidegoride de CandiLaquerri&re, who fortunately no longer wanted him, his daughter Sophie,, taken over with him, and her own son Lncien —these were, the chief of her dependents. And by dependence Bhe meant dependence; absolute arid unforgotteri. "Are you putting on weight again t You little idipt I Now, Sophie,, listen to me 1. .Yon simply can't afford to put on even an ounce. Look at your father I If once you put on weight you don't, know that you'll ever be able .to take itoff again. You can knock off sweets from to-day, arid X forbid you to toach cream, Do you understand that!" . s . ",Yes, mmnmie," said Sophie with ft , little sigh. . . .. j | "I don't take endless trouble over your clothes and spend my money on therii jiisf to see you play the fool and lose your . figure." "I know, mummie." "Don't forget, it, then.'' ' Miss Delafield traces the cau?e arid course of the insurrection at. M&rdale with, a wit both fluent arid precise. But §h6 ii sometimes even better when ihf itory is almost at a halt, as for iiistahce ) iri the delightful chapter deseribing the : Princesse de .Candi-LaquerriSre's inspection of the house, '' Anaraja purah.". "Charming," said.,the Princesse, "The house is exactly .as j remembered it, and so is the garden . . . Now! Come to thirik of it, I never the garden, did If."

THE ART OF THE THEATRE. The Theory of fining. By Allardyce Ntcoil. George G. Harrap ahft Co., Ltd. IBs 6d net.) It will be a pity if readers arei frightened away from Professor Niooll's book by the name of Theory, too often a promise of fullness and death, because he is vigorously alive. Certainly, the whole book is analytical and systematic; but the analyst never forgers that he is. dealing with the living voice and the living presence of the actor on the stage, before an audience, with the form oi art least separated by its medium trom life itself. If ho strives after a system, it is only to sea the actor, the author, the playwright, the stage, aiid the world in illuminating proportion—hot to deduce a set of abstract rules. Professor Nicoll has no difficulty in showing that dramatic theory has rested on very infirm and shifting foundations, from Aristotle, who forgot to define what lie meant by "mimesis" and seems to have meant now one thing, now another, to Brunetiere, who forgot that, if drama is conflict, as he thought, then some coiriic plays (at least) are not drama and some novels are. Professor Nico!] mentions in a footnote that Bacon, who anticipated so rritich, also anticipated quite modern and specific theories of drama in his "De augmentis," when he laid it down that to have drama it is essential to have an audience; but even Sarcey, who announced this truth, neglected for nearly 300 years, did not see that it went only half way. Telling a story to an audience would not make a play: it must be interpreted by actors. Yes, but the truth had only been neglected by the critics. During the centuries from Aristotle to Archer before they discovered (consuls Nicoll) that drama is. "the art of expressing ideas about hfe in such a manner as to render that expression capable of interpretation by actors and likely to interest an audience assembled to hear tlie words and witness the action"— Ideas about lifeP . . . Oh. well!—the theatres were open, dramatists wrote, actors played, the people clapped and laughed and hissed and wept, fulfilling a theory tliey could hot have stated. The critics did not watch closelv enough; too often staved r>+ their books. : Professor, Nicoll is a scholar; but he knows that the stiideiit of drama must Have his desk in the theatre.

A RUSSIAN TRILOGY. The STaguet. By ilarlm Gorki. Tkwib. By Baksky. Jonathan Cafe. (15s net.) (By "E.H.C." in the "Spectator.") The first volume of Maxim Gorki's historical trilogy, published last year under the title ' 'Bystander,'' was wordy, baffling, and inconclusive. The second, mysteriously named '' THe Magnet," is no less wordy; for Gorki wields an dmazingly fliient pen, arid "the art to blot" is one which he forgot at an early age. But it scores over its predecessor in point of clearness, and the plan of the whole imposing edifice is now rovealed: "What will revolution give them? (asks the hero], I don't know. I believe something else, is needed, something so terrible that it will strike, terror, into everyone at the thought of himself and of everything he does Let even half the people die or go road, bo as tho other half is cured of the vulgar senselessness of life."

"Bystander" was a picture of the "vulgar senselessness of life'in late iineteenth-century Russia; "The Mag net" exposes the futility of the early twentieth-century revolutionaries—' 'revolutionaries from weariness of life, or dare-devilry, or romanticism, pr the Gospels"; and both are intended as a foil to the .triumph of BolsheViism. in which the trilogy will culminate. The characters in .these two volumes • are therefore in the main negative. Only the hero, Clim Samghin, in the halting development of his cotivictions, is irieant t<> enjoy bar sympathy. The trouble is that Gorki himself ia not really interested in politics;, and the boredom oi aimless political discussion w iilmpst too t-ealistjiiaily rendered. It « k irelief wheii he eScSpes iiito an irrelevant episode stieh as a voyage down the Volga, every v iiich, of whiph he knows .by heart. the scenes of ..street in the revolution of, 1905 with which the book cloSes ate; bbwever, sf, ficietitly vivid to inrike tife look forward eagerly to. jthe, stofy of the 1917 revolution ini the volume, the trans : la,tion (By a different haid from that Bystander") follows the American idiom; but this does not eirpikin Why Paul de Kock should bg called "Paul-de-Coque" an,d the Podl of Siloam. m two places, "the Siloain font." *

THE INTRUDER. Xl 4. By Gilbert Nelson aiid t Btr IJennoS in tKe romantic manner of John Stichin. His hero's accidental intrusioii iiiip dark and perilous aftairi is well iriaii&|ed; ana ii th# .befinnihg of advehttiresl irismaged eveii b&ttfct. It is only at thii end; when the suspension of is over, that it ,if possible to think that Mr Lennox might Bavfe done bettef ttikii to use aMaih thi old gaii|j of ititern&tibnil alsaisins. ifckNDWLEbGMfejTi. The laying »r»p«. A,, N<wei, By. Bonali triser. With in introduction bf Humbert Wolfe. ..Travellers' Libraiy. Jonathan Cape. (Ss 6d net.) Mr Ronald Fraser's fantasy is ricli in beauty and htimouj. if it recalls WollS; ail has been said, it also retails de la Marej,, and the poet counts for more than the scientific speculator, it was his first book, and. has been revised for ri3-iSsu<S in tiis Librfify. Tlie Starching Feet. By sirs fiirnefci-Biiiit& (AniiiaS. Swan). Hodder and Stoughton. From W. S. Smart. „Mrs ielis , a good Stoi-yj perhaps.a, betterMory than evfer, and if she loots at modern youth; its politics &iid rieiigioiii and Without penetrating very deep, at least she sees nothing to deter her.from giving her benediction; . for sfie, down "pelce, listing peace, full charged with imiribrtiil hope," on the Barking road. The Unlicensed Prospector. By s, iwitiii. Young. John Lane, The Medley Head. ..Qiiii of Mill Ybuiig's enirgetic high-coloUred stories of South Africa. Piracy on the prohibited diamond ar,ea, ,a .green, gem; and a lovS affair are its chief elements. the Necklace of Seith. itenry Holi George G. Hafcap and Co.; Ltd. Mr Holt believe! in biz&rre cluSs: bloodstains on a Chinese, puzzle-box. ivpry chessmen, a jar of jelly, sequins, land a green jade monkey. But he makes goad use of them. Art in Australia.: Uaryi UMdsay Kiuaiw. August, 1981. , An excellent essay fey ; Mr Burdett, on . the. art of i Daryl Lindsay, accompanies this collection bf cdiour and halftone reproductions*. Mk-iiti fiis iiii. £jr W. k. Scud&wore. Elder., Through Whltcombe and Tombs. Ltd. (is.) , Aij attempt .to " down in colloquial English the attitude of oiie pkrticular middle-aged Englishman towards life and death." No Bed of Roses. ij.O.W, T, Werner Laurie, Ltd. A "human docujfi&at;'' the record oi ftradu&l degradation tad Wis,