AS BAD AS ALL THAT?

Press, Volume LXXIII, Issue 22004, 30 January 1937, Page 15

AS BAD AS ALL THAT?

the german outlook

IN NOVELS

(SPECIALLY WRITTEN FOR THE PRESS.)

[By ANTOINETTE POCOCK.]

ft is very difficult for the English . nter into the mental atmosphere If nther countries. Do the Germans, Latte and Slavs find ours equally to absorb? Within the last Lr five German novels have accome my way—“ Dame Cam! Sudermann; “The World’s by Wassermann; Little Man What Now?” and “Who Once Eats' Out of the Tin Bowl,” by Faliada; and “Fires Underground by t iLnn All allowances made for 2 translations and individualities, SS Se permeated by the same . \ t u at of a profound morbidity. m! rlt ’anthors all gaze on the black T f h Lmas We andsee no light. Their SroSes of thought and their conP Sns are alien to us. Their sense StMtte is so unlike our own. To be caught happy in thismiserohleworld would seem to them a -imp Their gloom and savage rage actually seem to hide an underlying spiritual conceit. It is as though S see themselves against a backSnd of raging elements, despair, erira finality, unmoved, because Severe facing the worst. They look at life with excitement and a urcharge of emotion which make everything accentuated and oveivivid Their point of view is completely subjective. The universe to them is man and one is driven to wonder whether, on their own conelusions, he is worth the bother.

Fundamental Differences

It is a temptation to infer that their attitude is the outcome of the upheaval, social and political, through which Germany has recently passed. But Sudermann, wno wrote “Dame Care in 1887, has precisely this gloomy and morbid outlook. It is certainly understandable in the most recent of these novels, “Fires Underground, which is written by a communist sympathiser since the establishment of the Nazi regime and shows all the signs of repression, terror, and hatred, and the accompanying, possibly inevitable, heroics of martyrdom; but there is nothing new in the attitude. The author of “Who Once Eats Out of the Tin Bowl,” sparing us no brutalities, reveals the cruel fate which awaits a released convict, and the inevitability of his return to prison. The theme is open to attack because it is overstated. There is nothing in the story but horror and horrible people. The result is that we feel no pity for the victims, only a rather pronounced dislike for them personally, although admitting unreservedly the cruel injustice of their fate. The ideas are introduced so violently that they arouse a strong opposition in the mind of the reader. Nothing could be more unlike an English book on somewhat the same subject;- “We. the Arcused,” by Ernest Raymond. Here we are haunted by pity for the wretched, lovable, little worm of a criminal under his doom. Probably our fundamental English sentimentality offends the German mind as much as his gloomy unhealthiness offends onrs. “The World’s Illusion” stages a bigger scene. The author follows the struggles of a young man to save his soul from the entanglements of riches, and the gradual emergence of a spiritual purpose in his life. Actually, on finishing the book, a reader feels like one awakening from the ghastly unrealities of a bad nightmare, and realising joyfully that after all it wasn’t true. And it is not true, moreover, for the Englishman.. He does not see life so. It is not that English literature does not include works of a similar type. J. G. Powy’s “A Glastonbury Romance’'mingles gigantic cruelties with a certain shrill irony; nis brother. T. F. Powys, in “Mr Weston’s Good Wine,” chuckles, even though often malevolently; D. H. Lawrence, in the midst of his rage and disgust, breaks out sometimes into clear and happy laughter; Virginia Woolfe sets her stage with merriment. 1 This is one of their {meat significant differences. The German does not laugh in his novels. The single comparison of “Her Privates We” and “All Quiet on the western Front” brings that fact out sufficiently clearly.

England’s Escape

The Germans may be right. They that slice of time called life to them it seems terrible. Certainly to-day the comic element is not at all in evidence. Yet the Englishman .inevitably sees it, and it is so obvious to him that he cannot befve, try as he may, in the German lability to find anything to laugh at - It is true that the English are only too much given to compromise poise. It is possible that they are bond and that the realities of to“ay are out of true proportion and even hectic. Time will show. .jlock of humour on the one hand ■jo of a real insight on the other tin no * seem a sufficient explana°n of the differences between the Looking back to their mmon origin, and tracing thence i i-, lar . as possible their diverging , 0 5\ ori , es > we wonder what element, one > bas produced such r onounced disparities. It may, of ke climatic, or due to a inan ma y be that the Gerthei S ?- re a “young” race. Certainly itv °f tranquillity and serentoi fte i r ou tcries against fate, seem cMu? a “n°st the angry rage of the Drimv German is nearer his to nT 1V ? ance stors, perhaps—nearer sav age Germany. It has 'thi>v suggested that the fact that ILI a Wer e never conquered by the ties seen in German barbaribiidpt +u of balance. England, first a j 6 i irect rule of Rome at of .t er through the channel civili?l nai l ls ® c t France, absorbed its that thhuence. A wit once said heat Borman Conquest was the EnoU-u 1 ?? that ever happened in from £- hlst 2, r y- si nce it saved us anv r a » ein .® German. Our fiction, at ate > bad a lucky escape.