CURRENT BOOKS BALLET

Press, Volume LXXVII, Issue 23301, 10 April 1941, Page 12

CURRENT BOOKS BALLET

Serge Diaghilev: His Life, His Work, His Legend. By Serge Lifar. Putnam. 550 pp. (21/- net.) When Lifar arrived in Paris in 1923, a refugee from Kiev, to join the Hussian Ballet, Diaghilev had already reached the heights of achievement. It was 14 years since he had presented his first season of ballet in Paris; and behind its triumph and sequel lay the passionate studies—in art, in music, in literature —which had sc astonishingly fed and equipped his gitf/s f°r ballet. They had. moreover, <tK yje their own fruits in his exhibitions bj/Russian pictures, concerts of Russian music, and a brilliant Russian opera season. Lifar had only six years of Diaghilev’s life and work to share before their partnership closed in the last fevered days at Venice and the macabre, hysterical scenes of Diaghilev’s funeral. Lifar’s. book therefore falls Into two parts. The first and longer, built up from Lifar’s personal knowledge of Diaghilev and his associates and from documentary evidence, is a straightforward biography; the second is a vividly personal, intensely emotional account of the six years of intimate friendship and collaboration. Many other books have been devoted to Diaghilev and the Russian Ballet; but this, if it displaces none, stands high among them. As a portrait of Diaghilev—of his prodigious energy, commanding skill as an organiser, and unique combinationof powers as an artist. and_ of his emotional extravagances, ranging between childlike tenderness and grotesque rage—this book is unequalled and indispensable. The background. .of course, is crowded with other figures— Fokine, Dolin. Karsavina, Nijinsky, Stravinsky—yet they do not crowd each other. The many photographs m the book include both portraits and scenes from ballet. MELBOURNE AND BEYOND Three-quarters of a Century. By Lady Mitchell, C.B.E. Methuen. 222 pp. (12/6 net.) Through Simpson and Williams Ltd. Lady Mitchell’s father, son of a Morayshire farmer, became headmaster of Scots College. Melbourne, in 1857; and her Australian reminiscences begin with her sailing-ship voyage out to a capital city still so primitive that Mr Morrison, two years later, was moving his governing body to see that water was laid on to the school. She married Edward Mitchell, a distinguished Australian barrister, her cousin was Ernest (“Chinese") Morrison, and the author of “A Warning for Wantons,” Mary Mitchell, is her daughter. These disjointed -facts may help to suggest that Lady Mitchell, the inheritor of strong intelligence and character, has watched the procession, of seven Australian decades from ,a’ position of advantage and with advantages of her own. But she was no observer merely. She worked, wisely and energetically, in many fields of social and Imperial service. The Bush Nursing Association and the Country • Women’s Association are two of her sturdy fosterlings. She travelled oversea and writes lightly and shrewdly of remembered experiences in Italy and Germany, especially. But, apart from these records of travel and of - Red. Cross work in England during, the war of 1914-18. Australia is the scene of Lady Mitchell’s recollections. Her wide range of interests and tastes, her cool, clear, humorous judgment, and her very concise and pointed style have probably made her conversation the delight of her friends, as they will make many friends for her among’4he readers of this well-filled book, - FREEDOM Conscience and Liberty, .By Robert s. W. Pollard. Allen and pp. (2/6 net.) Mr Pollard’s object in this essay is to show that freedom of conscience cannot be separated from liberty of opinion. To those who already value them, much that he writes will com-’ mend itself. The treatment of conscientious objectors and the threat of state domination in almost all countries are discussed, for the most part, dis--passionately and reasonably. This; booklet, however, has nothing to say to those who do not respect for , conscience and the individual as a political axiom. ' A REVIEWER'S NOTES Eminent Australians In National Portraits (Angus and Robertson Ltd. 224 .pp. 8/6) Mr Vance Palmer characterises “certain significant figures” in Australia’s history and estimates the importance of their life’s work. Representative men, typical of their age and spirit, or else “true pioneers,” originators, whose ideas became influential: those are his choice, which, accordingly, is wide enough to include Macarthur, the rebel squatter, and Wentworth, the constitutionalist; Sturt, the explorer, and Deakin. the orator; Monash. the soldier, and Buvelot, the painter: Edgeworth David, the geologist, and Cardinal Moran. There are a dozen more, well picked, well treated. Mr Palmer is not a debunker or a whitewasher. His view is clear and balanced. He writes well and with admirable skill in compression, but might have used characteristic anecdote more freely, even within his tight limits. His book carries, and deserves, the recommendation of the Advisory Board of the Commonwealth Literary Fund. Art of Reading “Reading,” says Mr Mortimer J Adler, "is a basic tool in the living of a good life.” Why he says so, how to gain command of this tool, and how to use it, he explains, with extraordinary patience and lucidity, in a book of his own, which—surprisingly, perhaps, because it promised no short cuts, no easy road, to “culture”—became a bestseller. The Australian edition was reviewed here on February 2. The English edition of How to Read a Book (Jarrolds, 288 pp. 8/6. Through Wmtcombe and Tombs Ltd.) is now . also available. Australian Letters The Melbourne University Press (in association with the Oxford University Press) is to be congratulated with tne author. Dr. E. Morris Miller. ViceChancellor of the University of Tasmania, upon the completion and issue of Australian Literature from its Beginnings to 1935 (2 vols. *074 a monumental descriptive , °, u °‘ graphical survey of books by-» oF " lian authors in poetry, dram/ ncaon. criticism, and anthology chiefly. References to work in biography, history, etc., are mainly incidental to these major classes. Dr. Miller, who tooK over this gigantic task from Sir John Quick and has carried it through with the help of Quick’s assistant, Mr Fred. J. Broomfield, rightly decided that a purely bibliographical survey would he too narrow in interest and in reference value. The historical background, therefore, in strict relation to the progress of literature, is unfolded m admirably proportioned sketches of the lives of the considerable writers; and these sketches, also, are used for compact but lively critical references. Broad sense and fine discrimination are used in the solution of the general and the particular problems—What is “Australian” literature? Upon what conditions is an author to be accepted as “Australian”? —that beset the bibho. grapher-historian. The lists and indexes are elaborate; and although the substantive work stops at 1935, u stretches bibliographically to 1938. Medical The fifth volume in the series of Practitioner Handbooks, published for the “Practitioner” by Messrs Eyre and Spottiswoode Ltd., is Modern Diagnosis (286 pp. 12/6 net), edited by Sir Humphry Rolleston and Alan Moncrieff.