GUEST REVIEWER

Press, Volume LXXXIV, Issue 25388, 10 January 1948, Page 5

GUEST REVIEWER

apent a year in an Engexnnrio tIC a ? ylum : his account of that An X ‘ S iurid and disturbing, on trust r at h< L says has to be taken the anth 1 e . mphaslse this point, which before ll ! h . lmself makes quite plainly e opening his narrative, because every One ? at wiU intermittently nag every reader of the book. . . . Time We are rern inded of the 7nn t h centary Bedlam or human ' i- s °lit ary confinement and Stmai fa ? n ave been re P’aced by comX J’?”! and good rations : t™ v‘ ht “ hopele ssly insane are metimes human animals, little more. a” ®h T£ S fi ° y . condition behave them The first shock of meeting it dTd M? a w U 5l almost as much as canvas h>!++ W< i Odley ’ when - wearing a lict ?UnnJ! on K SS mght-shirt and derethe ward ’ he Was mtroduced into Dath?tb. n “ y 1 f ,? w cases’and a symFev h« h .v f Hor whom Mr Woodelcus h e fh» Ot £ ln £ but P raise > hardly IvS!! th barbarism of the whole system. . . . Patients of every kind—

congenital idiots, schizophrenics, and borderline cases—are all herded together m clamour and filth; no psychological treatment whatever is attempted; the recalcitrant are quelled by violence and drugs (a blow in the stomach to persuade anyone resisting nis dose of paraldehyde); physical ailments may go unheeded because of inadequate medical supervision; the dying are attended by the same pubsqualor as the living; small wonder that the man or woman pitchforked into such a hell either comes out very quickly or remains for ever. . . .

He [Richard Brinsley Sheridan] was to be in Parliament thirty-two years, on the opposition side for all but two of them. The theatre which had provided the money for his parliamentary career war to burn down near the close of it. He was to wear out the patience of one devoted and beautiful wife, and then another, and to die in an attic, dropsical, filthy, and with creditors at the door. A week later he was to be buried in Westminster Abbey, with a Duke, a Bishop, two Earls, and two Lords as pallbearers. . . .

Mr Gibbs, while he brings to life most readably the political vicissitudes of the reign of George 111, nearly kills the author of “The School for Scandal.” He is a likeable fellow in those early years that Mr Gibbs passes over so quickly; though never so much as when rescuing at the age of 20 the lovely Elizabeth Linley, later his wife, from a would-be seducer and escorting her with all decorum to France. . . .

But the endless financial transactions, so enormous and so chimerical, the unpaid debts and the chronicle of light amours,, the perpetual drunkenness . . .

one is presently exhausted, even bored with it all. The brandied charm wears thin; the lively face becomes reddened and gross, “covered with disgusting eruptions”; and when we find him on his filthy truckle bed in his last illness, covered with a red and blue horsecloth, our sympathy is long since worn out.

No sympathy for . Sheridan? For Sheridan of the plays? That is the trouble with this book. Reading the account of the rather reckless life of the member for Stafford, one is inclined to forget the four brilliant years that are most worth remembering. . . .

Jiing r’s development as a prose writer ... is, as all his works have been, completely untypical of German fashion. The effect of “shock” which all his books have produced has been due less to their intrinsic content than to the unexpected moment at which the particular viewpoint they reflected was expressed. “In Stahlgewittern” [“The Storm of Steel”], which is a near fanatical glorification of war, appeared in 1920, when the whole of Europe wss nauseated with the subject, and the trend of literary feeling was bitterly anti-war to the point of pacifism—with the soil already being prepared for “Undertones of War,” “Memoirs of an Infantry Officer,” “Good-bye tq All That,” and “All Quiet on the Western Front.” Similarly, at the height of the Nazi movement (on whose intellectuals Jiinger had so much undeliberate influence) when it was expected that every German writer would lend himself to the task of inspiring the people for the coming struggle, Jiinger produced the

mature and, though ambiguous, sufficiently obvious anti-violence allegory of “Auf den Marmorklippen” [“On the Marble Cliffs”]. Yet, sueb had been his hold, as a fnilitary writer, on the Germsn imagination that the implications of what he had written failed to penetrate till it was too late. ... '

“Auf den Marmorklippen” is at once an attack on the Nazi regime, an allegorical exposure of the technique of tyranny, snd a subtle self-revela-tion. It is evidence both of the failure of one myth and of the need for another. But far more remarkable than either its style and subject-matter—-which is somewhere between Novalis and Kafka—or its disappointing lack of human penetration, is the very fact of its existence. For despite its ambiguities, and the necessary vagueness of its period and place, its fundamental analysis of a dictator’s rise to power, his methods, and the final disaster consequent on them, reveals a parallel to the Hitler regime which not even a German reintoxicated by the inspirational fumes of “In Stahlgewittern” could fail to see. . . . * *

There is a haunting phrase used by Plato of the influence of good art in education: “like a wind bringing health from wholesome regions.” It Suggests an invigorating wind blowing over cities in a plain from a land of snow-capped mountains, and reading Sir Richard Livingstone’s writings brings it back. The peaks of his country of the mind are in his writings clear to see and to name beautiful and ineluctable outlines— knowledge. Virtue, Order. Fellowship. M Nobility. Democracy; and the passport for those who would climb them is a knowledge of Greek. For those who know no Greek the wind still blows so long as there are worthy interpreters. . . .

Sir Richard . . . offers variations on themes he has made familiar: the primacy of training in character over the claims of science and the learning of techniques; the value of the classical Hianipiine of the vitamins contained in the study of history and literature. So eloquently has he expounded these themes before that one might regard their iteration as superfluous were it not for the new turns of expression imparted to them on every page "Thev are 1 ideed wholesome and inspiring: but it could be wished that their advice had bee “J2 ore .. expllP and realistic. . . . In the Character-

exciting sentence, “In judging any individual or nation, the most searching question that can be asked is: ‘Whom has he taken for master and how faithful is his service?’” only to be told that “we might accept excellence as master.” But what is excellence. and excellence in what? The approach is purely humanistic; Aristotelian rather than Christian in its diagnosis. Nevertheless, there is. much in this little book for which to gra&fA _ - 1

From a review of Certified. By H. G. Woodley. Gollancz. 224 pp. by c; s W - STONIER in the “New Statesman.”

From a review of Sheridan. By Lewis Gibbs. J. M. Dent and Son Ltd. 280 pp. by LEWIS in the “Tri-

From a middle-page article-review of On the Marble Cliffs. A novel by Ernst Juenger. Translated from the German by Stuart Hood. John Lehmann. 120 pp. in "The Times” Literary Supplement.

From a review of Some Tasks for Education. By Sir Richard Livingstone. Oxford University Press. 98 pp. by R. W. MOORE, Head Master of Harrow School, in the Sunday Times.”