GUEST REVIEWER

Press, Volume LXXXV, Issue 25709, 22 January 1949, Page 3

GUEST REVIEWER

From a review of Crafts of the Countryside. By E. J. Stowe. Longmans, Green and Co. 128 pp. in “The Times” Literary Supplement.

From a review by the Dean of St. Paul’s, of Human Knowledge: Its Scope and Limits. By Bertrand Russell. Allen and Unwin. 538 pp. in the “Sunday Times.”

Literary Views And Reviews

strategy^5 < f?X to see 110 w EGandhi’s] ence wu?d b. g r”!? civil di™bedi-whS-e noUHnfl appl,ed in a country appear and‘th» opponents simply disthinz that th p H b ‘ lc never hears any'vant it m h?, Government does not that 1 p M°reover it appears we shonld fin Fischer tells us that he doeen J°l lo . w Gandhi’s teaching, should TnUn 4 a £ tua JJy mean that we wanf c * ol low Gandhi’s teaching. He Russian lo ,• m p „ reve ?- t the expansion of Russian imperialism, non-violently if

Fr °?f _ GEORG ? ORWELL'S 'review and „ Stalin - B Y Louis Fischer. Gollancz. 163 pp. in the “Observer.”

we can, but violently if we mustwhereas Gandhi’s central tenet was that you must not use violence even vivo =^ lternatlve 1S defeat. Asked to r opinion on the German Jews, 15 1 ap P aren tly answered that they ?“^ uld have eommitted mass suicide ana thus aroused the world”—an answer which seems to embarrass even Mr Fischer. Most of Mr Fischer’s political conclusions are such as any of , goodwill can agree with heartily, but the attempt to derive them from Gandhi seems to be foundea on personal admiration rather than genuine agreement.

.Ostensibly, “Halcyon” is the story of two boys, one of whom has escaped from a reformatory, who run away to a deserted Mediterranean island They live a simple, lyrical life, with their ipod supplies brought to them by a fisherman. They imagine they are free. . Then gradually echoes of the war intrude; they are discovered by a strange, hallucinated old gaoler whose cap they find on the shore; they separate and a tender, awkward relationship is struck up between the

From ALAN ROSS’S review of Halcyon. By Pierre Herbart. Translated by Agnes Mackay. John Lehmann. 76 pp. in the “Tribune.”

gaoler and the boy from the reformatory- The world is reduced to the tiny confusing circle of their lives, and between them lies an inarticulate weight of anguish and loneliness they will never surmount.

M. Herbart conveys the sense of loss the unregainable innocence of adolescence that is half shame and half ecstasy, in prose of extreme simplicity and with a compassionate, intuitive understanding. But “Halcyon” fails in its consciously obscure presentation. There are no clues to the various symbolic levels of the narrative and. the story in itself needs more explicitness in characterisation than M. Herbart seemed willing to give it. . . But for all that, “Halcyon” has the charm of a sensitive and original miniature—a flavour of idyllic blue sea in an air of olives, a few stray moments in Time—that is increased by some Cocteau-ish drawings by John Harrison.

It is a paradox: everybody loves the rural crafts; they make human habitation an adornment and not a defacement of earth, and bring to birth beauty as a by-end of man’s labours; and yet they tend to decline to the status of a luxury trade. Mr--Stowe, too. loves them and has himsfelf had some practice in them. He inculcates a realisation of their intrinsic worth among the pupils of his school. . . . He can report a growing interest in them, yet, aware of their precarious existence to-day, he traces over again

every curve, and the action behind every curve, of the scythe-maker’s art and the wheelwright’s .and the smith’s, in dor that posterity may discern the traditional pattern of life that is implicit in a house of wattle-and-daub, or a hurdle or a basket. But now paper is made by machines at the speed of a galloping horse, so who wants baskets?

Mcdest as are the needs of those who live the satisfying lives of country craftsmen, a man cannot work by hand to-day at a speed sufficient to keep himself alive. This alone, apart from .the newspaper headlines, should be enough to suggest that something is wrong: the manifest beauty and rhythm of the traditional forms are a further omen. Perhaps, as Mr Stowe implies in his picture of modern harvesting by “combine,” set beside the old method, there may be a bolder pattern io come. . . . • *

This book doesn’t read like the life story of a European, but like the script for a Hollywood film, with a faint air of Canadian provincialism. All the ingredients are there, marshalled in the familiar way: the background of poverty, the hard work and integrity winning their way to a leading position in the banking world, the heroic war record, the scenes of dissipation in the night clubs on which Jan finally turns his back, the companionship of the pure woman whom he loved for years, and finally the adoption of a wonderful new motherland, the United States. The whole thing is phony; and the phoniness is in the writing, so it is still phony if Jan’s life was really just like that and if he was sincere every minute.

From .MERVYN JONES’S review of Portrait of Jan. By Dorothy Duncan. Robert Hale Ltd. 339 pp. in the "New Statesman.”

Anyway, what happens in the book? Three quarters of it concerns the means by which the hero managed to rise to a leading position in banking and in the snob Bohemian glass trade — built up for American millionaires and Indian maharajahs—while getting rich in the stock exchange on the side. He is so busy with these activities that he is amazed when, during a trip to Carlsbad, his chauffeur tells him that there is trouble with the Henl’inists —in May, 1938. In the circumstances his reflections on the responsibilities of democracy and the tragedy of Munich, which deprived him of many business possibilities, become rather nauseating.

Music-lovers will be fascinated by the inside account of the last chapter of the Liszt-Wagner saga and the musical gossip about famous singers and conductors of which Bayreuth was inevitably a centre. Those with less musical interests will be attracted by the picture of the Fuhrer and the top-ranking Nazis, seen always at their most ingratiating and speaking and acting “off the record.” But the real dramatic quality of the story is centred in the figure of Winifred, the curse of the house of Wagner,” whose entrance into the family* united all

From MARTIN COOPER’S review of The Royal Family of Bayreuth. By Friedelind Wagner. Eyre and Spottiswoode. 203 pp. in the “Spectator.”

the factions in a common rraentment. The only bitter phrase Friedelind Wasner ever heard her father utter waf big with tragic truth: Winnie destroys everything that I try so desnerately to rebuild.’ That was alter the first German war, when in spite of Winnie, the Festspielhaus was opened again by 1924. After the second German war Winnie and her like had done tbeir work too thoroughly for Bayreuth to rise again IneSsilv And yet she is an intensely moving and in a way tragic, cnaracter around’whpm the w bol ? h b t o °e X t™or<b symptomatic, too, of that extraora inaril v widespread neurosis in rprman society revealed by casual references in the narrative long before the Nazis came to power.

v S'SI age of 18 maSed Siegfried Wag-

ner (aged 46 then), the third child of Richard Wagner’s second marriage. She became an ardent Hitlerite; and Hitler was a familiar figure in the houshold both before he climbed to power and after. The works of Bertrand Russell begin to approach in bulk those of St. Augustine or (a comparison which may be more congenial to him) those of Voltaire. The latest substantial volume is addressed, we are told, to the public which is interested in philosophical questions and not primarily to professional philosophers. This return to the tradition of Locke, Berkeley and Hume, is welcome, but the intending reader should be warned that he will be taken through some stiff argument and at one stage will be required to choose between three different theories

of probability. For once Mr Russell has fallen short of perfect lucidity. Though he makes his thought as plain as the subject admits, the complex arrangement of the book may prove perplexing to students. It falls into six distinct parts: the World of Science, Language, Science and Perception, Scientific Concepts, Probability, Postulates of Scientific Inference. It happens that the same topics may be discussed at different levels, and we need to remind ourselves of Mr Russell’s warning that what he says last is what he really means. ...

The title of the book is misleading unless Mr Russell holds that there is no knowledge which is not scientific knowledge, for he does not discuss the important subject of historical knowledge, which some philosophers hold to be the key to all the rest, nor does he deal with value judgements, which common sense supposes can be either true or false. A comprehensive treatment of human knowledge should have something to say about them. No one could work through this book without feeling respect for the mental vigour and pertinacity of the author and for his learning, and few perhaps whose philosophy is different from his could avoid moments of irritation at what seem to be his blind spots.