SHIP AND SAILOR

Dominion, Volume 28, Issue 287, 31 August 1935, Page 23

SHIP AND SAILOR

Notable Story of Strange Devotion “The Johanna Maria,” by Arthur van Scheudel. Translated from the Dutch by Brian W. Downs. (London : Cape). “The Johanna Maria” is the translation of a work notably unsual as regards both literary style and treatment of subject. Of the former. Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch, who writes the introduction, says:— The English reader of this book will be given pause and puzzled at times by what seems to him an eccentricity in the presentation. This must not be blamed upon the translation, for the author insists on the run and break of his sentences ... In this story, moreover, van Schendel has that other vocabulary of sea terms and sailormen’s lingo . . . under his will.

The theme is an old one—the lover’s pursuit of his beloved. But the beloved is a ship—perhaps the last of Dutch sailing ships—and the lover a quiet seaman, saddened by a drab and tragic childhood, who finds in his devotion and desire the whole enl and meaning of life. The life of the ship and the life of the man run together for long years, broken at intervals by times of searching despair when fate lias temporarily separated them. The ship changes hands, captains, officers, men come and go, various names are painted in turn on her bows —to Jacob Brouwer she remains always the Johanna Maria, his to serve, to protect, to cherish until death. The story runs its course, living and real, with always the sea heavy with leaden menace, dancing in sparkling abandon, sombre, joyous, always changing, the background on which it is written. And to the end runs the man’s steadfast purpose, a lofty fanaticism reaching beyond earthly life.