DEATH IN THE1 AFTERNOON

Dominion, Volume 32, Issue 234, 1 July 1939, Page 2 (Supplement)

DEATH IN THE 1 AFTERNOON

"Six Bulls On Sunday” by Joseph Peyre, translated from the French by Warre Bradley Wells (London: Bles).

Joseph Peyre, author of that fine novel of the bull-ring, “A Matador Dies,” is far from being a romanticist. Though there is comedy in these new stories of the bull-fighting world which he has written, there is also in them a grim strain capable of making the reader shudder.

M. Peyre spurns the glamour associated with this form of public entertainment and Concentrates upon the terror that is a part of it —the physical fear which possesses every matador in the knowledge that at a given moment in the near future he must face death in the ring. This note of tragedy he develops in a brilliantly-written prologue to these stories in which he says: But, if I have thus insisted upon death, upon the perpetual presence of death, it is because people only too often forget the fateful penalty of thie art. For bull-fighting is .ah art. This is not the place to undertake a demonstration Of the fact. But, In the course of the following pages, shall we not catch a glimpse or certain traits revealing the lot of Hit artist at grips with his fate as a public performer, with the exacting expectation of a crowd to be met. with Its hostility to be overcome or its desires to be gratified? Shall we not. recognize the fine flower which crowns a work of art: namely, the final Isolation Of a man with it, the isolation of a creator whoke achievement attains perfection ? The stories themselves are magnificently done, particularly the long tale, “Six Bulls On Sunday,” Which gives its name to the book. There is an element bf farce in it which mingles oddly, yet very effectively, with the painful theme Of fear.