"SALAVIN"

Evening Post, Volume CXXIV, Issue 57, 4 September 1937, Page 26

"SALAVIN"

HIS CREATOR EXPLAINS

George Duhamel's "Salavin," comprising four novels in one volume, published by Dent, continues to be one of the most widely read books of the year. Translated from the French, "Salavin" is a human document of mere than passing significance, and on its creation the, author spent fifteen years of his life.

What does Salavin represent historically? Duhamel himself says Salavin is an ordinary man of the twentieth century. "In depicting him," he writes, "I have deliberately avoided painting his social milieu. That is a thing which: the great French realists of the nineteenth century have done admirably. I have therefore contented myself with giving only the barest indications. The real problem lies, elsewhere. Salavin is a humble clerk. vThat is all one. need know. This insignificant man has, like so many other men in the twentieth century, lost his religious beliefs; but he has not lost all desire to live with dignity. He wants to raise himself, to realise himself more completely. He has a gift for analysis. He sees and judges for himself; he is prepared to make a great effort to attain self-peiv fection without renouncing liis right to criticise his own thoughts and acts. But the results of this critical sense 'are often terrible, pitiless, grotesque, and even comic. Salavin is ready to welcome all kinds of experiences: those of love, of friendship, of social life. But the most remarkable thing in his life is the great effort he makes to become a saint despite the aridity of his nature—an effort that he pursues until his death. Many people, who believe that they can afford to make fun of Salavin. think that he only succeeds in making a grotesque caricature of saintliness. They are surely mistaken. I. who know Salavin intimately, affirm that he really does attain saintliness for. a single instant —the - instant of his renunciation when he says: 'I don't mind not being a saint as long as there are some in the world, as long as I am sure there are.'

"From the standpoint of human geography, the story of Salavin takes place tor the most part in Paris, and more particularly on the slopes of the SainteGenevieve hill. The humble folk of Paris bustle around Salavin as he makes his way through its streets and alleys. The sky that lights this long train of adventures is nearly always the Parisian sky, with its drizzle and with its intermittent smiles of delicate blue. '~.'.

"But it.is of Salavin's human aspect that I should most like to talk to the English reader.' 'i And now that my brother Salavin, wearing an English suit, has set out to make friends in British lands, I am hopeful that those who will have the patience to heed him for an instant will end by taking him to their hearts, first of all with pity, then with friendship, and lastly, perhaps, with a deeper feeling."