CURRENT LITERATURE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LX, Issue 18380, 21 April 1923, Page 6 (Supplement)

CURRENT LITERATURE.

NEW BOOKS. ■ V ■. ; ' *-—' * — BY CRITIC. Psycho-analysis plays greater and greater part in our education. Many healers of the day, many thinkers make public avowal of its benefits. Certain Continental writers have long pointed the wayit possibly behoves many of us to read and carefully note their reasoning. "Studies in Psycho-Analysis"— by Prof. C. Baudonin (Allen and Cnwin, Loudon). This translation, by E. and C. Paul, of the French scientist's volume, places fine material within everyone's reach. His contention is this, " that the method to which experience has led me, and whose results are here recorded is founded upon unceasing collaboration between autosuggestion and psycho-analysis." He then proceeds to give an account of twentyseven concrete cases. The interpretation of dreams provides the most important clue to the working of the unconscious. Reminiscences, especially reminiscences of childhood, are dealt with. The translators advise that non-expert readers shall, after the general survey, go straight to the Case Histories. Baudonin " takes a different road from Coue, to whom suggestion, unaided, seems a sufficiently therapeutic method." Baudonin deliberately joins suggestion and psycho-analysis. "May we not hope," add the translators, " that man is on the eve of learning how to use the most stupendous of all tools— his own mind ?" NIETZSCHE. " Nietzsche"—by Janko Laurin (Collins, London).— is difficult for the normal Britisher to assess the value, of Nietzsche as a thinker; he has been so misrepresented by those wishing to appropriate and fit his teachings to their own ideas. That Laurin, who has already given evidence of very fine powers of analysis and constructive reasoning, should attempt such a task is incentive enough for readers of his careful work. He claims that Nietzsche was the victim of a disease which' tortured him in the extreme; he was afraid of blindness, and he suffered from terrible headaches—the philosopher had, at an early age, to resign his professorship at Bale; and wrote to his friend that " he was on the verge of desperation, the suffering is crushing my life and my will." Driven by. his illness into introspection, he was avowedly morbid; yet he could write thus: "Apart from the fact that I am a decadent, I am also the reverse of such a creature. That energy, with which I sentenced myself to absolute solitude, and to a severance from all those conditions in life .Which I had grown accustomed my discipline of myself, and my refusal to allow myself to be pampered, to be tended hand and foot, and to be doctored— this betrays the absolute certainty of my instincts respecting what, at that time, was most needful to me. I placed myself in my own hands. I restored myself to my health." ... • "The first of the factors,' writes his critic, which influenced his philosophy, was a complete and stupid ignoring of his books on the part of the German press and public. His rancour and resentment against Germans and German culture were largely due to this circumstance, of which he complains in so many letters. . . . His aggressiveness is sometimes disconcertingly Ciieap, not to say brutal; and in spite of his intellectual refinement, his literary manners are not always of the best. However, all these defects are more than counterbalanced by the suppleness of his. mind, the boldness and depth ;of his psychological analysis, the originality of his metaphors, and the sparkling maliciousness of his expression. It is the happy combination of a delicate feminine sensitiveness, with a rather harsh masculinity of style and form, that lends to .his books an intriguing charm, often making his style more convincing than his ideas. In addition, Nietzsche's sentences vibrate, as a rule, with an absolutely untranslatable Dionassian i magic, under the spell of which even such a clumsy instrument as the German language dances and sings as if it were the speech of Zarathustra's Happy Isles." k . t "

THE SUPERMAN. : Nietzsche's quarrel was with the overcivilised. "The European disguises himself in morality, because he has become a sick, sickly, crippled animal, who has good reasons for being, 'tame,', because he is almost an abortion,, an imperfect, weak, and clumsy thing." "As a countermeasure." states Laurin, /'Nietzsche devises not immorality, but a vigorous morality of rearing— ; kind of higher eugenics, with the object of husbanding all those forces which could produce a new and stronger species. A new nobility, the result of breeding; the dav divided up afresh; bodily 'exercises for all ages; ruling taught and practised, its hardness as well as its mildness; we must make use of the degenerate— right of punishment will consist in this— the offender mav be used as an experimental subject in dietetics; this is the ; consecration of punishment that one man be used for the highest needs of a future, being. As a tonic against the gradual softening of modern Europeans, he : thought it even desirable that a kind %of " Promethean barbarians" should force their way into our present civilisation; ■ barbarians coming from above, not below"— idea which may explain the vanity of that nation which, apparently, . accepted .its own standard of what ; supermen should be - . _ , . ..-.';■ MISCELLANEOUS ; SUBJECTS. " v "Plays In Prose and Verse"— by W. B. Yeats (Macmillan, London).— • prolific poet and playwright claims to represent an Ireland, more simple arid spiritual in its nature than the modern deeds of some portions of it might easily lead the rest of the world to suspect. '.Irt' the present volume he reprints a number of plays .played at the Abbey Theatre, Dublin, when the movement for recreating our old Irish literature was at its beet. The . obligation of the author to Lady Gregory because he "could not write dialect* and ,because i hit. construction had fallen into confusion'*freely acknowledged. v-" >-. - ; V> ''* ••Will 0' The Wisp" or "The Elusive Shakespeare','—by George HooUharh (BlackwelL Oxford).— contribution to the perennial question as. to the identity of Shakespeare. Somewhat laboriously, our author contends that the actor was known to his contemporaries as Shakespeare, that "Shakespeare" was a nom-de-plume; that Bacon had all > the necessary intellectual equipment for the feat, including humour ; that in his own time the author's work was quite unappreciated for "characterisation, a subtle humour, ; sublime poetry" — Shakespeare was "no comet to the Elizabethans" —that "great as is. the hospitality 'of the human' mind', it cannot'forever entertain as guests two such mortal foes as the modern admiration .of the plays and the record' of the .1 life. Time will show."

"Art for Australia"— edited' by Sydney Ure Smith and Leon Gilbert (Art in Australia, Sydney)—contains 1 a comprehensive assortment of letter-press and reproductions, • the majority dealing with ancient writers, such as for instance.' Hush McCrae's revised anecdotes of Dr. Poissey. A good descriptive • article on "Our Portrait Painters" is contributed by Howard Ash ton; and the indefatigable Lindsays are well represented. The number shows excellent craftmanship, even to the advertisements. . •' ' ' "Our Hellenic Heritage''— by H. R. James (Macmillan, London). The second volume of this text book, dealing with the splendour and the fall of Athens. "450 Miles to Freedom"— by Captains Johnston and Yearsley.—A spirited account of the adventures of eight British officers in their escape from the Turks. "The Secret of Sex Determination" — by Rose Clements (Crver, Sydney :•• Whitcombe and Tombs, Auckland). v ' '"Rambles in Bookland"— by Charley Wilson (Whitcombe . and ; Tombs. '.., Christchurch) engaging study .on. the . companionship of books. The author. is a ganuiaa lover' of literature." ;> -

AUTHORS AND THEIR VIEWS » , ON FAVOURITE BOOKS. Give me a new story by Hugh Walpole or , Compton Mackenzie, or Sheila Kayo Smith, or May Sinclair, and politics and income lax demands, shipwrecks, and the Bolsheviks, are for the moment straightway despatched to a limbo of 1 temporary forgetfuhiess. Hashish and opium could, I feel sure, provide me no such reliable nepenthe from daily tasks or daily worries, as a good novel. Curiously enough, it, is rarely to those giants, Thackeray and Dickens, that I first turn when I desire a change/from the lighter literature of the day, but to some of the so-called minor writers of the Victorian epoch. Not that I swerve one iota from my steadfast devotion to "Pehdenns,' 1 "Pickwick,"' David Copperfield," "Great Expectations." Every two or three years I re-read these masterpieces. But it is to some of the less famous vintages that I often prefer to turn lor my evening draught. Wilkio Collins, for instance. Would you pup on thrills? Then go to Wilkie Collins! Yet the other day I drew a complete blank in the boo shop coverts, i lope, oddly ; enough,' is becoming quite a popular author with American readers. Then' there are the earliest, stories Of that rollicking Irishman, Charles Lever. I have never cared very much for "Jane Eyre." But I can, read and re-read " Shirley." Only a couple of evenings ago I took up J. ;H. Shorthouse's John Ingles;vit." In its own way it is a very remarkable story. How it ever came about that a Birmingham manufacturer of • vitriol could 1 have-, written this- wonderful romance, of [ seventeenth century England and Italy, V mus always be something of a mystery. I: It; was Mr. Gladstone, I believe, who first made the book famous-. One of his eulogistio postcard criticisms did the same for the once-famous, but now, I fear, halfforgotten "Robert Elsmere," by Mrs. Humphrey Ward. Most of us book-loving oldsters have a distinct weakness for two or three of Henry Kingsley's novels. As a literary celebrity, Henry was always overshadowed by his elder •'.. brother Charles, who had a trick of getting into the literary limelight. I don't think I would care to tackle " Westward Ho " again. But Henry Kingsley's "Ravenhoo'" has been a favourite book these . many years. As for Marcus Clarke's " Great Australian Classic," as a Bulletin • writer recently styled it, I franklv confess'l; could not read it again. I would ; as soon gloat over the rude wood-cuts of the tortures in an early edition of " Foxe's Book of Martyrs." Rambles in Bookland." Charles Wilson! ; ' CYNICISMS. W/. l y, '!■':■■ . " Sociology . is at game that \ self-ed; cated labourers play with f half-educated gentlemen." . ■"■»,'' ' > "One of those parties that are rightly scattered about a corner ■of London, and are, through open first-floor windows, apt to hit the solitary passer-by of the small hours, across the eyes, with \ the vivid glare and gesticulation of their • gaiety. These parties are much despised/, (a) by Che people who go to them; (b) by the people who don't get the chance; and, (c) by essayists \ who begin their essays with ' I sometimes , ask myself ( what hid; den. pleasures there are- to be found': in ; ; crowds.' This particular party; was quite small, or rather, it looked small, for.' although there were about a hundred people present, they were so scattered .about the various rooms upstairs or downstairs, that there were • never more than; 10 or 12 couples to encourage the band in the ballroom; so that, .if you were a bad dancer, you had no chance to use the excuse, so often effective on a crowded floor, that the art of dancing; is : riot : to ; . dance, but to avoid other dancers?" There were no decorations, and no dowagers. Mrs. Halliday was expert in achieving that' impromptu effect which is the result of lavish -and organised hospitality. (The name, by the way, must not be confused with that of the famous brewers. The Hallidays were, and had always been, bankers and gentlemen, . not i brewers and aristocrats.) No one " received " you at there parties: you just happened on your host John or. your hostess Euphemia. .as time "went on, and you talked with the 1 one and danced with the other, according to the -press, of , your business elsewhere. You ,'had gone in response to a ; casual telephone message from Euphemia's butler, and you left as casually; and you always , left. ' very late, and you always leTc. wondering why. you had stayed 'so long." —"Piracy." Michael ; Arlen.