W.E.A.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 24633, 14 June 1941, Page 13

W.E.A.

LITERATURE GLASS Pirandello, the Italian, and Karel Kapek, the Czechoslovakian writers, were the subject of the third of Mr J. F. McDougall’s talks before the W.E.A. literature class on “ The Art of the Modern Short Story.” Both these authors were distinguished in other fields, he said, both were dramatists and novelists. Short stories were only a sideline to them, but the lecturer considered that their short stories were important examples of the art. Neither of these writers was a propagandist, Mr McDougall said. Both believed in the pure fiction of life. Pirandello’s short stories were his early work. They were realistic depictions of human life as it was lived in his birthplace, Sicily. His eternal themes were the instability of everything human and the difference between the inner life and the outer mask. He believed that the majority of human beirigs were unconscious actors. As a short story writer Pirandello was comparable to Chekkoy. although there were many differences due to their different environment and experience. We were apt to think of Pirandello as a dramatist, but on the continent he was most esteemed , for his short stories, with their abundant humour and philosophy. Little was known of his private life. He once described himself as a man who "had forgotten to live.” The work of Kapek, the lecturer said, had become part of the world’s literature. His theme was that human life was in danger from our machine civilisation. Kapek, as a democratic Czechoslovakian, was interested in man as he is, not as he should be. Man could not be used as a means to an end. So Kapek was the incarnation of the democratic idea. Kapek was not a poetic genius,' but he had an understanding of psychological nuances, and a great simplicity of expression. He was a proletarian like his master. Masaryk. After Munich he lost his will to live, and died soon afterwards of a mirior illness.

The next lecture in this course will be Thursday, in the Children’s Library, when Mrs Dunningham will speak on Remain Holland and * the Jean-Christophe Chronicles.”