LITERATURE.

Otago Witness, Issue 3523, 20 September 1921, Page 54

LITERATURE.

• BOOK NOTICES. “Alaska Man’s Luck.” By Iljalniar.Rutzebeck. T. Fisher Unwin (.Ltd.), London. This is cue of Messrs Unwin's First Novel series. It is interesting as such, and especially as recording the actual experience of the author. His preface, written from Alaska, gives a few personal particulars : "1 was born and raised in Denmark, where 1 left school when I was 12, determined to become an author.

Although I have not gone to school since I have become an American citizen, 1 have picked up not only the English language, but much other knowledge. For, after all, life is a great school itself. It is only in the last live years that I have tried to write, and during that time I have been hampered greatly by having to make a living for myself and family, except the one year when 1 was in gaol.” Nome of his acquaintances ridiculed his expectations of getting publishers to

accept a book of his; but he persevered in literary as in other enterprises, and has been rewarded with success. The book attracts as the record of adventures and hardships and endurance, described in a straightforward, natural, vet vivid style. It is in the form of a diarv kept by him during his wanderings, and sent by instalments to tlie girl who has since become his wife. The Alaska man’s luck was for long very bad. It was in California that he met the girl of his heart, and he started to make his fortune in Alaska without money for tire long journey, stealing rides on the trains most of the way, one long stage being made on the water tank of the locomotive. "Part of the time i was frozen to the tank, so there wasn’t much danger of failing off. Once, however, I woke up suddenly when the train crossed a deep gulch, and it nearby scared the wits out of me. . . .

I rode on the rods from Roseburg. Arrived at the Alaska mining districts, he had ups and downs, and at a time when he was out of both work and money made a false move which involved him in troubles. Being starving and unable to get work, he broke into a grocer’s shcm to get food, and, unfortunately, was tempted to take money from the cash drawer also. Most of the rest of the book is filled with the record of his flight from pursuit, his capture, and his repeated escapes, always ending in recapture. In these endeavours to regain his liberty he underwent incredible hardships, and had many hair-breadth escapes. He had better have resigned himself to serve his sentence—a short one, —which he finally has to do. But at last he is a free man, with no fear of arrest. After a spell of mining work he takes up a little “ranch”—a few acres of land on a little cove, which he christens Viking’s Cove, —- clears the land, builds a cabin, and, when he has a home ready, goes south, marries the girl he loves, and takes her back with him to begin a new life together in Alaska —“a beautiful green land in summer, in spite of the terrible winters.” The book closes with a picture of a lovely May morning. “It was a holy day, for spring came to-day, and we spent most of our time up there on the cliff, bathed in the warm sunshine, and reading this, my diary. ... I looked at her goldentinted hair and her clean innocent face, and I wondered if it was right that I who had been only so recently in gaol, an outlaw and a desperado, should have her for a mate —this girl who is so pure and unspoiled and innocent. She smiled as if she guessed my thoughts. ' Do you know what I have been thinking? Everything here is so pure and fresh and untouched, that it seems as if God incarnate might walk among there beautiful mountains and up these shining Water paths. . . . And I wondered if you were thinking of the time when you were in gaol, and that perhaps > 011" did not belong to all this. But you know, Svend, the mistakes we make are only the steps along the road to wisdom.’ ” "Poems of R.” Whitcombe and Tombs (Ltd.). This is a slender little booklet of some cO pages, printed at the Wellington establishment of the firm of Whitcombe and Tombs. Probably it is the first publication of its anonymous author. If so. it shows considerable promise, displaying poetjc feeling and an ear for rhythm "and verbal melody ; the detects are mainly those so common in amateur verse—looseness of phraseology, producing obscurity of meaning, inappropriate or mixed metaphors, and words chosen apparently for their sound or some pleasing association without regard to their contribution towards the meaning of the passage. The two latter defects confront one in the opening lines of the first piece: AYliy should I dedicate with vcrmillioned phrases These billows which toward thv beauty’ break ? The first portion of the book-—and the best —consists of a sequence of love sonnets after the Shakespearean model. This form, it may be said for the benefit of those who have given little attention to verse technique, is a poem of .14 lines, the first 12 being rhymed alternately, the two final forming a couplet. The effect is quite different from that of the Italian sonnet form, of winch the first eight lines have only two rhymes, used in a strictly defined fashion. It is this, the orthodox sonnet form, which has been used with such beautiful effect in the sonnets of Milton, Wordsworth, and Gabriel Dante Rossetti, the greatest sonneteers in English literature. But the simpler Shakespearean form has its special beauty. All who seek to compose 111 either sonnet form, and lovers of poetry generally, would do well to study William Sharp’s collection of sonnets of the nineteenth century, which contains a most valuable study of sonnet forms and also critical notes on the sonnets of the volume.

Whether "R.” has doen so or not, he is evidently familiar with Shakespeare's sonnets. Ii is sequence shows the influence of Elizabethan love poetry in its vein of pleasing hyperbole, while occasionally there is rather too close a following of some of the imagery of a Shakespearean sonnet—e.g., in the fourth sonnet the Inter tells how when riding away from his lady : My pace grows sullen as I forward urge, As if my heaviness oppressed my steed. Compare Shakespeare, Sonnet 50: flic beast that bears me, fired with my woe, Plc-ds daily on to bear that weight in me, As if by some instinct the wretch did know His ricfer loved not speed being made from thee. Ihe lines of the sonnets usualy run musically. The first two of the second sonnet are especially pleasing both in sound and suggestion : 111 rich syllables and silvery lines, M hicli fail v. ith sweetness like low-laden bees. But we are afraid the writer is very much out in the argument of the following hne:-—tliflt a poet's worth is valued not by his verse but by his theme, —which leads him to the bold conclusion : verse of thee construct one faltering Or stanza want for melody of wit? Defying Lime with thee my verse is brave In syllables which overlap the grave. But satire would be ungracious. The reviewer prefers to quote what seems one of the best sonnets : Uy angel without wings save wings of love, Too dear for_ praises save thy true desert, I have not sai:l 1 love thee, tho* 1 strove On many e time to tell thee all my heart. And yet, I boldly write, I love thine eves, And them alone, if they unrivalled v/ere, But other favour for affection vies; I love thy blushes, and thy lips and hair, ihino every word a jewelled l madrigal, , Thy gentle- motion and unconscious mien, Tnv steps, which like vEolian music fall, Thy precious thoughts in deeds of kindness seen I love; but over all this verse esteems, I love the heart that ne’er of praises dreams.