BOOKS and BOOKMEN

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LV, Issue 17179, 8 February 1930, Page 10

BOOKS and BOOKMEN

HAUPTMANN’S “BOOK OF PASSION.’’ AN ‘ ‘ ATITOBIOGBAPHICAL ROMANCE.” BERLIN, Nov. 28. Gerhnrdt Hauptmann’s long awaited autobiographical romance, in two volumes, just published, bears the title of “The Book of Passion.” It is as intriguing to the German public as was over Goethe’s “Poetry and Truth.” Hermann Sudennann, who died last year, wrote long autobiographical passages and added to them entire portions of his friends’ lives in his two last books, each of which was an independent novel and entirely irrelevant to readers who had not the key to his life. But Hauptmann, in his preface, professes to be telling the story of somebody else, and Tor that reason only the initiated will ever guess where the truth lies —in the action itself or in the mental vision conjured up by the poet afterwards. More than once the parallel with the Goethe of “William Mcister,” as well as “Poetry and Truth,” recurs. There are passages of criticism and interpolated sketches in these two volumes which mark them as the work of a mature man, looking backwards and taking old diaries and manuscripts from his drawer as he does so. “The Passion,” which runs through the life of Hauptmann-—or his unI known hero —in the years between 1894 and 1904, is the indecision of a man torn between his affection for his wife, the mother of his children, and the love that came later for the woman who served art only; ten years of not knowing which of the two women lie cared for most, of ceaseless travel, upheaval, life lived in a win-

ter'landscape in Silesia, in furnished rooms in Berlin, on holiday in Italy. Melitta is the wife, and Anja is the girl violinist. When he has so far overcome the impulse that draws him to Anja,'lie settles with Melitta and the children again, sees Anja, and knows that the final parting both husband and wife are trying to avoid, will come of necessity. This ebb and flow of feeling that lies between the first marriage and the second is analysed and explained as the result of processes at work in the man’s mind—a growth and expanding that gave him no rest during ten years of struggle. This theme, as banal as any such threecornered light might, appear to novel readers, in ennobled by the form its presentation takes in Hauptmann’s language. THE CHANCELLOR. “Philip Snowden,” by “Ephesian” (Cassell.) The picture on the cover tells its story. Thin-lipped asperity and a laughing eye both ride above a dominant chin. The Chancellor of the Exchequer has been said to have the sweetest smile and the bitterest tongue in the House, in which case ho may be cited ia future essays on tho influence of climate over character. For the Pennine moors of his birthplace can, oh a blue day of breeze and fleecy clouds, be as jocund as the western wolds, while at harsher times they certainly annihilate all that’s made to a grey thought in a grey shade. Of that mixture, as his biographer shows, is Philip Snowden all compact. To love your neighbor is to go in wrath against your neighbor’s oppressor; so may benevolence and bitterness couch together. But tho main qualities, of the man arc faith and energy; the energy has fought down physical weakness, the faith has endured against all fatigues and disenchantment of the wilderness, all malice and intrigue of “comrades” turned to foes. Obstinacy there is, too, a full hint of the native rock and millstone grit. When Britain j discusses finance with its late Allies !it is well to have a Chancellor who | was born where Lancashire meets j Yorkshire, where the odd coppers in I a weaver’s wage arc counted closely, and where to be penny-wise is only the kindergarten course of prudence. “Ephesian” calls his book “an impartial portrait,” and is.as good as his word. If partiality must be hinted, it Will be found mb re on the prisoner’s behalf than against him. The fashionable habit of writing biography without admiration or eVen with disdain , is not to be discovered on this occasion. Approval keeps breaking in. The story is mainly one of relentless work. Born at Cowling, on the Yorkshire moors, and brought up amid the tea-urn and' temperance civilisation of Yorkshire Methodism, Philip Snowden inherited the Puritan qualities proper to those grey pastures; serious physical injury in a bicycle accident interrupted his career as a Civil Servant, and gave him tho opportunity'to read arid lead in Socialism. Those, who think of the ’nineties as the particular ago of aesthetic flowering should temper their notion by a backward glance at tiny, angry meetings in the North, where the men who were to alter the whole face of British polities and to man the British Cabinet thirty years on were talking to audiences of twenty or thirty, and fighting hopeless battles for council or for Parliament. Even during his honeymoon Philip Snowden went from platform to platform. Failing to raise funds, he had to abandon his candidature at Ivoighley in 18915; he moved to Blackburn and lost in 1900, winning in 1905, and remaining a Blackburn member" until another khaki election drove him out in 1918. Since then ho has returned nearer home, and holds the Coke Valiev seat where Victor Grayson once turbulontly raised a flag too red for those who habitually i chant, the praise of scarlet standards. The story of the man is well sot the story of the movement. “Ephesian,” assisted by his youthful 1 experience under Mr. Orage, of the ‘ ‘ New Age, ’ ’ does know what English Socialism is about, and fairly estimates the value of its rival groups and personalities. Thus Mr. Snowden's obstinate Parliamentarianism is well contrasted with the grouptheories of the Guildsmen and the Industrial Unionism of the Left Wing. A possible complaint is that tho author has rather scuffled through some recent episodes. Surely the General Strike and the reaction to it jof Parliamentary Labor deserved j more than a page and a half. The i recent conflict of mind and endur- | aneo at The Hague is well described, j and the summary of the Reparation j Problem is excellently clear.