Fiction

By V. S. 'PRITCHETT

—7rickeiliaistticrats;Topthrevolationargermtotrinntrfarbse it is perceptive and 7s. 6d.) As the comment of a Russian revolutionary upon the French revolutionary, The Dicta Consul is an exceptionally interesting book. Whether one decides to call it a novel or history, -whether one's standards of criticism are to be scholarly or aesthetic, are open questions. Both his originality and his faults spring from the fact that M. Vinogradov- has fallen between two stools. He might retort that he has extracted the best from two worlds. Certainly, if its faults are serious, The .Dlack Consul is a book of marked originality and dramatic power, and it is possible that it may revolutionize the methods of historical fiction. English historical novelists are in need of a new technique and perhaps, after M. Vinogradov,

shall see the eclipse of that over-nourished, picturesque, cinema history which has reduced the contemplation of the

past to the level of the annual and compulsory . Christmas surfeit. To those novelists iv-ho are gorged On glamour the

method of M. Vinogradov may be a useful emetic.

The rich material of this book is the French Revolution

in so far as it concerns Toussaint L'Ouverture; the negro Liberator of Haiti. (One notes at once" the Soviet novelist's eye for the race problem.) For M. Vinogradov the only true revolutionaries are the Jacobins, and -they are also the only true friends of the enslaYed negioes. The book opens with a picture of Dr. Marat, in the days when the editor of L'Ami du .Peu. Pais in hiding. He is called in to attend the negro' leader, who is ill. The negro delegates to the Assembly have come to Paris with their -cause. They are slowly realizing that, in the struggle between the revolu-: tionary factions in Paris, they are being pushed out of the picture. The slave owners, protOtype. of the -modern buc- caneer plutocrat, and indifferent to the ideas of the revolution, are quietly disposing of the negro delegates. We are switched, over to the laboratory of Lavoisier and see him discover that strychnine is the weapon favoured by the slave-owners. Lavoisier's is a good portrait. He is fighting for the auto- nomy of science among.the encroachments of political passion. He has bought the wealth -necessary for the disinterested pursuit of science with the unpopularity of heavy taxes ;' and his work on gunpowder has aroused the suspicions of the watchful foreign governments—here embodied in the figure of the Englishman, Arthur Young. Lavoisier's dilemma' is the intellectual's and is very well shown. So is everyone else's. All the great figures appear, Danton, Marat, Robes- pierre and Desmoulins ; they come as political's rather than as men. • Napoleon is shown dabbling in property in order to get the money, for the power he must haye. The story is conducted through Toussaint's escape from France,'

his arrival in Haiti, his leadership of the successful revolt to his final betrayal. --

The method, having similarities with Mr. Shaw's in St. Joan, is that -of narrative by argument. This is mainly placed in the form of documents, either genuine or purporting to-be so—

it is impossible, without investigation, to say. Extracts - from -speeches, letters, manifestoes and diaries are the bridges between brief moments of direct narrative. M. Vinogradov's originality is that he has seen that while political conflict may lie between men, a great deal of its dramatic essence is to be found in the clash of its documents. Some of his best effects are gained by the juxtaposition of a document which proposes and the event which subsequently-disposed. Passing

from one side to another and directed by his revolutionary beliefs,- he has' a mobility, a freedom of time and space which make the slower narrative convention seem laborious. Ideas are trenchant ; they simplify where men complicate.

The first fault of the book is that, if it is to be regarded as history, it does not tell the whole story of Toussaint or of Haiti ; one is just, pitched. into pr...naicidle.pf it Visual impressionism has been replaced by the impressionism, of debate. Secondly, men make hay of the simplicity Of ideas : it is impossible to believe very long in a world:divided:frit° , !shissare:always foigi%-en :them: -M Vinogradov's determinism ....may be ingeniously political rithenthan formally moral, but . the answer to even the most realistic disciple of the extreme left is that beyond humanitarianism is the human. It is fLot

, surprising to find M. Vinogradov's characterization ritai- mentary. It exists only in relation to the people's political selves. They have a certain physical vividness but they ,are `psychologically static. Because people are not _psychologically static, revolutions come to equivocal conclusions. The last 'phase of Robespierre should disillusion the Jacobin. M. ViriogradoY, for example, does not Mention that 'Tciussaint boasted of being the Bonaparte Of Haiti. Another weakness is M. Vinogradov's mediocrity in original narrative. Con- - fronted with the necessity of imagining a scene, he becomes a conventional plodder of the romantic, melodramatic kind. - Still it •would • be absurd to damn him for these faults which

do not detract from his masterly dramatic grasp of his theme. 1/2 - Bonaparte is long dead in the second volume of Mr. Conal O'Riordan's historical saga, and we are among the Irish aristocracy during the famine. Here we may contrast the more reputable pre-cinema, historical method with M. Vinogradov's. We see Ireland- through the eyes of David Quinn, a _returned exile of Qtiakerish upbringing, who has fled society because he had been - horribly disfigured at Waterloo. He comes home to confront the lecherous Catholic baronet, his father, and to entangle himself in a society which is embarrassingly attracted bjr his person, but which is openly amused by his prudery. The Irish aristocracy are, as usual, having it both ways by blaming the English for the famine and by calming their own consciences about their tenants by pointing out that starvation is greater among the English miners than on the Irish demesnes. Mr. O'Riordan's picture of aristocratic Irish society, though circumscribed, is good and all the better for its inevitable political context. The detail is conscientiously collected, but it is not very thoroughly analysed or ,thrust into perspective. Coincidence takes the place of action. He demands careful reading and the behaviour of Anglo-Irish society at any period can-never be dull.

This Was _Ivor Trent_ and Delay in the_ Sun are what may be called " brainwave " novels: - The former shows the genre at its most clever and its most maddening. Stop to ask a quektion of the narrative at any moment and the whole thing coitaii'ses under the weight of its own slangy pretences. A novelist, convinced that man contains "the potentiality of a new. being," goes. into hiding to try out the trick, is traced by a number of highly suspecting and suspicious people of his circle and is discovered to have led a double life. The very artificially managed suspense of the story keeps the reader. gñessiiig as to what the nature of this double life was. 4I'he book contains several well- observed characters of an interesting variety, but the new potentiality business- belongs to the world of crossword puzzles and of notion's: -lv.Tr.-Houglafoifis-a-lnaniiith notions,

some of which aregwitty. This, foi example; :

" My private. theory is that English Fascists will wear boiled shirts, in fact, I am certain they will. THE BOILED SHIRTS! A MIDDLE CLASS .MILITANT MOVEMENT TO CRUSH BOLSHEVISM. Imagine that, my good Rendell. A chance for ' the bourgeois to die in evening dress. The Boiled shirt would bola real national symbol.: It would signify' MIDDLE CLASS SOCIAL • SNOBBERY, THE PUBLIC SCHOOL SPIRIT, PLAYING TI1E . GAME and all the rest.of it. Labour members would rush to join. It will be an inspiring spectacle—THE -BACKBONES OF ENG- LAND IN BOILED SHIRTS."

• Unfortunately the-next speaker adds =

"That's very aintisingi Wrayburn." • ' .

1 Mr. Thorne's -Deiciy in the .Sun relies upon a sound formula : take a number of people, Piit them sitddeilly unfamiliar - situation and- efivirotuneht; and if You know your job the result will always be diveithig if not important. He lands- a • party of English tourists in a remote Spanish village. Here again the characters are well differentiated, each is made to reveal his -governing passion,' . : . . why 1, . and the intrigue is not dull. The SPanisti. scene is well done in a light and agreeable 'Way. It -is all perhaps rather thin, but