"Das Stisse Lied"
Jew Sass. By Lion Fouchtwanger. Translated by Willa and Edwin Muir. (Martin Seeker. 7s. 6d.)
IT is a long time since there has appeared- in the English language a book of such stark unquestionable power as Jew Suss, or one of such frank brutality : its pages teem with violations of every canon of taste and decency. But such violations are not irritating as is the case when the author is a mere Pickwickian fat-boy who intends to make our flesh creep : there is here no design on his part to horrify or shock us, he is only telling us just what happened in the state of Wurttemberg with its seventy-two towns and Mar hundred villages, when Karl Alexander was its infamous Duke and Josef Stiss his finance director. So solid and sordid a tale might well have been tedious, for such relief as we have is of a sentimental Little Nell sort, or concerns secrets and mysteries most in- effectively handled. It is the sheer power of the narrative in 'spite of its detached and ruthless sadism that gives the book its absorbing interest. The reader may hate it, but he will shudder and continue.
To give any detailed account of the plot would be implissible. There is in fact no plot beyond the antagonism between Jew and German Gentile. Events occur which illustrate it, but there is a complete absence of the thick texture woven of the reactions of events on character, and of character on events, which constitute the psychological novel. Indeed, if we examine its texture in this light we find it of no tight fabric but full of flaws and knots and holes. Book I., for instance, is quite irrelevant to the rest, and though it introduces the principal characters, is burdened with a host of others who instantly disappear. It serves no purpose but to boil up the "hot ink" in which the author writes the remainder. Again, though throughout this and the succeeding sections much is whispered about Jewish Cabbalism, as incarnated in Rabbi Gabriel, Siiss's uncle, it would be impossible to conceive a milder magician. Rabbi Gabriel Moons about glaciers and other remote places, with his passport correctly filled up, and though it is hinted that he is the Wandering Jew, he gives no taste of his quality, and the dismay with which he fills all who meet him is quite incomprehensible. As palmist, he correctlY tells Karl Alexander that he sees a Ducal crown in the lines of his hand, but that is the limit of his super-normal powers. For the rest he can do nothing but inspire his nephew with a dreamlike hallucination that he and the Duke and others are engaged hand-in-hand in a mystic dance which never material- izes. We suspect that the author meant to make something tremendous out of this Cabbalistic theme, so constantly intro- duced, but gave it up. But he keeps whipping the faltering top, which never truly hums, and he would have done better to let it die, for it has no reactions.
Similarly we suspect that the surprise he springs on Siiss (and on us) by the revelation that he is no Jew at all, but the
high-born German son of Field-Marshal Georg Eberhaal Heydersdorff, succinetly-described as "a- bloody; calamitom, fatal name," was an after-thought of the author's, and a most
ill-inspired one. For the whole idea on which the book hangs is the internecine strife between Jew and Gentile,, in which Siiss is young David against Goliath-Germany, and thus llie blood-call of his race, subtly and splendidly shown in bk. -rescue of Seligman, becomes an ircrniCal jest.' ITC is no son of his reputed father, and knows it, and in his fall all he had to d) to deliver himself from his tortured imprisonment and the fate of being strangled in the great bird-cage hoisted on the gallows was to make this fact known to Regent Rudolf, sup- porting it by the documentary proofs he possessed. As a Gentile he would have been Joseph indeed, ruler again of the land which had hitherto been Egypt to him.
The book is crowded with characters all etched in with biting precision, and most (after the opening -irrelevant chronicle)
contributing to the central idea. But it is in no sense a huge canvas presenting one picture : it is rather a picture-book over the pages of which the reader turns with engrossed interest. Many of the portraits have no more than a caption to say who they are, but they are all by Aubrey Beardsley, evil and exquisite designs, with dwarfs and monsters and gentlemen with cloven hoofs secretly smiling or scowling, and looking a little outside the margin of the. sheet, and in the centre of each scene are the two or three main figures, inhuman and goitred like the gods of Wagner's " Wallialla," sweeping along in their lustful destinies.
Like Wagner, too, the author employs kit-motif in heralding them, but his kit-motif often degenerates into a mere label, as
we read of Karl Alexander's hands, long and bony at the back, fleshy and plump in the palm, of Landauer's side-curls, of Duchess Marie Auguste's face, the colour of old and noble
marble, and her lizard-like eyes, of the three sacred furrows on Rabbi Gabriel's forehead. This becomes tiresome they arc all individualized without this endless repetition.
The English translation, by Willa and Edwin Muir, of thi! amazing book is a remarkable feat : like Carlyle they u English as a medium for writing in German. Never does it read like a book written in English : it is in turn ejaculatory, involved and lucid, and proves itself an admirable vehicle for the conveyance of an essentially German story. The reader is never at home in it, but he is never lost : the road on which he travels through the grim nightmare country is smooth and well-drained, and he has no fear of a stumble. Whether the spirit of the whole is merely ironical, contemptuously laughing at the jerkings and postures of its evil puppets, or merely detached, or possibly propagandist, matters not at all- The effect alone concerns us, and we find ourselves in the grip of power from Which we cannot escape till with mingled relid
and regret the last page is turned. E. F. BEN
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