PETER BURRA

The Myrtle Tree. By R. G. Goodyear.- (Boriswood. 7s. -6d.) Flowering Nettle. By Harry Martinson. ,Translated by Naomi

WaHord. (The Cresiet Press. 7s. fid.). .

The Brothers Ashkenazi. By I. 'J. Singer. Translated by Maurice Samuel. (Putnam. Ss. 6d.) Whiteoak Harvest. By Mazo de la Roche. (Macmillan. 7s. 6d.) Two apparently independent influences have combined in

providing the novelist of today with similar-.and related techniques for organising his new picture of life. If Psychology gave him the stream of consciousness, the Cinema gave hini.a corresponding streaming version of the active waking world.

Any novelist at all sensitive to the contemporary mood must, for better or worse, have accepted something from one or other of them. The Myrtle Tree is rooted in both.

It is a study of the workings of love, which is symbolised in the title,' and attempts to reach some general conclusions by displaying its manifestations in a. few small groups of individuals—normal, pervert, egoistical, and mystical. Each group provides its separate story. These are lucid and sug- gestive, and though they are presented as a film sequence without strict continuity, the links between them are skilfully made, and the book shows a unity of action as well as of

theme. A psychiatrist interviewing " cases " in a laboratory offers the only explicit answer to the problems which are raised, and the answer seems to be one of utility. You will

conic to desire love, he says to a patient, "when you find that it pays." A vicious circle ; but in moving round it we come upon some remote aspects of the phenomenon that are very subtly and sympathetically noticed.

Flowering Nettle is .another book which could not have been written without-the assistance of psychology. It is a slow-motion study of a boy's childhood, and the author has plaeetall hisiekutilically and imaginatively deduced evidences of effird:Gelfaviour in a_ single 4oy. This boy lives a separate story of his own, but is sufficiently generalised to -typify the whole suffering and passion of boyhood. In order that his

feelings may be subjected to as little artificial concealnient as possible, that is to say, in order that the analysis may appear in the natural process of his living, he is presented as a charity-. child of cornplete misfortunes. He is supported by the-parish. in three hard peasant homes, and, after running away from • the last of these, in a poor-house. 'The book ends with profound irony in the height of summer, with Martin, in the first moments

of happiness he has known,..pieeing.together his fragmentary realisations of beauty and love 'in- to some kind of meaning.: But for the climax lie is brought face tO.face not with perfect Jove, but death. This co'nclifilon is of unquestionable power, but the rest seems to be too deliberately .arranged, to suffer, in fact, by having, for its hero a creature.;_who is rather a receptacle for the findings of a psychologist than one who Jives from within-himself. . As 'O. Stti'dy- of childish fear and

guilt-complexes, of loneliness and group-instincts, of the child's suggestibility and God-obsessions, 'the book could not be more profound, and the story offers 'some striking scenes. But it is told so close to the object that it moves too slowly from point to point, though perhaps its want of

continuity is _another reflection of he .child's mind. The Swedish scenes , will, attract foreig,u readers by their unfamiliarity, .

In spite of the new freedom. and knowledge-which it gives, rsyehology, as these two books show, May itself .be a kind_of repression to the novelist as artist. With, their self-conscious dgliberatme* and tendentious selectiveness such books seem, h..). the side of one like The Brothers Ashkenazi, to be lacking in something very important, to have been sothehow -emascu-

lated by their very virtues. -This vast novel .enjoys all the freedom of thought and manner which modern techniques confer, but retains the sweep and luxury of the nineteenth- century tradition, without any of the pretentiousness which generally aceompanies modern attempts at its revival. Trans-

lated from the Yiddish, it is a disarmingly objeetive picture of Jews by a Jew. An interesting comparison could doubtless be made with Sholem Asch's The Calf of Paper which. Mr. Homer was renewing here- last week. Much of 'What.' he wrote might here be transcribed Word fOr---YrOid: I should

add, though, that:The Brothers Ashkenazi has made a far deeper impression on use than. did Asch's Three Cities.

The scene of the 'story is the industrial city of Lodz in Poland, and it covers.more _than. half .0. century of.the town's history, from' the beginnings of its prosperity to its collapse, in the inflation. Mr. Singer handles his long narrative, and

all its personal, political, racial,'-and religious Complications, with wonderful clarity and control ; and on no question either of politics, race or creed,- could one possibly accuse him of having any axes to grind. He is interested only to show the inexorability of a life- in which One ,element alone persistently triumphs whatever attempts may be made to change its...coarsenan..nature. What the book lacks is any poetic or 'prophetic -tone in the .telling—such as would lift it to the, level of.,true greatness:--until, the last episode between 'the two brothers; where the persbital and heroic motive dominates in scenes that are a magnificent and surprising ciihiiinaticiri to 'it ail. 'The brothers • ASlikenazi are Tthe twin -sons of a rich merchant • and -strictlk., pious adherent of the Chnsidie. tradition 1Sfa, the -*lei, a pre- cocionsly brilliant child, develops into a creature of limitless greed and ambitions, for the furtherance of which he blinds himself to all other values. Jacob, the younger, despised in childhood for his want of talents, is more than compensated by his charm and good looks and utterly careless of every- thing but the advantages which these' bring him. All Max-s pride in his own achievement is poisoned by knowing that

his brother "was getting the best Of everything, not by merit, but by the 'blind, stupid luck .which had made him tall, handsome and beloved." These two characters develop,

and folio* their separate stories with a most life-likesine, while the implacable tread of history is heard accompanying._,

them. Mr. Singer vine* suggests, in the book's first stages, the rule of Money as the sole desirable good, and he brings in the new note of social revolt—at first barely heard, at last overwhelming—with a musician's skill. The real hero of the book is the young Jew, Nissan, in whom the workers' movement is represented. Mr. Singer's picture, by virtue of its completeness and certainly not because of any ten- dency, compels one to accept his estimate of the situation:

"There was only one class which took no part in this lunatie,hunt for quick riches, one class which went on grinding steadily at ifs task, the only class in touch with ultimate reality, with substafice destined for 113Q. This was the class of the workers. On their shoulders rested the platform on which the - otheis danced _the frenzied dance of unmerited and unearned profits."

But the end is no triumph for Nissan. We part from him as he is driven out of the Constituent Assembly by the die-

tatorship of the Soviets, ." broken, humiliated,- astounded.'" For Mr: 8inger "sees all round everything, and knows 'low every attempt of man- to- be greater than his nature .collapses in hysteria. The end. of the book is genuine tragedy, when Jacob rescues Max from a Petrograd prison only to lose his own life.as he crosses.back over the new Polish bJrder for the cause of being a Jew.

Miss de la Roche's family chronicles, which would ordinarily possess a certain grandeur, seem to be sadly limited and con- strained in their scope after this. The authoress has taken nothing either from the cinema or from psychology. Doubtless her colonial setting is responsible for her marked lack of interest in contemporary modes—and responsible too kr the freshness of the charm and vigour of her actors. But she is incomparably better at complicating her Plot than at resolving it. The • various motives that Prompt a wife to

lave her husband and a young man to retire into a monastery are well explained. But there the story pauses, and time passes ; and it is left to time to achieve what the writer has not the skill to 'discover—a reason -for the return of the wife

to the husband, and the young man out of his monastery. The conclusion is altogether much too tidy. The sick are healed, lovers are reunited, couples join hands, and even the elderly members of the cast manage to pair off and come before the curtain, with all the gay, fulsome and improbable satisfaction of a. musical comedy's grand-finale.