Fiction
Many Worlds
78. 6(1.) Berlin. By Heinrich Mann. (Gollancz. 7s. 6(1.)
Is there a more various form of literature than the novel ? Here is another social comedy from Mr. Booth Tarkington, written in his smoothest and most delicate manner. It is a pitiable little story, too ; for, though social comedy skirts over the emotions in the lightest way, there are certain tragic listances between people, and certain tragic stupidities, which are bound to underlie the humour. Young Mrs. Greeley has a husband ; a very able and intelligent young man, who has just been given an important post in his firm. He deserved it: he was the right 'man and the only man for the job. But Mrs. Greeley cannot allow that Bill got his rise all by his own work. It is a point of honour with her, almost. not to admire her husband. She gets it into her head, therefore— a very charming and beautiful head—that his success must be due to her influence with the head of the firm.
In this fantasy she is abetted by her neighbour, Aurelia. The two of them are very well aware that men inevitably take all the credit for themselves ; and, besides, Aurelia is jealous and discontented because her own husband has been passed over. So Young Mrs. Greeley is driven on, by her vanity and by her old friend's spitefulness, to behave in a most mysterious manner. She comes to her senses in the end, but it is a difficult journey for her, and, meanwhile, she has come near to imperilling her husband's relations with his employer and his staff. Poor Bill doesn't understand his wife's conduct at all ; but when he finds that no damage is done and his wife seems herself again, " Ah well," he says to. himself, " I guess I can get along without knowing every last thing about everything."
In Mr. Gielgud's new novel we have all the excitements of romance ; plenty of fighting, a hopeless love, one of the most cold and magnificent of sirens, Moscow burning, and the incomparable Napoleon. Is that insufficient ? We have also a beautiful girl, disguising herself in uniform and fighting as an officer in the Imperial Army ; a mad Russian nobleman, who hires old fencing-masters as his servants and kills them off, one a day ; the Sacred Flies, who are Napoleon's spies, sent ahead of the army into enemy country ; the retreat from Russia ; heroism and endurance ; bitter cold and starvation ; family pride and self-sacrifice ; and some- thing new and glorious happening in every chapter.
Mr. Gielgud has a very notable gift for historical romance. He writes in a style without self-consciousness ; not a subtle style at all, but a fluent, vivid, high-spirited style. It is as if he enjoyed himself, and had a story to tell, and didn't care any too much how he was telling it, because the next incident was always pressing on, urgently demanding its chance to appear. Where an author seems to be enjoying himself, it is probable that readers will enjoy themselves, too. This is an exhilarating and exciting narrative ; and the history it contains will prove completely useless to schoolboys.
There are German novels in plenty being translated into English ; and most of them are good, sound, steady-going pieces of work. The two books in our list are much more than this ; both of them are works of importance, and they should meet with an enthusiastic welcome. Herr Wassermann's long short stories " are especially brilliant ; three of them rather lurid in subject ; all of them written in a staccato manner, thunderous and tense, but free from overstatement.
The most considerable is " Golovin " ; and Herr Wasserman's faults and virtues are both fully revealed in it. His faults are easy to notice—a liking for the bizarre ; a too great simplification of motives ; a habit of repeating the effects of other writers. His talents are equally prominent, and chief of them all is his literary " tact " ; the beautifully fitting degree of his emphasis. There is heat in his stories ; we arc always on the verge of crisis ; but they are never hysterical or out of control.
" I learned how to write from Heinrich Mann," says Herr Feuchtwanger. Here are his words, right across the cover of Berlin. They may be a recommendation, since Heinrich Mann's reputation has been overshadowed by the fame of his brother, Thothas ; but, in fact, Herr Heinrich Mann has a greater genius than his brother, and a far greater genius than his disciple. Berlin is a social satire of exceptional bitter- ness and wit. It describes the rise to fame and prosperity of a young, conceited, unscrupulous, and hypocritical artiste manqué. He has a supreme ability for accepting patronage under the most disgusting conditions. His vanity allows him to accept his successes as if he deserved them by his talents. At last it leads him to humiliation and disaster. Meanwhile we have been introduced to a gallery of savage social por. traits ; a world of miserable intrigue and selfishness. The pessimism of the novel is redeemed by its wit ; and even the profiteers and the idiotic women hungry for distraction who are the tyrants of fashionable letters are seen more as
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