Fiction
Joseph the Provider. By Thomas Mann, translated by H. T. Lowe- vorter. (Secker and Warburg. 15s.)
Now With the Morning Star. By Thomas Kernan- (John Lane. 7s. 6d.)
JOSEPH THE PROVIDER is the last part of Thomas Mann's interpre- tation of the favourite story of Joseph and his brethren. The Bible version is vivid and moving, but economic of explanation. It has been Mann's work to fill the story to the proportions of a long novel, partly with a novelist's skill in the comprehension of human nature, but also with a scholar's knowledge of the histories and religious philosophies of ancient peoples. A principal example of this double art is his explanation of the elevation of Joseph by Pharaoh. No further reason is given in the Bible than the pleasure and wonder of Pharaoh at the interpretation of his dream. Thomas Mann looks beyond this statement. The bare interpretation of the dream was not enough: there must have been, so he argues, something peculiarly impressive in Joseph's manner of doing it. Now the Pharaoh before whom he stood was that famous Ikhnaton, the heretic, whose re- ligious philosophy. sought a Cause beyond the accepted cause, a Cause behind the gold disc of the sun. Two unusual men were therefore facing each other—Joseph, the son of Jacob, subtle by heredity, reared in the knowledge of God, convinced of his own appointed destiny, and Pharaoh, the new recipient of divine revela- tions, eager to expound them to a man of immediate understanding. For all Pharaoh's thought Joseph has unexpected parallels in the religious experience of his ancestors, and Pharaoh is delighted not merely with his art as an interpreter of dreams but with his wisdom as an interpreter of the Deity. It is a part of the author's purpose, in short, to remark the continuity of religious speculation, no trace the development of the knowledge of God, to link the revelation of Abraham with the revelation of Pharaoh, and the religion of Egypt with the religion of Jesus.
It is an excellent point, but a little too strongly underlined. On several occasions Pharaoh is made to anticipate the actual words of Jesus. When he coins his phrase " My Father, who art in heaven" to describe his Cause beyond and above the sun, the effect is im- pressive, and the use justified: but when it comes to "Pharaoh teaches you to worship him in spirit and in truth," " For the son knoweth the Father . . . and will royally reward all those who love him and keep his commandments," and " My words are not mine but the words of my Father who sent me "—the picture is disturbed. The figure of the great king fades, and the reader catches sight for a moment of the author, labouring to make his point clear even to the dullest of his customers. The general argument, however, is incon- testably good. The author is making use of natural, historical, and religious truths to explain a relationship between two men, which, without some explanation, is indeed incomprehensible. Joseph was a slave and a convict. Pharaoh must have found more in him than the 'gift of second sight ; and, for his part, we may be certain that the son of Jacob would not have failed to equal the occasion. Thomas Mann's is a well argued, strongly convincing version of the story. .The Egyptian background is fresh and clear and some of the scenes—notably the recognition scene—are deeply impressive. But it is not an easy book. It pre-supposes in the reader an under. standing of much religious argument, while the author's tendency to treat the whole work as an historical essay detracts at times from its liveliness.
A historical novel set some thousands of years nearer to our own day is S. Golubov's piCture of the campaign of 1812, No Easy Victories. Novels have been written before now without a hero. This is a novel without any principal characters at all, or alternatively it is a novel in which all the characters are equally principals. In this account of Russia's defence against Napoleon the reader is intro- duced to scores of characters, all of whom have their places in the book solely as persons connected with the fighting. None are related to the rest in any kind of general design. Each is related only to the military situation. There is no main story standing against the background of the campaign. The campaign itself is the main and only story. It is as though one were to read War and Peace without Paul, Prince Andrew, and the Rostovs. There is no focus. The unbroken description of the campaign is remarkably clear and very well sustained, but the reader's interest is divided and his sympathies dissipated among the many small and equal claimants on his atten- tion.
Now with the Morning Star is the story of Brother Nicholas, a Cistercian monk, cast on the mercies of the Nazi world at the sup- pression of the monastery of Maria-Morgenstern in 1938—a great opportunity, you might suppose, for devising a romantic adventure. Thomas Kernan has chosen to tell the experiences of Brother Nicholas as a completely • straight anecdote, eschewing sub-plots, twists, and complications, and recording the adventure just as it happened from the point of understanding of Brother Nicholas. This 9. and this and this happened: we see it through the mind of the monk, hardly at all through the minds of the people working against him. The result is a tale which lacks the high excitement of an adventure story, but is curiously authentic as the record of a true experience. It has precisely the cold thrill of those true storie which were brought out of Germany before 1940. It would be a dis-service to the 'reader to tell the end of Brother Nicholas's story. It is unexpected, and will be particularly so to those who are awaiting the familiar moves of the routine adventure novel. Many people will enjoy Now with the Morning Star: it is an unusual book, and its clear and simple story is matched with a clear and simple style. V. C. CLINTON-BADDELEY.
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