Reviews of the Week
Tales from Portugal
Farrusco. By Miguel Torga. Translated by Denis Brass. (Allen & Unwin 15s.).
WE do not see enough contemporary Portuguese literature here ; this translation of a book of short sketches by the well-known Tras-os-Montes writer, Miguel Torga, is welcome both in itself and as an interesting example of Portuguese fiction. Mr. Brass's introduction is an illuminating inter- pretative comment on the stories ; presumably he is speaking for the author in suggesting that the animals (they are mostly animal stories) are meant for types of humanity, their situations for human predicaments. But those readers who prefer animal stories to be merely about animals can take them as such. They are touching and vivid and, in nearly every case, sad. Portuguese animals, one would gather, are unhappy. Or perhaps it is that the author dips into their lives at unfortunate moments : they are near death, they have been betrayed ; the faithful old dog lies dying, the emasculated cat slinks about in mortification, the mule is abandoned to wolves, the toad impaled by a cruel boy, the bull done to death by cruel men in the ring. The birds come off best; the raven, escaped from the ark, defies God's floods and lives, the blackbird gaily whistles his lies in the tree, the sparrow lives well like a spiv ; the rooster, however, is taken for the pot once his uses are over, and is ousted by his son.
The best sketch in the book is of Miura the bull ; the fight, vividly described, is an epitome of brutal tragedy. (It is, of course, a Spanish bull-fight, not the gentle Portuguese variety.) Here Senhor Torga uses a terse, vivid idiom, beautifully captured in his translator's English, to express the violent, agonising duel between man and beast, cheered and booed by a blood-lusting crowd, until the sword ends the bull's pain; a bull-fight from the bull's angle has never been so well described. In this story and in that of the faithful pointer Senhor Torga shows great imaginative sympathy and power ; in many others there are touches of beauty which remind us that the author is also a poet ; as, particularly, in the story of the friendship, formed in the moonlit country nights, between the old farmer and the toad, which has a quietly lyrical touch. The book is charmingly illustrated by Gregorio Prieto ; he and Mr. Brass have between them introduced Senhor Torga to us in elegant and graceful dress.
ROSE MACAULAY.
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