A HOLIDAY TASK.
Spring Sowing. By Liam O'Flaherty. (Cape. 7s. 6d.) Raw Material. By Dorothy Canfield. (Cape. 7s. 6d.) The Tents of Israel. By G. B. Stern. (Chapman & Hall. 7s. 6d.) I HAVE been tied down all the year by a sense of proportion, by the knowledge that I must strive to be just to every word and idea put forth by the authors I criticize. Now, this has been too much for frail human nature, which can keep its eye fixed on an abstract goal only at the risk of severe headache. I have had that headache, and for the moment I refuse. to take myself so seriously. I have read my one or two novels in just the same way that my neighbours on the seats along the parade have been reading their novels, purchased at the scent and handbag shops in the little fishing town behind us. It now remains for me to recall my impressions.
Liam O'Flaherty is a name that first attracted me some time 'ago as the subscription to a vivid and heartbreaking short story called " The Cow's Death," which appeared in the New Statesman. It was altogether different from the literary and artful short story which is characteristic of our English dealings with this difficult form. Yet it was not the product el' a rustic genius that had only to come to town to be swamped and spoiled. It was absolutely mature, with a terseness and cleanness of expression that could be obtained only by the expense of much wealth of concealment. Surely, I felt, if ever work was produced by conscientious care, this author has that power of passionate conscience in abundance. I felt that in these thousand or so words. the effort of an intense emotion, expressed fully yet economically, could be the result only of religious zeal. Now that I have read this collection of stories, which contains " The Cow's Death," I am more than ever convinced that the author is a zealot for perfect expression. What he has achieved in this book is remarkable, and I do not hesitate favourably to compare his work with.that of the most expert writers of the short story, such established names as Ambrose Bierce, Stephen Crane, Katherine Mansfield, Mr. Wells, and Mr. Hardy. FolloWing Synge in modern Irish literature, he should, with Mr. Joyce, give the quietus to the Celtic Twilight movement, whose lovely evening has been followed by such a depressing night.
He confines himself for subject-matter entirely to Irish life among the peasants, the animals, the fish, and the elements of earth, air and water. Even when writing of these last terrestrial powers he confines them, by the force of his native genius, to the locality of Irish villages and shores. But that confinement serves to accelerate their speed and earth- consuming rage, and they battle under this restriction all the more convincingly. Here is a description of some waves :—
" The waves came towering into the cove across both reefs
i confusedly, meeting midway in the cove, chasing one another, climbing over one another's backs, spitting savage columns of green and white water vertically, when their arched manes clashed. In one monstrous stride they crossed the flat rock. Then. with a yawning sound, they swelled up midway in the cliff. There was a mighty roar as they struck the cliff and rebounded. Then they sank again, dishevelled masses of green and white, hurrying back- ward. They rose and fell from' the bosom of the ocean, like the heavy breathing of a gluttonous giant."
There is no doubt that his realistic method owes much to the French masters in this kind, to whom he may have come through the George Moore of Esther Waters and The Mummer's Wife. But there is more of the sympathizer about him than there is in these masters, in whom the observer predominates. He has, therefore, much of Tchekov. But above all, I feel that he has a distinct quality in common with his own country- man, Oliver Goldsmith, whose lovable and inspired personality recurred again and again to me while I was reading these stories.
There are indications here and there in the book that the author is not yet out of his 'apprenticeship. I am not quite convinced that his self-expression is to be through this realistic method, especially if he forces it too far towards its French and American sources. I receive at present the impression that
he is disciplining himself mercilessly, excising his own tempera- ment to the point of self-discouragement. There is a phrase recurring frequently in the book which betrays him. After some meticulous description, he will round it all off with a weary gesture by the phrase, " or something," as though he is chafing against his self-imposed task. There are, too, patches of misplaced detailed description, as when he points out minutiae of dress after he has set his characters in action. This holds up his movement, and gives his fine terse writing a tinge of short-winded garrulity. To put aside my quibblings, I can only pay my homage to his sanity, his profound love and pity for mortal, beast: stones, trees, and all things static and moving, that make the setting for, and furnish the actors in, this coastal and rustic life of Ireland.
As her title may imply, Miss Canfield in her new book has invited her readers into the literary workshop, there to show them the blocks and planks of " real life " which the author would select to make up into the novel, according to the kind required. We see the finer grains, which would respond tob the delicate gouges and fine chisels of a Henry James. We see, also, the coarser fibres suitable for running up by machine tools for mass consumption. Miss Canfield has an object in this invitation. She wants her readers to go to their own experiences for their most constant enter- tainment, so that they can gain a first-hand criterion by which to judge the more seriously the work offered them by her and other novelists. I can do no better than to hand this book to my neighbour on the parade, who is devouring avidly a pile of shilling fiction which lies in her lap, while the gulls flash their white wings in the sun, and a , red-sailed barge goes by like an Egyptian queen—all unnoticed by the tired eyes beside me.
From the simplicity of Mr. O'Flaherty, and the genial esquisses of Miss Canfield, it is quite bewildering to plunge into the intricacies of Miss Stern's new novel, which can be compared only to an elaborate fantasia and four-part fugue. It is the history of a rich Jewish family, or rather tribe, whose enormous centripetal vitality overpowers the disintegrating effects of time and fortune. It is the story of a despotic matriarchy, whose foundations were laid in 1791 by an ancestress in Pressburg, and which spreads, through the increase of generations, to Constantinople, Vienna, Pads, London and Spain. The author brings family after family,. generation after generation, upon her stage, until the reader, is heartily thankful for the huge genealogical tree which she provides at the end of the book. Again and again I have spread this triple folded sheet—a perilous task on the windy, shore—and watched the names become characters, taking, shape and interest for me as the story has revealed the drama! of six generations of these super-civilized Jews. What! interests me so much is that these migrations here depicted so vividly are typical of those of the great European Jewish families of the nineteenth century. What executive genius, both in the financial and artistic worlds, arose in the Ghettos of the great imperial and guild cities' of Central Europe ! It arose and overflowed, infusing fresh life into the staling national systems of Europe, that still lumbered on with the obsolescent machinery of feudalism. These Jews were people of the town, at home in heavy and elaborate salons, which they filled with their gleanings from the cultures of the Gentiles. Wherever they settled, they added to their family treasuries of furniture, jewellery, tapestry and other fruits of the civilized senses ; so that in their drawing-rooms in London, Paris and other capitals, Baroque, Empire and Asiatic mingled in a lavish splendour that would be exotic in every State in Europe. But they brought, also, emanci- pating theories in politics, philosophy and art ; while lurking in their blood was always a strain of that sentimental, half- melancholy gaiety of the Vienna of the Empire, of Joseph Gurgl, Waldteufel, Schubert and J. Strauss. In their versatile emotionalism they brought novelties which they themselves hated. The music of Wagner, the anti-Semite, flowed along with them.
All this is the background of Miss Stern's story. Against it she shows the fierce struggle of the present generation to break away from the family despotism, and to immerse itself, by marriage and education, in the national life of the peoples amongst whom it has been born. The book is a brilliant intellectual achievement, and must appeal to all readers who
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