A NOVEL BY KIELLAND.*
So far as it is possible to pass judgment on the merits of a translation without comparison with the original, this seems to be a very creditable version of an original and interesting book. But in designating it a "novel," the translator, or whoever is responsible for the alternative title, has been guilty of a mis- nomer, if we are to adhere to the accepted significance of that somewhat elastic term. There is very little plot in Garman and Worse, and no distinct hero or heroine; it is rather a series of character-studies and quaint pictures of Norwegian bourgeois life. This disconnectedness gives it very much the appearance of an artist's sketch-book, in which the sights and many of the incidents of a tour are jotted down. The author undoubtedly possesses the gift of bringing up scenes and people vividly before the mind of the reader,—B0 vividly at times, that it is difficult to disabuse oneself of the notion that the char- acters described are photographs from life. But, on the other hand, he strikes us as wanting in that high imaginative faculty which enables a really creative mind to transmute its experiences, insteatl of merely reproducing them. It is as though he had recorded with the necessary omissions, exacted rather by con- siderations of space than dramatic or artistic fitness, a portion of the actual lives of a certain group of families. This is equivalent to saying that Garman and Worse is the work of a realist ; but happily Mr. Kielland, though he often pains his reader, stops short of disgusting him ; and if he is not reticent, at least refrains from expatiating on the gruesome themes he sometimes chooses to handle. If this book has any purpose, which is hard to tell from the singular self-effacement of the author, we should say that it was to illustrate the struggle between the old and the new views of life; and if it contains a moral, it is perhaps to be deduced from the moderate success which is achieved by Jacob Worse, who, with a fall conception of the complexity and difficulty of this struggle, found a simple remedy in unremitting devotion to his work as a merchant. The impartiality of the author is one of the most singular features of the book. It would be hard to say in which character, for instance, he takes most personal interest, unless it be the one we have just mentioned. But the portraiture is very lifelike. We feel as if we might any day en- counter in the flesh the soft and silkyDean Sparre, the impetuous but weak-minded young school inspector, Johnsen, and the acrid assistant-master, Aalbom. There is an amusing passage —for the author can be very amusing when he pleases—in which Mr. Aalbom's troubles in the wet weather are graphically described :— " But. the person who most of all anathematised the weather, and indeed the whole west coast and everything that belonged to it, was * Garman, and iliorsei.r a Norwegian Novel. By Alexander L. Kielland. Authorised Translation, by W. W. Kettlewell. London : Kogan Paul, Trench, and-Co.
our friend Mr. Aalbom. When he left his house in the morning the wind and rain would persist in beating in his face, and when he came out of school they were so obliging as to follow him right up again to his very door. When he had gone part of the way down the avenue, the wind managed to blow down on the top of his umbrella, which, after many struggles, it finally pressed down until his hat got jammed in among the ribs. Then all at once it began the same tactics from below, and blew up under the umbrella and between the master's long legs, filling out the closely-buttoned waterproof until it bid fair to blow it away altogether."
There is humour, too, in the following description of the per- formance of a local band at a public funeral. "The whole way from the church it had played incessantly an indescribable air, and it was only in the evening, when an account appeared in the papers, that the air was recognised as Chopin's Funeral March.'" The foregoing passage is characteristic of the method of the author, who has a curious fondness for mingling. grotesque. and pathetic incidents. Perhaps the most powerful chapter in the book is that in which Torpander, a journeyman printer, sets off in his best clothes to propose to the luckless Marianne Begmand :—
"He had • bought a coat for the occasion, not quite new,
it is true, but of a most unusual light-brown hue It was a
lovely sunshiny day, and the tall light.brown form went briskly on its way, moving its arms unconsciously, as if rehearsing the scene which was shortly to follow. In the left-hand pocket of his coat he had a silk handkerchief, which had long been his dream, of a bright orange-colour, with a light-blue border, and of which the corner was seen protruding from his pocket. It was not at all his intention to put the handkerchief to its legitimate use; for that purpose he had. a red cotton one, adorned with Abraham Lincoln's portrait. The silk handkerchief was to be used only for effect ; and every time he met any one in the avenue before whom he thought it worth while to show off—and that was nearly every passer-by—be drew the brilliant handkerchief from his pocketi raised it carefully to his face, and let it fall again. He derived the greatest satisfaction from feeling the rough surface of the silk cling to the hard skin on the inside of his hands."
The immediate sequel to this passage, and in cruelly abrupt contrast to it, is a death-bed seene, narrated with a grim and relentless simplicity that we have seldom seen surpassed. Poetic justice, where the weak are concerned, is absolutely non-existent for Mr. Kielland, and his characters are, in the main, so unsatis- factory or unfortunate, that one welcomes with a keen sense of relief the really charming descriptions of scenery which form the most attractive feature of his book. There is a powerful picture, also, of the fire in the building-yard, which causes the reader to feel quite an excited interest in the fate of the ship, on the safety of which so much depends. But on the other hand, there is a decided want of continuity and sustained interest throughout, and we find a difficulty in even retaining the names of the many incidental characters introduced. On the whole, one wonders why Garman and Worse is not a better book than it is ; and we venture to suggest that, with a little more finish, this unquestionably clever and vivid writer might produce a notable work. As it stands, Garman and Worse is a Norwegian setting of the theme of Peres et Enfants, and recalls in more ways than one the method of Tourgucinef. In an interesting criticism by M. Alphonse Daudet on the characteristics of Tourgoenef's works, he speaks of the Slavonic mist which seemed to brood over them. A similar mist or haze broods over this book of Kielland's, with the exception that it remains undispelled by any of the lightning- flashes of genius which from time to time illumine the pagesof the great Russian novelist.
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