A Novel in Verse
Each to the Other. By Christopher La Farge. (Jonathan Cape. 8s. 6d.)
THIS is the year's second poetic curiosity, and one even more eloquent of ambition and pertinacity on the part of its author than was The Family Reunion, for it is a novel in verse with double the scope and about ten times the length of that brave but stillborn experiment. The novel is the autobiography of Thomas Cottrell, from childhood to the death of his wife, with whom, during fifteen years of life together. he has built up what is presented as the perfect marriage. As a story much of the book—particularly the earlier part—is fascinating, its characters vivid and real, the experiences which it describes evocative and dramatic. As a novel it is not altogether satisfy- ing, because what is set forward as its crucial theme—Tom's marriage with Judith—so far from being probed more thoroughly, seems rather to be scamped by comparison with the earlier introductory themes. Judith herself is not brought to life so vividly as the other women with whom Tom had been in love before he married her ; Tom, as a man, is not so vital and convincing as Tom the child. The book as a whole produces the impression that, despite what is said to be its aim, its author was himself more interested in his character's adolescence than in his maturity, for much of the earlier part is given over to leisurely incidents, telling in themselves, which have little to do with its development, and half the novel is done before Judith comes into the story at all : structurally, the book is top-heavy.
Admittedly, these are details which may not occur to many readers, who will find the narrative and dramatic interest of the book satisfying enough to atone for its lack of unity and defects of form. But a novel written in verse has necessarily a higher aim than one written in the novel's conventional medium ; its justification for being written in verse must be that it could not so effectively have been written in prose. Each to the Other has not this justification. Its merits— psychological honesty, a subject worth writing about, vivid depiction of characters and experiences—are merits equallY possible to novels written in prose, and ones which its medium must merely have made more difficult to realise. Of poetry— which is not an alternative title for verse, but a quality to which verse should aspire, and which may sometimes be found in prose—it is empty. Mr. La Farge writes verse very skil- fully, but he is not a poet, and one may permit oneself to doubt whether there is anything but the ability to write poetry which justifies the attempt to write a novel, in verse.
DEREK VERSCHOYLE
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