Fiction
BY GRAMM( GREENE-
Short Stories. By Per Hallstram. (Cape, 7s. 6d.) - Rubber. By Madelon H. Lulofs. (Cassell. , 7s. 6c1.)
" SATURATION " has always been recognized as one of the most important qualities of realistic fiction ; one remembers Zola
with his notebook promenading Les Halles, Bennett exploring the Savoy, noting rather vaguely in the power station : " Artesian wells. Geared , turbines. , Power . for carpet sweepers; pumping, &c., &c.; Ventilated by vast draughts of cold air through trumpet-like things." There are always limits to a realist's " saturation," the mocking presence of what he has not understood. But one demands, too, a degree of saturation from the imaginative writer who has not set himself to describe in technical detail a mode of life, and though no " trumpet-like things " loOrri threateningly in the background, the saturation in mood, in a point of view, has More subtle dangers. The realistic. writer can swashbuekle among the machines, and only an engineer will note his mistakes, but the imaginative writer must maintain his mood, his outlook, and readers require no technical knowledge to condemn his failure.
Per Hallstrom, who was born in Sweden in 1866, and whose first book was published in 1891, is a short story writer who claims to be judged by the highest standards. This transla-
tion of some of his stories by Mr. F. J. Fielden is published for the Anglo-Swedish Literary Foundation and follows the translation of Strindberg's works. That is the kind of company he is intended to keep.. It is unforttinate that the book opens with an early story- 'which laihentably fails in saturation. It is like a cloth badly dyed, here and there the old colour shows, here aridZiheie the new : first a strain of sentimental rural idealism, the pregnant farm girl keeping her flocks through a lazy summer alone on an out-farm, com- municating with her lover on the other side of the valley through a great horn (apparently the ...words carried more easily when spoCen 'a diaturfaing whin, icality). last a sudden outbreak of violence, a rape by drunken charcoal burners. She cries for help through the horn, while the men crash through the bushes behind her, and the need at that moment of finding ihYmes `to make' her wordi carry has a purely comic effect. There has been no preparation for this sudden, violent intrusion, no undertone of warning; the story has not been saturated.in a mood. But this criticism does not apply to the later stories. These are so closely constructed that one cannot see a crack into which time and changing fashion can drive a wedge. The Characters are all touched by the closeness of death ; annihilation lends significance to a night at a Swiss inn (the husband, just saved from death, pencils; " 3 aiii-happSr," on the woodwork of-the window) ; to the funeral of a charcoal burner ; to two children playing together for the first: and last- time The stories are united by the same sense of the soul " conscious of its existence as something more than a dark, uneasy Imagine! of wavering 'happiness, Of love lender rather than passionate. Occasionally one is reminded of. Ibsen, a less realistic and at the same time less crudely. symbolic Ibsen, without the " odour of spiritual paraffin "- which James remarked. The eharcOal burner's funeral recalls in its bare dignity of phrase the funeral in Peer :Gynt, and when the toys of the -two children, friends for a day, who ha:ve died of diplitheett, are burnt ih- the garden, one remembers The Master Builder. Rubber is a study of life on the -Dutch plantations in Sumatra ; its saturation is that of a particular environment, a particular mode of life, and is safe-frOni criticism by anyone unacquainted with. rubber-groWing. "'One "begins by fearing a Dutch White Cargo, full of drink and native women and native words, harsh and superficial ;. but surprisingly -this novel proves to have Undertones f it is imaginatiVe as well as realistic ; ,it has its saturation of mood as well. as of environment, the mood of those who leave Holland with the one intention of earning enough money- during the -lubber boom to come back and live at home and who find when they return on leave that they have lost touch, that they don't want to stay, that they are only happy planting rubber. Then the • world ceases to want rubber in such qUaniitY -anti-their ertiployment comes to an end. They have been spoilt by.the.big bonuses and the parochial luxury of " the Club'," thy, halm no interests at home, they are left withOut 'direCtion. But the chief triumph of this bOok is not the treatment, of the theme, which' is sometimes melo. diarnatic, but the study of a husband and wife beautifully m accord. It is the - hardest thing in the world to describe andel:Standing,. to express without sentimentality the degree of tenderness pOssible in human relationships ; I do not think it has :Ofted-btion better done' than here.
Miss - ThomPson -and - Mrs:- Trefusis have -tried- -to saturate their novels With the sense of period. Miss._ Thompson follows a family's fortunes' from '1714 to 1982, Mrs.' Trefusis from:1892 to 'sonic :vaguely,
future :date. Miss Thompson's
fiction is simply an excuse for a slice of social history ; the attempt., to draw Chatseter is pitiably ineffective, and a little bad fiction does aot, make a' little 'bad history more palatable;
" Londrin was very gay iri:1857, when Emily's second son wen
born: Louis :Napoleon-. Eug4nie were: in England again that year and- Emily caught a glimpse of thorn' in the • Isle of Wight where she was convaleseing. Though there were alarming rumours in India, England was far' more interested in young Princess Vicky's betrothal and wedding."
Miss • Tlininpioie- =historical storical writing . has the elephantine
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eoquetry of a gossip _column. Her this for inter- preting the past is very doubtful; this is her interpretation of the present : " Joan and her friends had the strangest., most upsetting, outlook ; they said that skyscrapers were more beautiful than Gothic cathedrala. . . that Epstein was a finer sculptor than Phidias; that Lk R.. Lawrence Was a greater genius than Shakespeare —and who read poor old Bill anyway t " Mrs. Trefusis is :far, far better than this. She does convey period atmosphere in a prose rather consciously spangled with felicities. One wonders why an English novelist should write about s family of Greeks in France, why nearly all the characters should have titles (sometimes spelt in the English way, sometimes in the -French), and her introduction of real people is as maladroit as Miss Thompson's : it is impossible to believe in a party to whiCh Robert d'Humieres, Henri Bataille, Edmund de Polignac, Proust,-Debussy and Message! have all accepted invitations: Tandem is completely formless ; its theme, the motive for writing.it:- [(indiscernible, but it has wit and is easily read: - Mr. Bryan Guinness's first novel is very amusing, very shapely, beautifully tin:Arab:led. I find mySelf again and again admiring its quality of neatness. He describes the courtship, the marriage, and the divorce of-a completely com- monplace couple.- 'Their mutual career, from its start on the seat aboikee Boscombe Pier, is so maliciously "-average" that I was sorry for the one stroke of individuality,' Arthur's sudden success-as the composer- of a popular song. Gently but remorselessly, Mr. Guinness describes the fate of thousands ; nowhere can one Point to an unfair ' exaggera- tion. There are intrusions of verbal brilliance; the author's wit is shown in the careful choice of incident, the very-refusal-to comment. the background-of the furniture adVertiSemerita ; this is the-life, loVe and -suffering of that, appalling *couple Mr. and birs. Everyman ; it is very true and very funny and a little tragic.
One is apt to forget the existence of the adventure story al a serious genre. Knight Without Ariiiitur belongs to the same category as kidnapped, Carrion, Clementina, thOse high• handed, quixotic, improbable romances; excitement is the only object ; there is no moral; no thenie, things simply happen. An Englishman becomes a member of the Secret Service in Russia, loses his English identity; is exiled to Siberia by the Czar's secret police, becomes Bolshevik - commissar, and tries to save a beautiful countess front the hands of the Soviet. Love, Danger, Death,: these are 'riot the newest of captions, not the easiest withwhich to excite ; but Mr. Hilton .writes sto'reaSoriablY;he 'is s6 nil:elicited, that his incredible . story hia_the air of a plain, statement of fact. , One should not minimize this kind of achievement ; there is something of Defoe in the Melted.
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