Etctiori

By PETER BURRA

• Novel on Yellow Paper. By Stevie Smith. (Cape. -1s. 6c1.).

THE artist is always the enemy of his enviiOnmen1,-* is even conventionally accepted as such. It iriay :only .be a

particular aspect of that truth, but it is a teirible (hie; that appears in the following criticism levelled at pis own 'cofirrtry by•an exiled writer. He allows it to be spoken "through the mouth of a foreign critic, and attempts a bold answer to it, but it is too like the truth.

" Everyone knows that no country is so little'represented by its elite as Germany. The German. elite have always had to: .live (Velma Germany, never with it ; they have never had any influence upon their country, and have good reason for hating it. Klaus Mann, like his father, Thomas Mann; lives'iro longer

in Germany, but Journey into Freedom is frOrn being a hitter denunciation of the circumstances thatlinveifinde him an exile. The issue is not politics, but the- psychological effects of them, and the actors are persons, ,_not masses. There is on the surface of this book so much that is obviously attractive—a moving love story; its unfamiliar setting, and its link with urgent topical problems—that its profounder interests may easily pass unnoticed.

JOan, a young German girl and active anti-Nazi, arrives in Finland, after her escape from the horror of the revolution, to visit a friend, on the way to joining exiled confederates

in Paris. Between Karin and Joan there.-is an intense

femininie friendship, which, after a year's interval, is noiv_ to be renewed. Karin is the daughter of landed gentry. Her two brothers are extreme opposites. Jens, the younger, a Germanophile who hopefully expects Fascism in his own Country, is vain, unimaginative, tactless, slick and efficient.

Ragnar the elder, blaming the conditions of the time for his failure to lave their waning fortunes, is tempestuous and neurotic, honest and liberal. They are precariotisly held together by a mother who represents the old order in its struggle for survival ; but all her pretences of family worth and honour are brought to nothing in Joan's eyes by a skeleton in the cupboard, an imbecile old mother-in-law who is kept out .of the way upstairs. There is also a cousin, known as Madame Yvonne, abandoned and cosmopolitan ; and a brainless Fraillein Suse; who thinks the Nazis wonderful. This extremely economical cast earnest.* life at once because each member of it compactly represents a set of .ideas ; and they move naturally and significantly in a story where the strength of the ideas they stand for is to be tested. Ragnar and Jens quarrel inevitably with Joan's exile as the theme. Joan and Ragnar fall desperately in love, but the affair, each knows in secret, is hopeless from the start. Ragnar is predestined to marry money and save the family. Joan's friends are waiting impatiently for her in Paris. And even while she dallies in her love a telegram arrives that Bruno, her former friend, has been shot in Cologne, on a crazy expedition over the border. The struggle to compare the value of their love with these other values makes an exciting clirnaxrto the book. " Martyrdom," pleads Ragnar, " proves nothing." All that is so abstract, so unreal, in the light of the here and now. But Joan, in spite of knowing that all her ideals may still be illusions, clings to them, because, she knows, 'today we are hound to make a choice. We can only refuse to choose by turning our backs on life. Besides, for all her love of him, she sees by the light of her ideals just how much Ragnar is worth. . •

The action is-uncomplicated ; there is; no overcrowding, no

waste, and one comes to realise that nearly every sentence, however unobtrusively, hue a point to make. The pictures of the Finnish landscape are good and create a vivid impression .of an unfamiliar scene. There is perhaps a reservation to be made about the transkition---4entatively, since it may be quite wrong. But the book reads to me, in its style, as if it was the work of a woman ; whereas that can hardly be so of the original. It would be a good. rule that all translators should be of the same sex as the author of a work. Star Turn. By Rene Clair. Translated by John Marks. (Chatto and Windus. 7s. Bd.)

There Can be no doubt about Mr. John Marls being the right translator of Star Turn. The first tkingto be noticed nbout the boolitis _that it was written. eleven .years- to ; --that is to say, that M. Clair cameto the films from literature and not vice versa. At-that time, he sayg, in a preface.whiCh apologises for the book, both as youthful and as a period piece heavily dated Paris, 1925—at that time he was as yet imper- fectly acquainted with"the cinematographic setting in which by chance or predestination the story is laid. That story develops from an idea -which is certainly as witty in itself as any of his films. Cecil Adams is the world's most famous film-star, but is unhappily afflicted with a mental disease. At any moment he may become: exclusively, dominated by the personality of any one of- the seven great eharacters of his creation. M. Clair presents this, one notes, at the start as a perfectly probable mania ; later, fantasy takes control. The

seven characters are William of the Wild _ West ;. .Harold, master of speed and lover ; Dorian, the poet ; CharleS, diffident and poor ; Eric, amoral ; Antonio, a black-eyed

dancer ; and Jack, the comic. The -climax of the obsession occurs in Paris, when all seven get on the loose in turn. The fantasy is still in control and is handled superbly. The careers of Charles and Jack in love collide and a duel ensues. Jack is killed. Whereupon Adams makes a desperate bid to free himself of this tyranny; and hits on the-brilliantidch of making one last and greatest film, with himself in the title-role; as God. This is duly produced-at n cost exceeding that of the

World War. But from that point on, though the reading continues to be excessively funny, the fantasy disintegrate4, and is at moments scarcely intelligible.

Very marked throughout are such influences as Piraridello's1; but equally marked is the individual expression, Which one recognises unmistakably. Phrases—" The taxis' hoot?. with laughter "—and scenes—the introduction of the seven out of their posters hung round the office wall,transiate,t/rMi- selves at once into the visual world of Clair'S filins;-;;'What one misses here. from the films is the organisation and the clarity. Any drimatie iiieditini-denrandi a more immediate intelligibility and greater clarity than the written _word: Meanwhile, the wit of words is 'unfailing and Mr: John MarkS has co-operated brilliantly in his translation. - Perhaps it 1$ even better than the original.

Novel on Yellow Paper is apparently so called because the authoress typed it on yellow paper. What she typed might possibly be defined as young Joyce out of Anita Loos. At any rate, it is a bewildering mixture of perfectly fatuoui nonsense . . . " riding crops up and cropS take.-me' . . " Sir Phoebus is now away on holiday and has today sent me a large adubli-sized tin' of Harrogate -toffee.

that sort of thing about Sir Phoebus that makes him stand out head and shOulders above the ordinary run of baronet's . . . " with some disthnaflY good jokes, .-6.7:Wit diffuse, thinking, and a grand parade; 'of languages and literatures. One would be grateful, if ,for -nothing -else, to add the word Minorelizalietirismus to one's vocabulary..- But do the users of such splendid words alsolard their talk with " Phew-oops decries " and " Oh how f haVe enjoyed' sex," etc. ? One recognises in the lady features assembled from many faces into - a 'rather improbable mask; but she wears it well: She describes her " novel " as, ".The' talking voice that runs on and the thoughts that come, the- way I said, and the people come, too, and come and go, 5.7e." (cf. Miss Loos's heroine, whose gentleman friend told her "that if took a pencil and a paper and put down all of thy thoughts it would make a book " ; and the consequences). The trouble aboirt the " talking voice "pp paper is that-it invites from us the same casual attention which we give to con-

versation, but actually reqUires the most stream .. s' Concen

tration.to avoid losing the altogethe . Prospective readers will lie glad to knefv- that 'I can Write buly hs I can write only, and Does the road wind uphill all the way ? Yes, to the very end. But brace up, chaps, there's a

.60,000 word 'It is worth the effort.