Fiction

Fevers of the Mind

Mysteries. By Knut Hamann. (Knopf. 7s. 6d.)

Blue Voyage. By Conrad Aiken. (Gerald Howe. 7s. 6d.)

East Side, West Side. By Felix Heisenberg. (Cape. 7s. 6d.) In Spacious Times. By Sir H. M. Imbert-Terry. (Bean. 7s. 6d.)

The Flower Show. By Denis Mackail. (Heinemann. 7s. 6d.) DURING the summer of 1891 a certain John Nagel took up his residence in a small Norwegian coast town. " A noteworthy and original charlatan," Mr. Hanisun calls him ; but, after all, such labels are too rigid to hold very much truth. His charlatanry- was bright and tragic, and not easily described.

It consisted mainly in the weaving of fantasies. Everything that happened to him he took as though it were invested with

a mythical aura. He spoke in dreams and fairy tales. In the middle of these ordinary, fat, solid townspeople lie was extravagant and wild. It is true that he had a deeper intuitive perception than his fellows. But the real demon that drove him was a desire to be odd, to be very strange and significant. lie flung out his fables in a pathetic attempt to rouse attention and gain sympathy ; but, of course, it was all such egotistic nonsense to those around him that he drove them still further away.

Meanwhile, under cover of his oddness, he was full of humanity. In all sorts of intricate ways he was helping out the unfortunate ; squandering his money to cheer them up. Once he saved a man from drowning, and was given a medal. He scratched out his name, and when the medal fell out of his pocket, he swore he had bought it second-hand from vanity, to persuade people he was a hero. If he did good, it had to be by stealth. If he did evil, he must be the first to make it public. He could well say, with the English poet, " I am myself my own fever and pain."

It is obvious that disaster would come if he fell in love. Ile fell in love with Dagna Kielland, a girl already engaged to be married. He fluttered and shone and twisted himself round in all conceivable ways to attract her notice. And in this he succeeded ; he managed to create a tense and fantastic situation between them. But where was the sincere feeling behind him ? Bewildered Dagna had no firm ground to stand on. She was a girl of honour and much goodness. Nagel seemed neither one thing nor another. He would not have her break her engagement, and still less would he leave her alone. In fact, we may suspect that his dearest wish was to find himself in an impasse ; that it was more to his taste to commit suicide for hopeless love than to love with the prospect of succeeding.

The tragedy of Mysteries," says the publisher, " is that individual entities are incommunicable ; and the last turn of the screw is that one can sometimes not even understand one's PIM deeper realities." But, Mr. Hamsun's study is more subtle ; it is the tale of a man who could not escape from the fever of his self-centredness ; who was demon-driven and had neither courage nor desire to break loose from his torment. The hero of Mr. Conrad Aiken's novel, Blue Voyage, has awne simffarity,to Nagel. William Demarest is a playwright and a poet who likes to doubt whether literature is of any value. He likes to torture himself with his conscience ; b

e likes to examine his motives and find them very shabby and

• isgraceful.- He indulges-in fantasies and analyses them at the ma,rne time. Demarest, too, desires to be singular ; but his Ilia internal tail-chasing is a kind of

" behaviour. He withdraws from the *odd by being cheerfully vulgar in appearance,; by taking on the mannehi • of his companions, and despising them and himself and tlio whole world because he behaves so Aockingly;

But Mr. Aiken is self-conscious himself. The story is very complexly and tentatively written ; and Mr. Aiken has not dissociated himself from his characters sufficiently to gis'e them roundness or objectivity. It is a novel of insight and scattered beauty. The picture of the life of passengers on an Atlantic liner is painfully vivid ; but we feel that Blue Voyage is too much of a subjective document.

In East Side, West Side, Mr. Heisenberg gives us the noiv familiar picture of' New York as a huge vortex of life. drawing men into its service, stamping them with its own sign ; superlatively great, unknowable, animistic god. This is his

theme ; he vivifies it with descriptions of life in the Bowery, the Ghetto and Fifth Avenue ; of social life, of boxing, engineering, politics and finance. It is a panegyric and denunciation of New York. We sec a civilization which leaves men to fight out their problems alone ; individualistically; without support, drawing only upon their own obstinate energy ; then taking them for its own uses and filling them with a ruthless enthusiasm for its own greatness.

Sir H. M. Imbert-Terry has a difficulty to meet which ha's

wrecked many authors. An Elizabethan novel demands an Elizabethan vocabulary ; but the richness and spontaneity of the old speech are hard to recover. He succeeds in this effort better than most of his precursors. Once the novel is in full swing we forget that the difficulty exists. In Spacioth Times is a jolly story of wicked priests and Papists, heroic Anglicans, and quite estimable Dissenters. The Inquisition pops into the story ; the Martin Mar-prelate controversy is in full swing ; Robin Greene and Tom Nashe drink, swear, and sing their well-known lyrics. Conspiracy is foiled, the !tern proves his mettle, the heroine puts her arms around his neck, and the rising sun " gives promise of the birth of a new and brighter day." Is this anachronistic ? Why, no ! Thu rising sun has been giving these promises for millenniums.

It is pleasant to turn from all this turmoil to the charming

backwater of existence which Mr. Maekail portrays in The Plower Show. Little John Hewell dodges his nurse and rides on the swings. Old John Hewell, in whose grounds the ShoW is held, looks fierce and tyrannical and melts to good nature towards the end of the day. Even the village Bolshevik is smoothed out in the general peace and enjoyment. Very astonishingly, the picture on the cover proves that the artist has read the book. It is full of the bright detail which Mr.