Fiction

BY HERBERT READ

In a Province is that rare phenomenon-7a novel with a purpose which is also a work of art. Since it is Mr. van der Post's first novel, this is a very remarkable achievement. It is true there are weaknesses in the construction : the first chapter seems to be an unnecessary clislocatien•of the time sequence, and introduces in unnecessary detail a character who has no place in the main narrative ; the passage of time is altogether a little clumsily conveyed. " Five years had gone by since he came to Port Benjamin, five years which are so little in time and so much in the life ofthe individual. Many changes had come about . . ."—the perfect novelist does not make such direct statements about time. Time in a novel, like children in drawing-rooms, should lie seen and not heard. I also detect, here and there, a slight note of sententiousness.

I mention these minor faults because I can then, with a better

conscience, be generous with my I think, during the five months in which I have been reviewing fiction, this is quite the best novel that has come my way. If not so perfect in form as one or two others, it:Makes up in what for the

moment I will vaguely call feeling: Mr. Van der Post is a Dutch South African, whose father fought against the English in the Boer War ; he himself was born and bred on the veld. The theme of his novel is the racial one that is bound to pre-. occupy a sensitive person with such antecedents and such background. The old imperialist hatreds of Boer and Britain have now sunk into insignificance-against the greater problem of white man and native. Mr. van der Post has presented this problem, as a novelist should, ni the terms of an individual consciousness. His hero, van Bredepoel, _whilst still_ a boy, is roughly shaken out of his priggishness and complacency by his tutor, a consumptive old Dutch professor, who points out to him the attractiveness of a native girl; and laughs at his conventional prejudices. From the youth spent on the veld van Bredepoel is thrown into the very different atmosphere of a large coastal town. Here, at a boarding-houSe, he 'finds a young native, Keiton, who has also just arrived from the country, to become a servant. • The happiness, the naivety, even his pagan traditions and integrity, combine to make this native a sympathetic figure, and van Bredepoel becomes very attached to him. Then we watch the gradual corruption of • the native by the civilization brought to Africa by the white

man. Since, as the author remarks generally, it often happens in the lives of people that a purely human interest immediately

creates a corresponding concentration in the field of ideas, van Bredepoel revolts against the general attitude towards the natives, and his syMpathy for them . brings him into contact with a communist agitator who is trying to organize the black workers. Kenon ends up in a prison, and, when released, drifts back to his.cOuntry home, thoroughly demoral- ized'. Meanwhile, van Brecielioel,•after a severe illness, LS sent up country for his health, and there he again finds Kenon, and presently the communist. At a demonstration of natives, violence is incited by a white -police agent, with the object of implicating the communist leader. There is a riot, during which Kenon is killed ; and in a Subsequent attempt to convey the communist to safety van Bredepoel himself is shot dead.

The scheme of the book, it will be seen, is not strikingly original ; it is a tragedy of an immemorial type. What raises it to a certain grandeur is the manner of relating it, and the strictly cathartic attitude of the author. - Mr. van der. Post's prose is always adequate to his theme, and at ' times extremely vivid, conveying the swiftness of action or

the actuality of atmosphere with great precision. But 1.1-good" writing of this kind is no more than good reporting, and though good reporting is not to be despised, by itself

-it an only give a novel bright surface, and not depth. This

other .quality can only come from something I will venture to call humanity, a word I use conscious that on one side stands humanism, on the other humanitarianism. Humanism and humanitarianism are doctrinaire attitudes—one. historical, the other contemporary—and art is not compatible with the

doctrinaire. Mr. van der Post's novel is a timely document, for on a great question, full of import to millions of men, he shows, and I think shows convincingly, that the attitude of the artist (including the poet and the novelist) cannot be doctrinaire. But his attitude is not one of arid detachment.

It is an attitude of charity or sympathy that comprehends the polarities In human nature. After the riot, whilst in hiding, van Bredepoel turns. an the communist whom he is rescuing and in a few. very moving pages the attitude he has instinctively adopted finds at last its philosophic expression :

. " You are always beating your wings against the system. I'm sick of hearing about the system. - The system is only an approxi- niation, a reflection of the rulaf- that govern the little acts of each one of us. Only it's an. approximation so big that, if you place all the emphasis on the individual loses the sense of the respensibility- for his little share in it. It seems to me fatal. The starting:. and finishing-point is in the heart of each man. . . . If we try to look farther than the life that is in -us, it merely lands us in confusion, in a vagtie: speculation that is only too easy since the reality that must qualify it does not yet exist. . . Baal one must take heed for himself, and the system will in the end take heed for itself. If the system perpetuates a colour-prejudice, we . can. counteract it ,hy refusing to admit a colour-prejudice in 'our 'own lives, we can live as if no colour-prejudice existed. If we are too rich we can counteract riches by leading a simple life 'and helping the poor. .1 am -tired of people who still point me to a- cross at Palestine, 'tired of people who are always telling me to keep niy eyes on the horizon, looking for a justice which never comes. It is not justice I need, but forgiveness. Never again shall I reject, or not recognize affection offered me, but take it arid go bit alone with my love."

In a World paralysed between the extremes of marxism and-fascism, which are inhtunan doctrines, this book puts forward a point of view that imposes the burden of revolution on the individual rather than the state, and this point of view is of the -greatest importance if we are to preserve the liberty of the spirit and all that such a phrase denotes in art and literature.

From such considerations, it is interesting to turn to the work of one of the most brilliant of the younger writers of Soviet Russia. Panteleimon Romanof's novel, Three Pairs

• of Silk Stockings, which was translated two or three years

ago, was very remarkable, and I know of no single book which gives such a convincing insight into the conditions of life of ordinary 'people in the'Soviet state.- The short stories now published are equally good and revealing. I dare assert that Romanof is as good a writer as Chekov. . These short stories are perfect in form and feeling, and it is some con- solation to find that for a time at least a poet can preserve

his humanity under communism. I will not refer to these Stories in detail, but at the end of the book appear three articles by Romanof describing the Soviet Ford factory, the Molotov Automobile factory, and a new socialist city which has been built to house the workers in these factories. 1-tomanof frankly confesses his difficulties " Can one fnid vivid words.in which to speak of stone and iron, such words 'as came. to one in the atmosphere of the forest ? Art is here weaker than 'reality. Anyone looking at those material objects can grasp their meaning without the aid of art . . the artist, wishing to make them a part of himself, knows from the outset that a photograph would be more effective than his art.... But this mood persists only:until the moment when he realizes that it is not to give a deseaption of- the visible, objects that his art is required, but to reveal the invisible in them."

Romanof will try to find a new poetry, a positive. poetry, in this new .world, and perhaps he will succeed. But only

• if somehow he preserves its essential humanity. There are certain legitimate art• forms (in music and painting) that are

essentially abstract ; but- the novel and the short story is written round the lives of Men and women; and only becomes inhuman by renouncing its proper function.-- -- Ivan Bunin was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1933. The Ilogarth Press has therefoA reissued the excellent translation of four. of hiS stories which appeared twelve, years ago.

There is no indication of when they were originally written.

They are 'very 'effective; of the Jack-in-the-box type ; - that is to• say, ran elaborate deacription. or iirepiration leads up to a sudden surprise. Romanof is more direct, more eco- nomical, more universal in his sympathies. Bunin is a good writer, but Rothanof promises to be a better one.