FICTION
MR. MOORE'S " ligLOISE "
Hdloise and Abdlard. By George Moore. (Heinemann. 10s. 6d. net.)
IT is not often that a reviewer turns the last page of a contem- porary novel and lays it slowly down with the conviction that the book is one of permanent interest. How often is it the reviewer's duty to pass judgment against new books with seeming querulousness, self-sufficiency and unkindness 1 In the case of Mr. George Moore's Haase and Abelard the problem is to restrain enthusiasm within reasonable bounds, not to exaggerate beauties while still under their influence. The tale of Abelard and Heloise is one of the world's great tragic love stories, and, as we all know but too well, nothing is easier ' than to mar a good tale in the telling. The tale must not be told by a sentimentalist or a positivist philosopher or a Freud- ian psychologist, but by an artist—and what novelist have we who is so essentially an artist as Mr. George Moore ? Others might tell the tale so that we should listen and pity and admire, but only Mr. Moore could compose with such skill, and force -the theme to yield such extraordinary beauties, so much humour and tragic pathos. Mr. Moore's romance is beautifully complete, like one of those smooth, rounded mirrors in old Flemish paintings which seem to hold a lost world suspended in their depths.
If we are seeking to check enthusiasm by alleging faults, it might be said that Mr. Moore takes rather too much pleasure in the risky anecdote and the risky detail for their own sake ;
that it was perhaps an error to give the parrot and hawk story from Jacques de Voragine and then to tell another -parrot- story of the lady of Rousillon and the Comte de Rode. bceuf (and is not the lady of Rousillon always linked with Guilhem de Cabestahn and the legend of the collo mange?), and that it is at least improbable that nine years should page before Hildise heard of her husband's mutilation. But these things are the merest trifles and affect neither the mastery of the story-telling nor the beautiful imagination which evokes so charming though romantic and ideal a vision of life in twelfth. century France. In the very first chapter Mr. Moore estab- lishes convincingly his artistic convention and sustains it triumphantly until the end. Among modern novelists only -Anatole France was capable of a similar triumph, and one is inclined to think (still under the spell of Mr. Moore's prose) that there is a greater depth of passion and a more poetic creativeness in Helolse and Abilard than in even Les Dieuz ant Soif. For other worthy comparisons among recent .novelists one looks in vain. Probably all readers are now temperamentally Hardy-ites or Moore-ites, and neither party can come to terms with the other ; to the Moore-ites Heloise and Abelard towers over Mr. Hardy's books quantum lentil ,solent inter viburna eupressi. To those impassioned for art, Mr. Moore's impeccable artistry is irresistible.
One marked feature of this novel is the skill with which surroundings are made to interpret the moods of the chief actors. The most striking example of this is the flight of the lovers from Paris to Brittany, during which the whole of their world seems transformed into an unforgettable beauty. This is perhaps the highest point touched in the book, at least in the evocation of natural beauty as a symbol of emotion. Maurice Hewlett attempted a rather similar effect in his Forest Lovers, but, however successful, his attempt seems mannered and ineffective in comparison with Mr. Moores. This. masterly description will become one of the classic examples in English novel-writing. The same method .is applied, though not so triumphantly, to the rapid awakening of
Heloise's dormant faculties in Paris, and to the long, weary _
years of waiting for news of Abelard in the Convent of Argen. teuid. Heloise, indeed, is the very centre of Mr. Moore's romance, the personality to which all is related and subor- dinated. His creation is certainly the most satisfying Heloise we have yet been given. Without any mawkish and false ideals of " womanliness," but also without any of the cynicism and gouiaterie so common among the younger intellectuals, Mr. Moore has created a perfectly credible, perfectly human Heloise, who is never so much a blue-stocking that she ceases to be a woman, and never so much a woman that she forfeits esteem for her intellect and character. She, not Abelard, is the great character in the tragic tale, as anyone can see from the first of her preserved letters. If Abilard was in front of his time, Heloise was in front of Abelard. This truth is subtly and convincingly brought out by Mr. Moore, though even he cannot quite reach the heights of passion and tragic pathos touched by Helolse's letter. No merely conventional moral code is adequate as a touchstone of Helo:se, and those who seek to apply it merely display an ignorance of the nobler human values.
This too brief notice cannot be concluded without reference to Mr. Moore's understanding of early mediaeval French literature and to the skill with which he calls to life that dead world of poets and lovers—the troubadours, the irouvIres, the glee-men and the glee-maidens, and all the incidents of their wandering lives. For those who have some knowledge of the originals from which Mr. Moore has worked, these interpre- tations are peculiarly charming, for what other English writer has understood them so completely and sympathetically ? Here one finds a skilful adaptation of the memoires of Robert de Clari, here a reworking of legendary Provencal biographies of the troubadours, here a brief evocation of the great contro- versy between Nominalists and Realists, here a whole fas- cinating series of the poets of the langue d'oc, and here again a prose version of the greatest of Provencal altes, " Ah, God ! ah, God ! that dawn should come so soon I " We are even given a new version of the story of Jaufre Rudel (not quite so good perhaps as the laconic old Provencal biography), and the anachronism of telling it twenty years before it happened, or was supposed to happen, will disturb no one. And so lightly is this learning carried, so essentially and wholly artistic is the use made of it, that few will realize this novel shows considerable eruditionaS Well as imagination, a mastery of English-prose and of the •art of fiction, and an aesthetic ,vensill.ility rare indeed in contemporary literature.
Previous page
