Spanish Gleanings
Spring in Spain. By MacKinley Helm. (Gollancz. 18s.) Gatherings from Catalonia. By John Langdon-Davies. (Cassell.
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21s.) IF slim, unshadowed Italy has been the spoilt child of Europe, one might say that broad, clumsy-shaped Spain, with its shadowed culture, has been the neglected, misunderstood child. Most writers seem to find a difficulty in writing about the character of the people, usually making do with the irritating generalisation about their "reserve"; even Ford tends to explode in some witty piece of denigration when he writes of the people, and Augustus Hare moves through a landscape containing nothing but culture and condesas.
Dr. Helm is concerned mainly with Spanish history and culture, but constantly, in his short transcriptions of conversations, he gives revealing glimpses of the Spanish mind—glimpses which give his pages, laden as they are with his musings on art and architecture, ceaseless life. Dr. Helm is a Bostonian of wide artistic sympathies, who wears his learning with gentle urbanity and humour. He has lived for some years in Mexico and part of the interest of his delight- ful book comes from his comparisons between the tierra madre and her former colony. All who know both Spain and Mexico will agree with him when he insists that there is nothing so astonishing in Spain as some of the churrigueresque churches of Central Mexico. Whether he is looking across the Darro up to the astonishing beauty of the red Moorish ramparts of the Alhambra, writing of the con- oentration of plateresque architecture that forms the dying towns of Ubeda and Baezta (as remarkable in their way as Noto or Lecce) or overhearing the plans for an illicit love-affair between a couple at a café in Salamanca, Dr. Helm is always excellent company. Mr. Langdon-Davies is a very different sort of writer. He has lived in Catalonia, off and on, for many years and, while Dr. Helm skips expertly over the surface, Mr. Langdon-Davies has set out to write of Catalonia and the Catalans in depth. His artistic Interests are limited—he gives no more than a paragraph to the superb school of Catalan primitives—but on the day-to-day things of Catalonia he writes with great charm. Neatly and convincingly he puts Catalonia into perspective with the rest of Spain.
MICHAEL SWAN.
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