Paneros
Paneros. By Norman Douglas. (Chatto and Windus. 15a.)
Ma. NORMAN DOUGLAS is a puzzling literary figure. The author of three early works, Siren Land, Old Calabria, and Fountains in the Sand, which as travel books are probably unsurpassed in the English language, and of a novel (the term is used in its composite sense), South Wind, which, in spite of its author's menacing prophecy, is a masterpiece, he has of late veered almost exclusively in the direction of the esoteric and the academic. His development has been a withdrawal into a shell of learning, from the seclusion of which he produces with astonishing regularity delicacies of ripe, but sometimes indigestible, scholarship.
His latest published work, Pancros, is, as the sub-title indicates, a treatise on " aphrodisiacs and the like." It is as a matter of fact not a new book, being a reprint of an edition published in Florence last year. It is a triumph of eclecticism, in which the years are rolled back and we are allowed to peer, fragmentarily and inconclusively it is true, into the darkened mysteries of Greece and Rome, the near and far East, Mexico, Africa, and mediaeval Europe. However, after a copious enumeration of recipes and authorities, Mr. Douglas ends with a startling recantation of faith and a clarion call for ordered dietaries. This is depressing, not so much on account of the villain's unmasking, as because of the subject's inadequacy for Mr. Douglas. To be haunted by the ghost of an absurdity is pointless and annoying enough for anyone, but for Mr. Douglas it is overwhelming. In addition, we feel that he is not in reality satisfied that the ghost is satisfactorily laid : and even if it is, there is always the fear that its shadow will rise up and indulge in a similar mockery.
If Paneros is to be an index of its author's future work, we can only sigh impotently for the happier days of South Wind: that a man of Mr. Douglas's importance should content himself with skeletons, is nothing short of tragedy.
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