The Wind On the Sea
A fresh wind from the ocean made the waves sparkle when
Daniel took his cruise. He was on a solitary tour of New
York Harbor in a hired motorboat, his tribute to the general
pleasantness of a spring day out of doors, balmy, yet with sufficient
air. A motorboat was not, he reflected, as attractive to a
lover of the sea as a sailboat, but it enabled him to poke around
the arms of the port more satisfactorily. Today he set off down
the harbor with the breeze in his face.
At first he passed close to the docks of the enormous ships,
some of which were so long their shapely stems reached far out
into the stream. Nothing was so exciting as seeing their masts
and the tops of their huge funnels over the top of a dock. It
reminded him of a glimpse he had had of the tall, delicate spars
of sailing vessels over the roofs of a seacoast town. The realization
of being on the immediate threshold of the romantic sea is
irresistible in its rich suggestions, linking the most prosaic person
for a moment with strange places, hitherto only imagined, and
possibilities of adventure, startling even at a distance from the
point of view of ordinary life. Daniel thought about this and
other theories of his concerning the sea as his boat sauntered past
the imposing liners which so engrossed his attention. Their sharp,
carefully flaring bows and the suggestion of velocity in their
slanting rigging attracted him. One was just docking as he went
by. It was huge, and seemed a city with a host of tugs like parasites
slowly pushing it around. He could never get over the size
of them. It seemed like magic,—this, building a community that
floated so snugly on the water, the four red funnels above adding
the emblem of something powerful in its compactness. Yet in
spite of their size, the steamers seemed at a distance slim and
graceful, essentially ships and obviously made to deal with the
exacting ocean. Daniel saw liners with more penetrating eyes
than the ordinary casual observer, he was sure.
It was not long before he was off down the harbor away from
the docks. Here the waves danced to the breeze among the little
boats which carried on the teeming local traffic of the port, rushing
back and forth like water-bugs on a pond. The vessels that were
anchored strained at the ends of taut hawsers with the wind and
tide both coming up the bay. Over near the farther shore against
the sun, a great ship was moving down, a massive black shadow
sliding imperiously out to sea. He steered the launch near the
anchored vessels, under their high sterns. Reading their names
was a fascinating diversion for an imaginative person like himself,
he thought. Here was the “George B. White” of Jersey City,
near it the “Orphan” of Bombay; here a sloppy tramp from
Beirut, there an empty freighter of Cape Town; Japanese and
Chinese and Javanese vessels were there whose names he could
not read, and a little ship from the Piraeus, laden with smells
from Athens—dirt from her gutters and hovels, and dust from the
Acropolis.
Well, well, what a highway the sea was, after all. It was fascinating,
the harbor, fascinating! These great ships always sailing
out on voyages that somehow still seemed perilous, and others,
looking—to the imagination, at least—weatherbeaten, coming in
from foreign lands.
He turned and headed out past the narrows to the slow dips of
the ground swell, powerful, but almost at peace for the moment,
which his little boat climbed and descended like smooth, gentle
hills. The sun still sparkled, and here the water slapped more
vigorously against the sides of the boat, throwing flecks of spray
out and whirling back some of them to sting his face. He was
getting gradually drunk, he concluded. Certainly the spaciousness
of everything around him was going to his head. But it was, he
later decided, really the smell of the air that did it. No sweet
gasoline-sick atmosphere of streets out here, nor the faint odor of
millions of his fellow-men to which he was accustomed in the
buildings he frequented. The breeze was fresh and tasted strong
of salt. It had a palpable vigor of its own. Not artificially
intoxicating like a stimulant, but with a gusty sting. It whipped
his mind and brought it up eager and sharp, like a trembling
racehorse.
That air—that makes men on steamers feel so ridiculously fit
without exercise, enabling them to eat and eat—tea, jam, pastry,
steaks, cheeses, and then sit and read all day in one steamer chair
and be ravenous again! If only he could sail on a ship, he
thought. To feel so strong and finely balanced—not, as usual,
subject to his little moods of depression which so often went
hand in hand with indigestion, he had discovered—to feel so well
tuned! He had a vision of himself as he would stand on a ship—as
he had, on the only trip he had ever taken—in the very peak
of the bow, looking over and watching the tall prow sweep down
on and devour the unsuspecting patches of the sea. He remembered
how the breeze was steady in his face and how he used
almost to taste it! His hair was worried by the wind and he
relished its swift buffets on his face as he stood against it, drinking
it in as a hot man drinks a running stream. What nameless joy
he felt, he now remembered; and how he used so to overflow with
something buoyant inside him that he would ecstatically smile.
Well tuned! And singing, like an old lyre at the touch!
Well, if he could get to feeling like that he would give anything,
he said to himself in his conventional way—and suddenly he grew
disgusted. Give anything! Lord, he wouldn’t give up a month
of his most valuable time. Love the sea! He had been repeating
to himself all during his little outing that he loved the sea. He
was one of those few who really loved the sea. He felt that he
understood it better than a good many people. As though he
knew anything about it, who had never gone to sea and never
would. His experience of it standing on the street-like decks of
a liner and watching it; thinking about it, he flattered himself,
with rather a light touch, as it were, but still from a poetic point
of view.
The light touch! Everything nowadays was written and spoken
and even thought of with a light touch. A light touch in connection
with the sea! The old sailing vessels—swift clippers
around the horn; that was the ocean! No drawing-room stuff
about that. When the brutal masters carried all the press of sail
they could in those tremendous storms, till the topmasts went and
the gear came flying down like a thunderbolt and had to be chopped
away to save the ship. Trim ships where you worked beneath the
lash, and insubordination was best viewed from the yardarm. Ships
used to go down and never be heard from—often in those days.
But the men that lived were really children of the sea who knew
its great aspects; and they knew their ships, every inch of them,
from their thin spars that “shone like silver”, as the chantey says,
to the bright copper on their keels.
The great longing, the parching thirst of a hothouse intellect
for hardship swept over him like a wave of the sea itself. Hardship
assumed an intrinsic value for him at once, as it had one
winter in the South when he missed savagely the bleak Januaries
of his Northern home; as it had when he read of the Homeric
heroes who so relished battle, and the brawn children of Thor,
and Sir Lancelot with his great shoulders in iron, oppressed and
conquering. It seemed as though hardships were the only road
to reality, somehow. Hardships of the sea,—the grim knowledge
of experience; that would have given him something solid in his
mind! But none of that on the ocean now. Where there had
been towers of canvas (as he visualized it) now there were
freighters. Clippers and freight ships! The sea rather intriguing
whimsical people like himself—when once she held men until it
was her will to fling them away! Whimsy! What was this
compared to a strong man’s desire? What was this careful self-consciousness
of his feelings to his grand impulses?—the humorous
affairs of life to the grim ones?—dilettantism to the austere
compulsion of a passion?
While Daniel was working himself up in this manner, he was
steering straight out to sea, and, in doing so, overhauling a tramp
steamer that was starting on a voyage. He was coming abreast
of what he later called his fate. Upon impulse, he dared the wash
of the boat when he came opposite and ran in close along her side,
slowing down so as to keep pace for a while. She was old and
scarred, with a dip in her middle like an overworked horse’s back
which seemed to give her a jaunty air. Paint had not been wasted
on her ramshackle sides, nor any white on her cabin above, nor red
on her rusty funnel. Filthy clothes, drying in the sun, hung
from clotheslines; a thick rope dragged over the side near the
stern and it splashed irregularly in the water. She was dilapidated.
But some of her crew were singing for some reason or other as
they finished stowing cargo, and the sight of the little boat facing
outward and the sight of the great, blank, capricious sea ahead
waiting for her was distinctly thrilling, particularly as a fog was
coming up, making even the horizon mysterious in its invisibility.
What would it be like, Daniel wondered all of a sudden, if he
were to hail this boat and jump aboard? Often he had considered
doing some quite possible thing like this, such as getting off a
Western train as it stopped at a little, unknown town and—simply
staying there, or chucking his work some morning and going on
the stage. But there he was again with those light fancies of his.
People like himself seemed to have their individualities in glass
cases, to be looked at like shell-flowers. What was he, anyway,
that he actually could not do what he wanted to? Why should he
be so bound, and he was bound, he knew, as if with iron bars.
Tied down. Slaves, slaves, slaves. People thought of doing this
and that—they still had impulses at least, thank God—and were
powerless to do them. There seemed no manhood left. People
didn’t seem to be in control of themselves any more. Freedom!—he
wondered at the word. Oh, for a touch of it—just a taste—just
a whiff! Creatures in the grasp of something huge and
stolid! Damn those infernal practical considerations! What was
the world, a gigantic taskroom—an ogre-like mill to be turned?
By heaven, he must have a will! God knew he must stand there
free! He even looked around wildly to assure himself that he was
there alone and free.
Then he stood up. There was the rope hanging over the side.
He sprang for it, clutched it, and swung there.
There was no shield between him and a rasping sense of mortification
as he dragged himself spluttering and coughing into his
motorboat once more forty seconds later. He had so neatly proved
what he had railed at in this unusual seizure of the disease of
spring, and so humorously. Had staid old common sense ever
had to deal so brazenly with an impulse as to make a man jump
into the sea? Damp physically, and with a real bitterness in his
heart at such a plain statement of affairs, the world seemed very
dark. Depression swooped down upon his mind like the swift
black shadow of a vulture, and as he made his way home for
three hours it seemed to be actually feeding on his nerves. It
was that dark, stone-wall type of depression which is unarguable
and seems final—as though trusted old hope had a limit which
was suddenly glimpsed around a bend in the road. It left no room
for hypothesis; things were seen clearly to be foundationless that
had been rocks to the imagination.
He resolved at any rate to bury this experience in his heart as
a tragic sort of trophy which should represent in its bitter essence
all the disgust with life that assails people during a lifetime. He
had nearly played a trick upon mortality, he reflected. A fine
gesture had been made, and he had snatched lustily for the unvouchsafed.
It was an affecting experience and one to be reverenced.
But of course what really happened was that he made a
very good story out of it and one which afforded intense amusement
to his friends, though he was prone to shed a mental tear
as he told it now and then.
W. T. BISSELL.
Three Fables — I. — II. — III.
I heard not long since the tale of a weary knight and his
crippled horse. It had come about, after days of long travel
in search of a lost princess, that the poor steed had worn away his
shoes. Indeed, every step now left a clot of blood in the dust of
the highway. The knight, realizing the suffering of his companion,
dismounted and walked by his side, vainly seeking for a
smith. Finally, one night when both knew his strength must be
spent before the dawn, there gleamed a light in the distance. With
words of encouragement the knight urged the horse on to a last
effort. And his prayers were realized, for the light proved to be
that of a forge blazing against the darkness. In the doorway sat
the smith, drinking ale. When he saw the knight and his horse,
he burst out laughing.
“Well, this is a prize,” he cried.
The knight smiled. “You’re a great prize to us,” he answered,
“for this poor animal has plodded on through many days in great
pain. Forge him the best shoes you know how to.”
At this the smith laughed all the louder. “I’d have you know,
Sir Knight,” he replied, “that I am Martin Barrow, the greatest
smith who ever blew a forge in all England!”
“So much the better,” answered the other, for he had heard of
Martin Barrow. And, looking more carefully around, he saw
that this was no ordinary forge. Such huge bellows must for
certain hold a whirlwind; the anvil showed not a dent; and four
hammers lay against the wall too heavy, he thought, to be wielded
by any man. “I beg you to proceed with your business, Martin
Barrow,” he went on, “for my horse needs help at once.”
“Not I,” laughed the smith scornfully. “I have forged the
greatest swords that ever flashed in the sun. Mine are the
horses’ shoes which have fought through many a battle. Now
is my rest. I do no more!”
“But this forge,” cried the knight, “this anvil, these hammers—”
“For the pleasure of the many travellers who come to look on
the forge of Martin Barrow!” So saying, the smith gulped down
the last of his ale and turned away.
The knight flushed with anger, but he made no answer. Silently
he took the bridle of his horse and the two pushed out again into
the night. Neither had thought he could go further, but strength
of the spirit is a strange thing. Such courage is never without
its reward, and they had not gone far when there shone a faint
glimmer by the roadside. The light seemed too small at first to
be that of a forge, but as they came nearer the slow striking of a
hammer echoed through the dark. Reaching the doorway, the
knight saw an old man pounding away at his anvil.
“Good sir,” he said, as the smith paused in his work, “we have
come far, and my horse is in great pain. Will you please shoe
him with the best shoes you can forge?”
“That I will, Sir Knight,” he replied, and quickly set about his
work. As he did so, the knight looked about him: he noticed
the small little fire, the chipped anvil, and one poor hammer. And
the smith was a bent old man—one who should long since have
been awaiting in rest the near approach of death. He thought of
Martin Barrow—his shining forge, and his glass of ale.
Soon the horse was shod, and the knight offered the smith some
silver coins, all but one of which he refused.
“Great thanks to you,” said the knight. “I have yet to meet as
fine and generous a smith. May I ask what name men call
you by?”
“I have no Christian name,” he answered, “but men call me
the bad smith.” And, looking down, the knight saw that the shoes
were roughly forged and poorly set in place.
“Well, bad smith,” he replied, “you’ve done us both a great
service—and that, after all, is doing any task well.” And turning
from the doorway, the knight and his horse pushed out into the
darkness again to continue their quest. And although I never
heard whether or not they found the lost princess, I know they
had found in the person of the bad smith something ten times
more valuable.
By the rocky shore of a vast sea there once lived an old philosopher.
As long as men could remember, there he had dwelt
in a stone castle built far above upon a high cliff. Huge rocks
for many miles out prevented all approach to the shore by water.
Once in a while a boat might be seen on the distant horizon, but
never had one ventured nearer. Back from the coast stretched
a dense forest inhabited not only by wildest monsters, but also by
demons and strange spells—though I am at a loss to imagine how
any man could have returned from such an Erebus to report his
tale. However that may be, the only access to the castle lay by
a narrow, dangerous path up the very side of the steep cliff.
One might suppose that the old philosopher, so fortified against
the world, had as many hours to sit alone and think as his heart
could desire. But it was not so. The little path up the cliff had
been worn away by the feet of thousands of pilgrims—and that
at the risk of their lives. Even the death of four men in one year
failed to diminish the ever increasing number. The sand for miles
along the shore had been pounded into a hard, even road. The
sun never rose that it did not light the path to some figures
plodding up the cliff. It never slipped to the west but it touched
the faces of those returning to their far-off cities—a fearful tale
upon their lips and wonder in their eyes. For the old philosopher
was accredited the wisest man in the world—nay, even the wisest
man who had ever walked upon the earth. There was no secret
of the universe which he had not fathomed. You might ask him
what question you would, and its darkest mystery would be at
once revealed. What lay beyond the sea which stretched from
the foot of the cliff endlessly away no man but he might say. For
like his castle and the far horizon, Life and Death were playthings
to his genius. Exactly what he told his pilgrims I know not. But
it shall never be forgotten how king and peasant alike went away
marveling at the miracle they had witnessed, though their hearts,
if they knew it not, were no closer to the secret they sought.
There was only one other human who dwelt in the great castle
with the philosopher. This was Endelhan, an old servant who had
lived with his master ever since the time—if there were such a
time—when a whole day passed without a knock at the stone gate.
It was Endelhan who patiently waited upon the other, caring
for his slightest comforts. It was Endelhan who met each pilgrim
at the gate and led him quietly into his master’s presence.
There he would sit upon a stool close by, silently listening, gravely
staring upon scholar and fool. Little did he understand the
wisdom that he heard; the philosopher’s words to him were meaningless.
That he was a very great man Endelhan realized, but
his mute affection was born mainly of their long years in close
contact together. Sometimes a whole day would pass with no
more than a few words between them. To the philosopher Endelhan
was a good servant—of low intelligence, to be sure, but
careful and satisfactory. To Endelhan his master was a feeble
old man whose care and comfort it was his duty to serve.
One dark night they say a boat came in on the tide and slipped
away again before the dawn. The next day the pilgrims found
the gate barred and their calls unanswered. Slowly the word
passed from land to land that the old philosopher had uttered his
last prophecy. And the dangerous little path which so many had
perilously climbed was gradually overgrown, until to-day the castle
stands upon the cliff inaccessible to all chance travellers.
One thing more may be added. When you, too, have slipped
out with the tide and sailed that sea, you will stand on some far
shore before the Master and that “goodly companie”. Surprising
to say, you will find that the old philosopher is not there. Asking
patiently, you will meet one or two who remember such a one—“wise
in his own conceits”. That was long ago; he has passed
on. But lo! At the feet of the Master with silent lips and eyes
upon all who come sits Endelhan—faithful servant.
Prince Toldath stood before the King:
“Most gracious Majesty, I have come a long way from my
golden kingdom on the Northern Shore. Through storms terrible
even in imagination, over mountain-passes ventured never yet by
bravest men, across the length of a desert which holds the bones
of many of your gallant people have I travelled. Yet the prize I
seek is worth a whole life spent in such journeys. My slaves lay
before you a treasure which the gods themselves might dream of:
those silks have come from far Cathay; Earth gave up her fairest
secrets in revealing those priceless gems. Yet such a treasure
is small indeed compared to that I now would ask of you. Most
mighty King, my father is an old man, and it will not be long
before his wide and rich domains are mine. As you very likely
have been told, I am accredited one of the best swordsmen in our
part of the world. And my distant travels have brought me a
good measure of knowledge and wisdom. O great King, the prize
I seek—my deepest and everlasting desire—is the hand of your
only daughter!”
A hush was upon the court. All stared at this handsome prince
who had come so far in quest of their fair princess. Here, indeed,
was a suitor worthy at last. Brave and daring, he would succeed
where so many before him had failed. Hilnardees for once should
taste defeat. Slowly the King made answer—in the words he had
addressed to numberless suitors in the past.
“Prince Toldath, we thank you for these lavish gifts which you
have bestowed upon us. And we acknowledge the honor you pay
us in asking for the hand of our only daughter. That your
request may be granted depends upon one thing alone, and that
simple enough. Listen with care: You shall travel eastward
seven days, crossing the desert and plunging into a dense forest.
At night you shall rest—except for the seventh night, when you
shall push on after the fall of the sun. About the twelfth hour
you will come to a narrow, rapid stream. The name of this river
is Hilnardees, which means in our language ‘many-visioned’. On
the west bank you will find a small boat. Push out into the darkness,
and without effort you will be swept downstream with the
current. It will not be far before you come to a place where the
river branches into three parts. In the dark you will not know;
the current will choose which one you shall follow. And each of
these three streams in turn branches into three more. Each of
those does the same, and so on indefinitely. Somewhere Hilnardees
empties into the Sea—no man knows where nor in how
many places. Before that, however, your boat will come to rest
on the bank of one of the many branches. There you
shall see a vision of your own life—a living symbol of what
you yourself are. For Hilnardees is a blessed river, and
the hand of the gods is upon it. Many who have pushed out in
the current have never returned again to their homes, although
rumors of their existence in other parts of the world have later
been reported. Such has been the fate of most who have sought
the hand of my daughter. Those who have come back have told
of strange and fitful sights. Go, Prince Toldath, if your desire
is as great as it was, and return to me, paddling slowly upstream
and crossing the forest and desert as before. May your vision
prove worthy of my daughter’s hand.”
Prince Toldath smilingly bowed to the King. Here surely was
no difficult task, and the whole was likely enough a foolish legend.
If there were any truth in it, he need not doubt of a successful
pilgrimage. If not, he might invent all manner of splendid
“visions” on his way back. Thus, on the following morning he
confidently set forth.
All happened as the King had foretold. At midnight of the
seventh day he came upon Hilnardees, river of many visions.
By the bank he found a small boat in which he pushed out into the
dark. Whether he was exhausted from his travel or the river
cast some strange spell upon him I know not—nor did he. Many
hours passed in dreams of his princess before he was finally
awakened by the sudden jolt of the boat as it struck the sandy
beach below the bank of the river. It was broad daylight and the
sun was high in the heavens. Before him rose a flight of marble
steps. Slowly realizing that he must have come to the end of his
journey, he pulled his boat upon the shore and mounted the steps.
It was a glorious sight that lay before him. Never in all his far
travels had he seen such shining beauty. Babylon in all its splendor
could not have been like this. Rushing through the open
gates—completely forgetful of the purport of his journey, the
Prince found himself within a marble city. With awed wonderment
he walked through one street after another. At every turn
the beauty of architecture and sculpture surpassed the dreams of
the wildest poet. Towers and turrets on all sides sparkled in the
sunlight. His unheeded steps led him shortly to a wide square
at the center, where a fountain murmured as it played into a round
pool. Then it was that suddenly the Prince realized that the
fountain was the only sound he heard. The streets were empty.
In his transfixed wonder he had not noticed the deep silence which
was upon the city. Not even the cry of a bird was in the air.
With ominous forebodings he entered one of the largest buildings—surely
the palace of the king. The great door swung slowly
open. Within was a grandeur and beauty akin to the exterior.
No court in the world was the equal of this. Through room after
room he marveled at the lavishness of paintings, and furniture,
and ornament. Strangest of all, it seemed as though the palace
had been built but yesterday. Time had left no touch upon it.
So with the entire city. All was polished and shining—an ordered
perfection.
Then fear seized upon the Prince. Wildly he dashed from the
palace and shrieked aloud in the square. Only the taunting echo
of his voice laughed back on all sides. Then the deep silence again.
Turning, through one building after another he desperately, madly
searched—only to find the same splendor, the same perfection.
Finally, wearied, he sat by the edge of the fountain—the lone bit
of life in the whole city. Gazing into the bright pool, he quickly
laughed. Why, this was just a vision—a vision of himself! Of
course! Now he understood! This beauty—this shining glory
was his—his! Could any prince ask more? With a wild thrill of
exultation, he ran through the gates down to the river, and leapt
into his boat.
Ten days later Prince Toldath stood once more before the King.
Dressed in his finest raiment, he smiled with easy confidence upon
the assembled court. Indeed, the great hall was crowded to the
full, for rumor had spread that Prince Toldath had seen a vision
glorious enough to receive the hand of any princess.
“Prince Toldath,” said the King, “you have come back to our
palace, having carried out in detail what directions we gave you?”
“I have, your Majesty.”
“Prince Toldath, when the current swept your boat upon the
bank of one of the many branches of Hilnardees, what vision lay
before you?”
“Most mighty King,” cried the Prince, “I saw there a city of
marble flashing in the sun—a city more beautiful than any other
in all the world. As you know, I have travelled through many
lands. Never before have I walked in such awe and wonderment.
To describe the glory of the sparkling sunlight on the towers and
turrets one would need a divine language. Yet more surprising,
Time had not come into those streets, for all was as if it had been
built yesterday—perfect to the last detail.”
“And what manner of people did you meet with?” asked the
King.
“There were no people, your Majesty. A deep silence lay over
all. But if this be a vision of me—as I may scarcely believe, so
rich was its glory—then my princess and I shall bring life and
breath into the square, and the palace, and the temple. Great
King, I await your decision.”
As deep a silence was upon the court as ever that of the marble
city. The King—who was, as you have perceived, a very wise
man—looked down at the Prince. For many seconds he did not
speak. Then he said very quietly:
“Have you never heard, Prince Toldath, that the life of a city
is its soul?”
Some say the Prince married a rich countess in his own kingdom
on the Northern Shore and reigned happily many years.
While others believe a strange tale, saying that he drowned himself
in the waters of Hilnardees, river of many visions.
WALTER EDWARDS HOUGHTON, JR.
Book Reviews — Victoria. By Knut Hamsun . (Knopf.) — Blackguard. By Maxwell Bodenheim . (Covici-McGee.) — Black Oxen. By Gertrude Atherton . (Boni & Liveright.)
With the translation of Victoria into English, Knut Hamsun
demands again our serious consideration. He is universally
recognized as the author of Growth of the Soil, Pan, and Hunger.
In 1920 he received the Nobel Prize for literature; a great distinction
for any writer. That fact alone should fascinate us into
searching out his latest translated novel.
Victoria is a tragical romance dealing frankly with the hopeless
mutual love of an aristocrat and one of lower caste. The plot is
obviously commonplace; but Knut Hamsun has done with it what
few other men could do: excited and maintained interest. To
emphasize these qualities there must be some twist in his technique,
some trick in his style. Perhaps this is it:—
He chooses an incident, relatively unimportant for the progress
of the plot, and describes it distinctly in short, rapidly moving
sentences. Action always commands inquiry into the who and the
why. Then he presents the necessary description of the character,
his situation, and any other details that he deems necessary.
And in this last feature Knut Hamsun is a master craftsman.
Interest is maintained greatly by the refinement, and consequently
the confinement, of description. He is a poet by divine right,
some one has said. True. And he is moreover a modern poet,
abiding by the same principles that Ezra Pound and his followers
recognize: namely, to present instead of to describe; to give direct
treatment to the “thing”, whether subject or objective; and to
compose in musical phrases.
Victoria is a poetical novel with a strange love for its theme.
Formerly Knut Hamsun has been expansive, taking life as a whole
for his study; but now he is dealing with love alone, and is therefore
able to cast off much of the commonplace in details. He
asks, “Ah, what is love?” and gives many conjectures on it. “Love
was a music hot as hell which stirs even old men’s hearts to dance.
It was like the daisy that opens wide to the coming night, and it
was like the anemone that closes at a breath and dies at a touch.
It might ruin a man, raise him up again and brand him anew; it
might love me to-day, you to-morrow and him to-morrow night,
so inconstant was it.
“But again it might hold like an unbreakable seal and burn with
an unquenchable flame even to the hour of death, for so eternal
was it.
“Does it not lead the friar to slink into closed gardens and glue
his eyes to the windows of the sleepers at night? And does it not
possess the nun with folly and darken the understanding of the
princess? It casts the king’s head to the ground so that his hair
sweeps all the dust of the highway, and he whispers unseemly
words to himself the while and puts out his tongue.
“No, no, it was again something very different and it was like
nothing else in the whole world. It came to earth one spring
night when a youth saw two eyes, two eyes. He gazed and saw.
He kissed a mouth, and then it was as though two lights met in
his heart, a sun flashing towards a star. He fell into an embrace,
and then he heard and saw no more in all the world.”
Is there more beautiful treatment in all prose?
The tragical element enters into the form of fate. The Miller’s
boy is not to have that love fulfilled, the daughter of the castle
shall have it snatched away from her by death; the world is an
unhappy place full of all beauties. Knut Hamsun the fatalist!
Miss Larsen points out in her exhaustive study of the man that
there is no reason why the novel should have been a tragedy
except that, like Hardy, Hamsun believed during the period of his
life when the book was written that no joy was to be attained.
When he saw happiness coming towards any character he would
say, “Ah, this must not be! It is not the order of things.” And
that would end it. Yet there is strong foundation for an opinion
that the tragedy enhances the pathetic charm of the book.
It is Knut Hamsun’s finest romance. Is there any more to say?
A. H. C.
Perhaps the most startling quality of Blackguard is its
graphic lucidity of language. Consider this description of a
man sobbing: “It was as though a martyr were licking up the
blood on his wounds and spitting it out in long gurgles of lunatic
delight.” The whole story is told with such compelling clarity of
phrase, and Bodenheim has shifted his genius for acid wording
from poetry to prose without the slightest apparent misgiving as
to outcome. Result: a luminous biography of an introspective
young author that in some ways approaches the manner of James
Joyce.
The book concerns the poetic and amorous development of Carl
Felman, an aspiring scribbler who stoops casually to thieving
rather than enter its father’s business of whiskey-selling. His
fight against the world, and particularly against his mother, who
had a body “on which plumpness and angles met in a transfigured
prizefight of lines”, is rendered doubly difficult by his own discriminating
soul. He is not willing to give and take, but is concerned
with the taking only. In the end he achieves some tranquility
of mind—in a manner strange enough to warrant reading
about it.
Bodenheim will not cheer you up; rather will he wake you up.
And for rhymesters who aspire to better verse or don’t know
when to quit—here is an eye-opener that should not be passed
by too lightly.
J. R. C.
The notion of rejuvenation is not a new one, and the theme
of sophisticated womanhood reverting to romantic young
love is not unprecedented. In Black Oxen Mrs. Atherton has
successfully disguised the problem of the first with the accoutrements
of the second.
The hero, Lee Clavering, is a scintillating “colyumist” whose
literary worth is not restricted by journalism and whose ideals
are not cramped by the Young Intellectual atmosphere of the
Algonquin Group.
Mary Zattiany, the much-discussed heroine, is an American
woman who married a foreign nobleman, dazzled the European
courts and salons with her beauty and wit, and, after a process of
re-upholstering, returned to New York, where she falls in love
with the young journalist.
The motivation of the book is centered in the translated personality
of the heroine, and Mrs. Atherton’s treatment of feminine
psychology is exceedingly dextrous. But a large part of the
story’s merit consists in the cross-section of metropolitan activity
at the margin where contemporary artists enjoy social registration.
Black Oxen is primarily a woman’s novel. Its theme will
always be close to the heart of womankind, and Mrs. Atherton
has added a more than feminine touch by leaving the problem
unsolved. When, at the end of the book, Mary obeys the call of
European duty and closes the taxi door in the face of transcendent
love, the reader continues to wonder whether or not rejuvenescence
is a good thing.
The author has employed an idealized “colyumist” as a foil.
Clavering’s sudden success as a playwright is dubious. And the
ending is too obviously an escape from the lived-happily-ever-after
solution. But one loses sight of these technical anomalies in the
impetus of the romance, the deftness of satire, and the intricacies
of the heroine’s strange predicament.
Mrs. Atherton, in her first treatment of Eastern “civilization”,
has had the good grace to sublimate sentimentality without destroying
its perennial charm.
H. W. H.
Editor’s Table
“It’s about time you did some work around here,” said Cherrywold, as
Ariel arrived only one hour and fifteen minutes late.
“Oh, no, not nearly!” remonstrated that irresponsible virtuoso.
“You can write the Editor’s Table,” growled Mr. and Mrs. Stevens
patronizingly, who had come back from New York with a first edition of
Coleridge and couldn’t forget it.
At this point Rabnon, the Brushwood Boy, was detected trying to set fire
to the Lit. office with his cigarette stub. As the office was still damp from
the presence of the preceding Board, no conflagration ensued. In the confusion,
however, three poems by Freshmen were accidentally accepted.
Little Laird Fauntleroy wrote the Table of Contents laboriously, being
jumped on every minute or so for misspellings which he was expected to
commit, but which he carefully disguised by writing illegibly. Thus the time
wore on.
“What would you do with a man who perpetrated this?” expostulated
Cherrywold, holding up a poem with the inscription: “I’m very much afraid
that this is worth publishing—Mercury.”
“It shows he has no soul!” exulted Mr. and Mrs. Stevens. “No one with
a soul could have a face like his, anyway.”
“No personalities in Art,” cautioned Rabnon the politic.
In walked Roland at this juncture, smoking a poor cigar and holding in
his nervous hands a large sheet of paper with a one-word correction of his
latest poem.
“Here’s the man who wrote a sonnet in six-foot lines!” Han cried. A
chorus of groans and hisses greeted the heeler.
“Any defense?” asked Cherrywold, while Han prepared to hit Roland over
the head with his stick.
“He’s just been elected Chairman of the News,” said Mr. and Mrs.
Stevens in explanation.
“What’s the News?” inquired Han, hand to ear.
A wild scramble followed. Roland, vilified by the names “Traitor!”—“Snake
in the Grass!”—“Turncoat!” ran for his life.
“He got away,” Cherrywold panted, his fair face flushed with exertion.
“That’s all right,” said Han; “I couldn’t have spelled his name, anyway.”
Ariel.
