LITERATURE.

Otago Witness, Issue 2892, 11 August 1909, Page 81

LITERATURE.

tc A Flight from Siberia." By Vaclaw Sieroszewski. London : Hutchinson and Co. Dunedin : J. Braithwaite and Co. 3s 6d, 2s 6d. This is certainly a very remarkable novel, and is very popular in Russia. Tlte author, a Pole, writes in a vigorous, virile, picturesque style ; and he has been most fortunate in his anonymous translator. The descriptions of the lonely, awful land where darkness reigns supreme for socalled days and nights ; the awesome : spaces of the great tundras where sluggish streams meamaer in summer through vast moss-covered plateaux, and in winter liemotionless under winding sheets of snow ; the great spaces, the deadly silence, the solitude, the darkness, make the reader's flesh creep with" marvellous sympathy. And then the exiles, the political prisoners, who dwell in this icy inferno : some of them men of culture and refinement ; all thinkers, dreamers, ©ensitives; forced to live in this arid region in hovels of the poorest description, supported by a Government pittance just sufficient to keep bedy and soul together, but altogether insufficient to keep out the rigours of the severe climate; a pittance which they are ,at liberty, to supplement in any way that they can, very few ways being available, since out-of-door work can be carried on only for a few months of the year. These men are sketched and carefully indi- | vidualised with a powerful pen. Each is [ different, yet on each the fate of the exile falls with inexorable bitterness. Never once do they forget their cause, the sufferings Of their country, "t>n.eir countrymen, and themselves. And among them there are women. To be content in such condi1 tions is, of course, impossible; the exile' 6 heart always turns towards home ; so they think and plan, and plan and think, and escape is ever in their thoughts. But how shall they escape without money, ! without provisions, without hors«s, without friends? Stich is th"c eternal problem. In the str ry before us two attempts are made : one, ill-provided for, fails utterly ; the other is more successful. " Among the I sufferings of the former nothing proves more -baffling to the wanderers than- the : swarms of mosquitoes, which appear in myri'ids when, the ice melts in spring and summer These surround them "as a living calaract, a winged torrent, beating on their faces, till they had to close eyes and mouth, stinging, and crawling, and tickling, with a. fierce multitudinous hum like the sound of a steppe on fire." Only a circle of actual fire and the smell of acrid smoke will keep them out, and when the fire burnt low, "and a breath of fresh air entered the circle, the mesquitoes entered with it, flying low, in long, thin, attacking columns." And the men, whose brave hearts are still undaunted, are vanquished by insects. In the second and more successful flight, the most vivid bit of description is that in which the fugitives shoot the rapids of the river which is to take them north in a boat built by themselves. The river grows narrower and narrower, swifter, and still more swift ; dense wreaths of fog drop to the vegry surface of the water,' " and the rocks lean towards each other, dripping with moisture, ominous and -pitiless as the Gates of Hell. ... At the lower end of the pass, where the arists"~were thickest, a horrid hubbub now became audible ; a bellowing, Toaring, thundering din ; . . . the boat quivered, ac with fright, from stem to stern. She appeared to be motionless, yet the many voices, louder than the uproar of a tempest, were nearing them with portentous velocity. ' Get to yoitr oars! Quick!' yelled the steerer. .. . All at once the pas? seemed clceed . . . the river dashed bodily down with an awful groan under a black and jagged vault. Suddenly came the word of command, . . . the blades bent like switches ; and before anyone was aware the boat had swung right round with a heavy lurch, the keel grated horribly for an instant, and then the vessel fchot asJant through the giant gate, and parsed between two high crags cut of the fog into a wide expanse, on which the sun was j shining out of a cloudle&s sky." i " Poetry Militant." By Bernard D'Dowd. | Melbourne: T^"C. Lothian. Paper, Is. i This interesting eR- c <iy, which is '"An . Australian Plea for the Poetry of Purpose." was the subject of a presidential address delivered before the Literary Society of Melbourne at the commencement of this year, and is now reuublished with additions and revision*. It is an impassioned appeal to all the literary and quasi-literary people in A.u?trala.«ia to take themselves Vn'd their work earnestly, not to fritter, pervert, or prostitute their talent, whatever it may he, esnec-ially poetry. " Poelrv is the true nationbuilder. . "Australia has special woik for the poets to do— namely. to take , side? for or against the < '.*<& of Progress ' or Inertia, . . to build soundly every story of this cn'eat Australia, or to shatter what is built and erect more wif-elv ; ... to make of poelrv a renewing social force or a preserving social force. To becom.9 the generator of the npvr Dynamic, or the reservoir of the old Inertia, which religion was once, in mo>t countries, but can no longer be ; which war and conauest were often in the awful p ast » Dllt which, let us hope, they need no longer be." To .answer this call in it* true i-piritual meaning will, the writer declares. '• raf ,;n obloquy, certainly lor.eline=s. misundeistindingp. discomfort, hard work, iniirataude. and little or no visible lesult." But ""thev of the e]v\U heir. . and he who hems the call is. \-y the very fact of hearina it, put on his honour

to answer it. 3*3 * He must "of necessity leave all, friends*, home, dear, delights, dear beliefs, and follow the Spirit." Mr O'Dowd is a -Whitman enthusiast-, and in his plea for the " formative poet" and for "the poetry militant" he quotes 60106 splendid lines from "The Answerer": — - The -words o£ the true poems give you more than poems, They give you to form, for yourself poems, religions, politics, war, peace, behaviour, ' histories, essays, daily life, and every- ' thing else. They bailaroe ranks 1 , colours, races, creeds, and the sexes, ! They do not seek beauty, they are sought. They prepare for death, yet they are not tbe finish, but rather the outset: t They bring none to his or iher terminus, or tc be content and 1 full : .j Whom they take, they take in-to space, -to behold the birth of stairs, to learn one of tbe meanings, To launch off with absolute faith, to sweep through the ceaseless rings, and never be quiet again. ; This, in brief, is Mr O'Dowd's contention as regards ,the mission of the* colonial poet, who is. "to btf a "builder and maker of great thirigs," or lie is absolutely dangerous — a triflei and perverter of his high calling. The essay is splendid, impassioned, convincing. If Mr O'Dowd speaks as well as he writes, we wish that we could have been present at the opening of the Literary Society in Melbourne. But that being impossible, we do the next best thing by reading the address ourselveß and advising our friends to do likewise. "A Fetish of Truth," by Eileen, Fitzgerald. London : Hutchinson and , Co. Dunedin : J. Braithwaite and Co. 3e - 6d, & 6d. Two Englishmen possessing the same surname (Allardyce); but of very different character, birth, and breeding, meet by chance in the str-eete of New York. The wastrel, of good birth, holds an introduction to a big American firm which the poor- man, full of enerjry and -strength, would; have given anything to possess. He buys it from the wastrel under certain conditions. The seller dies in an accident, ' and Stephen Allardyce, by means of the introduction, obtains wealth- and honour, but he never fails in his bargain to provide for the children of his namesake. Allardyce returns to England a millionaire, and questions axis* as to his rela^ tionship 'o the children. He enters into society, and. marries a girl of high birth. But troubles and mutual misunderstandin ga arise. Lady Ruth accuses her husband of deceiving' her <f relation -to the children : he cannot deny it. Shej making "a fetish of. truth," -repudiates the tie between them, and the returns to America. He takes advantage ' of the' 'Frisco earthquake to lose, his identity, and covers his traces. But Ruth repents, and the end is, after all, <a. happy one. The story is dramatic. There is much common sense and woiidlv wisdom in it. It is quite worth reading." ,i " The Rival Physicians," by Paul Cupid. "A Rogue's Luck," by Arthur Wright. Sydney: N.S.W. Bookstall Company. Paper picture cover, numerous illustrations. Is (3d postage). The diplomas of "The Rival Physicians" are not in existence, and the shameless charlatans who take brevet rank in Paul Cupid's amusing story endeavour to hide the want of these -most essential licensee "to kill or cure " by unbounded impudence, and the lucky chance which enables them to secure the assistance of some unfortunate out-at-elbows "legal practitioner." The story is full of absurd incidents, only possible in " out-back " regions, and cannot be read without more than one hearty laugh at the folly ano? gullibility of the average patient, who accepts his " doctor "" — any doc. — as a heaven-sent and infallible guide, philosopher, and friend. " A Rogue's Luck "is a racing story, containing more thar one murder — of which, of course, the wrong man is accused ; some very (=lhady doings on th-a turf, and at least one excellently-" described race, the issue of which holds the reader breathless for at least a minute. " A Rogue's Duck "is a distinct improvement on Mr Arthur Wright's previous story, " Keane of Kalooorlie," being quite as amusing and a little anore probable. LITERARY NOTES. — Miss Jatomb-Hcocl, who ivon Mr ilel- ' roso'-s 200-guinoa prize for the best first novel, is writing another story. She proposos to call it " Johnny Lewison." Mr M"!rosc wiil publish the novel in the autumn. —It is paid that Mr Marion Crawford had, when he di°d. written the greater part of a now novel, and he. has certainly left *-'veral nianuscript-, which result from his studies in Roman liisrory — Mr George Webb Appleton, a popular water of son«at.'onal fiction, died in June, a^.?<l 61- I-T t > was born in New Jersey was correspondent of the New York Times in Paris and Rome, and started the lecture bureau sy^m in England. Bk novels deal chiefh with crime, detectives, and mystei'.jt, ;> His last book. "Dr Dale's Dilemma," is- shortly to be published. —Mr Francis Griffiths announces a romance by Mi«* Emily- Baker which dsals with " Pexgy Gainsborough," the great painter's daughter. Th« author, who is personally connected with the Gainsborough family, says she has endeavoured to portray the heroine's life and that of her family as she has gathered it from contemporary writers and other sources. She has sought also *aithfuHy to depict the people belonging to Gainsborough's coterie and the tim^s in which they lived — Richard Sheridan, Mrs Daignton the actress, Johann Fi<ch^r the musician, and others. —At a recent meeting of the Londoi County Council Lord Elcho presented a petition from the Shakespeare Memorial Committee, praying that the council would a-/aign a site for the erection of a Shakespeare national theatre. • The petition states that the committee represents a widely-spread opinion that a memorial fe»

Shakespeare should be set up in London, and that it should take the form of a Shakespeare national theatre, & monuineiit which should at onoe commemorate the poet who is the glory of all English-speak-ing peoples, and at the same time promote the elevation of dramatio art througncut the country and the Empire ; that die committee estimates that the total cost oi such a Shakespeare national theatre, exclusive of the site, would be about £400,000, apportioned as follows : — £loo.oCty for the cost of th^ building and equipment, and £250,000 as the capital sum to provide an annual endowment. — Tho assistance which literature brings to the conduct of life is usually strong -sc when it is indirect. If you would" hebrave read the Iliad, if virtuous Milton, 1 graceful Tennyson. In a poem, like Mil- : ton's '" Comus " even the purely deecripL tive passages have such a pitch of austere beauty that they mt the soul as hill air lightens the body. Shakespeare is different. He oasts all lessons and all conclusions on the shores of drama, and, drawing human. i nature as it is, leaves that human nature to survey itself. He feelingly persuades us , what wo are, and well knows that the lessons of life are self-enforcing, if only life itself can be seen steadily and whole. Perhaps he thought of nothing but to see life like that. Alter all, it were a kind of impiety, and perhaps an immedicable error, to know more than we do of Shakespeare's mind. He is the supreme stater of the facts of life. The sonnet. An expense of spirit in a waste of shame Is lust in action, is unlike the composition of any other i mind. There is something ineffable in its sombre humanity and detachment. In such definitions, because they are true and complete, all teaching and all 'reproof and all pity are implicit. — Mr Edgar Jepson, in reply to an article by Mr Arnold Bennet on the writers of fiction of to-day, declares that the sincere novelist is the worst of? of all. There are just four sincere novelists in England today who are making, over a thousand a year, and they make it .by their other qualities, not their sincerity. The rest of the sincere novelists — the novelists w"ho are doing sincere, valuable work — are not making a thousand a year; and they never will. Tho other novelists who are making " a thousand a year make it by turning out what the public wantt. The exaggeration, of the rewards of fiction seems a matter o* little mom-Mit. It does not really matter to the readers what the novelist gets paid for his novel ; for them the important thing is that the novel should be good. But in the-" long run this exaggeration exercises an injurious influence on the rtoval itself. Ifc brings into novel-writing a number of men and women who have «o genuine vocation for writing novels; no real call on them to express tihernselves in a presentation of- life. They learn fromMr- Bennett that the conditions of labour are agreeable, and' that time and again. Miss Mari© Corelli and Mr Hall Came have made £20.000 out of a year's work. They da»h upon thi» " soft " and well-paid' job. After three or four years they find that i.t, is neither "soft", nor well paid, and the bulk of them leave it for morecongenial occupations — haberdashing, per- } haps. But in the meantime they have | crowded the novelist .of genuine vocation ; they have lowered the reward of his labour j and: the circulation of . his novels ; their - trash has been the thorns which have choked his grapes. He is disappointed, and his life is cramped by the poor reward of his work ; be wr'tes fhe worse for th© ■disappointment -and the cramping, <- and 1 £ne novel suffers. Therefore we may aa well tell the .cold truth even about the rewards of fiction. —In a letter dated February 20, 1875, written by Algernon Charles Swinburne lo Edmund Clarence Stedman, the American! author, and published in The Times with the permission of Mr Theodore WattsDunton. bis sole executor, the English post says what he thinks of American poetry. He writes: "Your rebuke on the subject of American poetry is doubtless as well deserved es it is kindly and gently oxpressed. Yet I must say that, while I appreciate, I hope, the respective excellence of Mr Bryant's Thanatopsis and of Mr Lowell's Commemoration Ode, I cannot say that either of them leaves in my ear the echo of a single note of song. It is excellent good speech, but if given us &3 song its first and last duty is to sing. The . one is . most august meditation,- the -other • a noble expression of deep and grave patriotic feeling on a supreme national occasion : but the ibing more necessary, though it may be less noble than these, is the pulsr, tho fire, the passion of musics — the quality of a singer, not of a solitary philosopher or' a patriotic OTator. > Now, when Whitman is not. speaking -bad pros© he sinsrs, and when he sings at all he flings well. Mr Longfellow has a pretty' little pipe of his own, but surclv it is very thin and 1 reedy. Again, whatever may be Mr Emerson's merits, to talk of hk poetj-y seems to me like talking of the scholarship of a child who has not learnt its letters. Ever Browning's "erse always goes to a. recognisable tune (I say not to a good one), but in the name of all bagpipes what s the tune of Emerson's? Now, it is a poor thint to have nothing but melody and be unable to rise 'above it into harmony, !mt one or the other, the less if not the greater, you must have. Imagine c man full of great thoughts and emotions and resol — d to express them in painting who has alxolutclv no rowor upon either form or ooiom*. "W aipwright, the murderer, who never had any thought or emotion above those of a pig or of a butcher, will be a better man for us than- he. But (as Blake sav~). ' Enoujrh ! or too much.' " In an earlier letter Swinburne had written ac follow*: " I read your former letter very oarefully. and have since re-read a good deal of Tmerson's first volume of poems therein mentioned, which certainly contains noble verses and passage* well worth remembering-. I hop<» that no personal feeling -->r consideration will ever prevent or impair my recognition of any roan's higher qualities. In "Whittier the .power and pathos and righteousness' (to use a great old wor3 which should not be left to the 'pulpiteers) of noble emotion would be more, enjoyaola and admirable if he were not so deplorably ready to put up with the first word, goxl or bad, tihat comes to hand, and to :un on long after he is out of breath. For Mr Lowell's verse, when out of the B^lcv costume, I could never bring myself to :«ro at all. I 'believe you know my' theory th.it nothing which can possibly be as well <-a-d in prose ought ever to h*» said in verse."