UNWILLING SAINT

New Zealand Listener, Volume 19, Issue 491, 19 November 1948, Page 15

UNWILLING SAINT

CATALINA, by W. Somerset Maugham, William Heinemann, Ltd., London and Melbourne. HE author of this novel describes it in his last sentence as a "strange, almost incredible, but edifying mnarrative." This is a final note of irony. The story is strange because it tells of the lame girl, Catalina, who on a bright morning a few hundred years ago had a vision of the Blessed Virgin on the ‘steps of a church in Castel Rodriguez; but the incident was not "almost incredible" in that place and time, and the results were "edifying" only because innocence was able to escape the intrigues of wordly people. They seem less edifying in the dry light thrown by Mr. Maugham upon his churchmen, townspeople and strolling players. Catalina is beautiful, and now that she is no longer lame-for the Virgin arranges a cure-the tailor’s son, Diego Martinez, is quite prepared to marry her. But the subject of a miracle could not escape the notice of the Church, She is especially interesting to Dona Beatriz, Lady Prioress of the Carmelite Convent of the Incarnation, a_ strongminded and ambitious woman resents the celebrity of a nun later’ to be known as Saint Teresa of Avila, It seems to Dona Beatriz that Catalina, who has been cured publicly in a miraculous way, woula bring lustre to the convent. If the affair was properly

managed, she might even become a candidate for canonization; and the Prioress would then feel that she had less to fear from Teresa. In this way Catalina, who only wants to be married, becomes the centre of much scheming. She also has some influence on the life of Friar Blasco de

Valero, Bishop of Segovia, an ascetic who can be ruthless, in the cold Spanish way, in the extirpation of heresy. The intention of the story seems to be mainly ironical; but Mr. Maughan brings back the colour of the period, the brightness of the surface and the shadow below it; and the characters have much vitality, Even an encounter with Don Quixote fails to destroy the impression of realism. (Perhaps Mr. Maugham has read the Spanish phil--osopher De Unamuno, who insists in one of his essays that Quixote is a real person.) A fantasy written in the most practical manner, against a wide background of histdéry, religious and secular, rounds off with characteristic irony the career of a distinguished novelist.

M.H.

H.