THE LOVER OF POWER
THE BORGIA TESTAMENT. By Nigel Balchin. Collins. (Our copy through the British Council.) T is a little surprising to find Mr. Balchin choosing from the packed pages of history a theme which has, in its time, attracted the attention and the labours of such different writers as Rafael Sabatini and Somerset Maugham. For the events of the lives of Caesar Borgia and his father, Alexander VI., oscillate uneasily between drama and : melodrama. What, no cloak, no dagger, Mr, Balchin? Caesar Borgia was what found him, the most reasonable of men? No violence for its own sake, but all done out of policy, the ‘Borgia the Polonius of princes? __ This novel is brisk and rapid enough. It interests but does not enthral. It amuses but does not delight. It is competent but not inevitable. It is good, but it seems always to promise a little more than it performs. We feel that there is, just around the corner, over the next page perhaps, the perfect description of the unutterable, the answer, the quintessence, the final judgment, the last word, the Holy Grail, the ‘Message which will lay all flat. Somehow it remains unsaid, unuttered. Only the last pages, with their abrupt change from over-stoical autobiography to the brutal point of view of an enemy, have the vitality we would like to see diffused through the whole book. I don’t wish to leave you with the impression that The Borgia Tes‘ament is a flop, but it does seem to be a lesser thing than we might expect of Nigel Balchin. Caesar Borgia is a man drunk with a fatal ambition, possessed of a single-minded ruthlessness from which even his strong and experienced father recoils. His ambition for a united Italy (a Man born before His Time, of course) is this a_ pitiful illusion-or what? The novel seeks to explain and not to excuse, but does neither. Perhaps the writer meant me to be puzzled as to whether Caesar is villain or hero. But even if I have been led up the garden path, the flowers have been worth snuffing at and their colours brave.
D.O.W.
H.
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https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/periodicals/NZLIST19490128.2.22.2
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 20, Issue 501, 28 January 1949, Page 10
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358THE LOVER OF POWER New Zealand Listener, Volume 20, Issue 501, 28 January 1949, Page 10
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Copyright in the work University Entrance by Janet Frame (credited as J.F., 22 March 1946, page 18), is owned by the Janet Frame Literary Trust. The National Library has been granted permission to digitise this article and make it available online as part of this digitised version of the New Zealand Listener. You can search, browse, and print this article for research and personal study only. Permission must be obtained from the Janet Frame Literary Trust for any other use.
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