THREE LIVES
I LIVE AGAIN, the memoirs of Princess Ileana of Roumania; Victor Gollancz. English price, 16/6. THE LAST YEARS OF NIJINSKY, by Romola_ Nijinsky; Victor Gollancz. English price, 15/-. MY FORTYYEAR FIGHT FOR KOREA, by Louise Yim, with the editorial assistance of Emanuel Denby; Victor Gollancz. English price, 18/-. ‘THESE three autobiographies are records of personal toughness and de-votion-to an ideal of royalty, to a genius and to a country. They are interesting because of their subject-matter but none of the three is written with any style. The best autobiographies are not written by the best citizens. Living is one art: writing is another. I Live Again has an oddly period air. It reads like a few edition of one of those stories of ex-kings, ex-queens and ex-duchesses which were a staple product of the lending libraries in the nine-teen-twenties and early thirties. How avidly the memoirs of Marie of Roumania were read a generation or two ago! The same reading public one imagines will respond to this more up-to-date account of royal vicissitudes in peace and war. Princess Ileana addresses herself to an American public to whom she writes down with care and consideration. She assumes that her readers will be sentimental and ignorant of European history and custom. Who is to say she is wrong? One is tempted to remember the wisecrack, "To be a Roumanian is not a nationality: it is a profession." The Last Years of Nijinsky is the harrowing recital of a_ wife’s loyalty to the shell of a genius. Romola Nijinsky tells the story of what happened between 1919, when her husband went insane, to the year of his recent death. Although the dancer’s wife is bitter about the falseness of old friends, she did nevertheless receive help and assistance from many dozens of people during the 20 years she cared for Nijinsky. Romola Nijinsky does not seem to have realised that many _ fellow-Europeans were also personally familiar with suffering between 1919 and 1947. However, if it is to be effective at all, devotion must be combined with toughness and insensitivity to anything other than the object served. Romola Nijinsky could not only afford to be friendly with people who could be useful to her. She was giving so much. to one person that she could only take from the rest. Louise Yim is tough, too: she is also the most likeable of the three writers under review. This remarkable and heroic woman is today the only member of her sex in the Korean Legislature. She was the official delegate of the
South Korean Government to the United Nations in the early stages of the Korean dispute, a position she well deserved to hold because her life has been one long struggle for Korean independence. This autobiography is one of the few modern books to give a picture of Korean life prior to the present trouble. Thousands of newspaper columns about the military situation have left the ‘general public no wiser about the background and traditions of this nation. Most English readers will be astounded to learn in Louise Yim’s pages that Pyongyang, Korea’s first capital, was founded in 2257 B.C., that the world’s first astronomical observatory was established at Kwanju in about A.D, 500, and that in Korea the use of moveable type predated Gutenberg.
D.N.
W.
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 28, Issue 723, 22 May 1953, Page 12
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555THREE LIVES New Zealand Listener, Volume 28, Issue 723, 22 May 1953, Page 12
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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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