FACT IN FICTION
THE GALLOWS AND THE CROSS, by Bela Just; Victor Gollanez, English price 10/6. EROICA, by Carl Pidoll; Methuen, English price 15/-- MONMOUTH HARRY, by A. M. Maugham; Hodder and Stoughton, English price 15/-. HESE three novels are founded on fact, two so closely as to be scarcely fiction at all, the third re-seeing history with the aid of Shakespeare. (continued on next page)
(continued from previous page) Of them all The Gallows and the Cross impresses the most, by its passionate sincerity and its measured, unvarnished style. It is hard to tell. where, if anywhere, fiction enters into this journal of a Hungarian Catholic prison chaplain. With a mounting horror at his gradual identification with the processes of the law, and at hanging itself, the priest, despite his desire to serve God, comes to find himself at one with the men he accompanies to the gallows. His final protest-helping a condemned prisoner to escape-leads to his own imprisonment. But we are not left with any sense of waste. The graphic descriptions of hangings and the sober drama of the priest’s soul stir our pity and horror, making this moving plea against capital punishment a challenge to the conscience of every reader. . Translated from the German, Eroica is a biography of Beethoven, supposedly written by Nickolaus von Zmeskall, who was actually a friend of the composer. Herr Pidoll keeps so close to the facts that it is difficult to understand why he did not write a straight biography, unless he needed the mask of von Zmeskall to comment on Beethoven’s philosophy from a contemporary viewpoint. Although the musical sections are fine, the lengthy and serious expositions of Beethoven’s ideas, by contrast with Rolland and Sullivan, seemed to me woolly when they were not Teutonically dull, A. M. Maugham’s novel, following King Henry V. from boyhood through Shrewsbury and Agincourt to-his early death, is, of its kind, better than most, if not as good as some. It is scholarly, intelligent, lively, without too many embellishments, and refreshingly noblehearted. But I did miss Falstaff.
J.C.
R.
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 35, Issue 896, 5 October 1956, Page 13
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346FACT IN FICTION New Zealand Listener, Volume 35, Issue 896, 5 October 1956, Page 13
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