A LONG TIME AGO

New Zealand Listener, Volume 39, Issue 989, 1 August 1958, Page 14

A LONG TIME AGO

SHREE’S COMPANY, by Alfred Duggan; Faber & Faber, English price 15/-. ON A BALCONY, by David Stacton; Faber & Faber, English price 16/-. THE RINGGIVERS, by W. H. Canaway; Michael Joseph, English price 16/-. THE SIBYL, by Par ee Chatto & Windus, English price BIRD’S eye view of world history seems to be the thing, nowadays, for a youngster embarking on social studies. But the bare bones of an ancient civilisation are net enough. They need to be clothed in all but living flesh-cunningly compounded of the facts of history and the imaginative insight of a good writer. Alfred Duggan, in Three’s Company, does. just this and does it with such caustic humour that a rather dull dog of a Roman magistrate comes unromantically to life. Marcus Aemilius Lepidus, a patrician of Rome, followed Julius Caesar to power in 49 B.C., witnessed his death and eventually became one of the Triumvirate with Mark Anthony and Octavian. Birth, education and honest conservatism took him to the summit of power, but an over-developed talent for appeasement and indecision finally brought him low. A racy account, this, of a period of Roman history full of political plots, when the head of a Cicero was brought down as’ easily as the level of a draught of wine. Egypt, circa 1350 B.C., is the setting for On a Balcony. This ‘is a fascinating study of the Pharaoh Akhnaton, who banished a hierarchy of gods to make the sun-god supreme. Amongst the brilliant but decadent society surrounding him, his queen and sister catches

the imagination — Nefertiti, whose beauty has become as well known to us as to her contemporaries. Mr Stacton, however, prefers his morbidly introspective characters and thus gives pride of place to the Pharaoh. Set in the years 500-550 A.D., The Ring-Givers tells the stirring tale of Beowulf, leader of the Geats, a tribe who once -lived beside the Danes and Swedes. Mr Canaway is by no means the first teller of this tale, as the British Museum houses a precious manuscript, dated 700 A.D., of The Song of Beowulf, the only Old English poem of heroic deeds to come down to us complete. The original is incomprehensible to all but students of Anglo-Saxon, who have suffered, no doubt, in its translation; the novel, while drawing heavily on the poem, also develops _brieflymentioned exploits of other 6th century heroes, to make a splendid and terrible story of an age long past. The Sibyl by Par Lagerkvist is a short, spare book, written with the utmost simplicity and feeling. Its purpose is to seek out the nature of God and to that end the Wandering Jew visits a priestess of the Delphic oracle, asking for guidance. The imaginative triumph of the book, however, lies not in her answer but in the compelling re-creation of her life as handmaiden of the oracle, although remote in time from us by

nearly two thousand years.

K.

C.