Reviews

Aspects of Modernism. (From Wilde to Pirandello) by Janko Lavrin. (Stanley Nott, 69, Grafton Street, Fitzroy Square, London)

Janko Lavrin shows in his book his deep and wide knowledge of the trends of modern European literature. His searching criticisms and constructive evaluation spring from a rare insight and sound judgment. He has written a book of the greatest value to everyone interested and also to those who are ignorant of the movements of intellectual thought in Europe and its influence directly and indirectly on thought and literary production in modern days. This compact survey ought to make us delve deep into the thought of some of the writers he has put before us. He shows us a great variety of writers illustrating the restlessness, social and individual disintegration, lack of faith, anxious quest, hope and despair, or else compromise and evasion, of contemporary Europe.

His terse summing up of writers is very helpful. About Oscar Wilde he says: "After repeated perusal of his works one even feels annoyed to find in them so much liveliness at the expense of life, so much sparkling artifice at the expense of art, so much wit at the expense of wisdom. Oscar Wilde is one of the most striking representatives of the ‘decadence’ period in modern literature. Although not significant as a creator he is important as a symptom." About Anatole France he writes: "It is enough to read his ‘Le Jarden de Epicure’ in order to realise his aversion not only to the tyranny of errors but also to the tyranny of imposed or self-imposed truths. The cocksure apostles of such truths always struck him as devoid of inner honesty or else as minds of an inferior order, narrow, self-deceived and stupidly self-conceited." Anatole France himself writes thus: "Were I not conciliatory with regard to my own ideas, were I to confer upon a single system an exclusive preference, I could no longer tolerate the freedom of every opinion; having destroyed my own freedom of thought, I could not readily tolerate it in the case of others, and I should forfeit the respect due to every doctrine established and professed by a sincere man. The Gods forbid that I should wish my opinion to prevail to the exclusion of any other, and exercise an absolute sway on other minds!" As a psychologist he is subtle rather than profound. An amusing situation interests him more than the various depths of the human soul.

Gabriele de Annunzio, the poet of young Italy, shows a tendency to dazzle at the first glance by his brilliance, his eloquence and coquettish pose, but "many a glittering jewel of his art would prove on close inspection only an ingeniously worked up ‘bit of glass.’ More spasmodic than spontaneous he is too much of an ‘impressionist’ to be durably interested." About Rimbaud the poet and his work Lavrin writes: "And what strikes one at once is Rimbaud’s mental and emotional precosity as well as his technical perfection at an age when even the greatest talents only grope and imitate. It was between fifteen and eighteen that he wrote some of the finest poems modern French Literature can boast of." Rimbaud’s creative urge was born of his inner daring, reactions and adventures. While haunted by the infinite and at the same time drawn towards it irresistibly, he yet rejected any guiding principles except that of egoistic caprice, self-will and conceit.

An attentive reader of Knut Hamsun’s works is almost invariably struck by this mixture of two incongruous, and at the first glance incompatible, elements. One of them is the freshness of a map of the soil and the other the introspective brooding of a ‘decadent’ who is familiar with some of the most tortuous nuances and contradictions of the human soul. The hackneyed formula, nature versus civilisation, thus became one of his favourite and most frequent themes. Hamsun makes it clear that love becomes depraved only through the contact with town and civilisation. Town and civilisation are thus interpreted by Hamsun as agents of corruption. Yet, while rejecting Hamsun’s trend, we can still be grateful for that art which has grown to some extent out of it. After all it is Hamsun the author that matters, and his writings remain in many ways unique.

Although the poetic work of Alexandre Blok is striking and original enough to defy any labels, some of its aspects can best be understood if treated in connection with the Russian civilisation.

One of the characteristics of that movement was a strong impulse to go beyond mere art and literature and create a new consciousness, a new man. Such an aim was bound however to come into contact with the religious thought of Russia, with that of Dostoevsky and Vladmir Solovyev who were working towards an harmonious union of art, philosophy, religion and life. The prevalent mood at that time can best be defined as spiteful apathy. The drabness and vulgarity of existence overpowered him to such an extent as to make all efforts seem futile.

Rozanov, some of whose writings have already appeared in English, was a fragmentary, self-centred and self-contradictory individual, displaying a thousand masks and also a peculiar capacity for mixing even sincere reverence with a cynical chuckle. Endowed with a rare psychological insight he felt at ease only when rummaging in the most complicated shades of man’s sub-conscious inner chaos. He was against the cleavage–the gulf-between the sexless love and the loveless sex which is responsible for one of the most painful cleavages in man’s nature.

In contrast to Rozanov’s yearnings for sexual wholeness, Otto Weininger represents, and also advocates, the greatest conscious cleavage between sex and love, between what he calls the sensuous ‘lower life’ on the one hand and the life of the spirit on the other. In his frantic attempts to suppress sex at any price, Weininger would not even think of Eros as the creative sublimation of sex, a sublimation which turns our ‘libido’ into an aesthetic and spiritual experience. Lawrence suffered very much from the opposite fault and can be defined as Otto Weininger inside out. He suffered from too much puritanism, inherited an innate puritanism which he was anxious to eliminate by a forced affirmation of the senses. He remained, with all his anti-puritanism, a disguised, self-righteous puritan to the end of his days.

Rainer Maria Rilke’s poetry has essentially a feminine quality which made his strength grow out of his weakness. All his sensitiveness, his emotional and spiritual exaltation, seemed to have developed largely at the expense of his will and vitality. In addition he possessed a sensibility which made him one of the greatest artists in modern European poetry.

Then the author dilates on the Futurist movement "for the root of futurism is to be sought beyond, or at least away from, mere art. It was not so much an aesthetic as a spiritual and social manifestation. And as such it certainly deserves a retrospective scrutiny–a proceeding which can be of value only in so far as it throws some light upon the larger and more important issues of the present day inner crisis." The founder of this movement Maranetti in his book "The Victory of Samothrace" writes: " We wish to glorify war–the only health-giver of the world–militarism, patriotism, the destructive arm of the anarchist, the beautiful ideas that kill, the contempt for women. We wish to destroy the museums, the libraries. We fight against moralism, feminism and all opportunistic and utilitarian meanness." One outstanding feature is the brutal affirmation of the masculine as against the feminine principle in art and literature and this is more important than it looks. The most remarkable switch in the direction of the ‘masculine’ impulse is noticeable in the literature of the Soviet Russia. The fact that futurism enjoyed a particular vogue in Italy is in itself significant because it raises from a wider angle the question of cultural inheritance.

A conspicuous feature of contemporary Europe is the self assertion of small nations not only in politics but also in culture. Judging by some of their achievements they are entitled to more attention than they obtain. There is perhaps a certain advantage in a country bring so small as to be unable to afford commercialisation on a wide scale, which means that owing to its very poverty it is compelled to concentrate on quality instead of quantity. An author writing for so small a number of readers is doomed almost to remain somewhat provincial. But once he has gone beyond the limits of provinciality he can make a valuable contribution to literature as a whole, precisely by revealing it to the soul and the conscience of a small nation. All this Ivan Cankar has done.

The dilemma Ivan Cankar had to face was a double one. First of all the fate of a tiny nation–like the Slovenes–in the chaos of the contemporary political and economic struggle; secondly his personal fate within the frame of that nation, the fate of a great creative artist working in the pettiest provincial atmosphere which seemed to exclude beforehand any kind of greatness. An answer to both problems is given in his novels, plays, stories, satires and polemical articles. He achieved something similar to what Bernard Shaw did in England.

Finally, Esserun on the one hand and Mayakovsky on the other are the two dominating figures in the crop of poets and poetasters produced by the first decade of the Bolshevist regime. Mayakovsky became the herald of the rising proletariat, and Esserun was the voice of the peasant and the village. Of all recent Italian playwrights Pirandello alone has achieved an undisputed international reputation. Yet the reason of his literary fame is to be sought in his provocative quaintness rather than in exceptional originality or depths. The human ego helplessly wriggling in its ‘flux,’ in the mazes and contradictions of its own relativity–such is Pirandello’s favourite situation. And he intertwines it time and again with his two basic themes which he repeats with monotonous insistence. One of them is the instability of everything human, including our sincerest affections and opinions; and the other the antithesis between life and its external forms, masks as Pirandello calls them. His works show an utter severance of life from the values of life, and his inability to unite the two is only matched by his intellectual frankness with regard to himself and others. By not forcing himself into any half beliefs and ‘-isms’ to which he would have to sacrifice his inner integrity, he faces his own void as honestly and bravely as he can, and his works are largely a record of that void.

G. Y. MARTYN

The Crucial Problem of Imperial Development. (The Royal Empire Society. Longmans. 2sh. 6d.)

The problem of Imperial Development has engaged of late the attention of economists and publicists. The spirit of Ottawa is dead; and exclusive imperial economic agreements have not worked. More and more it is being realised that the Empire is not a self-sufficient economic unit and that imperial development depends on the increase of free trade in the world. "The Crucial Problem of Imperial Development" is an expression of that realisation. It is the report of a conference held by the Royal Empire Society in November 1937. The chief problem discussed was how to increase consumption and to set the wheels of imperial and world trade going. Mr. McDougall stated the problem for the Dominions; Sir Frank Noyce for India; the Marquess of Dufferin and Ava for the Colonies; Sir John Wardlaw-Milne discussed the relation of the imperial problem to the world problem; Prof. N. F. Hall spoke of the relation between consumption and production; and Mr. H. V. Hodson admirably summed up the conclusions. The ways and means suggested to increase consumption appear to be several but none of them really calculated to benefit the countries or to solve the essence of the problem in India and the Colonies, the standards of living, education and economic equipment are so low that the remedies suggested in their case appear to be far from adequate. For instance Sir Frank Noyce suggests that the problem in India could be solved only by the increase of intensive agriculture and by change of diet. As if the pressure on land is not intense enough in India and as if the country could employ on a large scale the results of research without substantial governmental aid. Mr. Hodson stated the problem for India better when he said that the only remedy lay in rapid industrialisation. But perhaps none of the contributors come to real grips with the difficulties. No improvement in consumption would be enough to solve the problem of imperial development. Much depends on the improvement in world trade; but far more on the application of the principles of socialism in the Empire. They would maximse production; they would also equitably distribute the product. The crucial problem would become less crucial and more helpful.

D. S.