Saints in Summertime
by
[Norton, $2.50]
THIS is an unusual novel. It gave me the impression of reading a Continental masterpiece without the impediment of translation. It has two disadvantages: its title, and the fact that it is a first novel.
The title, I suppose, is irrevocable. But the second objection is nullified, because the book has none of the weaknesses of a first novel. It is impersonal, well written, and constructed on several planes of significance. Except for utilizing his observation of a Middle European village, the author, either as himself or as his opinions, enters not at all. The style is urbane and careful. The plot may be taken as a study in particular human relationships; or, on a deeper plane, as a political allegory; or, on the deepest plane, as a study of the world through whose spirit these present nightmares pass.
It is essentially simple and realistic. The characters move on their destined ways in the clear commonplace. There is Westerling, a liberal writer who, from the provincial capital of Roda, pontificates to a large audience of other liberals and freethinkers, and, without being aware of it, thus prepares the way for the adultery of his neglected wife with a Fascist and his own unintended connivance with Communism. He is the two-faced god Janus, symbolic of trouble in the offing. His wife’s lover, Florian, believes in the machine, and his terrible vitality can lead but to one end. Smoother is Barfus, the Red strategist, who uses everyone for his own purposes. His motto might have been the lines from Emerson’s ‘Brahma’: ‘They know not well the subtle ways I keep, and pass, and turn again.’ He takes a sneaking advantage of every weakness he guesses in other men, and in the end succumbs to his own: an inordinate love of brandy. Meanwhile there is Westerling’s wife, Sophie, who comes from the village of Selo, where the main action of the novel takes place. From there, on a clear day, one can see the Carpathians.
Selo is stirred by political ferment. It is a microcosm of the agony in the heart of the world. To Selo, Westerling the liberal is a great, if a controversial, man. It is flattered that he married a Selo girl. Ludl, the local socialist, has on view, as it. were, a rustic philosopher and atheist named Popcek. This man is a drunken windbag and enters the novel but briefly at Ins meeting with Westerling. Yet on his fate turns the entire plot.
The interrelation of these people and many others, set against the background of political and personal intrigue, sharpens them like figures seen against the black cloud of a coming storm. Sophie, of course, is the victim, She is the natural person, attuned to the impulses which distinguish human beings from the rest of nature. But her marriage is sterile, her love is tragic, and she returns to an impossible family rent by religious mania and cynicism. Over the whole allegorical drama pours the flat light of relentless satire.
Looking back on what I have written, I am inclined to specify the mood that made me feel as if I were reading a Continental book without the need of translation. I discover that I am thinking of Ibsen partly, and largely of Thomas Mann. These are authors who have created human beings and human situations that are incontestably alive, and yet leave the reader with the sensation of having confronted the dilemma of a race that has neither sloughed off its bestiality wholly nor wholly achieved its spirit. The fête of Saint Bernardinus in midsummer has its religious ecstasy — tempered by sandwiches and the hope of having outwitted one’s husband.
ROBERT HILLYER