DELIGHTS AND AGONIES OF A BOY SAILOR
WILET, MARGARET L.
Delights and Agonies of a Boy Sailor; Revlew by MARGARET L. WILEY What Form of Collectivism? Review fey DANIEL EASTMAN EUROPE IN REVOLUTION. By John Scott. Houghton Mifflin Co., Boston....
...Th* symbolism has Its orgiastic panoramas, ad th* fall from political and literary grace, exemplified by bouts of box and drinking, dulls th* sensibilities —presenting Irena in a rather lewd, Wagnerian role...
...I had been plucked up by the roots and pitched endways, to strike root or die...
...I felt that all that kind of life was over for me, wst not to be for me...
...Life, looking on her lamb, postponed the slaughter And .-tamped within my soul delight in Water.'' Now he has written New Chum, in simple prose with overtones of poetry, in order to document the "delight in watei " which he knew in his first months sbosrd sn English trsining ship when he wss thirteen...
...Ho even manages to see the germ of new and bettor labor relations in the enslavement and transportation of hundreds of thousands of laborers from occupied countries by the Nazis...
...TtllS book touches on almost every important contemporary political problem, in order to show that collectivism is creeping up on ua from every side...
...He taw men who risked their lives in a long voyage come ashore to be fleeced by "maggots of corruption...
...Ennui drowns our lives...
...Even Scott recognizes elsewhere that "many Americans do not like the GPU, Collectivization, Soviet I m !«¦ rial ism, Communism...
...It it the inherent poetry of the sea and thips which comes over to one, uncluttered by purple passages...
...Now the brown-shirts are marching, and the perverse picture of Europe it tnappedl Kavaltky thinks he it not good enough for the new future—too weak to accept the means toward the end...
...Here are the cultured mindt of Europe sitting at a bull-session, preparing for the krieg in the west...
...In Wanderings, Masefield captured the vivid and disjointed memories of the young child and wove them into a narras...
...At the age of three he had launched out ' into a dangerous mill stream, from which 'two men rescued him...
...As the new chum approaches his ship for the first time1, he chants to himself joyfully the list of strange and wonderful articles in his sea chest...
...Once on board, he is swept into the bewildering and exciting maelstrom of orders, sea drills, hanging of hammocks, mess, twabs, navigation, metereology, etc...
...Inevitability* is an Uninspiring argument...
...Not even if Russia is, i as Scott avers, nn almost invincible military power, backed by something that he calls a Three-Dimensional Foreign Policy...
...there are chapters outlining the road to peace, the political future of Britain,, America's foreign policy, etc., etc...
...A satirist, he disinters the inner man's public ego, with bitter parallels of identity and social confusion!, and serves up a powerful literary stimulant One emerges from this Wslpurgitnacht of the Tomorrow morning of the Conscience with quite a head...
...The characters are first met in a Prague night-club, seeking authority and personal Integration though the medium of Kavalsky, a supreme egotist, representing drive and culture...
...The regimented mass...
...Here an« there the context gives ut clues, and ont day we shall meet these words again and understand them...
...Hit readers, however, probably won't share hit enthusiasm...
...Sometimes, as I sat aloft in the cross-tees in those early days, I thought how marvellous it was, to have this ever-changing miracle about me, with mountains, smoky, glittering cities, the clang of hammers, the roar and hoot of sirens...
...Obscurantism...
...Shuttling like a montage sequence between New York and prewar Prague, the minor story opens with the announced death of lit-erateur, Joseph Kavaltky, dandy of life and letters, a recent pursuer of Kafkian-Nietzschean effects...
...Scott alto tucceeds in making the collective revolution teem intolerable by identifying it with Soviet Russia...
...In one chapter ha cites with approval at a step toward collectivism the disappearance of money economy from Germany during the war, to that people were obliged to spend five hours bartering for what previously they could have bought for cash in ten minutes...
...as wall as Mrs...
...2.50...
...Kavalsky who, apparently, just like K avalsky's sister, most wait for all the evil* of history to unfold before her, morbidly noting Kavalsky's growing disinterest hi the minor role of the literary personality as he toarehco through his distortions for a streamlined verdict of history...
...tive poem...
...83,00...
...of modern man...
...He does this in part by interpreting every kind of social and economic catastrophe as a progressive step en the road to inevitable collectivism...
...Nevertheless, we must accept Soviet Russia because "tha fact remains that it* prestige among scores of millions of common people in Europe is vary high...
...Aside from continual reiteration of ' the main thesis, the inevitability of collectivism, the book seen)* confused, disorganized, and superficial...
...niscent of stories we heard read aloud in childhood, not knowing the precise meaning of all the words but being rushed along by the narrative...
...now the roots were trying to catch something...
...a philosophical latrine attendant who contributes the thesis—suicide...
...But he believes "most of these dislikes are th* result of misunderstandings...
...The book seems to have been written to convince the average, middle-class American that the world is going col-lectivist and there is nothing he can do about it...
...I had seen many dogs and many pigs better housed, for the keepers of the pigs and dogs liked their beasts to lie dry, and provided bedding for them...
...yow-yow.' How wat I to know what yow meant...
...the government changes color, shirt and political identity...
...The young Masefield's roving senses took in the sordid and brutal along with the beautiful...
...And Jaroslav who only hoped to write a book about the master, tentatively accepts the new role of treason...
...NEW CHUM...
...He sees another potential advance in tha fact that housing in Finland during the war became so short that troops were quartered on private families, and by government regulation everyone was limited to on* room par person...
...tuated by the joys of going aloft, of becoming an expert staunchlon polisher, and of awakening frequently to the sheer "delight in water" which was to follow him all his days...
...Misunderstanding of what...
...There is only occupation, a future for the renegades working through the German Legation, and the closed sky for the rest...
...among others, his repeated assertions without proof that local European Communist parties have practically no connection with Moscow...
...the actor, Hrubin, who has missed the main chance...
...Bp John Mastoid...
...268 page...
...Th* novel ends With a recollection of Benda's "Treason •f the Intellectuals," summarising this remark* bis novel of disillusionment, death, and social betrayal...
...He was appalled by living conditions on thips he visited in the harbor...
...To thit part of sea life he could never belong, though he was caught forever by its poetry...
...For the first few weeks hit life consisted of the usual hazing given new chums, punc...
...But the lad who told ghost stories to his mates at night and to whom a chance copy of Treasurs Is-land gave ecstatic joy was destined for * , Ufa of poetry—poetry which wat always within sight and sound and smell of Up the Dark Alley . "•view by HARRY ROSKOLENKO L.IKK Odon von Horvath, author of the now famout Ags of the Fish, Egon Hostovsky, the Czech impressionist snd symbolist, creates from the ruins of a prewar battered political world the metaphysical overtones of personal, though non-private, malediction...
...In New Chum he has seized upon the delights and fears and agonies of a thirteen-year-old and gives them to us with the insight of a mature poet...
...Kavalsky and his sister escape, as does his would-be biographer, Jsrotlav, the rot of iliumi -nationt under the heading of the fascist ideal...
...the renegades arrive...
...A shrill whittle blew, and someone shouted: 'yow, yow,' or 'how, YOW,' or 'YOW...
...Once the resder hss put down the book, he looks at the till* as symboli of the strange language to be foun within...
...That won't go...
...What seems Important now is not to lie down'and accept an inevitable collectivism on the Soviet model, but to stand, up and, figty for democratic and human values, Mr...
...Self-glory...
...there is sadistic and lecherous Irons, part-time mistress of Kavalsky, and no loss muddled than the rest...
...The event is in the hand of God...
...Despite a breakdown and a reaction, Kavaltky writes an obscurantist novel, somewhat within the tcope of the new order, symbolically enough at the time of the Sudetenland critis...
...The confusion layered with delight which characterizes the world of most thirteen year olds wat heightened by hit life on board ship...
...New York: The Masmillsm Company...
...One German politely informs a cultured Frenchman that th* role of France in the new order will be that of "a colossal brothel...
...Other dissenters can perhaps prove (1) that the Soviet Union hat undergone changes that can only be characterised as the betrayal of th* ideals of Socialism...
...Two yean ago John Masefield published a narrative poem, Wondsrings (Between One and Six Years), in which, among other early recollections, he in- -eluded hit first adventure on water...
...This identification leads him into some rather weird arguments: '"Dissenters," he admits, "may say, and with soma reason (I),that the Soviet Union, though Socialist in name, actually grinds down its people much mot* ruthlessly than did many prewar European capitalist democracies...
...Hostovsky's potent distillations, almost rarifying for timpla acceptance with hit seven diverse characters in search of history, are on the same level of suspension...
...the miles of dicks, the thips snd attendant ships, all there for me, seemingly only noticed by me, everybody else seemed to be used to it by this time, or to have other things to do...
...novelists, scientists,, naturalists, historians and sociologists, being pepped up for the new future...
...I find, that I have not been able to tell the effect which the chip made upon me...
...Jaroslav, th* first person singular, a critic, who proposes to write an appreciation of th* genius of Kavalsky but finds himself coerced instead toward the fascist ideal...
...If Scott expects Americans, even middle class Americana, to accept Russia as a and Communism as th* world's groat hope merely because it ha* succeeded in hoodwinking scores of millions of Europeans, he is barking up the wrong tree...
...a faceted illustration of the Celines, Hamsuns, Pounds—in the endless lists of the apostates What did they really love 1 Efficiency...
...Here are all the elementary drives, distortions, the paraphernalia of the mystique embracing Kavalsky and the seven associates who tpin round him like to many topi and psychological contrivances...
...even the comic actor, Hrubin, finds his main chance and goes over...
...there is a section devoted to eyewitness reports of the war years in Scandinavia...
...Any man who hat apprenticed to tht tea or any landdlubber who has only longed for it can enjoy this book without knowing that its author is the Poet Laureate of England...
...ought to re-read the quotation from George Washington on the monument in Washington Square: "Let us raise the standard to which the wise and the honett can repair...
...Kavalsky and Jaroslav can't take it and get beaten for their betrayal...
...a doctor, and some other professionals...
...The thema is timely: fire and death...
...There are excursions into the history of the European revolutionary movement...
...When the metaphysical wrappings and the gilt come off, only the brown-shirt emerges...
...The Brotherhood1 of the New Order...
...The latrine attendant now wields power...
...It was profound...
...How wat I to yow unless I could see my shipmates bowing...
...That, too, was ssid about a revolution...
...Some of the elite are frightened off, notwithstanding their own psat though unconscious contributions as apostles of the new creed...
...Scott belongs quite definitely to the hair-shirt school of social reformers for whom the worse things are the better they will be...
...tragedies no longer purge us and corned!ee no longer amuse...
...it was translation to another world utterly unlike anything before known, read of, or imagined...
...Kavalsky, in one of hia summaries before be embarks on his great man theory, tayt: "I am dying of ennui...
...The book abounds in see termi which it would be sacrilege to seek in t dictionary...
...Could yon consent to see other people here . . . maybe foreigners , . . to •** our native tongue die out slowly . . . to...
...Irena trie* informing in order to hold on to muddled Kavalsky, and then in the fantasy of madness, nude she imagines herself embracing him on the public streets and is packed off to the madhouse...
...Scott manages, however, to make the collective revolution teem so unpleasant that he defeats hit own purpose...
...Characteristic of the violent and "eternal" decisions of early adolescence was Masefield's refusal to join s group of his shipmates in reading Shakespeare on Sunday afternoons...
...They add a strangeness and charm to the narrative which is renti...
...The real difficulty with Scott's book is that he is so anxious to make' the collective revolution seem inevitable that he neglects to make it seem even bearable...
...Many of the author's statements are highly questionable...
...Perhaps this is a worthwhile purpose...
Vol. 29 • March 1946 • No. 10
