The New York herald. [volume] (New York, N.Y.) 1920-1924, 1920-10-24
Bv SAMUEL HOFFENSTEIN.

The ascetic, the saint and the con-
summate artist seem to have in COM
mon an air of high and serene aloof-
ness from their own intensity. Their
passion seems not so much part Of
themselves as a fiery and effective In
strument by which is wrought their
miraculous works. This dispassionate
passion is the manner of John Bunyan
and st. Augustine; and Christ Himself,
save for the occasional tempest of ex-
preston, labored and spoke with an al
most deliberate and calculating detach-
inent from His own emotion, as IL He
had been able TO fashion from the
burning ore Of His conviction a weapon
of salvation, to employ, calmly and ex-
pertly, like a duellist, for offence and
defence. These men used. and were not
used up. by their mission. They moved
these ascetics of Heaven and Art
like Dunsany's jade gods-colossal,
majestic, serene and ineluctable, and
called whomsoever they willed to their
embrace. In this manner, easily, as If
OF target play, the finished lightning
leaped from the hand of Vulcan.
This miracle of fire imprisoned in ice,
or burning in a crystal, has been
achieved by Maurice G.. Hindus in his
book THE Russian Peasant and the
Revolution" (Holt) A confagration
leaps from his facts, yet Mr.. Hindus,
sUmehow or other seems to have moth
| ing to do with either the facts or the
| flames. He seems to have spoken an
Incarnation or waved a wand and
evoked from the printed page a
pageant unlike anything else in hu-
man history. When one remembers
hat Mr.. Hindus is himself of Russian
peasant extraction II is difficult to un-
derstand how he refrained from rush
ing into the picture brandishing fire
and sword and crying vengeance.
Everybody recalls how a great provo
cation affected his contemporary, Bar
busse. But Mr.. Hindus shoulders, like
Spencer's sea shouldering whale" an
overwhelming torrent upon the shore
)f our understanding, and 1t is only he
who is not left breathless.
With simple statistics and simpler
declaratives he has achieved something
Of the grandeur Ola Dostoievsky can
vas-the wavering, epileptic grandeur
of the Russian epic of leagues and
darkness. 1t Is a story at once apoc-
alyptic and apocryphal. 1t is truly
revelation and a prophecy; of people
seen through a glass darkly of a fire
that smouldered in a seer's crystal
and has at last burst forth to bright
ness and freedom. II does not seem
real-this quasi-legend of unrivalled
tyranny and oppression. 1t is a kind
of historical somnambulism-the Rus
sian people rose in their sleep and
walked in hell for six centuries. The
sombre Slavonic half-world of the
roots of the earth OF which Mr.. Hindus
writes appears like a conjuration
from the Pathetic Symphony OF
Tschaikowsky. or a vision seen In
storm or cloud moving across the
steppes midway between heaven and
the grain.
1t is not the purpose Of this essay
to quote Mr.. Hindus but to recommend
him. He is especially recommended
to that vast majority who know so
little and say so much--the spiritu-
ally myopic, the bestially ignorant, so
i'm the liberty of their ig-
norance. They would not be impor-
tant IL Il were not for the continual
Intrusion of their unwieldy and OBJ
numbers into the crucial