The New York herald., 1921-09-25

LA DANSEUSE DE SHAMAhas-
DAMS LES GRIFFES DE LA CIVIL
IZATION. BY Armen Ohanian. Paris:
Bernard Grasset.
TIME exchange of commodities, OF
culture and of hates which goes
= on between the peoples Of the
Mediterranean region and of the ORR
ent curiously enough, is commonly
effected by means of the French
tongue. Even the merchants, careless
of literary tradition, add only such
local expressions as their business de-
mands to the language of Lamartine
In every town of any size there are
Jyoung people who dream OF taking
Paris by storm as the crusaders Of the
Middle Ages dreamed of Jerusalem.
Some of these ambitious ones come
to France and now and then make
a place for themselves, forswearing
the sky and the soul of their own land.
The poet Jean Morens returned only
once to Greece. though he declared
that he dwelt far from his country
only to cherish her the better.
To Maeterlinck and Octave Mirbeau
we are indebted for knowledge of the
Egyptian writers Albert AIDES and Jo-
sipovice-whose Liure, de GOhd le Sim
Dle was called a work of genius. Still
earlier, Jules Lemaitre had introduced
T ltt for nf
salem." Miriam Harry. And now Ana
tole France presents to us Mademois-
ellie Armen Ohanian. She was not un-
known to the public. Before her books
were issued she had shone as star OF
the dance Now she is translated, as
1t were, into apother art. AS Anatole
France writes, "You have carried over
into your descriptions and your nara
tive the charm that once informed
your motions and your glance. You
have found a way to paint in a word
the dawns and twilights of the eau
casus and to revel a thousand secrets
of nature and of human life."
one may ind in her memoirs an
alien turn of phrase or an idiom pc
culiar to the women of Pera, the Eu-
travelled ear perceives an echo or
smyrna and Salonica in her style
For Nine. Ohanian is an Armenian or
the Caucasus In that wild and nople
region among the patriarchal customs
of family loyal to the ancient ways,
her mind and her heart Enclosed.
When her native Samallha was de-
stroyed by an earthquake she con-
tinued her studies at Bakou, where
Russia. represented by the Cossacks
whip, exerted a tyranny more Asiatic
than European. Her fathers death
in a massacre drove her to Persia.
There she found a husband, who left
her the day after marriage!
At the point of suicide she was res
cued by a friendly Mohammedan prin-'
cess; and there in the gentle atmos-
phere of the harem she was deeply
affected by the Persian influence.
When she left her benefactress 1T was
10 practise her dancers art in Con-
stantinople, in Greece and in Egypt.
1.-THE Dancer of Shamakha" and In
the Claws of Civilization" are the
work of a true Oriental. And the two
books have an equal interest for those
who would penetrate the soul of the
East. In the first, one feels the els-
ments of a mind in formation, under
traditional infiuences-nature, poetry
and religion. The reaction to these
will be modified later by contact with
the West. as her second book explains.
"The Occidental regularity of pro-
eedure," she writes, checked my inn
pulse to digress, to evoke, to exalt.
Perhaps that one sentence best reveals
the whole conflict between two civsli-
zations.
Wherever she turned, European
custom disturbed the young Asiatics.
She was exasperated by the signs, in
houses and in parks, forbidding one
to smoke. to sing, to sit down on the
grass. We criticise the Orient for it's
barriers and castles, forgetting our
own stupidities. In the eyes of an
Oriental, Europe is a frightful maze
of conventions. dividing people. ami
mails and things into fixed classes.