The New York herald., 1922-07-30

and or electric signs beamed like
faithful lighthouses. Ruby
and emerald aperients flowed, MEM
bers Of parliament, straining hero
ically, were breaking up Cabinets.
poets were writing unimpeachable
verse about women's breasts and
hips; in petty journals desperate
revolutionists printed weekly TRADES
against the Government, which,
however, remained deaf to their
thunders, and savings bank clerks
entered in carefully wrapped books
new guiding zeros''
A book of a totally different ap-
peal is a novel called The Churayev
Family" by Georgy Grebenshchikov,
also an emigre, although Of an ear
lier vintage than Erenburg. In the
foreword the author, in giving the
history of the manuscript, tells a
curious tale, characteristic of recent
conditions in Russia. The novel was
begun in the Altai Mountains, ST.
IBERIA, and it was completed in the
Carpathians, to the accompaniment
of the guns of the world war. I'm
dugout which ] made with the aid
bf my dear comrades at arms of the
Twenty-eighth Siberian detachment,
which 1 commanded" writes the au-
thor, through the agitated nights
when the starving horses gnawed at
their bits and the sentinels sat by
the bonfires secretly dreaming Of
peace-in those nights my imagina-
ton carried me to the sectarian mon
asteries of far Siberia, and / has
tened TO sketch in the unique life of
my native region. / remember the
bright, snowy noon of February 5,
1917, when I completed my novel; !
remember the splendid horse, Swan,
which was saddled for me, my or
derly, my sergeant and practically
my entire company, by name and by
sight. Just a month later
came the news of the freedom which,
alasl proved to be the beginning of
great ordeals. On April first, the eve
of Easter Sunday. one of my men
insulted me with a blow in the pres
ence of the soldiers. Here
begins the painful history of the
saving of my manuscript from de-
struction by people who suspected
every one who had anything in writ
ing. The manuscript sweated in the
kits of soldiers who remained faith
full to me. 1t was concealed from
Ukrainian separatists, from Petlura's
bands, from the Germans, from the
Russians who for twelve. days bonn
barded Kiev. In the Crimea 1t rotted
hidden in the earth under reddening
tomatoes, and finally, despairing of
seeing itself in print at home, it mi
grated to Turkey. F.. Here its
author and protector worked as a
carpenter and longshoreman and
saved it from a ruthless publisher,
who estimated it at a humiliating
figure in order that in January, 1921,
it might miraculously reach France,
through the efforts Of rare Russian
woman, by way of northern Africa,
travelling aboard the warship Edgar
Quinet.'
The novel takes one into an atmos-
phere utterly remote from the spirit
of these times. 1t deals with the
secluded life of a group of Old Be
levers, lost in the mountain fast
nesses of central Siberia. As the
story develops the reader becomes
less sure that the book was worth
all the pains to which it put its
author. The plot is without special
merit. 1t involves a trite triangular
situation, affecting two brothers and
the wife of one of them. In the end
the woman runs off with her brother
in-law. The characterization is weak
and unconvincing. Yet the novel de-
riyes its effectiveness and power
from the presentation of a sturdy,
spacious. ample out of doors life, Gu
riously ruled by religious fanaticism.
The description of the religious feuds
which tear apart these mountain
communities and the scenes of the
conclaves where the rival hierarchs
ironic eyes of an orthodox mission