Evening star., 1925-09-19
THE LIBRARY TABLE
By the BookIOUer.

close to the soil seems to give strength
of body and Of character. Literature
which has its roots in the soil has also
peculiar strength. This Is illustrated
by much great poetry, drama and nc
ton. In modern fiction there are a
number of writer's who may be called
soil-novelists-for example, Thomas
Hardy. Sheila kaye-Smith. the Nor
wesian Krut Hamsun and the Polish
lIadislas Reymont. Thomas Hardy has
produced many novels the setting of
which Is 'Wessex"; that Is, modern
Dorsetshire. Not all of Hardy's novels
are equally vigorous in their portrayal
or primitive characters against the
background of the land. Perhaps his
best are Far From the Madding
crowd. THE Return of the Native.
The Woodlanders" and THE Mayor
OF Casterbridge." The vast wild waste
land of Egdon Heath in The Return
"f the Native" dominates the lives of
three men and three women and is the
scene of the final tragedy of two of
them. Hardy thus describes it's gloomy
influence: The face of the heath by
its mere complexion added half an
hour to evening; it could in like man
ner retard the dawn. sadden noon, ar.
tlclpate the frowninG of storms scarce
lY generated and intensity the opacity
q a moonless midnight to a cause OF
shaking and dread. The Somber
stretch of rounds and hollow seemed
10 rise and meet the evening gloom In
pure sympathy. the heath exhalins
darkness as rapidly as the heavens pre-.
| clpltated it In harmony with the
sinister heSth are the wild characters
a,,I
and in contrast TO 1t is the simple
kindly character of Diggory Venn, the
raddleman. whose vocation it is to
supply farmers with radding for their
Sheep. In Redeemed garments he drives
MS lurld red van over the long, dry,
white road which bisects the dark sur
( tace of the heath. He is not a man of
lofty ideas and his ambitions are linn.
, tied by his dairy farm and his raddle-
mans cart, but wherever there is
trouble DiSsory is there to help.
r 4 4 =
Sussex Gorse," by Sheila KAYE
Smith. is the grim history of the life
of man so land-hungry that he
| sacrihces everything 10 his greed
two wives, children, all personal hap
piness-and counts the sacrifice we'll
! made because he has conquered the
o.
he stands on the crest of Bdarzeli
Moor. from which he has just burned
! the last gorSe and tir trees, and
eXults that as far as he can see the
land is his and IS all cultivated. out
or small obscure farm of barely
90 acres he had raised up this splen-
did dominion, and he had tanned the
! toughest, toughest, fiercest. Cruelest
piece of ground in Sussex. the beast
of Boarzell." He lives alone in his
weatherbeaten farmhouse. His many
children have all deserted him. driven
away by his harshness, and the only
/ woman he has ever loved has just
died, despising him. Yet he is content.
| He needs no human being. He has
the land. He says softly TO himself, as
| he watches the last gorse blazing on
| the top of the moor: I've won-and
its bin worth while. l may live
/ to be a hundred, man of my might.
But if | go next week. l shan't COM
plain. fur I've lived to see my heart s
desire. I've lived SO close TO the
| earth all my days that I reckon I
shant be afraid to lie in it at last. -
Enut Hamsun's Growth of the
Soil is an epic of the gradual con-
quest of the soil by primitive man
anu tIIe CROWN Oh what Is
called civilization. The first sentences
in the novel tell its theme: The long.
| long road over the moors and up into
the forest-who trod 1t into being first
of all? Man, a human being, the first
| that anne here. There was no path
; before he came" The peasant Isak
! typifies primitive man. He comes
: trudsing over the hills. bearing a
sack of food and few rude imple-
ments. Here and there he stops and
! digs into the soil. At night he sleeps
on a bed of stacked pine. Finally he
! stops on hillside and begins clearing
| a space and building a hut of turf
! There are two rooms in his hut. one
! for himself and one for his beasts
| So he goes away one day and comes
! back leading three goats. He begins
! cultisating the soil. Another day he
/ sees some one coming over the hill
/ and then at last came help; the
| woman he needed" The but is made
| larger; children come; home is
| there. Years pass by quickly. Trou
| bles come. sin and punishment. Isak
! and Inger grow old. Their children
| always Isak has stayed on the hand
! In his old age he is margrave in his
| township, but he really cares only for
| the soil Twas rarely he knew the
/ day of the month-what need had he
| of that? But he knew ST
! Olaf's day in the Autumn. that by
| then his hay must be in; and he knew
Candlemas in Spring, and that three
weeks after then the bears came out
of their Winter quarters: all seed
must ~be in the earth by then. He
| knew what was needful.'
x X x
! pnJisl, coil nnuoI hlo ia
THE Growth of the Soil is The
! Peasants" by Ladislas Reymont
To the Polish peasants only the
essentials of life matter-food. shell
! ter. sex. The earth is their re.
| ligion. In the Spring they SOW, in the
Summer and Autumn they gather in
| their crops, and in the Winter they
hoard and wait for the Spring. The
animals are members of the family,
cared for as solicitouslY tand as unin.
telligently> as are the children
Boryna's large red and white COW is
ill., "wallowing on a heap of manure
| lust before the byre.'' His daughter
| in-law Hanka, is weeping and strokine
| the cows head. The neighbors stand
, about sympathetically From time
| to time the women would recommend
| her a new remedy for the sick animal
| Now they would pour brine down its
! throat now milk into which wax from
a consecrated taper had been dropped
One advised soap dissolved in whey
and another suggested bleeding.
From the land comes all the liveli
hood of the peasants: so nearly AL
| their emotions are concerned with the
land and its products-quarrels OF
! neighbors over fields, pasturage and
cattle, jealousies among brothers and
sisters over land inheritance, greed for
land dowries on the part of marrying
men, and eager struggling for advan
tage at the annual cattle and grain
fair in the town.
| X * x
| u,l. z.Lool,irIo af fbiS and nj AZ