Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1931-08-29
THE LIBRARY TABLE
BY the Bookloper

no reason for desiring life, there is
nothing to explain why the cotter and
fisher folk in Johan Bojer's novel, THE
Everlasting Struggle" do not all refuse
to go on with the struggle. Existence
at Plata, the home of Paal Flata and
his family, is bitter and gray and heavy
with poverty. The little place lies out
by the headland, on the broad ford,
which is shut in by "the long whale
back of the westward mountains" It is
part of a hamlet of fishing huts, gray
as the sea-gray as the shingle below
each with its boat house and q boat
or two lying in the open and
oozing out tar In the heat" Flata is
"a little old house sunken together I'M
der a turf roof The walls have been
battered by many Winter storm, and
over the two small windows down.
stairs there is a single one under the
loft. It is as If the house were clos
ing one eye against the western
heaven" Here live Paal Flata, his wife.
Mother Lisbet; his son Per and his
daughters, Anna and Martha. There
is also a small adopted boy, Martin,
and later the family receives additions
in the form of Mother Lisbet's illegiti-
mate son, Gjert Knutsen, who, after
a meteoric career as q head waiter in
the city, has become wreck at 40, and
the illegitimate child of Martha, little
Astrid. In this Norwegian parish, as
perhaps in some other parts of the
world, the poor are the most hos
pitable, the most ready to share the
little that they have.
In the small fishing hamlet, monot-
ony and drabness are the best that
life has to offer. When monotony is
broken, it is by disaster During the
brief Summer. when there Is daylight
all night long. there is warmth, and
life can be lived out-ofdoors. The
small crops are ha rested, and the cattle
from all the little erofts wind up the
glen to the outlying pastures. People
dress in their boarded Sunday best and
walk up the valley to church on Sun
days. But Autumn comes almost i'm
mediately; Per goes of for the herring
fishing; Mother LiSbet takes a few
dozen eggs to the city and brings back
few shillings, with which she buys
coffee and sugar and strip for the por-
ridge Then comes Winter, the longest
Of all the seasons. Storms rage over
the little hamlet: the men are away
at the Lofoten fishing, and of course
the women never know whether all will
come back At home there is pinch
ing and pairing, but IN spite Of all the
bills run up at the village store. Mar
tina, with her shoulders weighted by a
yoke on which hang two pals, struggles
up through the snow-drifted fields,
breaks the ice in the well head and car
ries water for both kitchen and byre.
She must go many times to bring
enough. Mother Lisbet tends the two
cows, the pig, the six sheep and the
hens, and often goes out to the byre
even at night because the animals are
H. 60 Ian~ bo
company With the Spring, the men
come back from the Lofoten fishing; II
the season has been good, the bills at
the store are paid; If not, the bills run
on until the storekeeper refuses further
credit, Mother Lisbet and Martha
scrub down the little house with soap
Suds. The men plant the small patch
Of ground, boil down the Gods hvers
from the fishing to make oil to take
to town and cut peat in the boys.
X
When the story Of THE Everlasting
Struggle" opens, a bride Is leaving
Flata. Anna is marrying bridegroom
far above her in the social and imam
cial scale, Peter Norset, eldest son OF
the widow Norset of one Of the big
bright for the Flata family, but their
predestined fate is a gray one, and the
brightness fades Peter NorSet Is a
dreamer, a ne'er- do-well, and Anna in
the end settles down to a life more
miserable than the one she has left.
FlataP poor as it is, is the center OF
the life of all the family connection.
1t has not much to offer, but good win
is TO be found there, the good will OF
old Paal F1ata, with his alternating
storms Of rage and bursts OF tears, and
Mother LIsbet, always ready to put on
the coffee kettle and share her last
spoonful of sugar or her last herring
Her generosity exasperates her son
Per, for, after all, it is he who must
struggle to pay the bills at the store,
and after her marries Bergitta from
Inderberg farm he begins to long for
a different life from that of his par
ents In him the desire for success,
which makes hardness necessary, con-
tends with a soft-heartedness like that
of his parents. Sitting by the dead
body of his father, he reflects that his
father was good friends with Poverty.
. His whole life long Paal had been
content to be an extra hand at the
Lofoten fishing. without share In boat
or gear, and to earn only half what
the others got, and all through his life,
too, he gladly worked his stated times
on the estate for a few pence q day.
1t was as IL he leaned toward
his father as he sat there, and would
fain be as he was. If he were to be
as poor as the old man all his days, he
would put up with poverty. He would
remember his father-Father made out
to bear it and he must do the same"
Daisy, Princess of Pless, is the daugh-
ter of Col. and Mrs. w. Corvallis
West and was the wife Of Hans Helm
rich, fifteenth Prince Of PleSs, from
whom she was divorced in 1923. Her
volume, Daisy, Princess of Pless," by
herself, Is a compilation from her
journals, covering the period Of the
World War, when she was, through her
German marriage, living in the land
of her own country's enemy. Her new
book, Better Left Unsaid" (the title
is rather silly), consists of more excerpts
from the journal. Many of them de-
scribe her domestic life in Germany
on the various Pless estates and social
visits to other estates in Bavaria, Ca
licia, England and on the Riviera.
Vladimir Zenzinov, a revolutionary
Socialist, was exiled by the Czarist
Russian government in 1910 to North
eastern Siberia, the Yakutsk Territory,
where he was sent by the governor of
the territory to the village Of Russkoye
Ustye, the fartheSt north habitation in
the territory. His experiences there are
related in his book, 1.-THE Road to
Oblivion" with the collaboration of
Isaac Don Levine. zenzinov was trans
ported TO the village by dog sledge and
found there seven wretched cabins on
the bank OF a frozen stream, with end
less stretches of snow-covered tundra
beyond. There the polar night lasts
seven months and the temperature
often goes to 95 degrees below zero
In this environment he managed to
keep himself alive for two years. and
to make a record of the life of the
few natives of the region, the bird life
in Summer and the geography of the
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