Evening star., 1933-07-30

a pint OF beer at hmcheon-"beer Is q sedative
to the brain"-he goes for walk for two or
three hours and he strols along, thinking Of
nothing in particular but looking idly about
him at the changes of the seasons. there would
flow into my mind. with sudden and unaccount
able emotion, sometimes line two of verse,
sometimes whole stanza at once, accompanied,
not preceded, by a vague notion of the poem
which they were destined to form part Of"
In some such way "A Shropshire Lad" must
have been conceived
TRY THE sky BY Francis Stuart, New York:
The Macmillan Co.
COMPTON MACKENZIE in his forevord to
~ Try the Sky says: II suggest that
Francis Stuart has a message for the modern
world Of infinitely greater importance than any
thing offered by d. H. Lawrence" Lawrence
worshipers will >demur at this. They are to be
found chiefly among other authors. But they
and many who view Lawrence more calmly VIII
be puzzled to find a basis Of comparison between
him and Francis Stuart. In this, in the other
tales of Francis Stuart, Pigeon Irish" and
The Coloured Dome" symbolism inspires the
story. There Is perhops . loss that in "Try
the Sky" he has left his native Ireland. which
he knows and loves 50 mystically. Carlotta an
Austrian girl and her lover Jose. an Irishman,
are Joined in vagabonding on the Danube by
Beltane, . Canadian. and his wife Buttercup.
a child Carlotta, while crossing the road near
her home in Galicia. has been caught and
badly injured by IAN enormous motor" and
through the fantasies Of her unconsciousness
and the pain Of her conscious convaleScence
has sounded the depths Of suffering She has
through this experience become obsessed by the
sense Of all the suffering in the world and
the desire that her suffering may vicariously
relieve that of others.
After some carefree, happy days with their
chance Canadian friends, who are travelling
about Europe exhibiting sculptures of Butter
cups creation, they all come to . Munich hotel
There a fight occurs in the street below their
windows between Nazis and government forces
(this before the Nazis were the govern
ment), a fleeing Nazi escapes into the hotel
and bursts into their room. Carlotta Is shot in
defending him-to her just any hunted human
being-from the pursuing captain of infantry.
Jose. despairing Of her recovery gropes for un-
derstanding of her idea of her vicarious suffer-
ing. How could she offer her blood for U.s.
wondered? To whom could she offer it? Well.
had heard Of such things in the lives Of the
saints and the martyrs. Perhaps love had its
saints and martyrs. too. BY her sacrifice she
might have meant to overcome the powers of
darkness that we had not been able to over
come before. Something threatened our
love and joy all along. had felt that, too.
- It was to overcome that thing that threat
ened U.s. then" This is not prusaic realism. It
is mystical, occult. Dr. Graf. too who attends
Carlotta, is a mystic and on her recovery takes
all four of the companions with him ON q great
flight In his own plane. the Spirit, to some
destination unknown even to him. But here
romance becomes practical After night above
the clouds, Carlotta and Jose awake to dull gray
daylight and he recognizes the place where
they have landed as the Curragh. in sight of
the wicklow Mountains IN Ireland. Caxiotta
has always feared going with Jose to live in his
Irish home, but now that to their surprise they
ind thonaSoveR there C2r1otfa tn ($YNf.
We're not going any farther. We're getting
off here" It hardly needs saying that Try
the Sky is told with Mr.. Stuart's usual beau
tiful lyric stylr