Evening star., 1935-08-11
By Mary.Carter Roberts

E. p. Dutton g. Co.
1HIS is indeed book. Coming
on it, even though somewhat
familiar with its authors fine
n contemptuous Imagination, one
has to pause and wonder a little as
to how a review of it may adequately
be done
And this is not because it is so
ouinessentially admirable or great,
but rather because, to find terminology
unstained by daily usage which will
fit it, is a puzzle And for this the
author is to blame. for he has written
something which puts all terminology,
somehow, out of joint. He has gone
outside of the well-used literary di-
mensions. The reviewer, seeking to
interpret him. can best say this and
leave it so. What is added is wholly
by way of explanation.
1t is, as one would expect from
Mr.. EddiSon's pen, a romance. 1t is
set in a land of his own creation;
1t is done in his heavily, sometimes
wearyingly ornate prose. and is con-
cerned ostensibly with such familiar
businesses as wars and intrigues and
loves between the rulers in that land,
and somewhat less ostensibly, but
more essentially, with its own curious
philosophic speculation.
To read it at all is to accept Mr..
Eddison's strange world, forgetting
any other. To enjoy it specifically
is to accuStom ones ear to his heavily
studied rhythms and ones mind to
the broad liberties which he takes
with our language as we know 1t. and
to follow. thus chastened, the adven-
lures of the great soldiers and queens
who crowd its pages.
Even thus superficially intent, one
wanders in a vast place, where the
figures seem sometimes to have stepped
out of glorious medieval tapestries,
panoplied in armor or garbed in
courtly array, or again to have come,
through this authors catholic con-
tempt for time and space. out OF the
pure sunshine of Greece from the
day when gods preferred the earth to
too long dwelling on Olympus. This
place he calls Zimiamvia. the land
that no mortal may tread, but the
blessed souls do inhabit it of the
dead that were great upon earth and
did great deeds" Hither comes the
soul of the dead Lord Lessingham,
soldier and courtier, and it is his
adventures that we follow.
But to enter into this place with
more than superficial enjoyment, even
enough in Mr.. Eddison's senuous and
gorgeous prose, is to 60 beyond the
face of the adventurers and look at
the subtly expressed notion which is
found here of the human soul and
human passion. For Lord Lessing-
ham, the soldier. in Zimiamvla, Is
also Duke Barganax, the poet and
artist, sometimes his adversary. Two
men, they are still one. And she
whom they love is the same in the
Lady Fiorinda and the Queen Antiope,
and herself beyond them, or any
manifestation, no other than Aphro-
dite, the Eternal.
So that, it would seem. understood,
zimiamvia has no impossible incon-
gruities after all, but is the land OF
the human soul. its borders as far
flung and all-embracing, and its pas
sions one passion. the one which Is
the oldest, the most variable and
yet the most unchanging.
However it be read, the book must
be held true accomplishment. 1t
is a structure too intricate and indi-
vidual to draw great numbers of the
hasty, modern public, perhaps. AS
was said in the beginning, it Is out
side the dimensions to which we are
accustomed. But that is of no matter.
There are those certainly who will
understand it. 1t will take its place.
r. D. BIS PROCESSION. BY Ralph
D. Blumenfeld. New York: The
Macmillan Co.
MR.. BLUMENFELD is one of Eng
-A lands most famous journalists.
For 80 years he has been editor of
the London Daily Express. The Pro
cession," which he has here put be-
tween book covers is made up of so
celebrated personages, seen as he saw
them. Some of the anecdotes are
very slight indeed. Others are witty
and revelatory. On the whole the
book is worth possessing.
Patti, Mrs. PankhurSt. King Kala-
kaua, Thomas Hardy, Lord Tennyson,
Ellen Terry, Mark Twain, James Cor
don Bennett, Pavlova and eight Amer
ican Presidents are among the great
names which Mr. Blumenfeld includes.
1t is catholic gathering. In spite of
the fact that many of the characters
are modern. it is drawn largely from
now vanished past. For that reason
alone 1t has much that will interest
the thoughtful. To read it is like leaf
ing through a somewhat faded scrap
book. where kings, poets and pugilists
are levelled all alike. To those who
like retrospect, one can recommend 1t.
LAND UNDER ENGLAND. BY Joseph
O'Neill. New York: Simon &
Shuster
THIS is an almost unbelievable book
1t has been variously described by
eminent English critics as a thriller
elevated into literature" "a brilliant
work of pure imagination" and IAN
extraordinary able fantasy" Its pub
fishers in America call it, further, "a
tremendous satire of the Fascist state"
and "a great imaginative answer to
Nietzsche''
If these phrases, assembled, seem to
hold within them the germ of contra
diction and to threaten to become be-
wildering. one can only offer as REM
edy the direction, Read the book. ="
For its essence is practically untrans-
mittable in any criticism. The best
summing up that occurs to this re-
viewer is as unhelpful as those quoted.
It would be that Land Under Eng
land" is the product of young Irish
man, in temporary (but totaD eclipse
from a mood Of disenchantment be-
hind his shadow very darkly talking
to himself. No other explanation