Evening star., 1935-02-17

is illustrated by his sad idyl, zone
More Spring" one of his most per-
feet pieces of work. Road of Ages" !"
with a bigger theme, does not equal
it in poignancy of Characterization
and fine nuances Of emotion.
In Road of Ages" the Jews of the
world are driven out from the western
the Mongols in the Desert of Cobb
AS the caravan moves eastward across
Europe it is constantly joined by new
contingents of these unhappy people,
driven from all the countries of the
world, and for the last time in re-
treat " " At night their fires burned
along the Danube, or lighted the dark
Bakony forests; while the wooded
reaches of the TisZa echoed with the
tramp of feet, the creak of carts, the
purring of motors, and conversation
in all the languages Of the world"
There is touch Of Mr.. Nathan's
habitual irony in the following: For
the Jews had not been made over
by their misfortunes; it was impos'
sible for them, even at this time, to
agree with one another" In the
moving throng are peasants from
Czechoslovakia. brokers and mer-
chants from all the large cities of
the world, learned rabbis orthodox
and liberal, Communists, bankers,
doctors of philosophy from Heidel-
berg. oxford, Padua, Yale, Grenoble,
Beirut workers in the clothing in
dustry and delicatessen shopkeepers
from New York, actors from Holly
wood, famous musicians and scientists.
Motley is their description. And
among them. as If society were be-
ginning all over again. develop ma
tional antagonisms Cfor they are
Americans, English, Germans, French,
etc, as well as Jews, hostility be-
tween the wealthy and the poor. dis
agreements over religious observance.
They form microcosm. The signi-
ficance of Mr.. Nathan's allegory is
apparent and perhaps has some bear
ing on the Zionist movement.
Il
THE ELAGHIN AFFAIR AND 9TH
Err STORIES. BY Ivan Bunin.
Selected and Translated by Ber-
nard Guilbert Guerney. New York
Alfred A. Knopf.
COME critics estimate Bunin, winner
- Of the Pushkin Prize for poetry in
1890, long before the Russian revolu-
ton sent him into exile, and the Nobel
Prize for literature in 1888, above
Turgenev in Russian literature, but
of all his prose which has been trans
lated into English it is difficult to
think of anything which gives as
broad picture of normal Russian
upper class life as Fathers and
Sons" Smoke" Virgin Soil" and
"a Nest of Gentlefolk." There is a
morbidity about much of Bunin's work
which places it, to lesser degree than
that of Dostoevsky, in the classifica-
ton Of pathological literature. Bunin
is obsessed with the idea of death,
which fascinates him; he better savors
life because of his constant thought
of death. He seems to say with Keats
in his lode to a Nightingale:
II have been half in love with ease
full Death -.
Now more than ever seems it rich to
die,
To cease upon the midnight with no
pain"
Death and sex are the subjects of
most of Bunin's stories, often brutal
deaths and devious manifestations Of
sex. In this volume the long title
story tells in the words of a young
officer of a crack regiment of his
pact with his Polish actress mistress
to murder her and then commit sui
eide. She has feared and longed for
death with cumulative intensity until
one night, in an interior room, draped
in black, with only a dim lantern hung
from the ceiling, she persuades her
lover to share her insanity. After he
has killed her his will is paralyzed
and he goes out and gives himself up
to the officers of law. The other long
story in the volume, DRY Valley" is
about less self-torturing people. It Is
the chronicle of the decay of the noble
Russian family of Khruschyov, the
ruin Of their manor by fire. the sale
of their land . peasants. the wreck.