Evening star., 1937-08-28
By Mary.Carfw' Roberts

Oll 1-lOhOSll. 1NS" Va n 4Ao4 PSA
e. Bros.
|HIS is the Harper Prize Novel
for 1878. The last award,
readers will remember, was to
L H. L. Davis for his unforget-
tably splendid Honey in the Horn"
Any mention Of this biennial compe-
tition will be incomplete without pre-
liminary reverent reference to Mr.
Davis gorgeous story. one feels, for
some time to come. The present
winner is fine book; past winners
have generally been high of standard
too. But above them all Honey in
the Horn" towers, great peak in
the foothills. Until its like is raised
up above the conscientious and unin-
spired level of our better fictior it
will be the book that one thinks of
whenever the Harper Prize is men,
toned. And that is as 1t should
be, too
With this tribute honorably paid, the
reviewer is able, however. to turn her
attention to The Seven Who Fled"
with feelings of complete admiration.
THE Seven Who Fled is an accom-
plished and beautiful book. 1t is also
strange book, and before commenting
on it further the reviewer will re-
mind readers that its author is the
young man who. in 1885, wrote THE
Asiatlcs,' which was received with
great appreciation by many critics.
That was the record of random
journey across Asia from west to east,
and in it Mr. Prokosch seemed to have
for his aim the creation of the humors
of continent rather than of human
beings, curious project which he
carried out skillfully. In his present
book he continues to be preoccupied
with the East His story is of seven
Europeans who fed from the city of
xashgar and travelled by various
routes east into the heart of the
Asiatic land, where various fates over
took them.
1t is symbolical work The Euro
peans typify, one feels, the conscious
and specific part of humanity at war
with the old primordial chaos which is
the ground-the spiritual tidal marsh
from which the conscious has arisen.
Asia, the land, the physical conti-
nent, symbolizes that chaos. in Mr.
Prokosch's vision. and as his Euro
peans penetrate farther into its in
fluence he allows them to be over
Whelmed, each according TO his fash
ion. The drama of the story is the
drama of degeneration, the word to be
understood in its most basic sense, to
be interpreted not as meaning the loss
of civilized veneer but of conscious
humanity and retrogression of the
soul back into the womb of the race
itself Bodies, of course, cannot fol-
low souls in any such retreat, and so
the bodies of the seven Europeans
come to curious fates as they wander
bereft in the needless immensely Of
the physical Orient Saving death,
madness is all that remains to them.
But the end of the body, Mr.. Prokosch
seems to say, is of little matter after
the soul has shrunk away.
The story is told by the arbitrary
device of following the adventures Of
each of the seven characters in a
separate chapter. They are an Eng
lishman, q Russian, a Belgian, Ger
man, an Austrian, a Frenchman and
the Frenchman's Spanish wife. They
flee, as has been said, from Kashgar
together, but the reasons for their
flight are treated with a deliberate
vagueness political disturbances and
rumors of war cause foreigners to
be ordered from the city; no one
knows much more about it than that.
A caravan is going toward the East,
and the seven join it. They are for
the most part strangers to one an
other.
Presently they are separated. The
Russian, the Belgian, the German and
the Austrian are detained by au-
thorities in Aqsu, the first city at
which the caravan stops. The French
man falls i'll and likewise remains be-
hind.
The Englishman, as he goes deeper
into the continent, feels a fatalistic
longing to visit Thibet and turns his
course in that direction. The Span
ish woman goes on with the caravan.
Telling the adventures Of each Of his
travellers, Mr. Prokosch adopts a sin
gle method; he has the character suf-
fer under the torment of Asia's filth,
cruelty and consummate heedlessness
until his mind turns in upon himself,
and he relives his childhood in men,
ory. After that, catastrophe overtakes
him.
The Englishman dies in the Thi-
betan SHOWS, betrayed by his guides
and the native officials. His is the
catastrophe of futility he dies with
his mind fixed on perfection, filed
with a dream which he cannot commu-
nicate.
The Russian, virtual prisoner in
the filthy inn of Aqsu, finds all the
forces of his powerful body, his child
like mind, his ignorantly mystic soul
turned in hatred against his fellow
prisoner, the Belgian. The outcome
u Ae Belgian's murder at his hands,
carried out sacrifcially and with ex-
altation.
The Belgian himself has been a
uIuA oelSl al llLo Pdol, llC Id dloo q
thief and sadist. The clash between
the two men is that of large ignorance
meeting petty cleverness; the culmi-
nation comes when the minds of both
have been overthrown by the condi-
tons OF their imprisonment, but a
dying flip of reality is given to their
antagonism through sex rivalry; they
have sought the favors Of the same
courtesan, the Russian unsuccessfully
The German and the Austrian
escape from the prison in Aqsu and
Join a caravan which, with more
vagueness abandons them in the des-
ert. They are cared for through the
Winter by an old Russian, who lives
with his senile wife nearby. The Ger
man typifies the postwar, Hitlerian
generation. He is obsessed with the
Nordic All-conquering Hero myth,
dreams OF battle and stern male
world wherein the old virtues of his
NpODlp will he trjImphant He cOn-