Evening star., 1946-12-01

pUllIlCdl OT IellSlOuS uclloiiiiid~
ton, rarely by those he wants to
convert.
Among the novelists and poets
few new names have come to the
forefront, such as Tove Ditlevsen,
whose love lyrics and sensitive
novels about very young girls
have a tender feminine charm.
In Norway
~N NORWAY, Germans and
Quislings meddled with a
Il will, to tune literature into
harmony with their New
Order" Some of the publishers
We're marched off to concentra-
ton camps, the publishing houses
were given Nazi advisers" or d.
rectors-and so next to no new
books were published, in spite OF
the fact that during the mental
blackout the appetite OF the peo-
pie for reading was tremendous.
So the Norwegian classics were
reprinted, and the bookstores
and publishers stores cleaned
out, books banned by the Ger
mans selling under the counter.
The authors wrote for their desk
drawers, biding their time. Some
new publishing houses were
started by the men of the New
Order" but as the Quislings and
Germans were not reading lot
and nobody else wanted to buy
their output, no subsidies from
above could prevent their vast
ing away. OF the handful Of
Norwegian authors who joined
the Nazis, everybody except
Knut Hamsun is today as If he
had never lived.
Immediately after the liberia
ton only the shortage of mate
rial set limit to the output Of
new books. With money on their
hands and not a thing to buy
without rationing points except
books and paintings, people
bought books and paintings.
Everything published was sold
out in no time, and for books of
more than ephemeral interest,
like the volumes of our two great
poets, Nordahl Grieg, who was
killed in an air raid over Berlin,
and Arnulf Overland, immured
for three years in Sachsenhau-
sen, you had to enter your book
sellers list and wait patiently,
sometimes for months. Also sew
eral volumes of drawings and
sketches made on toilet paper
and smuggled out of Grini con-
centration camp were snatched
away as soon as they were
printed.
The first intense interest in
books about the. war has fallen
off somewhat, yet still a number
are published-about the cam
paign in Norway, the secret war
of the underground, the rebirth
OF our navy and air force, and
also war books from other coun-
tries, among them some Amer
lean, such as Queens Die Proud
ly." Probably only a few of
these will be of lasting interest,
such as Judge Cappelen's re-
strained and terrible account of
his experience with the Gastapo
and his life in an determination
camp, or Max Manus' story of
a RI
soldier. An Oslo boy in spite of
his foreign name, Manus is as
slangy as Damon Runyon, writ
ing frankly about the daredevil
deeds he had to perform in spite
of being in blue funk, only
they had to be done; enthusias-
tically praising his comrades and
the helpers from all classes of
the people, who willingly risked
their lives to aid the commandos.
In his poignant novel, "Voyagers
for England" Sigurd Evensmo
tells about 18 young Norwegians
who tried to cross the Atlantic
to join our fighting forces in
England, but were betrayed and
finally executed. Evansmo, who
was one of the doomed band,
escaped the firing squad only be-
cause the Gestapo also had other
bones to pick with him. The
beauty of the book is the faith
of these boys that the love of life,
human integrity and goodness,
faced with those whose passion
is death and destruction, will
never be conquered, no matter
how many men may have to die
for IL