Nothing is more characteristic of the man than the fact that, on his Jast night alive, he contrived dictate notes, his impressions on the approach of death. Once he had egun his great work, he was a writer and nothing else. He rived only for his avt and the fame it might bring him. Up. to now! Flaubert has represented the type, but Proust was even more extreme than Flaubert, We can see him, sitting by an open grave, keeping even Death at bay, while he foliowed the fortunes "of Swann, the Guermantes, Chalius and Albertine, Thus there is a strange paradox in the life and work of this men. Reading his work, we feel that he, more than any other man, wrote in order that he. might live his life again. "To. recapture an impression, to reveal a_ character, find the. exact phrase, know that what he had done was were st desires, and this onderstocd snd appreciated—these
the way that satisfaction and joy were to be found for him.
Thus his famous novel, presents us with the - desolating tragicomedy of things in flux, of love that is only thwarted desire und illusion, does not really give asa true picture of life, even as he Proust's actual life was seminated by.one great purpose, Dut what he reveals to us is life emptied of that purpose. Tt is true, some of his admiring orities have pointed out, that the beginning of his. novel shows tio the ie. process. at work, as if we saw she ook beginning to write Stself. Nevertheless, the actual life revealed within that framework, the supposed memories, do not repressest Proust because they lack in spite of the passages dealing with art and artists, Bergotte and Elstir, precisely that which sustained Proust, namely, the task of communication, the jay of creation, with their attendant satisfaction, It is a8 if @ born scientist were to speak of a world without science, Proust did not really begin to live, being the man he was, until he set work upon his book, but the life he shows us is life without that work, a barren and vain thing. Not having read the final volume, I cannot say whether he intends to Head us at last to a glorification of fort and of art alone, but even if he did this, there would be still something at fault in his representation of the texture of life through these many volumes.
Tt is obvious that the time has not yet come when his work can be properly examined. His reputa-he tion still lives in an atmosphere Jcatealls and genuflexious. M. Pisrre-Quint's study of the work is very] but it is too idolatrous for my taste.
study that cannot find, a single weakness anywhere hardly' deserves the name. I will say at once that T think Proust's novel (for it must be regarded as a novel) one of the most astounding pieces of work of the century, a masterpiece. Neve theless T think Mf. Pierre-Quint and is fellow-idolaters would do wall to tak themselves the following. questions: Is the use of association, memory, by. Proust " really 30 original? Ts his psychology so new, profound, subtle as they think it is? Axe his touches of character more subtle than these of Stendhal. Meredith, Torgenieft, Henry James, and if 0, find examples? Is he really the first writer to show that Time has its ironies? Is his account of love as desire suddenly awake thwarted then crystallized, really true and profound, and is any man who contends that such a view is rather narrow and superficial nocessarily a shallow optimist? T eaanot help thinking that the real Proust, that fine artist, will be all the better off"when auch questions have been A SOUTH SEAS EPISODE, "Dawy o" Desi Gallon. London, By Nellie Tom-The:
Diamond The man who hi as the expression seemingly unending theme for the ready novelist; and this tale of the doings of Andrew Glyde in Tahiti but a timeworn: mechanism slightly refurbished. In the refurishing, however, lies an entertaining. enough narrative, calculated to. while away an hour or two, if "The story breathes suffciesit local Jcolour, but this is of the type which marked the tales of A, N. and C, N. Williamson in a former day, and which in. their pity that the author of book. seems of Desire" should have chosen so hackneyed a theme, for her treatment of it is that of the born story-teller and worthy of a better subject. As it mains sufficient lure about distant]
lands, men first gone wrong, and then gone right, and, above all, about half-caste girls whom nature (for the purposes of fiction, rate) invariably turns out seductive as to infuse a bronze idol the spark of life, as to lend terest to the "Dawn of Desi in the eyes of the overworked city. clerk, "the romantic shopgirl, and all who. fondly dream of the day. when they, too, shall sail the tropic Jseas and come to the pot of gold the rainbow's foot, even as 'Arndroo" and. Terry and, Aunt-Jessie, who found the stolen pearls, stolen' by the distinctly poisonous Henri Lamotte, and the finding which spelled the opportunity return to Albion's Isle, there to ream in comfort about the late-lamented Tetua who gave her /fcr Andrew Glyde, and the mordored Mitihwith, her daughter and Clyde's Possibly ghe author chose this theme for another and very poignant 5
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.