[We shall be glad to review books in all Indian languages and in English, French and German. Books for Review should reach the office at least SIX WEEKS in advance of the day of publication of the Journal].

ENGLISH

History of the Great French Revolution: - By Dr. Annie Besant. [The Theosophical Publishing House, Adyar, Madras. Price Rs. 2.]

The fourteen lectures of which this book is a re-print were delivered in London between 1875 and 1884 when the author was a vigorous Free-thought propagandist and a member of the Fabian Society. There are other books on the French Revolution available, in English and other languages, more scholarly, more literary even than Dr. Besant's. Carlyle, Hilaire Belloc, Louis Blanc, Michelet–to name no others–have all illumined, each after his own fashion, that wonderful and extraordinary epoch in European History. But it may be doubted if there is another book like Dr. Besant's that seems to be spoken to one with the friendliness and affability of an intimate conversation. Moreover, it is, as the author claims, written exclusively from the standpoint of the people; and that makes the book very important indeed.

After briefly surveying in the first lectures the deep-rooted causes of popular discontent which were to make the Revolution "at once possible and inevitable", Dr. Besant enables the reader to have a clear perspective of the course of events from the accession to the throne of Louis XVI to the fall of Robespierre. The circumstances under which the States-General was summoned, the nature of its deliberations, the emergence of Mirabeau, the first peaceful solution of the problem, Mirabeau's death, the unloosening of the latent forces of extremism, the King's attempts to fly the country, his capture, trial, and conviction–all these so bewilderingly rapid changes are cogently narrated in the first half of the book. And then, the Reign of Terror; the grim incredible figures of Marat, Danton and Robespierre; the lesser shadows of Camille Desmoulins, Saint Just and Focquier Tinville; the strange, and pathetic destinies of Marie Antoinette and Charlotte Corday–the account of Dr. Besant's which weaves into one fascinating yarn so many tantalizing threads, is masterly and one can but whole-heartedly admire the volume and pass it on to one's neighbour.

Mr. Jinarajadasa points out in the Foreword that Dr. Besant's "estimate of Robespierre is not the usual one." The general view of Robespierre, most spectacularly expressed in Carlyle's picture of the ‘sea- green incorruptible,’ is that he was the moving spirit of the Reign of Terror. The most important part of this view of Robespierre's career was the immediate result of his fall. What gives colour and plausibility to the whole theory is the fact that with Robespierre's fall, the Reign of Terror did indeed come to an end. And why if he was not the author and sustainer of it? But Hilaire Belloc and Dr. Besant think otherwise. The

Reign of Terror was tolerated by the people because they trusted Robespierre; obviously the man was above suspicion. Robespierre himself instinctively shrank from terror; but his lieutenants made him believe that his own security depended on the very extremity of terror. He was a good man and a great patriot; but he was fatally weak and this weakness undid him. When he fell, the real architects of the Reign of Terror saw to their infinite chagrin that they had removed from the scene the one man whose universal popularity alone could have sustained the Terror and so it inevitably came to an end.

It is unnecessary to say much about Dr. Besant's vivid and forceful style or about the urgent significance the ‘History’ has to the New India in the painful throes of a rebirth. The volume is excellently got-up and does not belie one's expectations of the books over the imprint of the Theosophical Publishing House.

K. R. SRINIVASA IYENGAR.

Modern India Thinks.–By Keshavjee R. Luckmi Das. [Published by D.B. Taraporevala Sons & Co., Bombay. Price Rs. 6.]

The salvation of the world, said Thomas Hardy, lies in international thought. Modern India Thinks is a collection of the thoughts of some of the greatest sons of India: Mahatma Gandhi, Aurobindo Ghose, Rabindranath Tagore, Radhakrishnan, to mention only a few,–and these thoughts cover every phase of life: Literature, Art, Religion, Education. The book includes thoughts of non-Indians as well, and this inclusion is meant to show how the utterances of the East and the West fuse into one another and thereby contribute towards the salvation of the world. Ancient India no doubt "let the legions thunder past and plunged in thought again"; but Modern India has become conscious of her individuality, her greatness to deserve the name of the Eternal City of the Universe. See what Mahatma Gandhi says: "My mission is not merely brotherhood of Indian humanity. My mission is not merely the freedom of India, though today it undoubtedly engrosses practically the whole of my life and the whole of my time. But through realisation of the freedom of India, I hope to realise and carry on the mission of the brotherhood of man." Mr. Luckmidas, the compiler, has, from the deepest fissures of the mighty Indian minds, gathered the choicest gems and pearls and strung them into a lovely chaplet.

M. S. I.

Kandan, The Patriot.–By K. S. Venkataramani. [Published by the Svetaranya Ashrama, Mylapore, Madras. Price Rs. 2.]

The English novel at the present day is Cleopatra-like in variety. It ranges from the trilogies to tetralogies, the Leviathans of modern letters, long sagas in three or four volumes covering the longest periods and all the space between the Poles, to the little masterpieces of psycho-analysis that read like lyrics in prose. We have novelists who hack at words like maniacs or play with them like monkeys; and the machinists who plan novel-writing like cinematography, work as barmaids or butlers to learn about hotel life, or go with note-books for ‘local colour’ to places about which they write. The spirit of modernism has enlarged the scope of the novel. The modernist novelist zigzags round a point, employs the trick of the cinema, wavers between the merest sounds and symbols between shadows and hidden lights, and creates characters as exquisitely unformed and deformed as Epstein's sculptures; but he has given us marvels of psychological insight and sex-expressionism. The consciousness of a moment is made exciting for hours. Whole mobs and streets are heroes. We not only travel fantastically round Moons but are familiar with the scientific robots of the future. One must read the works of Dorothy Richardson and the late D. H. Lawrence; of Mrs. Woolf, a phenomenon in herself with her system of psychics and juggernaut syntax; of Huxley with his icy realism and inhuman cleverness; of James Joyce with his super-realism and hydra-headed prose.

If Mr. Venkataramani's Kandan, The Patriot were published in England it would be difficult to place him. He is neither a maniac nor a machinist. He is not even a modernist. He maintains his statutory bulk and form. There is little psychology and less pathology in his work. What are his axes? The question arises because the axes in Murugan were a bit obvious, and critics made them plainer still. He does not seem to grind axes in Kandan. So the questions whether it is right for a novelist to grind axes, whether Mr. Venkataramani's axes are good axes, whether his axes are the same as your axes or my axes, do not arise. Kandan, like Murugan, mirrors the spirit of an India rising from her sleep of centuries. While Murugan is better in patches, Kandan is more ambitious and better-constructed. Rangan and Kandan, like Ramu and Kedari, are a study in contrast, till the dual forces are fused into one. The end may seem sudden but is within the limits of the possible and the probable. Not the least part of its interest is its topicality. Though everything is idyllic, it is not an idyll; it is mainly a story of the present-day political India. Mr. Venkataramani does not write like a psychologist or a pathologist; nor does he, like some modernists compete with photographers. He dips his brush in beauty and paints the little comedies, little tragedies, and little ironies of life. His book has characters that live, a delightful humour and much poetry; it lacks gusto because of an evenness, unusual in the modern English novel. Events such as the arson, the loot, the firing are described with the same deliberate ease and slowness, while the maniac and the machinist would have debauched in beauty. There are no subtleties and examples special knowledge or observation. It is written throughout with a sensuous intuition, and with a reserve of the sublime. A strange part of its realism is that readers and characters feel kin, like the characters among themselves, and blood answers blood. More words would have given us slow motion-pictures of everything, but Mr. Venkataramani reels off scene after scene.

Meet these charming people. Rajeswari Bai has distinguished herself as a ‘Desh Sevika’ in Bombay. Rangan the Civilian, is Indian in spirit and skin, sweltering in Western trousers. Sundaram is a vagrant, then a bogus sadhu, then a station-master. Saraswati is the shrew till she is tamed to national service by the force of Kandan's personality. Chockalinga, fiddling with engines and mobs, is a delightful rascal. We have a mob of granary-rats and toddy-rats. Govindan talks like a toddy-shop Plato; Katteri is a mute inglorious Marx. Karian is the force that side tracks trains and causes a collision. Like Murugan, Kandan is more an influence than a figure in detail; he is the spirit of self-sacrifice and reform. They are all types and individuals. Rangan is not only the Assistant Collector of Guntur but the discontented intellectual. Sundaram is the sation-master of Akkur as well as the versatile vagrant. Mr. Venkataramani betrays character in a phrase or a sentence. We are not told how they blow their noses, twiddle their fingers, and twirl their thumbs. It is this economy that leaves a sense of something suggested, something with-held; we are familiar not with human bodies but with spirits, and the spirits that move and talk and live are the spirits of beings rooted in a back-ground of the beauty and the strange force of life. When Saraswati changes it is like the sudden fall of water. When Kandan dies in the hour of fate it is like the quenching of a thirst.

Many have praised Mr. Venkataramani's prose, and some, the poetry in his prose. We should rather compare him with Mr. Tomlinson or Major Yeats-Brown, whose books have been so refreshing to English reviewers in these days of breathless jazz rhythms. Mr. Tomlinson's "All our Yesterdays' has similar slowness, dreaminess, and irony; and Mr. Yeats-Brown in his ‘Bengal Lancer,’ which is not fiction, uses simple words, but makes phospherescent sentences, now and then dazzling with splendours. Mr. Venkataramani subdues his colour and sound but loves to wander into luminous zig-zags. His is the rhythm of the surf and foam-breakers on the bench, but the little graces and the small music creep into the dialogue like foreign matter. Characters as different as Kedari, Murugan, Kandan, Rangan, Karuppan talk like Keyserlings and seem to suffer sometimes from mysticism and sometimes from metaphors. The truth is that Mr. Venkataramani has created a technique of his own, and like all masters of technique suffers from it to a certain extent, though technique is not of any intrinsic importance. The danger in such cases is that writers escape from one kind of jargon only to fall into another kind of jargon. Mr. Venkataramani in his use of epithets is sometimes on the verge of danger, but avoids it by sheer restraint. ‘A Log of Wood’ and the ‘Hour of Fate’ show him in his strength and form the best that he has yet done.

It is the Comic Spirit that sounds the dominant note in his previous works and in this as well. He avoids satire and caricature but delights in irony. Some day Mr. Venkataramani may let himself go and write a great novel and then perhaps he will write to the Tragic Muse, for Melpo-mene, the Muse of Tears is also the Muse of Strength and power. Contrasts are as odious as comparisons; but we may say that, to realise the charm of his novel and the characters he has created, one should be familiar with the robots of Huxley, the sensualists of Lawrence and the mediums of Virginia Woolf. It is a tribute to his art, that though the story apparently ends, we are impelled to watch with interest the progress of Akkur and the future of Rangan and Rajeswari, and Sundaram, the special correspondent, and Khan Bahadur Meera Saheb, and Rao Saheb Ratnam Pillai, and Mr. Lance with his, Martian fondness for straight irrigation channels and the granary-rats and the toddy-rats and Chockalinga, that delightful rascal.

Star Fires:–By V. N. Bhushan. [Published by the Ananda Academy, Masulipatnam.]

Mr. Bhushan writes poetry but rarely gives us a good poem. He has much poetic energy but little poetic art, and seems to dissipate his imagination and fancy in verse that is too fluid and formless. We have no quarrel with Free Verse. But Free Verse, which is not merely blank verse, even blank verse with its many variations, has a technique of its own, a form that must be spun out of itself into pleasing patterns, and rhythms that could be rich and various and demand an impeccable ear. The poems in Star Fires are rich in substance, coherent and incoherent, but deficient in form; some are crude; some are chaotic; and most of them lack focus, like scraps Pindaric odes. The weakness of Indo-Anglican poets is that they do not study and master the technique of English verse rhythms, and if they make their consonants alliterate they do not attend to vowel composition and assonance. Mr. Bhushan shares this weakness. Alliteration runs amock amidst gorgeous imagery; some promising music is shattered and lost in single lines; and the verse is not the better for all the consonances, the confused metaphors, the refrain, and the half-hearted rhyming. "God Save the King" is a mixture of Hudibrastic doggerel and Republican bathos. "Re-creation" has the sound of Yeats without the art of Yeats. In some poems he is prophet, psalmist and parson. But there are moments when his art matches his energy, and he produces the right poetic atmosphere and gives us lines and phrases like; ‘Thro’ sweeping savannahs and whistling wilds.’ ‘Orphan clouds in lunar synthesis,’ ‘The pale shadowy paths of the earth,’ ‘The dying embers of dreams.’ ‘A chandelier on the lilied altar.’ "I and My Jar" contains some good lines: ‘The spilt riches of the water-nymph,’ ‘Lying captive in the clutch of shape I felt my soul’, ‘Red sleep of form’. "Influences" throbs with passion’; and "Routine" has grace form and felicity of expression. We think that Mr. Bhushan would achieve better results and would not fritter away his sounds and images so much if his Muse were to put on the fetters of a more formal verse.

Saffron and Gold, and Other Poems.–By Manjeri S. Isvaran [Published by the People's Printing & Publishing House Ltd., Triplicane, Madras. Price Re. 1-8; or 2sh 6d.]

Mr. Isvaran is not one of those minor Tagores who are overrunning the country, one of those Indo-Anglian poets or poet-asters who fiddle with rhymes for days and days and end their woes in Free Verse. He does not attempt word-magic that is meaningless, or, like a medium, convey messages beyond the power of his words. The poems range in subject-matter from Sita, Damayante, Hira Bai, to things he is intimate with, like a Brahmin wedding, the busy esplanade, or the sea; and in form, from the sweet simplicity of ‘The Pleasure-skiff’ to the complicate rhythms of ‘The Eclipse Bathers.’ Mr. Isvaran does not overpower us with passion or stir us with his song; he does not dream much or deal with elves and elfin music though we cannot forget the dulcet dreaminess of ‘The Pleasure-skiff’ or the haunting dreaminess of ‘Dream-lit Homes.’ We are glad that he cares more for the poem than the phrase, that he is free from pampered phrases that make a poem the merest palimpsest of passion; and if strange words, clipt words, learned words are not lacking in his verse, he is simple throughout and does not dim his sense of wonder, or mystery, or pity. Many of his poems are monochromes, though they are monochromes of light and shade. English is said to be a language in which the consonants dominate the vowels; but Mr. Isvaran does not make a mess of English verse rhythms, and is to be congratulated for avoiding hissing or hiccoughing effects or the rub-a-dub of drums. We can see his sense of sound in ‘Dream-lit Homes,’ wherein the last stanza has the richest orchestration, and the chiming vowel-sounds in the last words of each line, roll like the organ-notes of the ocean:

his sense of colour in:

or in:

his sense of wonder at the Divine Goldsmith fashioning the mystery jewels of stars and the ‘delicate-wrought disc’ of the moon; his sense of pity in ‘Saffron and Gold,’ ‘A Strange Bedfellow,’ ‘Triumph of Love,’ ‘Love's Sorrow’; and his dramatic sense in ‘Hira Bai,’ ‘On the Golden Throne of Fame’ is packed with natural magic; ‘To Heaven Ascending’ reminds us of Francis Thompson; ‘A Rare Rosary’ is simple and dainty; and all three reveal his art at its best, Mr. Isvaran manages his rhythm with success; and sometimes the texture is complex and triumphant as in ‘Sons of the Soil,’ ‘La Divina Lumiere,’ ‘On the Strand’ and ‘The Eclipse Bathers,’ The poems wherein he is rich with memories or photographs the soul of a city, adorns a tale or points a moral, as ‘Nought recks Man of Foul or Fair,’ ‘The Voyage of Life,’ ‘The Little Basket-maker,’ ‘The Child that gave me a Flower’ and others are not so successful as the poems wherein he attains the sublime or the purely sensuous. His passions are never trite or tempestuous, and there is a tendency in him to tranquillize his emotions into thought; he has more of the light of imagination than the fire of passion, more of feeling than fancy, and what would have been a triumphant sensuous outburst is toned down to a seasoned rapture, He is primarily an artist and not a prophet or medium like some Indo-Anglican poets, and we give below a few lines wherein he weaves his colour and sound into textures, robust and delicate:

Even the greatest men of letters are in a sense men of promise. Mr. Isvaran in his first book of verse promises much, for he has matter in him and knows his medium; has colour, sound, art, and vision, and what is rarer among Indo-Anglican poets, an understanding of English verse rhythms.

M. CHALAPATHI RAU.

Speeches and Writings. N. Krishnamurti, F. R. Hist. S. [V. V. Press Branch, Trivandrum. With a foreword by Rao Babadur K. V. Rangaswami Iyengar]

We welcome this little book of seventy pages, a collection of the speeches and writings of Mr. N. Krishnamurti, a talented writer and a fascinating speaker. Every page is saturated with a deep love of English Literature, and ‘The Rapture of Song’ with which the book opens, gives us a taste of its quality. The life of H. H. Sir Rama Varma, the late Maharaja of Travancore, which he originally contributed to Triveni, is sketched with feeling and insight. And the author's father, Dewan Babadur V. Nagam Aiya, is portrayed with that interest and sureness of touch which intimacy and complete saturation with the subject can alone give. The other essays tell us of his ideas on Education and Indo-Anglican Poetry.

Mr. Krishnamurti belongs to the select clan to whom literature and life is one, as it is to my gifted friend Mr. K. Chandrasekharan; their approach to life is from the dainty angle of the pure artist and the true lover of joy, Books move them, vitalise their outlook as much as life itself with its heroic men and their deeds. This little book is the work of a scholar whose wide reading has not choked but only quickened the circulation of his ideas. We hope that Mr. Krishnamurti will give us in the near future more things of this kind and work out in life the longings of his mind. For, Renascent India requires of us all tree and strenuous lives, each in his own way, for the service of the Mother.

K. S. VENKATARAMANI.

MALAYALAM

Koman Nair.–By Chelnat Achyutba Menon, B. A. [Published by S. R. Book Depot, Trivandrum.]

Koman Nair is a simple story simply told. Its theme is drawn from the folk-songs of North Malabar, one best suited for treatment as a story. Very few of these folk-songs are reduced to writing; composed in the colloquial dialect of the people in irregular metres, they treat of the deeds of bravery and chivalry of the fighting Nairs of old Kerala, and are extremely popular. The story is all about a blood feud, a Montagues-and-Capulets affair; it ends happily with the marriage of the knightly hero with the beauty of the rival house. Love triumphs. Mr. Menon has sucessfully reproduced the atmosphere of the times. He wields a nervous, dulcet Malayalam prose style.

M. S. I.

KANNADA

Gitagalu.-By ‘V. C.’ [Publishers, Karnataka Sahitya Prakatana Mandira, Bangalore. Price Rs. 3.]

The author is a sincere worshipper at the altar of beauty, both in life and in his writings. The book under review is a bunch of poems on various subjects, patriotic, philosophical and psychological. The author is highly sensitive to beauty in all her aspects; and whatever he is impressed with, he expresses in poetry. The contents are merely the poet's emotions and imagination ‘reflected in tranquility.’ There is an artistic finish about every poem and most of them are tuned to select ragams well in harmony with the subject-matter and are free from the choking rigidity of old school prosody. In the various phenomena of the universe he discerns the play of God's beautiful hand and its mystery. The patriotic poems are free from unbridled emotion often characteristic of them. But at the same time they rouse the reader to ‘the call of the Mother.’ He has a personal tie even with the towns in which he lives. A week's absence from Mysore in his native place kindles in him a feeling which he calls a type of viraha. This only shows how deep-rooted his love for ‘a thing of beauty’ is. The introduction of reprints from the master paintings of two of India's leading artists gives a finishing touch to the get-up of the book. Some people may complain of the price of the volume, but anyhow, the get-up is something very rare in vernacular publications. We only wish the country will, ere long, rise to a position of liberally patronising such a volume which is ‘a thing of beauty’ and therefore ‘a joy for ever.’

Aryaka.-A drama by Mr. S. G. Sastry, M. Sc., (Lond.)

Though more widely known as a Soap Chemist Mr. S. G. Sastry has extended his activities to literature also. He is a good story-writer and this is the second drama from his pen, the first being his "Death of Socrates." The play under review is a translation of Henrik Ibsen's ‘The Warriors of Heligoland.’ The story gives a picture of the sea-faring life of the Norwegian Vikings. A character who appears throughout and rivets our attention, is Prathapakumari, the foster-daughter of Aryaka, after whom the play is named. She is a cunning, emotional woman, with a kind of ‘devil-may-care’ spirit, espoused to a coward who is always under her sway. Next to her we are concerned with Aryaka, her foster-father. He is an adventurous sea-farer somewhat akin to the Scotch Highlander met with in Scott's novels. He is very sensitive to tribal dignity and is over-come in old age by a great calamity consequent on the demise of all his sons, which he endures with a spirit of resignation. The other characters have nothing very impressive about them. In some places here and there we find certain words which may be replaced by better ones. ‘The printer's devil’ first manifests itself with the first word of the Introduction and reminds us of its presence now and then elsewhere also. The play has a number of stage directions and the author suggests to the male characters dress of a kind similar to that of the Norwegian Vikings. But his suggestion of sarees and ravikas for the women characters looks incongruous. Anyway, Mr. Sastry deserves to be congratulated on his attempt, and we hope he will translate some more dramas of Ibsen which have some problem in them. Though good materials are used in the get-up of the book, the printing could be done better.

A. N. V.

MARATHI

Sahyadrichya Paythyasin, (Or At the Foot of the Sahyadris). By V. S. Sukhtankar. [With an Introduction by Shrimati Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay. Publishers, The Dhruvaprakashnalay, Bombay. Price Rs. 2/4.]

Few writers in Maharashtra have been able to achieve in the course of their literary apprenticeship the somewhat unique position which Mr. V. S. Sukhtankar has been able to achieve by his interpretation of the life of Goa and its somewhat chequered history, to a wider public through Marathi. To many of us, Goa and the civilisation of the Portugese has remained a closed book and all that we know about Goa is that it is a pretty place with prettier girls, and as a land of old world romance and travel. What where the influences at work on this small province? How did the people of Goa and Portugese India assimilate the Portugese culture? What were the results of a premier European civilisation on a soft and mild, peace-loving race? How did the literature of the country develop under such diverse influences?

The answers to some of these interesting questions are to be found in this dainty volume of short stories which Mr. Sukhtankar has brought out recently.

The short story has undoubtedly become today a most powerful means of literary expression, and with a writer who has a certain amount of imagination and skill of portrayal, it excels easily all other forms of literary execution. Mr. Sukhtankar, one feels happy to note, possesses both these qualifications and what is most pleasing, he has an uncanny insight into the hundred frailties of the small provincial community at Goa and their beautiful simplicity which he brings out in all his writings.

Most of these stories make charming reading for an idle hour. It is difficult to make a choice, but the story of ‘Varanda,’ or ‘Tamrapat’ will do credit to any writer. ‘Jai-Jui’ is a well-executed plot in spite of its length.

One helpful suggestion the reviewer feels he ought to make to Mr. Sukhtankar, and that is, his stories must be made less lengthy. He must remember that the days of long-winded descriptions are past and that the more direct a word picture or a story is, the better is its grip. For instance, the way in which we are introduced to the families of Santhu Shenai, Paola Da Sa is much more interesting and gripping than the long descriptive introduction to ‘Jai-Jui’.

But this is a small detail. One hopes Mr. Sukhtankar will write more stories about his beloved Goa and introduce us all one day to the spirit and the playful genius which Camoens loved and sang.

Draksha Kanya. –(Or the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam of Naishapur.) By ‘Madhav Julian.’ (Publishers, The Ravi Kiran Mandal, Poona. Price 12 annas.]

‘Madhav Julian’ needs no introduction to Maharashtra. Nor does the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam to the world. But Madhav Julian's beautiful translation of the first edition of the Rubaiyat does need an introduction, and the writer of this review has great pleasure in recommending to readers of Triveni this fine volumes of verses.

The attempt is one of the first of its kind in India. ‘Madhav Julian’ therefore deserves the thanks of all persons interested in modern literature.

The translation of some of those haunting quatrains say the 26th, shows the author at his best.

R. L. RAU

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