1938-02-26 — Page 35

SPARE

THE HONGKONG TELEGRAPH.

SATURDAY, FEBRUARY

26, 1038.

MOMENT PAGE

Books-Edited by Roger Pippett

PORTRAIT of a

M

*IOHAEL, BAKUNIN has his duly dishonoured place in Marxian legend: and his name was much used in that vocabulary of abusivo denunciation in which Com- 1sm has always been so rich-until it was replaced by those of more fashionable villains...

For most of the outer world he is G

· rather dim figuro-the Russian anarchist whose revolt against Marx split and de- stroyed the First International.

Yet what a man it was that is thus half- forgotten or only remembered in dreary polomics, One of the most fantastic fgures of his own, or any, ago.. What a subject for the blographer: but missed until Professor Carr drew this careful but brilliant portrait (Michael Bakunin, by E. 1. Carr, Macmillan, 25s,) of thỏ great rebel.

Rebel is the right word for Bakunin, He was the passionate, dynamic, furious, undisciplined embodiment of permanent rovolt. Revolt against anything and everything—as inconsistent as it was torrential, Eprung by some genetic miracle from a respectable family of Rusalah small landowners and officials, his strange fate led him to things unforeseeable when, rest- less, expelled from the army, in love, for the moment, with Hege- Jan philosophy, he left his nativo Premukhino for Berlin.

He Loved It

For thirty years with a brief Interval in Biberla - he flared stormily across Europe, arguing. quarrelling, borrowing, fascinat ing, repelling, denouncing, always demanding revolt against this or that; A revolutionary who loved revolution for its own anke, pot for its ends.

Tho social question," he once wrote, "takes the form primarily of the overthrow of Society." That is the essential Bakupin. He was not inter- ested in any new order, but in the overthrow, the destruction (they are his favourite.worda) of the old.

There was not, there could not be, any consistency in such a man. He was everything by turns and nothing long. He lauded democracy and denounced 1 He called fiercely for the King- dom of God-and as florcely denied God's existence.

He cursed Tardom—and begged tha Tar to make himself revolutionary dictator of Europe. He counted Ger- many hi spiritual home — and preached a pan-Glav crusade against all things German.

As a thinker he was negligible. As an emotional force he was in his day formidable and feared. Twenty stone of tumultuous, eloquent humanity, roaring for revolt Twenty stone of unscrupulous adventurer, living from hand to mouth en eternal borrowing from over-ready admirers. Ironic Accident

At the very last the volcano burnt itself aut.-Ho-turnod,-weary and illi,-to thoughts of his childhood home, of philosophy, of music. Almost his inst recorded utteranco wAJ, The world will perish, but the Ninth Symphony will remain."*

By ironic accident, when the end came, the Berno authorities recorded the death of "Michel de Bakounine, Rentier."

"If you saw it in a picture...." II A novelist had drawn this character,

It would be demonstrably grotesque, exaggerated, outrageously impossible. But it was GO.

And Professor Carr has succeeded in making the incredible truth convino- ing. the incredible man not only human but as nearly comprehensible As a volcanic mass of self-contradio- flon can ever be to normal folk.

V. N. E

For Beauty!

REBEL

From “Five Thousand Years Young,” a collection of modern Chinese' drawings and icoodcuts pub- lished by Lawrence and Wishart, 18. Profits are for Chinese Medical Aid.

NEW NOVELS

CELIA

Dy E. IL Young (Cape, &t. d.)

N the headlong hustle of zo much modern writing-stories slammed together, incidents tumbling over one another, char- acters like marionettes with lega insuficiently glued on, idean miss- ing and grammar erratic-what a pleasure it is to come on the work of a patient, conscientious craftsman,

Miss Young's novel is so solid and well-made that I felt comfortable rending it. I could bear to wait whilo sho gradually built up a cliaracter, be- cause I knew she wasn't going to cheat end offor mo, in the end, something highly polished and quite dead.

YOU

Celia is pilve. You see her faults and weaknesses as well as her virtura. You And yourself criticising her OR would notice, the shortcomings of a friend without ceasing to be friendly. She in a vague, kindly, uncertain, self- contained woman, pollte but pointed in her talk, amiable but too reserved for either passion or deep tenderness.

She does not really enter into the itto of her two children. She despises her husband in secret. Her mother- in-law is someone to be endured and evaded: her feeling for the man she might have married one long

romantic dream. Her friendships are carefully removed from intimacy: her mind is as much in a muddle as the bureau she is supposed to be tidying when we first meet her.

In other words, the Elves, moves and has her being.

The story of how this pleasant. płacid fobber-off of realities nearly drifted to diasster and had to hear few home-truths before she woke up to Ho contains Bomb explosive material. But Miss Young is firmly -in charge all the time.

ESTHER VANNER By Chris Manie (Sampson Low, Maraton, 73. Gd.j

HIS novel opens with the death of Queen Victoria and closes with the outbreak of the Great War. And from the many vitar developments of those thirteen years Mr. Massle

has chosen the Women's Suffrage Movement as his central theme.

He is careful to admit, in a foreword, that he has manipulated history to suit his tale. But I think he is sound in pointing out that one of the strangest things about the night for the vole was that it remained, with so many women, simply a fight for the vote.

No clear idea of what to do with the vote aver emerged. Women wanted their rights. They, quito naturally, smarted under a seize of injustice, and they were even propared to die if that injustice could be removed. But was there any guiding social principle, any political philosophy, bellud tho Kirunale?

wwwwwwwwwwwwwwAA÷UJASA÷1÷÷54÷KAAAAAAMMAASSA,

FOR YOUR LIBRARY LIST

NOVELS

Candle in the Sun, by Edith Roberts (Harra. Us. 04.).

**Behold the Judge, by John Brophy

(Collins, Ga. Od.).

*** Katrina, by Sally simisen (Thom-

ton Butterworth, "a. Od.),

DETECTION

** Procped With Caution, by John

Rhode (Collins, Ta, od.).

** The Wich Sheild, by Henry Wate

(Constable, Ts. Od.),

Danger Point

Knowledge of Nazi Germany needa as complement and counterpart know- ledge of her neighbours: mast of all, perhaps, of Czechoslovakia.

Walch Czechoslovakia, by Richard Fround (Nelson, z od) is a short contribution little over abundred pages But it is an admirably fucid and unpropaganda” account of a State whose domestic problems are of European importance. An excellent Introduction for anybody who cares to know something of a country more Lalked about than known W. N. E

Che SNAPSHOT CUILD

DECORATIVE SILHOUETTES

Since the puppy is likely to move, a photographlo flash buik, which given an instantaneous flash of light, was used in making this silhouette. PHOTOGRAPHIC silhouettes are Thren sixty-watt inside-frosted cloc- a source of decorativo pictures trio bulbs will provide enough light -and camera fun-which avory to give good results with fivo-socond suapshooter should try. The arrango-time exposures, using a box camera ments are implon whito shoot with its lens at widest opening, or stretched over a doorway, or divi- other cameras at lens stop L11. To sion between two rooms, with a stop movement when pots or atall strong light behind it and the cam chidren are appearing ta silhouette, era set up in front,

use a flash bulb bahlad to sheet. Or, with two or three large size flood halba snapshota can be taken.

By arranging his subjects in front of this brightly illuminated sheet,

When using the 'flash bulb, sONIC- the clover photographer can con- struct any number of imaginativo ono can flash it at the correct mo. or story-telling pictures. Coalume ment at an "okay" signal from the snaps are particularly interesting in person operating the camera. There silhouette, and there are possibil-should be sumclent light, from un. ties for many humorous pictures of the "it-can't-bo" variety.

abaded regular household bulbs, do- hind the sheet for the "cameraman" to ace the silhouetted images, and to know when to give his "okay" signni,

For instance, a juggler can be ple Lured kooping a dozen or two balls or bottles in the air at one time, or a camper can be pictured with two When the silhonotto is snapped. skillets, nipping a dosan flapjacks | of course, all lights must be turned at one shot, In both theis pictures, off in the room which contains the the object to appear in the air camora and subject. Unless this lo would be cut from black paper or dono, dolail in the subject will show, cardboard and pinned to the sheet | spolling the shouolle offect. The at proper polute,

photographer should also be watch- The sheet must be stretched | fal of stray light from windows, and evenly, as wrinkles wiil sbow in the mirrors which might catch light pleturos. Lighting bahind the sheet | from the illuminated sheet and should also be as even as possible, throw it toward the shadow elds of Five foot is a suitable distance from the subject. Iamps to sheet.

John Van Gulider.

ARE YOU A ONE-TENTHER?

BY MAX EVANS,

musiclan, a great writer, a great calculates an arithmetical problem specialist in "anything need only be that goes into millions.. you belong to the great aver- of average intelligence.

Anyone can do that if they train Usually it is the big business man their mind," says Kehne. age in this world you are

who leads in brain gymnastics. He only one-tenth a human being- is the man who can do several things Kahne visited the University and During his stay in Melbourne in intelligence.

at once, see several points of view, held 400 students spellbound with a That, anyway, is the rather frigh- and analyse them instantly.

display of

acrobatics. mental Try Mr. Kahne's elementary self- He did mathematical problems up- |tening opinion of Mr. Harry Kahne, practical psychologist and mental test of intelligence, and see if you side down and back to front while phenomenon, who was recently in are below average, past average or Melbourne.

have hopes of getting out of the rut, Performing a series of memory feats "It was a valuable demonstration "Yes, the average person doesn't Take the figures 1 to 9. Write them use more than one-tenth of his brain out rapidly and as you write count of how the human mind can be de- power," said Mfr. Kahne. "He leaves them backwards. That is, as you veloped when man sets out to train the nine-tenths of perfectly good and write one say nine, as you write two it" said one of the professors who emelent Grey matter to atrophy, say 8, and so on. Do it fast and was there. There seemed to be no put on the brain-particularly as This neglect shortens life. Mentai don't hesitate. Then do it in re- limit to the demands which could be development lengthens it.

Kahno made no claim to have ex- If you do it both ways first time hausted the uses of mind and "This is fact not theory, and is proved by world-authorised statistics and without hesitation you are better memory."

than average. It is a simple case of that the average longevity of brain doing two things at

once. Your Kahne pointed out to the students usera is 67

years, but of routine and brain is doing double the work it that every human born was equipped manual workers only 44 years."

Mr. Kahne contends that no one would be doing if you just counted with a perfect memory. People for- got things because their recollection in the world uses the full ten-tenths or just wrote the figures out.

verse.

Kahne was a dull boy at school, was at fault. Everything seen or of his brain power. If he did he but he went in for developing his heard from the day of birth was would be a superman.

probably only five-tenths consoling to the rest of us!

in *

Edison used

that's brain, and now one of his stage per- photographed on the memory, but formances is to exercise ex mental because people learned to forget processes simultaneously.

more readily than to remember these While reading a newspaper, upalde memories were locked away down and writing what he reads on darkened section of the brain. By Mr. Kahne's reasoning a genius a blackboard (ulso upside down) he Kahne had demonstrated, the pro- often is in the category of the one- reciles any popular poem nominated festor aald, that that section could be tenthers. A great scholar, a famous by the audience and at the same time illuminated by mind-training,

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