ence, bitter though it undoubtedly was, through an acquired literary medium.
There is a curious lack of fusion which one comes to recognize as studied in Evelyn Scott's style. Miniature typhoons of staccato sentences are continually whirled up from the main stream of her story interrupting its continuity. "Frogs bark. Stark white moon. Eternal peace. Blind house. Earth gives up radiance." One can of course construct a picture from loose fragments of coloured glass, but at the same time one prefers to see them in an integrated harmony that demands no such artificial manipulation. It is often, too, in the midst of her most lyrical expressions that she uses this clipped phrasing so popular at the present time.
It is interesting to note that over and over again the author's similes revert to various metal substances almost as if she were attempting to rid herself of something hard and unyielding in her own breast, thrusting it recurrently away from her into the landscape only to have it reappear with a slight change of phrasing in each succeeding page. This is carried sometimes to a point of absurdity—"the blueness of a heaven that was angry like a stone," "trees go black with an iron slowness," "heavy metal sobs," "stiff wind like shredded iron." But one might continue indefinitely.
The adventure ends with a sudden fantastic episode, out of which, fighting against ennui, one struggles to construct a lucid meaning and fails. If the digression had been more amusing, its drift somewhat more boldly implied, the author could have afforded to laugh with cunning satisfaction over the perplexity of her critics. But such is obviously not the case.
In laying down this delightfully bound and printed book with its attractive yellow jacket one is gratified to know that, like black acid projected from a glittering white-blooded fish, Evelyn Scott's corroding hatred of stuffiness and injustice has been loosed in such a very stuffy and unjust world. Where love ceases to instruct, hate at least rouses to defence. But art is after all a matter somewhat outside these querulous and stormy considerations.
