Eady oh Lesin

“In this drawing of Lenin talking with children in a park, a
Soviet artist conveys a warm impression of the founder of the

world’s first socialist state.

RECEIVED BERLIN PREMIERE

‘This Is Canada’ pageant

feature of youth concert

THIS IS CANADA, a pageant
which was first produced in
Berlin last summer at the
World Youth Festival, will be
a feature presentation at a con-
cert to be held Sunday, Febru-
ary 10, at 8 p.m,,
Auditorium here.

This is Canada was written
by Mary Holmes of Toronto.
Its Berlin premiere resulted ‘in
widespread comment in Canada,
including a distorted article in
Toronto Saturday Night.

Youth from various groups

at Pender

4

‘such as the Ukrainian, Russian,

Jewish, Scandanavian and the

National Federation of Labor
Youth will take part in what
promises to be a colorful and
Spirited program. The  pro-
gram includes national dances

and songs, music, skits and a

pageant.

The concert, to which there:
is no admission charge, is’ be-
ing held in support,of Cham-
pion, Canada’s national, demo-
cratic youth paper, and is spon-
sored by the B.C. Champion
committee.

SRHE*SIEVER TASSIE’

Edmonton student group

produces: anti - war play

SEAN O’CASEY’S moving
anti-war play, The Silver Tas-
sie, was recently presented in
Edmonton by the University of
Alberta’s Studio Theatre, a
group which is rapidly estab-
lishing a reputation for itself

with the fine quality of its pro-

ductions. ;
Although its work is hamper-

ed by its having only an inade-

quately heated Nissen hut for

a theatre, the Studio Theatre -

group usually fills the place for
the ten performances of its pro-
ductions. The creditable pro-
duction of The Silver Tassie
Was no exception,
good audiences.

O’Casey’s. play is centred

around Harry Heegan, a popu-

lar young football player who,
~ while home on leave during the
First World War, wins the tro-
phy, the coveted “Silver Tas-

sie,” for his home team. The ©

first act is set in the Heegan
home when Harry comes in tri-

umphant with the precious cup.
The curtain falls on the fare-
wells of Harry and his family
as he and his friend depart for

attracting |

the front.

The second act, pt ina battle-
field scene, is a symbolic, dream
scene. Cleverly portrayed are
all the brutality, stupidity and
senselessness of war. The con-
sequences of it all are carried
over into ‘the third act, a hospi- »
tal ward scene, in which Harry
is seen restlessly going back
and forth in a: wheelchair and
obviously suffering the emo-
tional. shock of having lost the ©
use of his legs. His friend is
present, too, blind, and bewil-
dered by his predicament.

The final act is set in .the :

football club rooms where a
party is in progress. O’Casey
has put into this act some of
his most powerful anti-war
effects. ‘The two “heroes” are
present, the one paralyzed, ,the
other blind. The conflicting
emotions of their families add
to ‘their own.

Bitterness and realization of
the futility, of war are expressed

‘in Harry’s crashing of the tro-

phy and his paraphrase: ‘The
‘Lord hath given and man hath
. taken away. ras

STANTON, MUNRO & DEAN

Barristers - Solicitors - Notaries ©
SUITE 515 FORD BUILDING 198 E. HASTINGS
(Corner Main & Hastings Sts.) ‘
/ MARINE 5746

GUIDE TO GOOD READING
Great Rumanian novel ‘Barefoot’
reviewed by noted Welsh writer

HERE AN suiaadee Welsh
novelist, Gwyn Thomas, author
of The Dark Philosophers, re-
views the work of a Rumanian
writer, Zanaria Stancu, the Eng-
lish translation of whose novel
Barefoot, published by Fore Pub-
lications, is now available in Van-
couver at the People’s Coopera-
ttwe Bookstore, 337 West Pender
Street, price $2.50. Thomas’ own
new novel, The World Cannot
Hear You, already published in
Britain, will be issued in the U.S.
this spring by Little, Brown.

*« * *

RARELY HAS life with such
pelting abundance been put be-
tween 'the covers of a book as
in Zanaria Stancu’s ‘Barefoot.
Alongside this work the aver:
age novel produced today is a

, pale, polite and puling thing.

In the kind of society and
time from which Stancu has
created the scalding poetry and
beauty of this book, there was
no time for evasion, pretence or
fatuity. Here are people and
things seen ‘by an eyé as in-
'tensely accurate as any that has
ever melted existence with un-
derstanding pity and pouted it
into the form of art.

Nothing is idealised. The sore,
festering little village on the
Rumanian plain breaks in upon
our senses as savagely as it
did on Stancu’s .Here is one
of the greatest records of men
and women struggling to pre-
‘serve what little is left of com-
passion and joy from a tide of

prutalising circumstance which °

seemed to rise blacker and
higher with every generation.

The story? Simple as life or

death, and as terrible and deep.
oe x Rea te

A BOY, one of twelve, grows

up in a bitterly impoverished

' peasant family not far from the

Danube in the early years of
this century. The land has

‘been seized by the local barons,

the boyars, who do not scruple
to call in ithe Turks to put
down pathetic, blind risings
that take place from ‘time to
time against the sheer down-
press of misery.

These people are faced by a
blank, terrifying solidarity of
exploiters, man and nature in

a tireless competition of vile-—

ness. “Ravens do not gouge
each other’s eyes out,” says the

boy, trying to explain how the.

tiny minority of the replete
manages in decade after decade-
to silence the hunger-rumbles
of cheated bellies. , —

_ Stancu’s. people ‘have | their
labor to sell and since the local
landlord is the state made vis-
ible with power to call in the
gendarmerie and the army to
punish the least sign of criti-
cism or unwillingness, they are
virtually a mobile crew of im-
pressed laborers who must
stand ready to heed the bugle
call of the old veteran. Dis who,
blowing this alert from the

. Town Hall steps, calls ‘the bare-

footed and the landless together
to listen to the latest instruc-
tions of authority.

The summons'‘is almost al-
ways to announce some fresh
misfortune—a war, some new
draconian measure of labor-re-
cruitment, a rise in taxes, al-
Ways some new technical ad-
vance in the great art of the
rich in making themselves more
so.

\ Debt rises in a sinister tumu- :

lus over the village. Drought

and. flood intervene to ae
them massaged and supple in
the great test of endurance
which is ‘their life. Man with
his subtle pride in life even at
the most ferocious levels of
misery can assimiliate degrees
of outrage that would finish off
an animal with mortal disgust.
“I pray,” says an old peasant,
“that I will not ‘tbe asked to
suffer as much as a man can
bear.”

They work in summer under
a pitiless sun on another man’s _
land, pensive, enraged manure
on an earth which should be.
theirs because it has been won. -
and kept sweet by their labor
and anguish. “Keep the furrow
deep and narrow,” sings out the
steward, not wishing to see an
inch of the ‘boyar’s land unused.

Women within a few hours
of giving birth to their children
have to work alongside their
husbands att harvest time.

Darie, the boy who tells the
story, was himself born in the
fields. His navel string was cut
hy his father with a scythe.
That is why his navel is mis-
shapen. The other boys laugh
at him when the goes down to
he stream for a bathe.

Then they line up, men,

-women and children, at the gate

of the boyar’s vineyard for the
autumn grapepicking. Each
peasant is fitted by the steward
with a muzzle over the face,
lest any of the boyar’s grapes
tbe eaten by mouths for which
such fruit was never meant.
* * *

HUNGER, poverty, war, shot

, through with those intimations

of loveliness and laughter in-
separable from humanity every-
where, lay their pattern on life.

Each tide of calamity recedes. —

The people are not washed
away. Their passionate vitality

and goodness waits only to be

released from the vices of want
and indignity to create wonder-
ful new ‘blooms of ‘human
achievement. Darie, the boy, is
aware that ignorance and fear
have come very near to rotting

‘Capsule
Reviews

KING SOLOMON’S MINES

A magnificent spectacle of the
African wilds, through which
Stewart Granger and Deborah

‘Kerr wander more or less irrele-

vantly. If you ignore the story

you will enjoy ‘the splendid

shots of African wild life and
the scenes portraying the native
people, in particularly the dance
of the Watsuti at the conclusion.

BORN YESTERDAY.

A hysterically funny comedy
delivering sharp “political
punches. While it’s all pretty

_ much on the light side—thanks

almost entirely to the talents of
Judy Holiday—the pungent di-
alogue does a ‘devastating job on

the corruption of U.S. congress- |
men and big business. \

THE WELL

Highly contrived story in
which a “race riot” is prevented
when Negro:and white residents
unite to rescue a little gir] who
falls down a well. Despite weak-
nesses, in many respects best of
“Negro interest” ‘films to come
out of Hollywood.

the very spine of human identi- :
ty among his kindred.
The old teached, being dis-

missed by a state inspector for

mentioning to his little class the
great insurrectionary heroes of
the Rumanian peasantry, tells
Darie, “People live as in a very
deep, dark nig’ht. You have read
a little so far. You should keep
on reading. Your eyes must
open wide upon the world.”

The boy’s mother, is an in-
terval of rest and reflection in
her endless round of toil and
sickness, returning from the
death bed of a cousin whose
mind has been twisted into a
lifetime of spite by deprivation
and anxiety, says: “How stupid
we human beings are. We quar-
rel, we hate, we embitter one :
another’s life uselessly. We re-
“alize when it is ‘too late.’ Nich-
ita, the boatman on the Danube,
the proud craftsman, says it all:
“The mountains are beautiful.
The streams are cold and clear.
If only we could have a more
decent life.”

The boy grows into a creature
of rich responses. In his mind
every sight and sound of nature
is lovingly cherished. I would

‘define this book, for all its

prose form, as one of the great-
est poems of our time—if the
aim of poetry is to pierce him
who reads from page to page
with a sense of the world’s
_ beauty, magnificence, pala and
promise.

The boy does well at his pri-

mary school. He is marked
down by a friendly teacher for
further schooling in the town.
Then he suffers an infection of
‘the leg which makes him a
a cripple in a world where the
sick are curtly invited to die.
The poor can afford only pasa-
sites who are not of their own
ranks.
,He builds his own little citadel
of wary self-defence, sensing
that ‘beyond the barrier of our
present. stupidities, there must
-be a way of social living better
than the plot of crass indigni-
ties which the has known. “It
seems there is a lock to your
soul, Darie,” says to his mother.
“It’s easy matter ‘to get to your
heart.”

He is apprenticed, in a sec

~ tion) of the book as uproariously

picaresque and humorous’ as
“Lazarillo de Tormes,” to a
wonderful series of tradesmen
and masters, all ruffianly, de-
generate and doomed.

The book ends when, at fit.
teen, Darie leaves the service
of a boyar with whom ‘he has

‘been signed on as a clerk and ©

takes ship down the Danube to
Bucharest. We ‘have a last
glimpse of the river as a sym-
bol of change and liberation in
the lives of those whose work,
and blood enrich its banks.

Allow nothing ‘to prevent vou
getting this book. The common
folk, in all part of the world,
are making as they go a great
‘saga of their fight ‘against war,
racialism, indignity. Stancu’s
‘book contributes a golden chap-
ter to that work.

Our thanks to the publishers
and translators for a real addi-
tion to our experience.

—GWYN THOMAS

PACIFIC TRIBUNE — FEBRUARY 8, 1952 — PAGE 8

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