600
PARTISAN REVIEW
for his previous novel
The Tree of Man,
which I have not seen, and
the present work,
VOSS,
is issued by the publisher with a natural confi–
dence as "the finest novel of a great artist," a judgment supported by
the Book-of-the-Month Club, which has made it a Selection.
The story, set in nineteenth-century Australia, concerns a continent–
crossing expedition led by a German immigrant, Johann Ulrich Voss,
and financed by the merchant Bonner with whose niece, Laura Treve–
lyan, Voss falls in love. Their love affair, since he is away in the out–
back during most of the novel, is conducted by letters which get de–
livered to no one but the reader, by dreams, visionary communications,
and crises telepathically shared; this novelistic contraption for together–
ness is invested by the author with a good deal of bardic sonority and
mystical falala. There is a subplot concerning a servant girl who dies
giving birth to an illegitimate child; the child is adopted by Laura
Trevelyan and given the name of Mercy; this is deeply symbolic.
The expedition, whose members appear to have been selected by
the novelist simply as the likeliest people to perish in the wilderness,
perishes (all but one, a convict)
in
the wilderness, in circumstances of
which the reader is fully informed but the other, home-keeping char–
acters are not.
In
the last part of the story we hear of one or two half–
successful attempts to trace the true history of the matter, the old
convict returns, not quite right in the head, to tell the truth no one
believes, a statue of Voss is ceremonially unveiled, and we fade out
on a view of Laura, older now, a schoolmistress who of course has
never married, cherishing a past which makes her appear both myster–
ious and distinguished as well as some sort of symbol of faith in the
future of Australia.
I found this book well done for what it is, a popular romance. This
will appear a patronizing judgment but I must stand by it, since I also
found this book pretentious, empty, and dull. Mr. White is a highly
skilled writer, more so perhaps than quite a number of great masters
have been if we look only at superficial qualities. All the externals of
his action are done to a turn, with some slight idiosyncrasies of notation
which suggest to the reader that this is
literature
("In the resilient hall,
the music continued to ache until it was time for supper"). His novel
is essentially popular in its compound of "epic grandeur" with nice do–
mestic detail (comparable to a "treatment" of the
Nib elungenlied,
say,
by Katherine Mansfield ) , in its substantial but very magniloquent de–
scriptions, shrewd observation of manners, soothing historical irony and
somewhat sticky mystical eroticism. I have little doubt it will be widely
viewed as "great," but it has no inwardness and its characters are for
