BOOKS
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similar respect for the sanctities of private feeling and the necessity of
beauty derives from the depth of his involvement with all those romantic
"escapes" that Professor Malia continually jibes at and decries. One of
the great symbolic encounters of the modern spirit is that between
Herzen and Mazzini described in
My Past and Thoughts,
where the
former unsuccessfully attempts to persuade the great agitator of the im–
portance for humanity of Leopardi's lyric cry of pain. Herzen could
feel and express both the tragic human
cost
of extreme radical politics
as well as its ineluctable necessity in Russia; and this is what gives him
a warmth, a breadth, and a humanity that we find also in the great
novelists of his generation, but which is so noticeably lacking in what
Herzen called the "bilious" generation of radicals that followed.
Professor Malia's totally negative evaluation of these romantic ele–
ments of Herzen's formation constitutes, in my opinion, the single most
important distortion imposed by his approach. But whatever the limita–
tions of Professor Malia's emphasis and interpretation, they do not impair
the substantial value of his first-rate study.
Joseph Frank
E. M. Forster: The Perils of
Humanism
By
Frederick C. Crews
Each of E. M. Forster's five novels is here analyzed within the
framework of Forster's cultural heritage, nineteenth-century lib–
eralism and humanism. The book traces Forster's family and edu–
cational background, his religious and political heritage, and his
relation to the "Bloomsbury Group". "The author has made
valuable and sensitive analyses of each of Forster's novels. . . .
The result is a vivid, pointed study of Forster's growth as an
artist."- Dorothy Van Ghent.
208 pages. $4.00
Order from your bookstore, or
PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS
Princeton, N.
J.
