Books: Flemish Pastoral

HATH NOT THE POTTER—Maxence van der Meersch (translated by Gerard Hopkins)—Viking ($2.50).

In Invasion, a story of Flanders during the German Wartime occupation (TIME, Jan. 25), Author van der Meersch presented a panoramic account of a people in the hands of their enemy. More compact an outline, more pastoral in treatment, his second has the same general setting but a different time and far narrower scope. In spite of its slightly cramped design, however, and chiefly by reason of its author’s virtuosity, it is in all respects a highly interesting novel.

The book opens with a sort of prelude, in which Uncle Domitien, visiting the Moermesters’ farm, makes an only half-serious promise to Karelina (then just in her teens and worried about life) to help her if things get too much for her. Before long she needs his assistance. She is married off to one Gomar t’Joens, and Gomar —a typical Walloon peasant, roundheaded, hard-drinking, tough-natured — soon proves to be a caution for cats. His small inn becomes a way station for tobacco-smuggling across the French border, and, as Gomar gets deeper into the racket, Karelina’s life sinks to that of a drudge in a roistering, rustic underworld. She escapes, hunts up Uncle Domitien. Gomar pursues and reclaims her—but not before she and Domitien have fallen in love— kills Domitien, and in the man hunt that follows is killed himself. The end is long-drawn-out, slightly platitudinous, with Domitien’s wife and Karelina united in grief for their common lover.

The beauty of the book lies in its treatment, in its precise and vivid descriptions of Flemish country life and customs. Van der Meersch has a gift (aided here by highly sympathetic Translator Hopkins) for conveying the mud and mist of the low-lying Belgian country, the bleakness of its villages, the hard craft and knockabout hilarity of its inhabitants. To describe them he strays frequently, and to good effect, from the path of his narrative. Best scenes: a country woman dressing, layer by layer, in her go-to-market clothes; description of a cockfight; Breughel-esque picture of a village fair.