Poles Apart

FROM DAY TO DAY--Ferdinand Goetel-- Viking ($2.50).

Few authors have hit on a cleverer or more effective scheme for telling a story than Author Goetel's. His book starts in the form of a diary written by Stanislaw, Cracow novelist. The Cracow he inhabits is a city of postWar, united, republican Poland, but before the War it belonged to Austria. Stanislaw, a man without a country, fought for the Austrians against his Russian-Polish compatriots.

In the diary Stanislaw tells of the story he is about to write based on his experiences as a war-prisoner in Turkestan. Page by page, as he writes it, it is sandwiched in between his journal entries. The same people appear in the diary as in the novel: Stanislaw, his wife Zosia, his friend Felix, Marusia, his Turkestan inamorata. In the diary you see Stanislaw's life as a government clerk, his evenings devoted to writing, his wife's attempts to make him a social celebrity, her flirtations to arouse his jealousy. The novel tells of two Austro-Polish war-prisoners (Stanislaw, his friend Felix) sent to a Turkestan farm to help with the crops. The farm is owned and managed by no rustic curmudgeon but by a Polish girl, pretty and strong-willed Marusia. The prisoners spend pleasant months there, become members of a congenial family. Marusia falls in love with Stanislaw: it works both ways; before he can say knife he is back in the prison camp again, for Marusia has jealous and watchful friends. Then comes the Russian Revolution, Stanislaw escapes, trudges back to the farm, has one white night with Marusia before he tries to get home over the border. He will divorce his wife, arrange for Marusia to come to him, everything will be happy. . . .

Here the novel breaks off, the diary becomes agitated; Stanislaw has heard Marusia is still alive, still remembers him. Frantically he wires, sends messages, money. The little son he has never seen is brought to him. Marusia has died of cholera on the trip. Stanislaw and his wife patch up the pieces, go on again from cay to day.

The Author is introduced to the U. S. by Author John Galsworthy as "a leading Polish author, a man of charm, energy and experience, a traveler, a mountain-climber, a writer of great gifts, whose work has been acclaimed in Poland. France and Germany." Like his hero, Author Goetel lives in Cracow, during the War was interned as a prisoner by the Russians, was sent to Asiatic Russia to work as a laborer, and met a Polish girl there. Unlike his hero, he married the girl. When you have read From Day to Day you will agree with Introducer Galsworthy it was high time for Ferdinand Goetel to be translated. From Day to Day is the May selection of the Literary Guild.

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