Customer Reviews

Light and the Dark

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

C.P. Snow (1905-1980) is probably best remembered for having postulated, in 1959, the existence of a growing gulf between the sciences and the humanities ("The Two Cultures"). A physicist who later successfully served in government, he also wrote a very interesting, albeit stylistically simple, sequence of self-contained novels ("Strangers and Brothers") roughly stretching from the 1920s to the 1960s, whose narrator, Lewis Eliot progresses from rather humble origins in an English provincial town to law school, a practice in law, a fellowship at Cambridge and government work during and after the second world war. Eliot is a decent, human and sympathetic character who is, at first, Snow`s device for exploring for exploring more brilliant or outstanding characters -in this respect Eliot sometimes reminds one of a more intelligent and senstive version of Conan Doyles' Dr. Watson. Snow`s novels quickly become more concerned with exploring routine struggles for power and influence in the changing English society of his time.

"The Light and the Dark", written just after the second World War (1947), is a tale about one of Eliot`s friends, Roy Calvert, a brilliant young linguist at Cambridge who suffers from maniac-depressive bouts. There are four parts to the novel. In the first part, set circa 1935, we meet Roy as a graceful and gifted graduate student and see how he moves through a slough of despondency, rises to a peak of reckless, destructive behaviour and then is impelled to a blindingly harsh and absoluteless cheerless intuition about reality. At the same time, Snow regales us with an excellent portrayal of the academic manoeuvres in the closed college world which culminate in a fellowship for Roy. In the second part, we watch as Roy`s (and Eliot`s) hopes that he can overcome his condition are dashed, how other of Roy`s most intimate friends gradually become aware of his problem and their futile attempts to help him. This is set aginst a fascinating background of how torn and polarized pre-War Britain was on the subject of Nazi Germany, to the point of setting lifetime friends and members of the same family against each other. In the third part, Roy himself spends some time in Germany and, to the horror of his friends, is quite sympathetic to the nazi regime and even invites Eliot to Berlin in the forelorn hope of converting him. War breaks out, and we get a very interesting glimpse of how part of English academia was coopted into the war effort. Roy himself is initially drafted into Intelligence while Eliot is concerned with planning and becomes involved in fighting against a strategic decision to escalate air bombing. By this time, Roy has reached the end of his tether and when Eliot unsuspectingly and bitterly mentions that the highest casualty rates will be amongst airmen, Roy requests his own transfer and is killed on a bombing mission.

The book tends more to the dark than to the light, as befits the years that are portrayed, but the author exercises a quiet control to prevent the novel from slipping into sentimentality or pampleteering and strives to presents some sort of balance between the light and the dark. Roy himself is a complex character who deeply marks those who know him, who know that they can never be or feel the same way after they have fallen under the spell of this gifted, charming, proud man unsuccessfully struggling to master his own illness.

A terribly bittersweet, hauntingly powerful novel about Roy Calvert, first seen in "Time of Hope". A manic-depressive, I think. Perhaps it was not so recognized in the 30's and early 40's when this takes place. A very memorable and sensitive portrait of the love and friendship that can exist between two heterosexual men, as it delicately portrays the compassion and caring they come to share, Roy, and Lewis Eliot, the narrator. Melancholic and sad, yet a wonderful book. Just as striking as two others, "Time of Hope" and "The Conscience of the Rich", but even more poignant. The last line could not be more perfect. Snow is a master of the human psyche and condition.