Juggler's Kiss
by . New York: Boni & Liveright. 1927. l2mo. viii + 288 pp. $2.50.
KOMROFF is a story-teller rather than a novelist. His book is loosely constructed and episodic. It is held together by a cloudy symbolism that never quite satisfies one’s sense of logic. It is written with Slavic artlessness. And yet — partly by virtue of these very qualities — it is an extraordinarily moving novel, and one that leaves the reader with a profound sense of spiritual nobility.
This is because its author is a tender and compassionate observer of life. He sees man forever lured on — and forever betrayed — by the juggler, hope. And he observes this perpetual allurement and betrayal, not with bitterness, but with pity, as an inexorable element of human destiny. ‘Life must go on’; hope is its motive force.
In Juggler’s Kiss hope appears as a living man, assuming whatever form is necessary for the accomplishment of its purpose. To Dundee, the ' hero,’ it appears first as the distorted image of himself, proffering the counsel of material success. ‘The world is not made for the simple and good. You must be cunning and crafty. The end justifies any means.’ Dundee looks about him. He sees the good, the simple, the noble, as life’s dupes and victims. Spurred by ambition, lured by the phantom hope, he leaves home and the girl he loves for the city. But the road to success is arduous. He attempts the short cut of crime and lands in prison. It is his first betrayal, but the stranger whispers to him that his only crime is clumsiness and that next time he will succeed.
In remote Java, Dundee timidly sets about building a new life, lie acquires a plantation, a wife, a child. Life blossoms for a moment, but only to be swept away by death and fire; and Dundee, on his knees before the ruins, cries out against God. ‘I have been bad and I was punished. I have been good and this is my reward. You are God of success. You serve only the gamblers and jugglers of life. To them that have, you give more. I defy you!’ But in the midst of his despair hope appears in the form of a priest, assuaging his grief, tempting him forward with crafty words. Life must go on.
Dundee turns sailor. Hereafter he will play a lone hand, leaving no hostages to fate, trusting only to his own strength and guile. He smuggles opium. He is kept by a rich American woman, He haunts the gambling hells and boarding houses of the China coast. But fortune still flits out of reach. At last, as he plays roulette in Shanghai, the stranger again appears. Dundee takes him to his room, locks the door, demands an accounting, and the book comes to an extraordinary and violent end, for Dundee learns too late that when hope is dead man must die, too.
Apart from, but a part of, this main narrative are the incidental stories put into the mouths of the various characters. Always, with Komroff, it is the dramatic and picturesque episode that sets fire to his imagination. And it is when the episode lies a little outside the story, so that he must gather it in, as it were, with violence and for its own sake, that his imagination burns most vehemently. Such stories as the battle with the ants or the famine ship are superb in themselves and immensely heightened in effectiveness by their background of more sober narrative. And, oddly enough, these semi-independent stories add immensely to the effectiveness of the novel as a whole. For their inclusion heightens the impression of casual simplicity and candor that is the book’s dominant charm.
R. N. LINSCOTT