SEVEN DAYS AT TEE SILBERSTEINS

by Etienne Leroux ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 25, 1967

This philosophical pantomime, stylized scenes set on a ""farm"" or rather feudal outpost, Welgevonden, won the highest Afrikaans literary award in 1962. Talent it may represent, although its ""moments"" of indeterminate significance"" remain more unfathomable. To Welgevonden, ""a liberal way of life, civilized and stimulating"" and certainly bizarre, comes Henry van Eeden, a philistine innocent, in the notion that he is to marry Salome Silberstein. Salome remains hidden during the next seven days which are spent in ritualistic displays of one sort or another and in ""immobile observation and meditation"" on good and evils doom and salvation, order-one of the supreme objectives, and the ""featurelessness of Being""--the ""individual's loss of his dramatic image""--the supreme loss... If none of this seems very immediate or purposeful, it is because it repudiates both of these prosaic virtues by dealing with illusion (Salome--love) and projecting it through the series of mysteries and masques which take place here. For the reader who is not attuned, Seven Days is a long week.

Pub Date: Aug. 25, 1967

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1967

Categories: FICTION