THAT ALLURING LAND

The work of Timrava, the pen name of Bozena Slancikova (1867- 1951), gives us a peek at Slovak literature and Slovak life of the early century; mostly it's for the latter—the small human portraiture of individual lives swamped by great events—that we read on. The greatest of these events was, naturally, WW I, which Timrava addresses in the novella ``Great War Heroes,'' a vinegary tale of nationalist enthusiasm—Slovakia against the Russians and Serbs, all three nationalities benighted and manipulated—and of how the self-inflation soon flattens as war's real costs quickly come due. Timrava's style is quick but conventional, hardly up to so large a canvas; better are the more village-like stories—the title one, for instance: the bewildered lives of the women left behind as their fathers and husbands strike off at the turn-of-the- century for America's gold-paved streets. People left dangling in dead dreams is the recurring theme here. Interesting, but for a very small and specialized audience.