Santal by Ronald Firbank (1921)

This is a puzzling piece. It has much that is characteristically Firbankian - that sense of a very camp, slightly bitter, slightly flighty personality celebrating violent or victim-like natures in its characters; the love of an odd flourish of prose wrapped in simple but quietly decadent narrative. I hesitate to say that it seems like an initial enthusiasm of which he quickly bored. The north African-Arabic atmosphere in which it is suffused is alive and energetic in the long opening chapter, where the scene is fully set. The four which follow it, though they are not completely lacking in enthusiasm, are more elegiac and intrepid, as Cherif, the young main character, starts out on his journey toward the holy man he wishes to visit across the plains and desert and few oases and lush places. The fact that the story stops at the end of Chapter Five with Cherif simply imploring Lord Allah to show him compassion, and the feeling that he will go on searching for his goal even though he has been stymied thus far, seems to suggest that Firbank didn't think of this as a narrative at all, but rather something different - an allegory for the state of his life, perhaps? There is always that sense with him of the layer of the personal (and the acting out of it) underneath his overt narratives. Maybe this one took it one stage further. If so, it has to be said that it is beautiful but very unsatisfying.