Terra: An Allegory

by Gregor Lang (pseudonym), Faber Birren, Raymond Lufkin (Illustrator)

Terra is an allegory of humanism and democracy. Into the mythical struggle of a nation of people to find peace and security, it weaves dozens of significant tales--all of which express those simple principles of freedom so cherished by the world today.

Here basic human conflicts , frustrations, fears , delusions, are mixed together in a great pottage which is itself the confusion of life. The taste is at times bitter, at times sweet, but always sustenance in the problem of being.

Terra is a pleasant book to read, for its style is unforced and universal in quality. While it points no morals, it does take sides in its insistence on mortal answers to mortal issues. Using the allegory for emphasis, it tries to stimulate action from the reader--in the hope that his own effort will add significance to what he reads. For the purpose of art is to excite and not to conclude.

----- From the inside front flap.

338 pages, Hardcover

First published November 5, 1953

Reviews

[Joshua Buhs · Rating 4 out of 5]

Terra presents itself as a series of connected vignettes written by the author’s great grandfather, Henry Lang, who was raised in Luxembourg during the tumultuous nineteenth-century when that country came under the rule of one country after another—all the disruption supposedly driving Henry to Buffalo, New York, where he penned these stories in Moselfrankisch, which Gregor then had translated. They tell an alternate history of a group called The Midianites, who have a chance to join with Moses and become part of God’s chosen people, and later to accept the teaching of Christ, but resist (for the most part) choosing, instead, to stubbornly measure themselves by the standards of humanity, rejecting romantic variants of Nietzscheanism for a more humble dedication to work. Stories are told within stories, allegories whose meaning is hidden only by the easily deciphered code of giving a character the name of a virtue written backwards—so that Layol becomes a hero, and Reldi a villain. For all that the book threatens to become overly didactic, Birren makes it involving by never forgetting that his characters are characters first and adding little grace notes that make the story come feel true. The point is not to imagine a perfect utopia, but instead pose the struggles of the Midianites as a model for humans: that their focus should be on work and helping one another; that religion leads to extremism and hierarchy; that even with everyone working hard, humans will be consumed by passions at times, and make mistakes, and go to war, and all the rest: the best we can hope is to temper those tendencies and get back on track when civilization’s run off the rails. It’s an interesting and unexpected book, one that suggests Birren, fulfilled by his work on color, had more he wanted to say.