Word: sword
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...Friday, at three in the afternoon, the day and hour of the Passion, Godfrey of Bouillon stood victorious on the walls of Jerusalem . . . After 70,000 Moslems had been put to the sword, and the harmless Jews had been burnt in their synagogue . .. the bloody victors ... ascended the Hill of Calvary, amidst the loud anthems of the clergy; kissed the stone which had covered the Saviour of the world; and bedewed with tears of joy and penitence the monument of their redemption...
...IMAGE OF A DRAWN SWORD (242 pp.)-Jocelyn Brooke-Knopf...
What happens to Langrish after that, in The Image of a Drawn Sword, proves that British Novelist Jocelyn Brooke can create as violent fictional disturbances as anyone now writing in English. Compared to it, his first tense little gothic novel, The Scapegoat (TIME, Jan. 9, 1950), was a mild emotional debauch...
...captain invites him to drive into town to see a boxing match that night, Langrish happily accepts. Everything about Archer is mysterious: his talk about an imminent "crisis" and the need for dedicated soldiers, his warning that the "other lot," the enemy, is getting ready to attack, the tattooed sword and snake...
Despite its own mumbo jumbo and its deliberate lack of clarity, The Image of a Drawn Sword is a disturbing allegory: the desperate desire of Mr. Average for an existence in which love and comradeship replace tension and uncertainty. The book's elaborate use of symbolism, its bewildering time scheme in which past & present merge crazily, sharply recall the brooding of Novelist Franz Kafka. There is one important difference: Kafka's theme was man's search for God. Brooke's dazed hero would settle for something which he almost, but never quite, comes out and names...