BOOK REVIEW : Out of Africa: Adjusting the Jungle Doctor Myth, Reality : OUT OF MY LIFE AND THOUGHT; An Autobiography <i> by Albert Schweitzer Translated by A.B. Lemke</i> Henry Holt $24.95, 272 pages

History and fashion have turned Albert Schweitzer into a ludicrous figure. We think of “the jungle doctor” as the very embodiment of old-fashioned imperialism, if we bother to think of him at all: an old man in colonial whites, pith helmet and handlebar mustache, arrogant and aloof, surrounded by the “natives” whose ailments he deigned to treat in exchange for bananas and rice and small change.

“Out of My Life and Thought,” as I discovered for myself with this new edition, shatters the old myth and allows us to glimpse the real Albert Schweitzer, a man whose moral example is as relevant and compelling in the 1990s as it was in the 1930s on first publication.

“Out of My Life” is Schweitzer in his own eloquent and heartfelt words, a brief and highly readable autobiography that sums up the great man’s work in the jungles of Africa, his spiritual and intellectual progress, and his grand passions: Bach, the restoration of old church organs, the restless search for “the historical Jesus.”

The book comes to us in a new and highly accessible English translation by A. B. Lemke, who draws on newly uncovered materials to clarify the text and adds a helpful chronology, a bibliography, and a selection of photographs.

Born in Alsace in 1875 and educated in France and Germany, Schweitzer was steeped in the values and experiences of the old order in Europe. Schweitzer knew that war was coming, he writes, when civil servants were no longer given the choice of receiving their pay in currency or gold.

Schweitzer was certainly a man of his times and of his class; he played piano for a housebound countess; he made obeisance to the cult of Wagner; he argued that “even colonialism can allege some acts of moral value.”

Still, Schweitzer does not come across as a somber or fusty man; in fact, he possessed a self-denigrating sense of humor that is quite at odds with the caricature that he has become.

After publishing a successful book on Bach in French, he set himself the task of creating a German translation, but he ended up rewriting the book: “Out of a book of 455 pages,” he deadpans, “there emerged, to the dismay of the astonished publisher, one of 844.”

Schweitzer did not succumb to the same impulse in writing about himself. Although it is styled as an autobiography, “Out of My Life” is more nearly a sampler than an encyclopedia of Schweitzer’s long life. He deftly summarizes his major works, from “The Quest for the Historical Jesus” to “On Organ-Building and Organ-Playing in France and Germany.”

And he succeeds in imparting a vivid sense of what he learned, what he believed, and how he acted upon his beliefs.

At the heart of Schweitzer’s story, of course, is his decision to become a doctor at the age of 30 and devote himself to the practice of medicine in the jungle clinic at Lambarene--a self-willed fate that has become something of a 20th-Century myth.

Here, too, we find passion and even whimsy at work, but a fresh reading of Schweitzer’s autobiography reminds us that his impulse is not merely “modern” but ageless.

“It struck me as inconceivable,” he writes simply, “that I should be allowed to lead such a happy life while I saw so many people around me struggling with sorrow and suffering.”

When Schweitzer resolved to go to Africa as a missionary doctor in 1904, he was criticized by sophisticated and civilized people for whom the aching reality of Africa was something alien and remote:

“A lady who was filled with the modern spirit proved to me that I could do much more by lecturing on behalf of medical help for Africans,” Schweitzer writes with gentle irony.

“She said, ‘Today propaganda is the mother of events.’ ”

When I read those words, uttered at the turn of the century, I could think only of “Hands Across America,” and I realized that “Out of My Life” is not merely a historical curiosity.

Quite to the contrary, Schweitzer speaks directly to the most crucial and troubling questions of our age: the conflict between the scientific spirit and religious fundamentalism, the restless search for true and enduring values, and--above all--the urgent moral imperative that calls on men and women to do something about the misery and despair that abounds in our world.

Next: Richard Eder reviews “Saint Peter’s Snow” by Leo Perutz (Arcade Publishing).