Books
Bazinet, John L. & Sweeney, J. J. & Connolly, Cornelius J. & Strakhovsky, Leonid I. & Radziwill, Catherine & McGuire, Harry & McCabe, George K.
BOOKS America and Russia Two Frontiers, by John Gould Fletcher. New York: Cow-ard-McCann, Incorporated. $3.00. AT FIRST there seems to be no comparison whatsoever between Russia and the United...
...75...
...A Life of Bell Alexander Graham Bell, by Catherine Mackenzie...
...his advice is sound and his statistics are informative...
...His present book aims to establish a meta-physic based upon the presence, in a single universe, of three "distinct and in some sense autonomous real"-matter, life and value...
...Obviously the conservatism of the Catholic Church would be regarded as a menace by those who would relax the marriage contract on the basis of experiment...
...TRUE lyricism is here on many a page: not in the frenzies of a school which, for a decade past, screamed in immeasurable quantities over psychoanalyzed shallows-those modernists, like Regan and Goneril of the play, full of clamorous protests, and not like Cordelia in character and eloquence: "What shall Cordelia speak...
...How so...
...the second treats the question of race and nationality, often confusing the two terms...
...Father Lepin finds need to begin at the beginning...
...Joad's analysis of value as a "real" is, however, open to investigation...
...Also commendable is the precision of all historical details...
...John L. Bazinet...
...In all such questions, scholars have as a rule gladly admitted the substantial truth of Christ's historical existence, though they have not universally done so...
...While Father de Grandmaison considers the personality, message and proofs of Christ, Father Lepin limits himself to three narrower questions, to one of them but hurriedly at that: the historical existence of Jesus, His Messiahship, His Divine Sonship...
...Until the latter part of the play the author successfully avoids oversentiment, but when at the end he tries to convince us of the sincerity of the two lovers (to neither of whom has Christ been much more than a myth right up to the time of the action) in passionately desiring to substitute their own deaths for Christ's, his own admirable feelings get the better of him and he forces his characters into unlifelike attitudinizing...
...but the appropriate reader will recognize the depths of a cloistered heart in chanting the dramas of home and home, of love and love, pro aris et focis, which are the assured circumference of all great poetry, pagan or Christian...
...They have realized that his psychology was unique, at least in some of its aspects, and they have neither attempted to make a god out of him nor to paint him as a hardened criminal...
...and France never became one...
...J. J. Sweeney...
...That we have reached such a point today, is the belief of Professor George Ross Wells...
...The actual plot is built of a cabal in the house of Jobal, a crafty member of the Jewish Sanhedrin in Jerusalem...
...Footlights across America will have to content itself with a very limited public...
...An illusion if there ever was one, but Napoleon also had illusions, and this book which deals with him and his life would have gained in merit, if it had mentioned them kindly and sadly...
...With the essential problem of the real, earthly existence of Jesus of Nazareth he concerns himself in the first lengthy section of his book...
...Other famous individuals have everything to gain by a vigorous attempt on the part of their biographers to explain their greatness to others, but Caesar and Napoleon do not require it...
...Out of the fatherland he was now born into the universe...
...Nietzsche's saying about the strong personalities of history is put as a motto to the first part of the book...
...New York: E. P. Dutton and Company, Incorporated...
...The Christian Church, the author tells us, began with a group of humble persons, including many slaves...
...The first part compares the historical development of the two countries...
...Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company...
...FLEG himself describes this book when he says that Solomon appears here "as a Faust, at once Hebraic and universal, in whom life, as it widens and increases, at length sums up the whole of human experience...
...Man and the Group Individuality and Social Restraint, by George Ross Wells...
...An Actable Religious Play Barter, by Urban Nagle...
...The divinity of Christ was proclaimed by Saint Paul...
...WHILE problems of adjustment of the individual to social organization must arise, they become particularly acute when the restrictions upon the individual are unnecessarily harsh and the attempts to modify his habits are unduly multiplied...
...Happily, it appeals directly to our Christian sentiments by using a New Testament rather than an Old Testament theme...
...By linking the written testimony of Christ's claims and of the belief of those close to Him with His general character, His doctrine, His miracles, particularly that of the Resurrection and the moral miracle of Saint Paul's conversion...
...The author has made a fairly readable book out of unpromising material...
...Through the 147 pages devoted to these years of his life, the interest is heightened by the encounter of the obscure instructor from Boston University with many of the great men of his day...
...Paris: Bloud et Gay...
...6.00...
...3.75...
...Love and be silent...
...The Local Theatre Footlights across America, by Kenneth McGowan...
...URBAN NAGLE'S drama, Barter, the winning biblical play of the 1928 Drama League-Longmans, Green and Company Playwriting Contest-is far superior to the play, Pharaoh's Daughter, which won the 1927 contest...
...It is not a book of travel nor one of mores, but a mixture of the two...
...MEREZHKOVSKY is a very great Russian writer, and the subject he has chosen for his last book is a great subject, one which will never cease to interest the world...
...One has to be baptized and confirmed in the longings and assurances which begin and terminate the little lyrics of this volume to evaluate their authenticity and adequateness...
...The very way in which the book is planned is pretentious, and jars on one's sense of fitness...
...THE travail involved in the perfection of Bell's great gift to mankind is described here in great detail...
...Merezhkovsky's has been forgotten...
...Forster stressed are to be observed in the writing of Visit India with Me...
...Any reader of French would do well to own and to master Father Lepin's Le Christ Jesus...
...I will quote but one to show what it is I have in mind...
...The result becomes, in consequence, curiously like the first drafts from which the artist-writer commences to mold and shape his ideas...
...Christ's importance is rarely denied...
...None is suited to the delicate ear...
...I thought at first this might be the fault of the translator, but after having perused the Russian edition I came to the conclusion that the English one, far from accentuating the defects of the book, has on the contrary improved it immensely, and made it far more intelligible...
...Lack of respect is Mr...
...1.50...
...Napoleon is so immense a historical figure that the best way to handle him is with complete simplicity, allowing facts to speak for themselves, without attempting to explain them with a flow of eloquence, and a quantity of useless words...
...Its core is the Passion of Christ, which is projected to the stage indirectly through the shouts of the mob, as in Benson's The Upper Room...
...New York: The Macmillan Company...
...Yet the figure which results is a true, if considerably enriched, reproduction of the Scriptural character...
...The historical background is fairly well treated although one feels that the author is not familiar with the extensive historical literature on both countries...
...During his declining years, in the absence of the Edison-Ford-Firestone junket, Bell spent his time and money very enjoyably in attempting air flight...
...WE HAVE said frequently that The Pageant of America is one of the most remarkable among current endeavors in the field of popular publishing...
...A genius like Plato, a prophet like Moses and Isaiah ? Is anything further probable, possible, thinkable...
...The first seven chapters of the book deal with the nature of the individual...
...JOAD is certainly one of the most interesting among newer British philosophers who work in a spirit of trying to effect a synthesis...
...BEYOND the studious research and reportorial diligence displayed in this book there is little to recommend it...
...Perhaps when played the swift action will more than counterbalance this weakness of shifting emphasis...
...The Life of Solomon, by Edmond Fleg...
...The same criticism can be applied to other parellels of Mr...
...While it draws heavily upon the great Davis, Moses and Fridenberg collections, it has utilized many other scattered deposits...
...In any case it is gratifying to find a Catholic (the author is a Dominican brother) turning out an imaginative and actable religious play that will appeal to all Christians...
...It is that of Christ's Divine Sonship, His Godhead...
...As Mrs...
...It seems, however, that if only strong personalities can endure history, while the weak are crushed beneath it, it is nevertheless the weak that make history...
...It is precisely this geographical similarity which proves to be the main point in the argument for the very interesting book under review...
...It is unnecessary to comment on the astounding naivete which the author displays here...
...Briefer Mention The Veiled Door, by Caroline Giltinan...
...A real solution, the author believes, can come only by reflection and application of experimental methods...
...But the subject of this study proves to be an ungrateful one and the conclusions of the author are very doubtful...
...translated by L. A. Post...
...New York: E. P. Dutton and Company, Incorporated...
...For example, how many business men owe their success to the fact that they come upon their prey unawares and unseen...
...Quinn possesses the ability to have done a splendid job and everywhere there are stretches of delightful descriptive writing...
...He wants all through his work to make out of Napoleon a superman, forgetting that he was one who did not need canonization in the lay sense of that word...
...The Passion is at first only incidental to a love intrigue between Jobal's daughter and a young Roman officer, but as the play progresses the love story is deftly woven into the betrayal by Judas, the trial before Pilate, and the Crucifixion...
...The illustrative material is remarkable for range and pertinence...
...The fourth Gospel and the synoptics clearly bring out Christ's declarations concerning His own nature...
...The Varangians in Russia established their capital not in Kieff but in Novgorod...
...To these join the fact of Christianity and the fact of the Church...
...The author compares Tolstoy to Whitman and says: "Both turned away from an elaborate and complex culture to the simplest native elements they could find...
...There are also some inaccuracies of facts...
...Apart from all this, the volume is not an easy one to read, and must often be laid down before it can be digested...
...THE latest volume in the Broadway Translations contains those comedies of the illustrious Greek dramatist which have best escaped the ravages of time...
...Another Germanic thinker has also left his imprint on the work...
...This trite observation is equally applicable to the author's adoption of Watson's phrase "hereditary reaction pattern," which adds nothing by way of explanation...
...While he had some success with his kites, he was unable, lacking scientific or engineering skill, to get one to fly before the Wright brothers had succeeded in developing an engine-driven machine...
...The book is divided into four parts...
...Briefly summing up the Messiahship of Jesus in a condensed second part, and passing on to his third general division, Father Lepin swings into the chief question taken up in this volume...
...George K. McCabe...
...and of Americanism taking hold of Europe...
...and it was hailed by His immediate disciples, as can be easily seen from the Acts of the Apostles, the Epistle to the Hebrews and the writings of Saint John...
...It is a grimly statistical survey of the local theatre in America consisting almost entirely of a cataloguing of financial statements and the minutiae of little theatre organization...
...Spangles, by Joseph J. Quinn...
...Let us merely recall the fact that the group of early Christians included many of the patrician class besides the humble, and likewise attracted the intellectual...
...The entire volume is pervaded with this quest after effect, and filled with phrases meant to be very clever, but which only lessen the dignity that ought to have been its leit motif...
...It may not be biography so far as the outward circumstances of the great king's life are concerned, but it qualifies as a poetic record of his inner development...
...New York: E. P. Dutton and Company, Incorporated...
...no vain oratory, no touchy abuse...
...It is regrettable that she omitted the economic effects of the telephone...
...Merezhkovsky writes about Napoleon landing in Toulon on June 13, 1793: "Henceforward he is a man without a fatherland: Corsica ceased to be that for him...
...Cornelius J. Connolly...
...Visit India with Me, by Dhan Gopal Mukerji...
...Then again there is an inaccuracy: The Diary of a Communist Schoolboy is not by S. Ignatiev but by N. Ognyov...
...While not agreeing with the author's prophecy as to an imminent war between the two materialistic forces, one can but subscribe fully to his appeal for a more spiritual outlook...
...What does often rise in our world, and readily too, is the twentieth-century version of "What manner of man is this...
...In these qualities Father Lepin resembles his more literary contemporary, the late Father Leonce de Grandmaison, S.J., though Father Lepin's present work is cut on straiter lines than the two-volume amplitude of the author of Jesus Christ...
...While the terms of the neurologist may be used in describing the simpler movements of the organism, the author happily recognizes that their use is not justified in the present state of science, when speaking of the higher activities...
...In his belief these two forces will come to a clash, an open war, which will ruin mankind...
...The basis of the individual's psychology is the "stimulus-response mechanism" so much in vogue...
...The craftsmanship is good, and the author has chosen wisely in carrying the dialogue in elevated, dignified prose instead of blank verse...
...Christianity, in M. Couchoud's view, does not stand on rock, not even the modernist crumbly substitute of a man idealized...
...The second half of the book is devoted to groups, their information and relations to the individual...
...Even non-Christian and anti-Christian thinkers feel in no ordinary way the wholly unmatched influence of a personage indeed little known in His own day, yet now hailed with love or with hate wherever modern men touch Judaeo-Greek thought...
...Hence he makes use of the term "consciousness" in the absence of a behavioristic term adequate to describe the phenomenon...
...The Pageant of America: The American Stage, by Oral Sumner Coad and Edwin Mims, jr...
...It reveals the curious cross-currents set up in the Oriental who is striving to adjust himself to occidental habits and ideas...
...Aziz, the hero of E. M. Forster's A Passage to India, to write...
...Fletcher has made a very praiseworthy attempt to write a study in historical psychology, a type of literature that is still in its infancy...
...2.50...
...Emperor Alexander I of Russia succeeded to the throne not in 1794 but in 1801...
...Leonid I. Strakhovsky...
...For him then who expects the elan of a Papini, there waits disappointment...
...translated from the Russian by Catherine Zvegintzov...
...Its calmness, judiciousness and fairness will certainly impress every discerning reader...
...Everywhere there is evidence that Mr...
...It is therefore to be regretted that he did not use the material he had at his disposal in a more interesting and, if I may be allowed to say the word, more human way...
...I do not want to appear ungenerous toward the play, for I like it in many ways and believe it should be widely produced in schools and colleges...
...All the qualities of the native of India which Mr...
...Dividing it into seven chapters called Dawn, Sunrise, Noon, Eventide, Sunset, and Night, reminds one of a sensational novel, and belittles the personality that ought to fill its pages without any recourse to theatrical advertising...
...nevertheless I doubt the wisdom of getting us interested in a love story and then-however artfully-trying to shift our interest offstage to the Passion...
...It is enough to say that this is one of the best books in a genuinely fine series, a boon to libraries and a joy unto the reader...
...on the contrary, to M. Couchoud, the reason accounting for Christianity lies in God humanized-but not really so in a historical person...
...For his Solomon is at various times prince and beggar, sage and fool, libertine, penitent and prophet, legend having furnished Mr...
...and his later polemics are the most important of his works...
...They have understood that Napoleon cannot be explained, and must only be accepted...
...This section can be read to good advantage by all realistic thinkers...
...He Himself made the same claim...
...These considerations naturally and inevitably lead to the proposition that Jesus is truly the Son of God...
...Somehow I do not think that the great emperor himself would ever have accepted such a judgment or subscribed to it, he whose aim throughout his life was the greatness of the country to which he was so proud to belong...
...A Slavic Napoleon The Life of Napoleon, by Dmitri Merezhkovsky...
...New York: Oxford University Press...
...For M. Couchoud holds that Christianity (and a fortiori, Christ) is no more nor less than a myth-religion with no historical character as its basis...
...Of the former, the expanding Christian fact in a saturated pagandom, one may well say with a recent writer in Life and Letters that "we are still left . . . face to face with the real miracle of its [the Roman world's] conquest by Christ...
...Indeed, the weakness of the book may lie just here and in that too little play is ordinarily given to the feeling in the argument...
...As for his conception of the character and personality of Napoleon it is far too Slavic to be real, and he looks at the emperor entirely too much from the point of view of the Russians who after having burned Moscow, imagined they had destroyed the conqueror whose horses' hoofs had defiled it...
...Quinn reverts to satirical humor, a vein in which he achieves his best work...
...Quinn has seen it from the perspective of front-page accounts, not literature...
...2.50...
...Post's versions are the best the present reviewer has seen, and his comment is uniformly lucid and discriminating...
...Merezhkovsky on the contrary has applied to his description of Napoleon the Slav psychology of other people's souls, which says so much in regard to the personages described, and yet tells so little...
...Father Lepin concludes his whole book with something more than an invitation: "L'homme peut croire a l'amour, et se livrer a l'embrassement divin...
...and the fourth serves for the author's conclusions...
...Some, alas, may mistake the facility and exactitude of her lyrics for limitation in profound emotions and in the force of note...
...Through it, a better understanding can be had of India and her inhabitants than through ten Mother Indias...
...Almost everything of historical interest has been chronicled by the authors, whose tact and discrimination are uniformly admirable...
...2.50...
...New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company...
...the solution is "better writing and a more virile and modern attack...
...Menander: Three Plays...
...Further, Christianity stressed the value and importance of the individual in contrast to class and the state, a point which one would expect to see recognized in a book purporting to defend the "rights" of the individual...
...Possibly The Girl from Samos is the most interesting...
...Were this person aware of the claims made by M. Couchoud (Le Mystere de Jesus, 1924) he would soon be convinced that the author's time is not frittered away charging windmills...
...Someone may object that there is no use taking such a running start before plunging in medias res...
...As for the conclusion the author sees a danger in the further development of Bolshevism taking hold of Asia...
...Boston: The Stratford Company...
...Merezhkovsky's greatest failing in his conception of Napoleon, and one can only regret such is the case, because great men like great things must only be spoken of and written about with reverence, and awe, not with theatrical pomp combined with spite...
...Matter, Life and Value, by C. E. M. Joad...
...The best part of the argument is the defense of vitalism, really an essay in constructive criticism...
...The group was strengthened by "the attractive nature of the promises made concerning the future life and its pleasures [which] appealed to countless thousands of unsuccessful and despondent persons...
...McGowan's report will be of considerable value to any one who contemplates establishing a local theatre or who is baffled by the complexities of conducting one...
...36 francs...
...Doubtless, Mr...
...Having no personal prominence in this life, they asserted the reality of another life where their aspirations should become reality and the meek shall inherit the earth...
...New York: D. Appleton and Company...
...At the end the girl even dies in the arms of her lover, from no very clear cause except sympathy for Christ...
...THE subject of this book stands vitally alone in world history...
...5.00...
...The problem is succinctly stated, but no solution offered, though an attempt is made to evaluate the various forms of alleviation...
...But this land-bridge, as a unified civilization, had already passed its maximum, and was headed for decline...
...New York: E. P. Dutton and Company...
...Nor was Jesus merely acknowledged Son of God...
...Occasionally, as in Ask the Man Who Owes One, Mr...
...With this essential question Father Lepin quite effectively deals, using argument drawn from sources by no means suspect of traditional leanings, quoting men like Strauss, Renan and Loisy, and their conviction of the substantially historical character of documents such as the Gospel of Saint Mark and the Epistles of Saint Paul...
...The general tone of this work is excellent...
...Fletcher: Irving and Pushkin, Mark Twain and Lieskov, Hawthorne and Gogol, William James and Soloviev, Henry James and Tourgeniev, Melville and Dostoievsky...
...Such w6rk should point the way for many talented playwrights on religious themes who in the past have fallen prey to unnatural blank verse, trite character types and unregulated emotion...
...For instance in his bibliography he cites only A History of Russia by Sir Bernard Pares and The Oxford History of the United States by S. E. Morison...
...This statement must now be reinforced with a hearty recommendation of The American Stage, which is unpretentious and yet easily the best general survey of our national theatrical history...
...It reposes upon so firm a confidence in evolution, it tends so enthusiastically toward a somewhat confused mystical idealism, that one follows it with far more of caution than of assent...
...THERE is excellent material in this book for numerous short stories but unfortunately Mr...
...2.50...
...And apart from the unenthusiastic admission that religion "must be credited with being a source of far more good than harm," the author shows little appreciation of the role the Catholic Church has played and is playing in inspiring and preserving whatever we have that is beautiful and noble in civilization...
...the third part draws parallels between American and Russian literature...
...It is this restraint, a genuine quality of every true artist, that predominates in Miss Giltinan's fine temper for song, and guides her achievement of gentle ecstasy...
...The present reviewer has unearthed no errors of importance in the narrative, though he tried honestly to do so...
...In the comparison of literatures the author expresses a series of judgments on Russian authors that no Russian would accept, as, for instance, saying that Tolstoy's What Is Art...
...The duller but nevertheless essential portions of the book are sandwiched between a fairly interesting resume of the evolution of the little theatre movement and some stimulating constructive theorizing on the possibilities and advantages of national cooperation with little theatres...
...THIS is the kind of book that one would expect Dr...
...This is a scholarly volume, though not in the sense of an unreadable one...
...If one wants to find a comparison in Russian literature with Whitman one should take Gorky, but then it will not fit with the author's plan, because they were not contemporaries...
...The author's very skilful and even-tempered treatment of the essential problems of Christ's historical existence and of the proofs for His Godhead deserves a distinguished public...
...The bulk of its readers will be specialists either in sociology or in community theatre organization...
...In referring to the extended use of the term "instinct," the author notes that such usage is "an example of a widespread fallacy which consists in believing that to give a name to anything is tantamount to explaining it...
...Catherine Radziwill...
...Viewed as a whole, the book is an intelligent though relatively eclectic plaidoyer for pluralism...
...But for the ordinary reader interested primarily in the broader aspects of the theatre such a census can do little more than indicate the extent and achievements of a movement toward which, unfortunately, public attention is too seldom directed...
...AT FIRST there seems to be no comparison whatsoever between Russia and the United States unless one observes the geography of these countries...
...New York: Longmans, Green and Company...
...New Haven: Yale University Press...
...in Whitman the dock laborers, stage drivers, longshoremen and common workmen, and in Tolstoy the shrewd and simple Kutuzov, the Cossack bandit, the peasant saint...
...Against these two attempts to impose on mankind a purely mechanical and material conformity, we must uphold, perhaps for the last time, the values of an ideal and supraphysical unity of spirit, not of function, of a humanism that is at once scientific and aesthetic, and of a world outlook that reconciles both man's desire to achieve 'the good life' for himself on this planet, and his overwhelming sense of awe and wonder at the superhuman processes of the universe...
...The Arbitration seems most definitely modern, and what is extant of The Shearing of Glycera strikes one as most sprightly...
...Best indicates in the introduction to this play, recent church drama has been notoriously restricted and childish...
...Harry McGuire...
...One feels how Spengler has influenced the ideas of the author who believes in the decline of western civilization: "Europe lay as a land-bridge between Russia and America...
...3-50...
...The most menacing groups, says the author, "are the Catholics and so-called fundamentalists, particularly in their gaze toward the past and their finding authority there...
...Other authors, among them the late Lord Rosebery, have grasped this essential fact, and as a consequence their books will live long after Mr...
...Christ and Scholarship Le Christ Jesus: Son Existence Historique et Sa Divinite, par M. Lepin...
...Fleg with as much, if not more, material than the Bible...
Vol. 11 • March 1930 • No. 21
