“Sylvia Percival, twenty-two years old, is left sole owner of the Consumer’s rubber company. Charming, delicately bred, shrinking from all unpleasantness, Sylvia is quite content to leave affairs in the willing hands of Pethick, the capable but unscrupulous manager of ‘the works,’ and goes to France, to visit her cousins. On her return, she is to marry Kenneth Landon, whom she loves, and who loves her. Soon after Sylvia goes, Kenneth’s father loses everything, and young Landon suddenly finds himself penniless. His great idea then comes to him. He will go to work incognito in Sylvia’s factory. He will learn the secrets of ‘the works,’ and emerge at the end of the year, a friend of the operatives, and thus be able to help Sylvia more practically than he else could have done in that work of uplift he has no doubt she will be as anxious as he to carry on. He learns more quickly than he could otherwise have done, because of his friendship with Sohmer, the socialist leader and philosopher. He goes to board at the Sohmers. And here Greta comes into his life: Greta, whose vivid personality is the epitome of love’s need of ‘giving.’”—Adapted from Boston Transcript
“It is seldom that a novel presenting so keen a study of the eternal warfare between labor and capital has so poignant a romantic interest. Usually one or the other is sacrificed. ... The skill with which the story is wrought is admirable. ... Among the most effective bits of an always artistic method, are the contrasting descriptions and their subtle influence upon Sylvia, of the grim Canadian town, where her betrothed is waiting for her and the picturesque districts of the Riviera, into whose delights she and her Parisian cousins are initiated by the cosmopolitan of parts, Philippe Amaro.”
“The weak point in execution is the character drawing. Sylvia is perhaps the most lifelike. Certainly, in spite of her open-eyed selfishness, she is a much less unpleasant character than Greta. Sohmer is simply unreal, either as a symbol or as a man. It is a pity such defects detract from what might have been a novel of considerable power.”
“The author has presented only the more obvious questions in the conflict between labor and capital, the more obvious conflict between real and fancied romance in the heart of his hero, and he has thrown about them a sentimental glamour that no amount of forceful writing can conceal. The book is a good example of the so-called better type of American novel with which the general reading public is wont to satisfy itself.”
“The romance, which is depicted on a background of factory life, labor grievances, and strikes, seems artificial and unnatural.”
“‘The inner door’ is a door of revelation through which the youth of the story passes from good-humored acceptance of the world as a pleasant place to knowledge of it as a world of fellow-men. ... The story has no striking novelty of material.”
“Those writers about labor who have not themselves been laborers or in constant close touch with the labor movement invest their subject with a glamour quite absent to the accustomed eye. ‘The inner door’ offends deeply in this particular. ... The leader of the striking laborers is a type of man that never could be anything in a modern labor union but an eccentric ‘character,’ loved, perhaps, by his fellows, but never followed where serious issues are at stake. The hero ... is another impossible creation ... and his fiancée, the owner of the factory in which he works, is in every way his complement. ... The capitalists in the book are much better drawn than are theiremployés. Perhaps Mr Sullivan knows them better. ... His plot and incident are fairly well worked out.” D: P. Berenberg
“Although it is with Sohmer and his daughter that Mr Sullivan’s sympathies evidently lie, he has done much better work in his sketches of pretty, pleasure-hungry Sylvia, her relations, the Percivals, and the delightful old Comtesse.”
SUPPLE, EDWARD WATSON, ed. Spanish reader of South American history; ed. with notes, exercises, and vocabulary. (Macmillan Spanish ser.) il*$1 Macmillan 468 17-2333
“The editor is instructor in Spanish in the Sheffield scientific school at Yale.” (St Louis) “This book contains selections from Latin-American authors dealing with episodes in their history, such as the death of Atahuallpa the Inca; the campaigns of Bolivar and San Martin, who drove out the Spaniard; and the sea fight off Iquique between the Peruvians and Chileans in 1879. The text is carefully annotated, with a vocabulary and maps.” (Spec)
“Has clear maps and interesting illustrations.”
SURETTE, THOMAS WHITNEY.Music and life; a study of the relations between ourselves and music.*$1.25 (3c) Houghton 780.4 17-11124
A collection of essays on music, reprinted in part from the Atlantic Monthly. The book as a whole makes a fine and vigorous plea that music be accepted as a part of life rather than one of its ornaments or decorations. In his conclusion the author sums up the matter: “The relation between music and life is an intimate and vital relation. Any person, young or old who does not sing and to whom music has no meaning, is by just so much a poorer person in all that goes to make life happy, joyous and significant. Any community which employs no form of musical expression is by just so much inarticulate and disorganized as a community. Any church that buys its music and never produces any of its own loses just so much in spiritual power.” Contents: What is music; Music for children; Public school music; Community music; The opera; The symphony (two chapters).
“The chapters on ‘Public school music’ and ‘Community music’ are noteworthy, and there is some helpful discussion of the possible influence of music upon American life.”
“Professor Surette is one of the most enthusiastic and successful leaders in the community music movement.”
“He fails dismally in his attempt to prove that the German classical symphony is a coherent work of art instead of a mere suite of four incoherent pieces. There is a sensible chapter on opera, but by far the most valuable pages in this volume are concerned with Music for children, Public-school music, and Community singing. On these things Mr Surette speaks as an expert and an authority.” H: T. Finck
“The chapter on music for children should interest all parents.”
“He does not tear down without building up. Everywhere he offers remedial measures.”
SUTHERLAND, SAMUEL JAMES.Reserve officers’ handbook. il*$1.25 Houghton 355 17-18055
The author is a captain in the Twenty-third infantry, U.S.A., who has served as company commander at Plattsburg, as a member of the examining board for reserve officers, and as lecturer to applicants for commissions. He covers clearly and concisely administration and organization, small arms firing, field service regulations, topography, military law and miscellaneous topics, and reprints from the “Infantry drill regulations” of the United States army such extracts as are essential to the reserve officer, with corrections to January 9, 1917.
“Clear and concise.”
SWANSON, MARGARET.Needlecraft in the school. il*$1.50 Longmans 646 E17-742
This manual on needlecraft is divided into three sections. The first deals with sewing for children under 12 years and provides a section on boys’ sewing. Section 2 outlines work for those over 12 and includes millinery. Section 3 covers a course for the training college student. The work is very fully illustrated, with several full page pictures in color. Professor John Adams of the University of London writes an introduction in which he says, “A striking characteristic of the book is the appreciation of the child’s point of view. ... Students of Mr Macdougall’s ‘Social psychology’ will find in these pages many illustrations of the manipulation of instincts in the interests of education.”
“Stimulating in spite of possible criticism.”
“Miss Swanson hails from the Glasgow school of art, where needlecraft flourishes as a vital force, and her name with that of Miss Macbeth of the same institution has already appeared on another of Messrs Longmans’ books on the subject, ‘Educational needlecraft,’ the scope of which is different from that of the present volume.”
“It has 130 pages with large clearly rendered illustrations, six of which are in color. ... While some of the designs will not meet the approval of American taste, others will, and all are suggestive.”
“The wide range of subjects which may be grouped under the name ‘needlecraft,’ and their educational use, are here put before the reader in an interesting, we might well say an arresting, manner. ... This book will be of use to amateur teachers as well as to professional teachers and students.”
SWINBURNE, ALGERNON CHARLES.Algernon Charles Swinburne. il*$2 (4c) Putnam 17-13753
This volume is made up largely of extracts from the letters of Algernon Charles Swinburne. Mrs Disney Leith’s recollections of her cousin, amplified from an article that appeared in the Contemporary Review in 1910, serve as an introduction. The letters date from 1855 on, but are not arranged in strict chronological order, as the editor has endeavored to arrange them somewhat by subject, grouping together those relating to distinguished persons, foreign travel, his work, etc. Many of them are family letters addressed to his mother and sisters.
“A first feeling of disappointment comes when one discovers, at page 38, that the recollections are finished. The disappointment is a compound of surprise at their short length and mild anger at their lack of interest. ... The remaining 218 pages are given to letters of little or no interest, which contain no particularly valuable references to people or events. The whole volume contains practically nothing that Mr Gosse has not presented in his recent biography.”
“It is his devotion to his mother that seems to have been the sustained absorbing passion of his life. ... The Swinburne that Mrs Leith’s volume reveals is an altogether lovable sort of being, as different as possible from the traditional caricature that passes for a genuine portrait of the poet.”
“It seems as if the letters, in particular, had been selected partly with a view to counteracting any conception that the general public may still retain of Swinburne as a morbid, hyperaesthetic or extravagantly eccentric man. ... But if one is unaffected by the mythical and anecdotal view of Swinburne—if what one chiefly wants is greater insight into the poet’s art and his ways of thinking and feeling, the present volume may prove unsatisfying.”
“Where may one begin or stop in the attempt to convey some idea of the contents, the interest, and the charm of so wholly delightful a book?”
“Mrs Disney Leith’s reminiscences of Swinburne in boyhood, and the letters to his mother and sisters extending over a period of nearly fifty years, form a most valuable supplement, and to a certain extent a corrective, to Mr Gosse’s memoir.”
“A very delightful volume and a necessary supplement to Edmund Gosse’s recent biography.”
“The letters, just because they are so unexpected, help us to understand him. He was a boy to the last.”
“It is hardly fair to compare the personal recollections of Mrs Disney Leith with the work of an experienced biographer like Mr Gosse; but, if the blunt truth must be told, her account of the poet in his family relations is both thin and dull, and adds nothing to our knowledge. ... Under her cautious shears everything that might make the poet a vital figure is shorn away.” C. B. Tinker
SWINBURNE, ALGERNON CHARLES.Posthumous poems; ed. by Edmund Gosse and T: James Wise. $2.50 P. R. Reynolds, 70 5th av., N.Y. 821 17-22667
“In his preface Mr Gosse tells us that the earliest of these poems was written in 1857, the latest in 1907. Among them are eleven Border ballads, written probably in the early ‘sixties,’ and these are the most interesting part of the book. Mr Gosse explains why they have not been published before. ... Mr Gosse prints the poem on The discovery of the North-west passage, with which Swinburne competed for the Newdigate in 1858, but did not win it. ... There is also a long ode to Mazzini which Mr Gosse proves to have been written early in 1857.” (The Times [London] Lit Sup) “The remaining poems included in the collection reflect various aspects of Swinburne’s genius and character. None is devoid of interest, some are curious, and several are beautiful.” (Spec)
“There is much in this volume which lovers of English verse would not willingly have let die.”
“The ballads, take them all in all, are interesting bits of work, and they alone would have made the volume worth publishing. Of the miscellaneous poems which occupy the rest of the volume, two or three are parodies, and one—‘Pope Celestin and Count Giordano’—is an extremely clever imitation of Robert Browning, not a parody, for there is no exaggeration in it, but a piece of good Browingesque work. ... Among the shorter pieces there are several of considerable charm, such as ‘Echo,’ ‘Evening by the sea,’ and ‘Æolus.’”
“There is no poem in the book as good as his best; but the ballads reveal a power in him which was not fully revealed even in ‘A Jacobite’s exile.’”
SWINNERTON, FRANK ARTHUR.Chaste wife.*$1.50 (1c) Doran 17-3573
There are some very pleasant and amusing people in this novel of English life. Its underlying theme is serious, concerning as it does the problem of adjustment between married lovers. Stephen Moore had known hardships and privation.His home life had been unhappy and he had carried the burden of support for his brother and sister and a good-for-nothing father. He had struggled upward to a position of prominence as a journalist and critic when he married Priscilla. Priscilla’s life had been one of sunshine and ease. In Stephen’s love for her there was an element of worship and in his mood of grave wonder and exaltation, it does not occur to him to tell her of the one dark incident in his past. It is not such a very dark incident either, but to Priscilla, with her simple and austere code of morals, it seems so. Sympathy and affection, and a sincere willingness to understand, help to solve her problem.
“Mr Swinnerton writes so close to life itself that in our memory of his book it is not the story as a whole that stands out, but rather scenes, details and characters that beckon us irresistibly. It is the people rather than what they do that absorbingly interest us.” D. L. M.
“Since the publication, a couple of years ago, of ‘The happy family,’ Frank Swinnerton has had a place on that comparatively brief list made up of the novelists who really count. This new story, however, is better than the earlier one, clever as that was.”
SWOPE, HERBERT BAYARD.Inside the German empire, in the third year of the war. il*$2 (3c) Century 940.91 17-3466
A book based on a series of articles written for the New York World in 1916 during a three months’ stay in Germany. The author had visited Germany soon after the beginning of the war and he gives interesting contrasts between the two periods. At the time of the first visit the German motto was “Siegen”(conquer); now it is “Durchhalten” (stick it out). He does not predict an early peace. Germany may be able to “stick it out” for an indefinite time to come. He writes of: The four ways toward peace; The war’s objectives as Germany sees them; Liberalizing Germany; The spirit of the beleaguered empire; German hatred of America: its causes; The menace of the U-boat; Germany and the American president; Business behind the battle line; Captive Belgium and northern France, etc. In few books written on the war has neutrality been so admirably preserved.
“Though many of his opinions must be discounted by the Russian revolution and America’s entry into the war, his book deserves thoughtful scrutiny.”
“In reading both Mr Swope and Mr Curtin one feels that they tell the public what in their opinion the public wants to know. The result is a somewhat onesided picture, though it is a fascinating one.”
“His conclusions about Belgium we must regard, at best, as hasty. But of Germany herself, Mr Swope is in a position to be well informed. ... Mr Swope has much to tell that is interesting and new to us—about public opinion, internal organization, the trends of political thought, and the probable leaders of the future. His point of view may not always be accurate in detail, but it is evident that he is a shrewd observer, and a fair judge of the signs of the times.” R. M.
“The tone of his writing is dispassionate and without bias.”
“It gives Americans a view of the German people, which in vision, lack of bias, and kindly feeling could hardly be surpassed.”
“Questions, of immense interest to the rest of the world, are answered in this highly interesting, well-written volume by a trained American journalist.”
“It has been many a day since the appearance of so vital an account of contemporary German life and thinking as Herbert Bayard Swope offers in his book. ... Most promising for the future is his conviction that the war will permanently liberalize German social and political conventions.”
“Always bearing in mind the presence of the censor—for the author made his notes during a residence in Germany undertaken for that very purpose—we have here the sanest and most reasonable appearing digest of conditions in the German empire that has yet been made public.” J. W.
“Some useful information, mingled with much that is doubtful, about the state of Germany during last autumn may be found in Mr Swope’s new book. ... Yet the book is of interest, especially as a warning that Germany is by no means exhausted or penitent and that the Allies have a very great deal more to do before they conquer.”
“Conceiving that the office of a reporter is to report and not to judge, he diligently repeats what he has been told by Herr Zimmermann and others and gives us the official German picture of contemporary German conditions. There is no evidence that he has observed anything for himself, or even that he has read the German papers. From a file of Vorwärts, or even the Berliner Tageblatt, one could easily refute his propositions in detail. ... ‘Rich and poor,’ writes Mr Swope, ‘fare alike.’ That also is untrue. The Socialists arise and say so, giving chapter and verse for their statements, as often as the Reichstag and the Landtag meet.”
“Rather expensive for the small library considering that the conditions described are transitory.”
SYMONS, ARTHUR.Figures of several centuries.*$3 Dutton 804 17-13498
“The ‘figures’ in this collection of thoughtful and discriminative studies range from St Augustine to Baudelaire, from Villon and Donne to George Meredith and Sarojini Naidu, and from Flaubert and Ibsen to Charles Lamb and Emily Brontë.”—Ath
“Mr Symons writes, as ever, with a deep sense of the seriousness of art as an expression of personality and the meaning of life, and with as deep a sense and appreciation of beauty. His devotion to beauty of style leads him astray sometimes in his relative appreciation of prose works and poetical works. Thus Ibsen and Whitman, in our opinion, scarce get their due in comparison with poets who were not their peers.”
“Few things more acutely critical than the nine pages that he modestly calls ‘A note on the genius of Thomas Hardy’ are to be found in modern criticism. ... He gives us no less emphatic a view of the other writers. It is, however, no injustice to him to rest his case as a critic upon this brief glimpse of his insight into Hardy.” E. F. E.
“Though Mr Symons is constantly bringing out books, none of the reviews and literary essays in the present one date within the past ten years; many of them are older than fifteen; one or two date back a quarter of a century; and some of them are early things recently—or less recently—retouched.”
“His most unsympathetic essay treats of Ibsen. ... His most elaborate study is of the metrical accomplishments of Swinburne. The most subtle, penetrating, and intimate deals with John Donne.”
“The reason why Mr Symons, one of the most sensitive among living critics, does not rank with the great critics, is easily found. His impressions are always recorded with exactness, and often with sober beauty. But they are the impressions of a critic who undervalues mere mind, who is not enough disturbed by its absence—see his essay on Swinburne—and who is deficient in moral insight—see the essay on Ibsen.” P. L.
“It is eight years since the last publication in this country of a book by Arthur Symons. These random essays are not all of equal interest or value. But the book has in it much of loveliness, much of analysis, much of fine appreciation. It is to be welcomed heartily.”
“In the study of Thomas Hardy, in a brief half-dozen pages, Symons has dissected and analyzed the novelist as story-teller, philosopher and psychologist in a piece of memorable and distinguished criticism.”
“Sensitive Symons is, but not always sensible. At his best, when he is compact and restrained, he attains a combination of fresh insight and feeling expression that makes criticism a delight. In this collection he is often at his best. ... But Mr Symons in some of the later essays becomes the mere ‘enthusiast.’ And when he does he simply slops over.”
“These papers are for the most part short; but they are aimed so directly at the heart of the subject that in each case they seem to show us something we had missed before. And it is always done as the poet knows how to do it. ... Naturally we do not accept all that Mr Symons says; but we must consistently pay homage to the spirit in which he approaches these different writers.”
SYMONS, ARTHUR.[2]Tristan and Iseult. new ed*$1.25 Brentano’s 822 17-13960
“One of the oldest themes in literature engages the pen of Arthur Symons in his poetic drama, ‘Tristan and Iseult.’ The subject has been popular in all countries in all ages. It has appeared in Irish folk legends, in the English Arthurian cycle, and in the minnelieder of Gottfried von Strassburg.” (Springf’d Republican) The story is here presented as “a blank verse tragedy [in four acts] of the love triangle of Iseult of Brittany, Iseult of Ireland and Tristan the harper.” (Cleveland)
“The lines make an emotional appeal but are not equal in beauty to the prose of Symons’ essays.”
“The finest piece of imaginative work that we have ever had from Arthur Symons. It has an enchantment that is hard to analyze. ‘Tristan and Iseult’ is ingenious and subtle; it is imaginative, too, and above all it has a personal soul.”
“Pleasant and skilful as is Mr Symons’s sensuous verse-making, neither emotionally nor in beauty of diction does the play attain the hights of which the theme is capable.”
“In his effort to keep his characters ‘natural’ Mr Symons has robbed them of some Attic grandeur; in his respect for their grandeur he has robbed them of some Elizabethan humanity. For all that, he is too fine a critic and too subtle a craftsman in poetry not to have made a thing of beauty.”
SYPHERD, WILBUR OWEN.Bibliography on “English for engineers.”*25c Scott 620.7 16-15643
“[This is] a useful list of articles on technical writing arranged under such headings as the importance of good English, the teaching of English to engineering students, and the composition of various kinds of technical papers, reports, and contracts, with an appendix containing suggestions for the formation of a technical library. The bibliography does not pretend to be exhaustive; ... it does index a mass of material that the ordinary English teacher would have difficulty in finding.”—Nation
“The list of recommended engineering books includes no titles later than January, 1916. The compiler’s ‘Handbook of English for engineers’ (Scott, Foresman, 1913) is one of the best of its type.”
“In scope it is limited strictly to technical composition in the narrower sense, in which sense the word ‘English’ in the title is to be understood. Perhaps the most valuable sections are those referring to material on the use of technical terms and on the writing of specifications. ... If a second edition is called for, the compiler could add immensely to the value of the bibliography by including, with the same admirable organization, some scientific material such as that in the tentative, wholly unorganized, and yet valuable ‘Bibliography of scientific and technical writing,’ published February 1 by Professors Raymond, Atkinson, and Starbuck of the Iowa State college of agriculture.”
TABER, SUSAN.[2]Optimist.*$1.30 (2c) Duffield 17-22703
Twelve short stories on modern themes. Contents: The optimist; Two feminists; The spoiled child; The sword; His brother’s story; The winter of her discontent; The patriot; Alethia; The wedding veil; A legacy; Easter morning; Alice in wonderland.
“The author has remarkable ability in setting forth the meaningful episodes in her characters’ lives. In her economical use of material, too, she is skilful, giving in considerably less than the usual space illuminating glimpses into the past and clever characterizations besides.”
“Stories neither especially good especially poor in quality, make up this new volume by Susan Taber. Several of the tales are based upon rather clever ideas, but they are not very well developed.”
TAGORE, SIR RABINDRANATH (RAVINDRANATHA THAKURA).Cycle of spring.*$1.25 Macmillan 891.4 17-6670
This play, which in its original Bengali was presented by the boys of the poet’s school at Bolpur, makes use of the device of a play within a play. A king who has just discovered his first gray hairs is overcome with the melancholy of old age. He neglects his affairs of state and chooses as his only companion a pundit who preaches the doctrine of resignation. Then a poet who sings the joy of life persuades him to witness a play he has written. This play is a merry allegory in which fleet-footed Youth pursues Old Age, unmasks him and finds him a sham. Age is only Youth disguised.
“This reads throughout so obviously as a translation—we would almost say of the untranslatable—that it fails to give pleasure, and leaves but a vague impression. The translationof a mystical work calls specially for lucidity and exactness of phrase, and the translation of a poetical work also calls for dignity of style: this gives neither.”
“Like Tagore’s other plays, the volume contains many charming lyrics. It is pungent, too, with a growing spirit of irony; and one notes the passionate praise of activity, which is as essentially the Bengali poet’s message to the East, as contemplation and repose may be said to sum up his message to the West.”
“Charm and buoyancy the play undoubtedly had in the original, the reader feels, but also that the qualities were too elusive to catch and fix in an English translation.”
“Tagore’s greatly overestimated wit, wisdom, mysticism, pleasantness, cast again their glamor. Considered as a play ‘The cycle’ lacks, however, complicating forces, and, therefore, development, characterization, interest, climax. It is chaotic art. Considered as poetry its lyrical interludes are mostly imperfect, meaningless, or prosy.”
“I am not imperceptive of its cunning and winning ways; I am alive to something half-celestial in the daintiness, the sleekness, and the pliancy of its wavy and murmurous English. But my heart remains hard; I do not like books that put up their mouths to be kissed.” O. W. Firkins
Reviewed by Clement Wood
“Not only do brightness and gayety inform the spirit of the book, but humor bubbles through it, and every now and then it sparkles with wit, wit that sometimes is sharply barbed for a thrust at some meanness in human nature.”
“The Indian poet dramatist at his happiest.”
TAGORE, SIR RABINDRANATH (RAVINDRANATHA THAKURA).My reminiscences.il*$1.50 (2½c) Macmillan 17-12485
This book does not pretend to be a complete biography. The author says, “It is as literary material that I offer my memory pictures. To take them as an attempt at autobiography would be a mistake. In such a view these reminiscences would appear useless as well as incomplete.” Most of the reminiscences are drawn from boyhood and early youth. The translator says that they were written and published in the author’s fiftieth year, shortly before he started on a trip to Europe and America in 1912.
“Intrinsically interesting as a record of a life mostly passed amid surroundings unfamiliar to most European readers, and of the mental, moral, and literary development of a distinguished man, these reminiscences have an intrinsic charm, due to the felicitous lightness of the style—for which a share of the laurels must in fairness be awarded to the translator—and to the shrewd aphorisms and touches of gentle irony scattered over Sir Rabindranath’s pages.”
“The book, though somewhat elusive in manner, presents an interesting picture of a boy’s life in a large household before European customs had encroached on the native manner. It permits one to understand also the sort of intellectual and moral atmosphere that enveloped the budding poet.”
Reviewed by Clement Wood
“If the book is not very illuminating to a critic, it is perhaps for the majority of persons the most surely rewarding of Tagore’s books, and it is capable of casting a spell upon the imagination even of those who care little for the author’s poetry. ... The whole narrative is marked not only by poetic qualities but by a spirit of kindness, gayety, and humor, the adequate expression of which in literature is as rare as are successful flights of fancy.”
“Interesting, mystical, dreamy; but as a biography not satisfactory. One wants to know about Sir Rabindranath’s school and its methods, about his principles of education, his view of English civilization and the English people, his judgment on the relation of the English government to India; but on these subjects, the author is absolutely silent. The chief value of the book is as a self-revelation of an oriental mind.”
“The volume is the history of a mind which seems to us excessively self-centred in introspection. We think the translator might have added to the explanatory notes. Only towards the end of the book, does he come to that mystical revelation which lifts the cover of triviality from the everyday world and suppresses the ever imminent sense of self. To some the pages describing this experience will seem idle, mere dreams from the ivory gate; to others they will be the most significant in the book.”
“Well worth a place in literature. ... In the frankness of its self-revelation and the naïveté combined with the latent vigour of the style, it reminds us of Yoshio Markino’s ‘When I was a child’; but there the resemblance ends. ... It contains much to attract even those who are not interested in the psychological aspects of literature: quaint character sketches of teachers, friends, and fellow-students, vivid pictures of Indian habits and scenery, analyses of child mentality done with extraordinary insight and sympathy.”
TAGORE, SIR RABINDRANATH (RAVINDRANATHA THAKURA).Nationalism.*$1.25 (5½c) Macmillan 327 17-22891
“A nation, in the sense of the political and economic union of a people, is that aspect which a whole population assumes when organized for a mechanical purpose.” It is in this sense that Rabindranath Tagore finds the nation inimical to the good of humanity. India offers a concrete example of humanity suffering under the mechanical efficiency of the nation. His criticism is not directed against the British nation as such but against the ideal of the “western nation.” He distinguishes between the spirit of the West and the nation of the West. The spirit of the West has much to give to the East that would be willingly received. The “western nation” is held responsible for the world war. The first essay, Nationalism in the West was prepared for delivery as a lecture in the United States. Essays on Nationalism in Japan; Nationalism in India, and a poem: The sunset of the century, complete the contents.
“He has produced a thoughtful book, and one that western people will be the better for reading.”
“His lectures are well worth reading, but they do not furnish leadership.”
“We need not perhaps take too serious a view of a poet’s whimsical and partly humorous incursion into a field with which he is not familiar.”
“If we do not think the poet’s view fair, we may allow that, from his standpoint it is explicable. ... As to immediate practical problems, the book does not give much guidance. ... It is enough that he indicates evils and dangers in the present system. It is for us to recognize those evils and dangers, and consider the way of salvation.”
TAGORE, SIR RABINDRANATH (RAVINDRANATHA THAKURA).Personality. il*$1.35 (3c) Macmillan 891.4 17-13755
“The text is composed of half-a-dozen lectures in which is developed the idea of art as a spontaneous expression of personality, and of meditation as a passive surrender of the soul to the influx of the world.” (Nation) Sir Rabindranath also gives an account of his school for boys, and sets forth his views on woman, who will, he thinks, find her true place when we get a civilization based “upon spiritual ideals of reciprocity, and not upon economic ideals of efficiency.” Contents: What is art; The world of personality; The second birth; My school; Meditation; Woman. There are six full-page pictures of the author.
“In a somewhat lighter vein than Sãdhanã and permeated with the same ideas of individualism, mysticism and optimism.”
“Tagore is true to the mystical type. ... As an example of how differently the thing may be done, one turns to Samuel Butler’s argument in his ‘God the known and God the unknown.’ ... Butler’s little volume should be read with Tagore’s ‘The world of personality.’ ... The chapter entitled ‘The second birth’ is not only clear and coherent where the preceding chapter is muddled and topsy-turvy, but is a well-sustained study in place of a hodgepodge of dubious, more or less related observations.” M. C. Otto
“The reader who succeeds in entering at all into the spirit of these discussions will not fail to see that in all of them the author is saying something about where the true life of personality lies. His ruling conception is clearly not the familiar one. He is as far as possible from identifying personality with that in a man which is peculiar and exclusive. Personality is not that which breaks out in the foibles and eccentricities of an individual. ‘Living one’s own life in truth,’ Tagore says, ‘is living the life of all the world.’ And in that phrase we have pretty much the focus of his vision. The lectures are greatly taken up with the task of showing what is personal in man and in the universe. The universe is a person. It has a soul.” J. W. Scott
“The whole tenor of Tagore’s book is deeply religious, but everywhere he protests against formalism in religion, as against formalism in thought.”
“Personality, if we can imagine it made the subject of an actual painting, as, let us say, motherhood has been, is here handled in Botticelli’s manner rather than in Murillo’s—as, primarily, an act of faith rather than as a piece of truth.”
TAGORE, SIR RABINDRANATH (RAVINDRANATHA THAKURA).[2]Sacrifice, and other plays.*$1.50 Macmillan 891.4 17-28833
Includes the four new plays. Sanyasi or The ascetic, Malini, Sacrifice and The king and queen. The title play’s underlying theme is the wrong to life in slaying animals for sacrifice. When King Govinda beholds the grief of a beggar girl whose goat has been slain for sacrifice, he orders that no more blood be shed in the temple “from to-day forever.” Then priests rise up with the time worn sentiments on their lips, “That which has the sanction of ages, do you have the right to remove it?” and “He has defied you and me, all scriptures, all countries, all times.” The king typifies the spirit of knowledge and understanding fighting its way to freedom against superstition and blind faith.
“While the technic of these plays closely resembles that of the previous collection, the teachings are more forceful, and emerge from the philosophy of the East in sharp, definite outlines which are satisfying to the western mind.”
TAKEDA IZUMO.Pine-tree (Matsu). il*$1.25 Duffield 895 16-25134
“The pine-tree,” the Japanese drama presented here, is a version of the play produced by the Washington Square players of New York city during the season of 1916-17 under the title “Bushido.” It is a play based on the Japanese ideal of loyalty. The play itself is preceded by a discussion of the Japanese theater by M. C. Marcus, with chapters on Some glimpses of old Japanese literature; The elements of Japanese drama; Early tragedy and comedy; Development of the drama; The classical period—Takeda Izumo and his “Pine-tree”; and Theatrical customs. The version of the play presented is an adaptation, not a translation.