With Twenty Copper-plate Etchings by Martin van Maele
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“Thaïs” is a work of religious mysticism. The story of the Priest-hero who sought to stamp out the flames of nature is told with a delicacy and realism that will at once charm and command the reader’s attention. Anatole France is one of the most brilliant literary men in the world, and stands foremost amongst giants like Daudet, Zola, and Maupassant.
The book before us is a historical novel based on the legend of the conversion of the courtesan Thaïs of Alexandria by a monk of the Thebaïd. Thaïs may be described as first cousin to the Pelagia of Charles Kingsley “Hypatia;” indeed, the two books, dealing as they do with the same place and period, Alexandria in the fourth century, offer points of resemblance, as well as of difference, many and various, and sufficiently interesting to be commended to the notice of students of comparative criticism. There is, however, a subtle and profound moral lesson about the work of Mr. Anatole France which is wanting in Kingsley’s shallower and more commonplace conception of human motive and passion. The keynote is struck in the warning which an old schoolfellow of the monk Paphnutius addresses to him when he learns of his intention to snatch Thaïs as a brand from the burning: “Beware of offending Venus. She is a powerful goddess; she will be angry with you if you take away her chief minister.” The monk disregards the warning of the man of the world, and perseveres with his self-imposed task, and that so successfully that Thaïs forsakes her life of pleasure, and ultimately expires in the odour of sanctity. Custodes, sed quis custodiet ipsos? Paphnutius has deceived himself, and has failed to perceive that what he took for zeal for a lost soul was in reality but human desire for a fair face. The monk, who has won Heaven for the beautiful sinner, loses it himself for love of her, and is left at the end, baffled and blaspheming, before the dead body of the woman he has loved all the time without knowing that he loved her.
It is impossible for the reviewer to convey any adequate notion of the subtle skill with which the author deals with a delicate but intensely human theme. Alike as a piece of psychical analysis and as a picture of the age, this book stands head and shoulders above any that we have ever read about the period with which it deals. It is a work of rare beauty, and, we may add, of profound moral truth, albeit not written precisely virginibus puerisque.
It is emphatically the work of a great artist.—(From a Notice in “The Pall Mall Gazette”).
The Well of Santa Clara
This work is, from the deep interest of its contents, the beauty of its typography and paper, and the elegance and daring of the illustrations, one of the finest works in édition de luxe yet offered to the collectors of rare books.
Apart from the other stories, all of them written with that exquisite grace and ironical humour for which Anatole France is unmatched, “The Human Tragedy,” forming half of the book, is alone worthy to rank amongst the master-efforts of literature. The dominant idea of “The Human Tragedy” is foreshadowed by the quotation from Euripedes: All the life of man is full of pain, and there is no surcease of sorrow. If there be aught better elsewhere than this present life, it is hid, shrouded in the clouds of darkness.