Some Happenings, by Horace Annesley Vachell (George H. Doran Company). This is an entertaining collection of stories, by an English writer in the American manner, and ranges in breadth of interest from stories of the American West to English mystery stories and French pastorals.
III. Translations
The Seven That Were Hanged, by Leonid Andreyev (Boni & Liveright). These two sombre studies in death rank among the masterpieces of modern Russian literature. “The Seven That Were Hanged” is a study in the human reactions of seven different men between their condemnation and execution. Andreyev is a master of character, relentless in his probing, inevitable in his conclusions. “The Red Laugh,” which is also included in this volume, is an unforgettable study of the horrors of warfare.
Lazarus, by Leonid Andreyev, and The Gentleman from San Francisco, by Ivan Bunin, translated by Abraham Yarmolinsky (The Stratford Company). These stories, published together in one volume, are in vivid contrast. In “Lazarus” Andreyev has written one of his two great prose poems, relating how Lazarus revealed the mystery of the grave. “The Gentleman from San Francisco” has poetry too, but it is essentially an ironic study of the artificial values of commercial prosperity.
We Others: Stories of Fate, Love, and Pity, by Henri Barbusse, translated by Fitzwater Wray (E. P. Dutton & Company). This collection of early stories by Monsieur Barbusse would have been important even if the author was not already known to us by “Under Fire” and “The Inferno.” It includes forty-five short stories of remarkable technique in small compass, sounding almost every note of the human comedy and tragedy with the utmost economy of means and finish of construction. It is perhaps not an accident that the first two stories are the best, but the collection is unusually even and seems sure of reasonable permanence.
Czech Folk Tales, selected and translated by Josef Baudis (The Macmillan Company). This is probably the best volume of fairy stories published this year and should interest students of folk lore and the general reader as well as children. There is a wild poetry in these brief tales, which is well rendered in Dr. Baudis’s translation.
Tales from Boccaccio (The Stratford Company). It was a happy thought of the publishers to select these seven stories at which the most puritan cannot carp, and to present them to us in such an attractive form. An old translation is used whose style faithfully mirrors that of Boccaccio.
The Wife (The Macmillan Company), The Witch (The Macmillan Company), and Nine Humorous Tales (The Stratford Company), by Anton Chekhov. Two new volumes have been added this year to Mrs. Garnett’s admirable edition of Chekhov. It is now universally admitted that Chekhov ranks with Poe and de Maupassant as one of the three supreme masters of the short story. “The Wife” contains at least two of Chekhov’s masterpieces: “A Dreary Story” and “Gooseberries.” With these two stories I should rank “Gusev” and “In the Ravine.” The little book issued by the Stratford Company reprints nine of Chekhov’s less familiar stories, some of which cannot yet be obtained in English elsewhere.
Peasant Tales of Russia, by V. I. Nemirovitch-Dantchenko, translated by Claud Field (Robert M. McBride & Company). These four poetic stories by one of the less known Russian masters are tragic studies of human conflict, softened by pity and a deep-rooted religious belief. They are admirably translated in a style which reflects much of the poetry of the original. “The Deserted Mine” is one of the great short stories of the world.
White Nights, and Other Stories, by Fyodor Dostoevsky, translated by Constance Garnett (The Macmillan Company). These seven short stories and novelettes range over a period of more than twenty years in Dostoevsky’s career. “White Nights,” which is one of his earliest works, is a poem of young love and its effect on solitude and spiritual isolation. “A Faint Heart,” which was written seven or eight years afterwards, is a study of the will and morbid melancholy. It anticipates many of the findings of modern psychiatry. “A Little Hero,” written immediately afterwards, is a kind of autobiography, and sheds much light on Dostoevsky’s early life. But “Notes from Underground” is the masterpiece of the book, and is one of the chief clues to Dostoevsky’s own philosophy.