Jewish Fairy Tales, translated by Gerald Friedlander (Bloch Publishing Company). This collection of eight stories, translated from the Talmud, Yalkut, and other sources, has been wisely selected to cultivate the imagination of Jewish children, but should prove of much interest to the general reader who is likely to be unfamiliar with most of these legends.
Taras Bulba, and Other Tales, by Nikolai V. Gogol (E. P. Dutton & Company). “Taras Bulba” and five of Gogol’s best short stories are now added to Everyman’s Library. The title story is the national epic of Little Russia, and has a Homeric quality of spaciousness, dignity, and imagination which places it among the world’s great masterpieces. The other stories show Gogol in many moods, but chiefly as Russia’s greatest humorous writer.
Creatures That Once Were Men (Boni & Liveright) and Stories of the Steppe (The Stratford Company), by “Maxim Gorky.” These two volumes are in sufficient contrast to one another. The former contains five stories of life among the submerged classes of Russia, which are nobly told with simplicity, imaginative power, and sceptical philosophy. “Stories of the Steppe” contains three prose poems full of a wild gypsy poetry.
Men in War, by Andreas Latsko (Boni & Liveright). These six realistic studies of warfare by an Austrian whose book has been suppressed in his own country are a terrific indictment of the militaristic spirit which has brought on the great conflict and continued it relentlessly for four years. It shares with Barbusse’s “Under Fire” the distinction of being one of the two masterpieces written by combatants during the last four years, and the spirit of the two books will be found to be essentially the same.
Tales of Wartime France, by Contemporary French Writers. Translated by William L. McPherson (Dodd, Mead & Company). This anthology of thirty war stories is well selected, and shows that the war has produced many excellent French stories. One and all, they illustrate the spirit of the nation, and show an artistic reticence which contrasts favorably with the work of English and American writers.
French Short Stories, Edited for School Use, by Harry C. Schweikert (Scott, Foresman and Company). This collection of eighteen stories for the most part follows conventional lines, but the choice is excellent and introduces the reader to several unfamiliar stories by Coppée, Bazin, Claretie, and Lemaître. The critical apparatus is competent, and the biographical notes should prove useful.
The Spanish Fairy Book, by Gertrudis Segovia, translated by Elisabeth Vernon Quinn (Frederick A. Stokes Company). These eight fairy stories show much imagination, a pleasant unpretentious style, and a fine sense of form. While written for quite young children, they also possess much folk lore value.
Serbian Fairy Tales, translated by Elodie L. Mijatovich (Robert M. McBride & Co.). I would rank this with Dr. Baudis’s “Czech Folk Tales” as one of the two best books of fairy tales published this year. Like Ispirescu’s collection of Roumanian stories it seems to bear traces of a secret animistic doctrine disclosing the mystery of change, and to have crystallized in literary form through centuries of traditional storytelling.
Mashi, and Other Stories, by Sir Rabindranath Tagore (The Macmillan Company). Of these stories it is difficult to speak without undue enthusiasm. With admirable economy of means, Tagore has succeeded in conveying the utmost subtlety of nostalgic remembrance, and the sensuous beauty of shrouded landscape in which he projects his figures sustains profound emotional revelation without undue tightening of the literary fabric. His literary method is a strange one to us, but it might well be the beginning of a new short story tradition in which an American writer could find inspiration as fresh as the new impulse that the discovery of Japanese prints brought to Whistler and others that followed him.
Paulownia: Seven Stories from Contemporary Japanese Writers, translated by Torao Taketomo (Duffield & Company). These stories reveal a new world to us, as significant in its way as the world of Tagore’s stories. Some of these Japanese writers have been influenced by European models, but their spirit is essentially national, and springs from an imaginative quality which it is hard for us at first to recapture. All the stories have a finished art, and so has Mr. Torao Taketomo’s translation.