Short Stories from the Spanish; Englished by Charles B. McMichael (Boni and Liveright, Inc.). The present volume contains seven short stories by Rubén Dario, Jacinto Octavio Picón, and Leopoldo Alas. They are wretchedly translated, but even in their present form one can divine the art of "The Death of the Empress of China" by the Nicaraguan Rubén Dario, and "After the Battle" by the Spaniard Jacinto Octavio Picón. The other stories are of unequal value, so far as we can judge from Mr. McMichael's translation.
The Fairy Spinning Wheel, and the Tales It Spun, by Catulle Mendès; translated by Thomas J. Vivian (The Four Seas Company). It was a happy thought to reprint this translation of M. Mendès' fairy tales which has been out of print for many years. It is probably the only work of its once renowned author which survives the passage of time. Here he has entered the child's mind and deftly presented a series of legends which suggest more than they state. Their substance is slight enough, but each has a certain symbolic value, and the poetry of M. Mendès' style has been successfully transferred to the English version.
Temptations, by David Pinski; translated by Isaac Goldberg (Brentano's). We have already come to know what a keen analyst America has in Mr. Pinski from the translations of his plays which have been published. Here he is much less interested in the surface movement of plot than in the relentless search for motive. To his Yiddish public he seems perhaps the best of short story writers who write in his tongue, and certainly he can hold his own with the best of his contemporaries in all countries. He has the universal note as few English writers may claim it, and he stands apart from his creation with absolute detachment. His work, together with that of Asch, Aleichem, Perez, and one or two others establishes Yiddish as a great literary tongue. A further series of these tales are promised if the present volume meets with the response which it deserves.
Russian Short Stories, edited by Harry C. Schweikert (Scott, Foresman and Company). This is a companion volume to Mr. Schweikert's excellent collection of French short stories, and ranges over a wide field. From Pushkin to Kuprin his selection gives a fair view of most of the Russian masters, and the collection includes a valuable historical and critical introduction, with biographical notes, and a critical apparatus for the student of short story technique. It is of special educational importance as the only volume in the field. In the next edition I suggest that Sologub should be represented for the sake of completeness.
Iolanthe's Wedding, by Hermann Sudermann; translated by Adèle S. Seltzer (Boni and Liveright, Inc.). This collection of four minor works by Sudermann contains two excellent stories, one of which is full of folk quality and a kindly irony, and the other more akin to the nervous art of Arthur Schnitzler. "The Woman Who Was His Friend" and "The Gooseherd" are less important, but of considerable technical interest.
Short Stories from the Balkans; translated by Edna Worthley Underwood (Marshall Jones Company). This volume should be set beside the collection of "Czecho-Slovak Stories," which I have mentioned on an earlier page. Here will be found further stories by Jan Neruda and Svatopluk Čech, together with a remarkable group of stories by Rumanian, Serbian, Croatian, and Hungarian authors. Neruda emerges as the greatest artist of them all, and one of the greatest artists in Europe, but special attention should be called also to the Czech writer Vrchlický, the Rumanian Caragiale, and the Hungarian Mikszáth. The translation seems competently done.
Modern Greek Stories; translated by Demetra Vaka and Aristides Phoutrides (Duffield and Company). While this collection reveals no such undoubted master as Jan Neruda, it is an extremely interesting introduction to an equally unknown literature. Seven of the nine stories are of great literary value, and perhaps the best of these is "Sea" by A. Karkavitsas. Romaic fiction still bears the marks of a young tradition, and each new writer would seem to be compelled to strike out more or less completely for himself. Consequently it is necessary to allow more than usual for technical inadequacy, but the substance of most of these stories is sufficiently remarkable to justify us in wishing a further introduction to Romaic literature.