UNDERHILL, EVELYN (MRS STUART MOORE). Jacopone da Todi; poet and mystic—1228–1306; a spiritual biography. *$6 Dutton
20–4482
“Jacopone da Todi, that remarkable Italian mystical poet, was born soon after the death of St Francis of Assisi, about 1228 or 1230, while Dante was yet in the prime of his manhood. Living in the world until he was forty, a shrewd lawyer, a man of vivid temperament, of wide culture and refined tastes, he received at that age his first religious call. For the next ten years he wandered about as a missionary hermit and in 1278, being then about fifty, he became a Franciscan lay brother. Miss Underhill’s book is divided into two parts of about equal length. The first is devoted to Jacopone’s life, set in its proper historical environment. In the remaining part of the book Miss Underhill gives us a chronological selection from his mystical poems, so well known as the Laude, accompanied in the fellow page by an English translation (also into poetry) by Mrs Theodore Beck.”—Cath World
“Miss Underhill has a fine flow of language, a nice choice of adjectives, and a thorough, if somewhat undiscriminating, knowledge of the literature of her subject. Altogether her book is well done in its way, and it is not the slightest use wishing, as we do, that it had been done in another.” R. S.
+ − Ath p636 My 14 ’20 760w + Boston Transcript p7 Mr 13 ’20 1500w + Cath World 111:819 S ’20 620w
“The biographer’s comprehension of the worldly accomplishments of her subject and her equal insight into his spiritual attainments, is strikingly the counterpart of that two-sidedness which she emphasizes in the man himself. The bibliography apart from its immediate value as indicating the sources of the present work, will be of service to those interested in the whole subject of Christian mysticism.” Marianne Moore
+ Dial 70:82 Ja ’21 1650w
“When the romantic personality falls into the hands of the scholar there is necessarily something of glamour and delight lost. This is what has happened in this austerely spiritual biography of Evelyn Underhill.” L. C. Willcox
+ − N Y Times 25:169 Ap 11 ’20 1200w