+ Ath p12 Ja 2 ’20 950w + Booklist 16:339 Jl ’20 Boston Transcript p7 O 9 ’20 380w
“It is decidedly difficult to find anything in the literature of the West which recalls these brief lyrics, which confine within seventeen or at most within thirty-one syllables the passion of a life or the shadowing imminence of death.” Babette Deutsch
+ Dial 70:204 F ’21 800w
“The volume shows the scholarly care and literary taste which were the charms of Mr Waley’s previous translations, and nobody could wish for a better introduction to Japanese poetry; but the poems do not give the same thrill as those little decorative masterpieces—the Chinese translations. Some of them seem to be too purely decorative.”
+ − The Times [London] Lit Sup p646 N 13 ’19 820w
WALISZEWSKI, KAZIMIERZ. Poland the unknown; tr. from the French. *$2.25 Doran 943.8
(Eng ed 20–6295)
It is the contention of the author that the characteristics of the Polish people and of their national ideals has always been quite distinct from those of western Europe and that, as a vanquished nation, she has for nearly a century and a half presented not her own face but a mask to the world. That her exceptional virtues rather than her failings have been the chief cause of her undoing and that of all the nations that participated in the latter, Prussia has been the arch-criminal, is the object of the book to show. Contents: The enigma of a nation’s fate; The Polish paradox; Ideas and principles; Organs of government; Anarchy; The crisis; The catastrophe; Beyond the grave; Resurrection; Conclusion.
“M. Waliszewski’s book is largely a vigorous and effective polemic against the misrepresentations of Polish history so long and systematically inspired by Berlin and St Petersburg. Unfortunately, his own views as to the causes of Poland’s downfall are nowhere very concisely summed up. The author may be criticized for great carelessness in the matter of names and dates.” R. H. L.