Wilbrandt, Adolf. New humanity; or, The Easter island; tr. by Dr. A. S Rappoport. $1.50. Lippincott.
Helmut Adler, an enthusiast and the hero of this story, is modeled after Nietzsche. He has a plan for improving the human race by taking a few chosen followers to a secluded isle where they may rear a perfect race. He loses his reason and dies, and his daughter and her lover decide that the island of perfection can exist only in their own souls.
“But we have seldom seen a worse piece of work as translation than the volume before us.”
| — — | Acad. 68: 567. My. 27, ‘05. 960w. |
“The story is told with a certain morbid power, but drags heavily in the telling, and is only moderately successful in the delineation of the several types of character which people its pages.” Wm. M. Payne.
| + — | Dial. 39: 41. Jl. 16, ‘05. 160w. |
“If the book is doctrinal and the doctrines heavy, it is not therefore a heavy book. On the contrary, there is so much sincerity in each point of view, combined with so much lightness of pen, that it is even absorbing reading; the way is tortuous, indeed, but not slimy.”
| + + — | Nation. 81: 148. Ag. 17, ‘05. 780w. |
“The translation is sufficiently clear to carry the meaning of the German writer to the English reader. It is certainly not a work of literary art, but that does not matter.”
| + | N. Y. Times. 10: 376. Je. 10. ‘05. 540w. |