One undoubted merit the book has, and that is the industrious collection of personal recollections of Nietzsche and of Nietzsche portraits which Dr. Carus has brought together in its pages. These will give the book a positive value to the Nietzsche enthusiast, while the sight of Dr. Carus’s cool, scholastic temperament trying to drench the burning bush of Nietzsche will at least interest him.
Illiam Dhone.
Feminism and New Music
Anthony the Absolute, by Samuel Merwin. [The Century Company, New York.]
It is interesting to watch the struggles of an essentially chivalrous masculine soul caught in the whirlpool of modern feminism. Samuel Merwin, ever since the old days of A Short Line War and Calumet K., written in collaboration with Henry Kitchell Webster, has held towards women the attitude of the knight errant. Recently, as shown in The Citadel, The Charmed Life of Miss Austin, and even more strongly in this latest book, Anthony the Absolute, he has become a determined feminist. But the attitude has not changed. Formerly his hero laid at the feet of the lady of his choice as much wealth, fame, and position as he could acquire; this latest hero gives her in the same spirit a career and the chance to develop her own personality. Mr. Merwin says: “The man who deliberately stops a woman’s growth—no matter what his traditions; no matter what his fears for her—is doing a monstrous thing, a thing for which he must some day answer to the God of all life.” He is still the knight errant. It is still man who permits woman to develop.
None the less it is a very readable tale. The male characters are all clearly and convincingly drawn, not without humor. The lady is a little nebulous, but very charming. Illustrating the absoluteness of Anthony and serving as an introduction to the charming Heloise is an interesting musical theme. The scene is laid in China, where Anthony is studying primitive music, and Heloise is able to sing for him a perfect close-interval scale, in eighth tones instead of the “barbarous” half and whole tones of the piano scale.
Unfortunately Mr. Merwin has permitted himself to be led by the exigencies of a popular magazine, in which the story appeared in serial form, into giving the tale a certain meretricious air of sex allurement which it fundamentally does not possess. On the whole, except in a certain technical facility in handling the situations and sustaining the tension of the plot, Anthony the Absolute is a decided falling below the really splendid standard of excellence which Mr. Merwin set for himself in The Citadel.
Eunice Tietjens.
Of all our funny little Pantheon the absurd little god who gets the least of my service is the one labeled “Personal Dignity.”—Some Letters of William Vaughn Moody.