My Childhood, by Maxim Gorky. New York: The Century Company.
That Gorky is deteriorating has become a truism. Exaggerated as the importance of his early works has been, one could not deny their freshness, elementary adroitness, soulfulness. But the god-fire was soon exhausted in the none-too-deep spirit of the tramp-poet. He gave us the few good songs he knew about the life of the has-beens, and then went hoarse. The public, Hauptmann’s Huhn, is not irresponsible for Gorky’s false notes. Compel the canary to imitate the nightingale and the poor bird will lose her short, simple, pretty twitter, and rend her little heart with shrill ejaculations. I have in mind Gorky’s later dramas and stories.
The book before me makes me think that Gorky has come to recognize his fallacy in attempting to treat subjects alien to his inherent capacity. At any rate in this case he is free from pretentiousness. His childhood memories are related simply, realistically, sans philosophizing, sans allegorizing. It is left for the reader to deduce the “moral” from the sordid panorama that is revealed before him, that malodorous dunghill swarming with human beings, whose crawling and writhing is called life. The book should have been much shorter; the super-abundance of details makes it Dreiserian or Bennetian.
And here I should like to touch upon a sore which reviewers customarily do not discuss, for fear of mauvais ton. Why are the English translations so careless and comical? The book in question is full of such glaring errors, such nonsensical misunderstandings, such atrocious ignorance, that it has made me pull my hair in despair of solving the dilemma whether I should laugh at the comicalness or whether I should rage at the impertinence. I am quite sure that the translator (his name is not revealed) knows as much Russian as Percy Pinkerton, the crucifier of Artzibashev; he mutilated Gorky from a German translation, I suspect. The book has another jolly feature—illustrations. They are reproductions from popular Russian paintings, with inscriptions that are supposed to illustrate the text. The naive forgery is too crude and unskilful to mislead even the unsuspecting reader. Will the publishers ever acquire respect for the printed word?
Instruction
The Greatest of Literary Problems, by James Phinney Baxter. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
Have you the sense of humor to guess which is the Problem? Shakespeare or Bacon! About seven hundred gigantic pages on this vital question, with illustrations and data. Are you curious to know who wins? I shall not tell. Why should the reader be spared the reviewer’s agony in wading through the bewildering labyrinth of speculations and arguments till he reaches ... the same point that he started from. Bon voyage!
Instruction Plus
Tales from Old Japanese Dramas, by Asataro Miyamori. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons.
Some Musicians of Former Days, by Romain Rolland. New York: Henry Holland Company.