The book introduces a feature that may interest the sexologist: frequent passionate love among near kinsmen. Two sisters are in love with their brothers. A romance between uncle and niece. The heroes and heroines are awakened to love for the most part at the dangerous age of forty. I recall that Przybyszewski presents in two of his works love between brother and sister. Shall we say that ideal sex-relationship requires the closest kinship of body and spirit? In the Pole’s lovers the force driving them together is the harmonious coincidence of two morbidly developed intellects with a common craving for beauty and fullness. In Couperus we face mutual yearning of small, pale, empty souls. But I am not interested in sex-problems, not yet.
K.
Two Points of View
Violette of Pere Lachaise, by Anna Strunsky Walling. New York: Frederic A. Stokes.
A gigantic background—the eternal graves and trees and monuments of the old Paris cemetery. The rest is fudge. A mouse born out of the bowels of a mountain. Nauseating feminine sentimentalism. Boring talk, talk, talk.
K.
The reviewer above is absolutely mistaken about Mrs. Walling’s book, I believe. It is the story of one of those human beings—rare people—who live inner lives of extraordinary intensity. It is radiantly absorbing, to me.
M. C. A.
The Reader Critic
The Editor: