[Mitchell Kennerley, New York.]
Almost simultaneously with The Congo has appeared a prose volume by Mr. Lindsay, Adventures while Preaching the Gospel of Beauty. It is an account, in the form of a diary, of a walk through Missouri and Kansas, and into Colorado. Its value is almost purely personal. To anyone who is interested in Mr. Lindsay’s striking personality, this book will serve as a spiritual Baedeker. As literature its value is comparatively slight. It contains, however, one of his most striking poems, The Kallyope Yell, which appeared originally in The Forum. This alone is worth the price of the volume.
Eunice Tietjens.
Pumpernickel Philosophy
The Man of Genius, by Herman Tuerck. [The Macmillan Company, New York.]
Professor Tuerck, a very normal German, has been writing critical essays since the end of the eighties, and he has not changed a bit—the same good old idealist of the sissy category. In this book he makes a study of Genius, and comes to the magnificent conclusion that the chief characteristics of a genius must be goodliness, loving kindness, respect, and loyalty to existing institutions, obedience to the law, objectivity, and truth. Naturally, those who do not possess these delicacies are villains. The professor demonstrates two groups of thinkers, one in angelic white, the other in devilish black. Among the first, the real geniuses, we find beside Christ, Buddha, Shakespeare, Goethe, Byron, also Alexander, Cæsar, and Napoleon. But oh, Mr. Wilson, what German atrocities! Mr. Tuerck mercilessly disfigures his victims and pastes upon them with his saliva accurate, uniform labels. In Hamlet, in Faust, in Manfred, in the mentioned law-givers and warriors, the author manages to discover goody-goody traits of exemplary burghers. In the Black Gallery we face the lugubrious sinners—Stirner, Nietzsche, and Ibsen. “Woe to him who follows these modern antisophers!” cries Mr. Tuerck, for they are enemies of humanity, of the state, of society, of reality, of truth, for they are selfish and subjective. “The Devil, the Father of Lies, is great and Friedrich Nietzsche is his prophet.”
A word of reassurance for Mr. Thomas Hardy. This Sauerkraut-gem, The Man of Genius, has had seven editions in Germany, and has aroused wide enthusiasm there, as witnessed by the numerous press-notices exaltingly praising the great idealist Tuerck, written by professors, Geheimraths, Hofraths, catholics, protestants, and even by socialists! Now, pray, ought there be any fear for the Nietzscheanization of the Fatherland?
K.
Kilmer’s Confession
Trees, and Other Poems, by Joyce Kilmer. [George H. Doran Company, New York.]