LITERARY INTELLIGENCE
THE death, recently reported from Germany, of Dr. Richard Dehmel at the age of fifty-six removes after a long interval the second of the two poets who were admiringly regarded by their contemporaries as rivalling the literary partnership which once existed between Goethe and Schiller. The Freiherr Detlev von Liliencron, who died in 1909, was one of the initiators of a new movement in German literature; and of this movement his much younger friend was often proclaimed the most distinguished ornament. Dehmel was the son of a forest official in the Mark of Brandenburg, and it has been speculated, without obvious results, whether there was not some Slavonic admixture in his blood which was reflected in his work. But there is little in his career which requires further brought explanation than the conditions of its time and place. He was educated at the University of Leipzig, where he took his doctor's degree with a thesis on a point in the business of insurance, and he worked for some years as secretary to an insurance company, a period of his life which he regarded as having profitably taught him discipline and orderliness of mind. He developed late as a poet. He himself said that he wrote nothing worth having till his twenty-sixth year, and many of the pieces in his first volume, Erlösungen, published when he was twenty-eight, were afterwards discarded or altered. His works consist of several collections of poems, which he continually shuffled and regrouped with every new edition (he was inclined to rebuff critics who wished to trace the development of his powers); Die Verwandlungen der Venus, a series of poetical visions of all types of love from the highest to the lowest; Zwei Menschen, a novel in verse, describing the elopement of a librarian with his employer's wife; Der Mitmensch, a modern play in prose, to which he himself attached great importance; an elaborate wordless play called Lucifer; Michel-Michael, a political tract in dramatic form; a collection of short stories; a collection of essays; and a collection of tales and verses for children. Like most of his generation he was subject to many exotic influences, ranging from Verlaine to Przybyszewski and from Shakespeare to Pierre Louys; and his works contain many admirable translations, those from Verlaine being among the best in the German language. His own poetry is pre-eminently didactic and he preaches consistently, in allegory, in direct narrative, and in direct precept, the doctrine of self-control and of the full utilisation of all human faculties. He had passion and vigour, a not always active power of psychological discernment and an occasional perception of beauty. He is justly reproached with a certain brutality and vulgarity and, one might add, with strange lapses of humour. His courage and determination are beyond question; but in his erotic, as well as in his mystical, rhapsodies (which are often combined) there is too frequently a disagreeable element of frigid calculation. His obscurity is sometimes tiresome and unnecessary, and many of his allegories and symbols are incomprehensible without an external key to their meaning. Some of his lyrics, however, are extremely beautiful: there are passages of insight and dramatic force in Zwei Menschen; some of his epigrams and aphorisms are wise and terse; and a strain of earnest sincerity runs through all his preaching. In August, 1914, though his class was not called up, he volunteered for service, and, possibly as a reward for a great deal of patriotic poetry, he received the Iron Cross. He died at Blankenese, near Hamburg, where he had lived for several years before the war.
Those many who knew the late Edward Thomas, who fell in France in 1917, will be glad to hear that a memorial is being prepared of an admirable poet and essayist. It will take the form of a volume, biographical and appreciative, of prose and verse, and the contributors will include, amongst others, Messrs. W. H. Davies, Walter de la Mare, V. Locke Ellis, Edward Garnett, James Guthrie, E. S. P. Haynes, and Edward Rhys. Extracts are given from Thomas's letters to Mr. W. H. Hudson. The book is being printed by Mr. Guthrie, whose beautiful work as draughtsman and painter in Root and Branch has not yet had the full recognition it deserves. It will be a quarto, set in Caslon Old Face type, and bound in dark green cloth, with a device in gold by Mr. Guthrie, who has also designed a frontispiece, title-page, and initial letters. The price is to be ten shillings, and prospective subscribers should apply to the Secretary, Pear Tree Press, Flansham, Bognor.
Lady Burne-Jones, widow of the painter, died early last month. She was the author of one of the most readable and delightful biographies in the language. Her "Life" of her husband was written vivaciously rather than brilliantly, and it revealed in Lady Burne-Jones no notable gift for literary creation. But her two volumes contained no dull page, few slipshod sentences, and a life-like portrait of one of the most lovable of men.
The next number of The London Mercury will contain the first of two long contributions by Mr. Edmund Gosse embodying his reminiscences of Henry James and an article by Sir George Henschel on Interpretation in Singing. Either in that or the next number we hope also to publish a first instalment of the last diary of the late W. N. P. Barbellion.