T is only a few days since that several of the New York daily papers made brief mention of the imprisonment for political crimes in Santo Domingo and Guatemala, respectively, of two poets. Were a convincing illustration required of our almost total ignorance of the thought and literature of Spanish America, none would be more explicit than the casual and uncertain identification of Fabio Fiallo and José Santos Chocano by such of our publications as noticed their imprisonment. And yet to those of our Latin-American neighbors whose native language is Spanish, and in great measure to the people of Spain, Santos Chocano speaks with as authentic a voice as did Walt Whitman to English-speaking peoples.

It is perhaps a recognition of our curious neglect of a literature so important to us in the quality of its spiritual content that has prompted the publication at this time of Mr. Walsh's excellent anthology of Spanish and Spanish-American poetry 1 and Mr. Goldberg's provocative introduction to a group of contemporary Spanish-American writers.2 An unqualified charge of neglect of Spanish and Spanish-American poetry by English and American poets would, however, in the light of the weight of evidence to the contrary contained in the "Hispanic Anthology," be less susceptible of proof than popular ignorance of that literature in this country would justify us in believing. For one of the obvious points revealed by even the most casual glance at the anthology is the somewhat surprising extent to which Spanish poetry has received poetic translation into English from the days of Byron in England and of Bryant and Longfellow in the United States down to Arthur Symons and Masefield and several of our own contemporary writers of verse.

Among the latter group must be counted Mr. Walsh himself, who has brought to his editorial task not only a profound familiarity with the poetry of Spain and of Latin America but a rarely sympathetic insight into the diverse experience of life of which they are the expression. The plan of his anthology is remarkable for its comprehensive inclusion of selections from the work of every significant figure in Hispanic poetry from the unknown author of the "Poema del Cid" to the latest of Porto Rican modernistas, born in 1838. Equally important, and especially so from the point of view of the American reader unacquainted with the Spanish language, is the finely judicious selection which Mr. Walsh has made in choosing not only the original Spanish poems most representative of their authors but the translations into English which constitute the anthology. For the most part these translations are of highly poetic quality and recreate in English the mood and color as

1 Hispanic Anthology. Poems Translated from the Spanish by English and North American Poets. Collected and Arranged by Thomas Walsh. The Hispanic Society of America. G. P. Putnam's Sons.

2 Studies in Spanish-American Literature. By Isaac Goldberg. Brentano's.

well as the content of the original Spanish versions. This wholly admirable anthology thus for the first time provides the reader unfamiliar with Castilian with an adequate introduction to a poetic literature as extensive and as distinguished in quality as that of our common English tongue. The chronological sequence of arrangement adopted by Mr. Walsh and the succinct biographical and bibliographical notes with which he has introduced the selections from each poet notably enhance the value of the volume.

Perhaps the greatest service of the "Hispanic Anthology" is in calling to our attention the rarely beautiful verse written by Spanish-American poets during the past twenty-five years, much of it influenced by what Spanish critics have called the modernista movement, and by what

RUBEN DARIO

Mr. Goldberg, in his suggestive introduction to the work of several of these poets, terms the modernist renovation. That renovation, or movement, first took definite form in the work of several SpanishAmerican writers, notably Rubén Dario, the Nicaraguan; Manuel Gutierrez Najera, Enrique Gonzalez Martinez, and Salvador Diaz Miron, the Mexicans; the Cuban Julian del Casal; the Colombian José Asuncion Silva; and the Peruvian José Santos Chocano. Beginning with a desire to introduce into Spanish poetry the innovations in form and the philosophy which characterized the literature produced by the Parnassian, symbolist, and decadent groups in France, the modernist movement brought forth sweeping changes in both the content and the form of SpanishAmerican poetry, profoundly affected the course of contemporary literature in Spain itself, and became in a measure an intellectual declaration of independence on the part of the authors of Latin America. Not the least singular element in the development of recent literature in Latin America

In his book Mr. Goldberg devotes a chapter to those writers whom he classes as precursors of the renovation, namely, Gutierrez Najera, the Cuban patriot-poet José Marti, Casal, Diaz Miron, Silva, Amado Nervo, and Gonzalez Martinez, illustrating his exposition of their contribution to Spanish-American letters with copious quotations from their work in English versions. Gutierrez Najera, the Mexican poet, possessed a charming and delicate lyric gift and a whimsical humor, and expressed in his work the ironic reaction to life which was a consequence of his intellectual doubt. Marti, the prophet of Cuban independence, saw life in a more affirmative fashion, and brought to his poetry something of the vigorous personality which orchestrated his glowing prose. Casal, consciously exotic, wrote exquisite sonnets voicing his nostalgia for lands and epochs that he had never known, developing in his art a cult of the nuance characteristically individual in expression, but derived from much reading of the French decadents whose works were his breviary. The Colombian poet, José Asuncion Silva, perhaps the most significant of the precursors of modernism, sought an intellectual emancipation from philosophic dogma in a determination to savor all possible experiences in life. His poetry, melancholic, voluptuous, illusory, is iridescent with subtle rhythmical coloring. An innovator in poetic forms, Silva expressed in both his verse and his fragile prose the chromatic quality of his many moods. Diaz Miron, the Mexican, began his poetic career with the vehement assertion of personality; a Latin Henley in his youth, the defiance has left his art, and in his lastand to-day only acknowledged-work he has revealed himself a seeker after the exact phrase and an epicurean of vivid tragedy. Amado Nervo, the Mexican poet, who died only last year, wrote of the beauty of characteristically modern life; caring little for the forms of art, he expressed a contemporary faith in science in terms of beauty. Gonzalez Martinez, also a. Mexican, leads the revolt against the tradition which has crystallized about the name of Rubén Dario, and has expressed as his creed the necessity for probing beneath the externality of experience.

.

Following his chapter dealing with the precursors of modernism, Mr. Goldberg devotes chapters to Rubén Dario; José Enrique Rodo, the Uruguayan essayist and critic; José Santos Chocano, the greatest living Latin-American poet; José Maria Eguren, a young Peruvian poet; and Rufino Blanco Fombona, the Venezuelan poet and novelist, who is now exiled from his country and residing in Spain. Dario is to Americans perhaps the most representative and the best-known of LatinAmerican poets. His early verse colored by that of the French symbolists; erotic, sensual, and eclectic, it voiced a neo-Hellenism characteristic of the period in which it was written. With greater

was

maturity came a period of philosophic doubt, a melancholy distrust of life, which led him to write that

...

there is no grief greater than that of living,

nor more grievous woe than conscious life. Finally came the spiritual pantheism which is his greatest intellectual contribution to the spirit of contemporary literature. Dario is undoubtedly the most significant writer produced by Latin America, and in the quality of its content as a reaction to modern experience his verse belongs with the great fund of poetry common to all nations. In Chocano we have an arrogant, primitive soul untroubled by philosophic questioning, vigorously expounding the theory of Pan-Americanism. It is in Chocano's verse that we find powerfully set forth the native beauties of the South American landscape, the vivid surge of national traditions, the buoyant hope of a glorious future. Chocano suggests the analogy of Whitman; he is, above all, the poet of the Southern democracies. If Chocano is the South American Whitman, José Enrique Rodo may well be termed the South American Emerson. Like Emerson, Rodo sees life in terms of infinite potentiality, and his philosophic creed is dynamic in its insistence upon the constant renewal and reintegration of the individual personality, upon the necessity for the constant preservation of intellectual curiosity, upon the fact that truth itself has no virtue except as a basis of action. Of the chapters devoted to Eguren, an engaging if not important lyric poet, and to Blanco Fombona, the Venezuelan poet, critic, and novelist who shares the Pan-Americanism of Chocano and Rodo and views life from the angle of Socialistic theory, little need be. said beyond an admission of their ade,quacy as introductions. Mr. Goldberg's criticism is impressionistic; he has based his appraisals of South American writers largely upon the estimates of native critics, and he has interpreted with no very remarkable originality the principal tendencies evident in their work. The principal value of his book lies in the fact that it offers a stimulating introduction to a body of literature too little known in the United States.

That the body of South American literature which has developed out of the modernist movement is of absorbing interest is not to be doubted. The criticism of the Argentine statesman and writer Mitre, that Latin-American literature, as a whole, possessed little cohesion and few discernible ideals, has been invalidated by the writings of such men as Dario, Chocano, Silva, and Rodo. And to us in the United States that literature has the added advantage of interpreting not only the psychology but the spiritual life of our neighbors in the republics to the south.

THE NEW BOOKS

FICTION

Closing Net (The). By Henry C. Rowland. Dodd, Mead & Co., New York. This is a new edition of a thrilling story of crime based on the adventures of an expert American burglar who reforms in Paris when he finds his own half-brother facing his pistol. Later the situation turns around and the burglar brother rescues the reforming half-brother and saves him from

ruin and disgrace. The book, as the publishers say, is "full of action, thrills, surprises, and red-blooded excitement." If a "movie" has not been made from it, one certainly should be.

Ditte Girl Alive. By Martin Anderson Nexö. Henry Holt & Co., New York.

Danish fiction is attracting attention. Nexo's "Pelle the Conqueror" has been called a "stupendous prose epic." His new book is not (one almost adds, "Thank Heaven!") a stupendous four-part affair, but a simple, natural tale of a little Danish fishing village, with a peasant girl as its

heroine.

Flappers & Philosophers. By F. Scott Fitz

gerald. Charles Scribner's Sons, New York. Short stories by the author of the astonishing "This Side of Paradise." We use the word "astonishing" literally, for Mr. Fitzgerald has an impish joy in shocking and surprising his readers. These stories have clever situations. "Head and Shoulders" has a twist at the end that is truly O. Henryish. So does "Bernice Bobs her Hair." We pick these two as the best. Henry Elizabeth. By Justin Huntly Mc

Carthy. The John Lane Company, New York. A capital tale of the days of Queen Bess. It is just historical enough and not too much so. How the sturdy red-headed young country squire got his queer name and how he was awakened so that from being a stupid, sottish country clown he became a gentleman of noble heart and intrepid courage these elements make up a tale which has incident, action, humor, and character depiction-and what more need one ask for in a novel? Modern Greek Stories.

By Demetra Vaka and Aristides Phoutrides. Duffield & Co., New York.

A dozen stories translated from the works of Slovak and Czech writers. Together they give a clear and interesting gether they give a clear and interesting picture of the life of the two peoples, both in city and village. The volume is one of "The Interpreter's Series," a good idea well worth carrying out, if this is a fair sample.

Wang the Ninth. By Putnam Weale. Dodd, Mead & Co., New York.

Mr. Weale has before this written well and forcefully about China. This story tells how a Chinese boy, a peasant's son, takes a message of vital importance to the allied forces who are to advance against Peking, at the time of the Boxer Rebellion. The tale is one of adventure and courage, and the character of the Chinese boy is unusual and decidedly interesting.

BIOGRAPHY

Memoirs of Life and Literature. By W. H. Mallock. Harper & Brothers, New York. Whatever one may think of Mr. Mallock's views on social, political, and theological questions, and however he may be regarded as a writer of fiction, it is unquestioned that he has had unusual opportunities for knowing the men and women of his day in English society and in literary and political circles. His Memoirs reflect this knowledge, but his comments and anecdotes are not always agreeable or calculated to give the reader high ideals. Thus he sees Carlyle and tells us that he wore dirty slippers; he sees Swinburne and tells us that he drank too much; when he recalls Cardinal Manning it is to sneer at the Cardinal's belief that Satan was back of spirit messages; he tells us that "Ouida"

tried, in an ungrammatical letter, to get the second Lord Lytton to elope with her; he mentions Jowett's connection with the Broad Church only to laugh as he remembers that a Russian attempting to describe a new religion to Jowett said, "It was not a good religion. It was schlim-schlam. It was vees-vash; it was vot you call' Broad Church."" Mr. Mallock, in indicating his summing up of every thing, quotes the Greek motto on the title-page of his own "New Republic:" "All is laughter, all is dust, all is nothingness, for all the things that are arise out of the unreasonable." Greek or not, this is mighty poor philosophy, and it leaves an unhappy impression of Mallock's views of life and man. Pastor of the Pilgrims (The). A Biography of John Robinson. By Walter H. Burgess. Illustrated. Harcourt, Brace & Howe, New York.

This is really the life and times of John Robinson, and more his times than his life. It is the work of a scholar thoroughly familiar with the field, is full of curious, interesting, and sometimes instructive learning, and will furnish a useful mine from which editors, preachers, and orators can draw in preparing their articles and addresses for the Tercentenary of the landing of the Pilgrim Fathers. It makes very clear the difference between the Puritans and the Pilgrims, familiar to scholars but little realized by the general reader. And it indicates the difficulty which both Puritans and Pilgrims experienced in dealing with that still unsolved problem of how to reconcile liberty with union in the Christian Church.

HISTORY AND POLITICAL ECONOMY

Founding of a Nation (The). By Frank M. Gregg. George H. Doran & Co., New York. The title fails to indicate the romantic character of the book. It is an attempt to put the experiences of the Pilgrim Fathers in fiction form. Many to whom the facts of history as ordinarily presented are unpalatable will find pleasure in reading this story of a cavalier who sailed with the Pilgrims on the Mayflower.

Pilgrim Republic (The). By John A. Goodwin. Illustrated. Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston.

This new edition of a standard history appears at the right time, when all the world is interested in the tercentenary of the landing of the Pilgrims. It tells the Pilgrims' story with a fullness of detail and a grasp of the subject that can probably be found in no other book.

TRAVEL AND DESCRIPTION In Lower Florida Wilds. By Charles Terry Simpson. Illustrated. G. P. Putnam's Sons, New York.

A fresh note is struck in these chapters about Florida. A naturalist who loves that remarkable State takes us with him on his excursions, and introduces us to many strange and interesting places unknown to the tourist. He talks genially yet learnedly about trees, flowers, shells, the geology and the geography of the Everglade State. South of Suez. By William Ashley Anderson.

Illustrated. Robert M. McBride & Co., New
York.

Impressionistic sketches of personal experiences and historical happenings in Abyssinia, Zanzibar, and other places in Africa in which the writer sojourned dur ing war times. The impressions do not always "get across," good as the author's

material is.