come once more to life. Luther and his fellow workers of the Reformation, and the old struggle of the peasants' war, have been represented in some places. Battle pictures from earlier times are very popular. Many a note reminds us of the former power of Old Fritz, of the deeds of Blücher or Bismarck. It need not be said that Hindenburg is not lacking, though I do not know whether Ludendorff has also found his place on the paper currency. The influence of the old schools controlled by throne and altar comes to light everywhere. Discord in the various territories stirs the minds of the people strongly, as we can easily see from the paper money, and affairs do not seem always to have flowed along smoothly here and there.

German poets, old and new, and pithy quotations from them we find in numbers on the notes; but the fact that they must often lend their help to worthless counterfeits with falsified dates not always without a deliberate purpose to enrich the public coffers shows no especial respect for the teachings of their thought. Such issues, indeed, offer dismal illustrations of the degradation and weakening of the moral fibre characteristic of the years since the war. One gets the impression that most of these spiritual leaders have lived and worked in vain, so far as many of our fellows are concerned.

Still other examples of this substitute money remind us of the needs of the war years. We learn how many dead and wounded the Germans must regret, or how many bushels of turnips or potatoes this city or that has used during a year. Or perhaps there is a graph depicting the fall of the mark or the rise in the cost of living.

Yet the paper money gives good evidence of the high development of German industry. While in our grand

mother's time the spinning wheel was still in use, and our fathers sat at a towering loom, keeping the machine in motion with their feet, to-day the power of electricity sets hundreds of little wheels to spinning. 'Whether woven by hand in olden days, or produced by machinery, Pössneck's flannel was and is the best in the world.' This is the motto that Pössneck once had printed on its seventy-five-pfennig notes to the glory of its old fabrics and its new ones. The pictures also show tanners, shoemakers, and bookbinders, with their old and new processes, and the tremendous progress they have made. Other notes depict coal-mining, the generation of electricity, and numerous processes of these crafts.

Many a city and many a district has achieved unexpected wealth with its paper money. When some particular issue of Notgeld (war-time currency) becomes a popular article with collectors, only a few out of hundreds of thousands of notes issued ever come back for redemption. In his desire for the precious gold, many a magistrate has not held the rules of honesty and decency in too great respect. Not only have dates been falsified, in order to give the bills greater value in the eyes of collectors, but many cities have not felt it beneath their dignity to put new notes on the market that had already lost their value before being printed and some which had not even been in circulation.

In spite of the immense output of war currency, it is hard enough to get issues that have genuine value for the collector; and in my own collection of nearly ten thousand specimens I think I have scarcely a dozen that really take high rank. But as a contribution to the history of our civilization, as documents of the war and the years that succeeded it, I do not hesitate to give them an imperishable worth.

To the person who wants to understand the literary movement in Italy during the past twenty years, it is well to recommend four volumes, by the Neapolitan critic and philosopher, Benedetto Croce, entitled The Literature of the New Italy, published by Laterza, as well as the Critica, the review that this remarkable man has edited since 1903. The only reservation to be kept in mind is not to swallow completely the author's philosophic principles, which are always interesting but sometimes give rise to error.

Two anthologies should be recommended as well: Poeti d'Oggi (The Poets of To-day), compiled by G. Papini and P. Pancrazi, edited by Vallecchi in Florence in 1920, and Narratori Contemporanei, exclusively devoted to prose-writers, collected by G. Titta Rosa and published at Milan in 1921 by Guido Podrecca. These anthologies are indispensable to anyone who wants to get a clear idea of what Italian literature really is. But aside from Poeti d'Oggi these are untranslated books and, except for some few articles like those by M. Benjamin Crémieux or those in the Nouvelle Revue Française, French criticism only takes notice of writers in previous generations.

To tell the truth, the last twenty years of Italian literature present a spectacle of vast confusion. Since Carducci, whose national lyricism strikes an unfamiliar note to-day, though he has a number of fervent disciples on the other side of the Alps; since Giovanni

Pascoli, whose epic poems are equally out of date but whose fine sensibility has left behind a fresh and genuine tradition; since D'Annunzio, whose burning Dionysiac creed places him in an exceptional position, we have not seen a single strong personality stand out from the general body of writers, nor has a single masterly piece of work appeared. The number and the quality of the attempts at poetry that have been written do not seem to indicate that this art is held in great honor among the Italians of the last two generations. The novel, which is almost invariably preoccupied with social or ethical matters, does not show any robust vitality either. In the taste for prose poems and in the love of critical analysis we find the inspiration for most of the important work that is now being done.

At the present time, Benedetto Croce is the man who has extended the most profound influence over the young writers, and it is believed that his propensities as a philosopher, critic, and historian have naturally stimulated other intelligent minds to express other shades of thought similar to his. Just as the sensual language of a D'Annunzio could not help arousing imitation, however mediocre, so the philosophy of Croce, so widely inclusive of diverse activities, gave birth to a host of ardent disciples. In this fashion, Italy, in the past two decades, has witnessed the growth of what can truly be called a cultural literature. And a grave omission would be made if one did not

nclude the important foreign influences ɔf Maupassant, Bourget, especially in Le Disciple, Tolstoi, Dostoevskii, Nietzsche, as well as Rimbaud, Whitman, Romain Rolland, Gide, Claudel, Péguy, Apollinaire, and finally the da-daists.

Another very characteristic point that should not be forgotten in connection with Italian production is the anarchistic individualism that inspires it, though we may also remark that Italy has remained faithful to the classic tradition of Leopardi and Manzoni. But under the critical ægis of a Croce, the most varied spiritual currents are fused together. If such an excess of individualism appears to be an exceptional law that governs genius, the normal accretion of talent seems to adapt itself much less successfully to this law. The objection might be raised that literary Italy is going through a period of stagnation. This is undoubtedly true. But stagnation is not death and I shall simply mention some men's names and certain books to show that the intelligence of the writers is stirring itself and that a rapid growth has set in.

After the establishment of Italian unity, certain writers were eager to describe the life and manners of their province. We thus distinguish a regionalist literature, which soon became confused with realism. Thus Giovanni Verga, who died in 1922, abandoned his first inspiration to write about life in the world and took up instead those rustic, passionate, brutal, murderous stories and those powerful novels, where a cycle of social history comes to life after the fashion of Balzac, or even more of Zola; and these books, built on a scheme of magisterial sobriety, show us the customs of Sicily. Renato Fucini, whose sonnets in the Pisan dialect made him famous, describes, in his turn, the peasants of Tuscany, and his alert manner recalls Daudet's style.

In Le Novelle della Pescara (Tales of Pescara) D'Annunzio paints vividly colored pictures of the land of his birth. Pascarella wrote in Roman dialect. But it is the country about Naples that the universally famous realist, Matilde Serao, has chosen for her favorite themes in Il Paese di Cuccagna (The Country of Cocaigne). Salvatore di Giacomo also takes joy in singing about his birthplace in this Neapolitan dialect, which was the language he used in almost all his work, and he brings to life with even more ardent sincerity the swarming ruffians in the narrow streets of this clamorous city.

Against this short-lived realism, some writers, such as Arturo Graf, quickly protested, denouncing a brashness in this style incompatible with that æsthetic sense so dear to every Italian heart. This idealism, carefully guarding all its rights, proclaimed the noblest ambitions and pretended to solve the fundamental problems with which social life confronts us.

Therefore the 'social novel' occupied a place of considerable importance during the opening years of the twentieth century. Ahead of any other writer we should name Fogazzaro. The French public has long ago read Il Piccolo Mondo Antico (The Little Ancient World), which is perhaps his masterpiece, Il Piccolo Mondo Moderno (The Little World of To-day), and above all, Il Santo (The Saint), where the author, transported by an intense fervor, reveals his vision of Christianity although taking up a modernist position. Here again we find Matilde Serao as well as Grazie Deledda. On the other hand, there is Giovanni Cena, whose Ammonitori (Advisers), on the heels of his beautiful poems, Madre and Homo, is simply a profound cry of love for the suffering of humble people. And then there is Sibilla Aleramo, who audaciously outlines the thesis for necessary

divorce and gives evidence of very powerful and human emotions. Still other names that merit our attention would include Dora Melegari, Amalia Rosselli, Butti, and Lucio d'Ambra.

But to Gabriele D'Annunzio, whose genius has covered him with universal glory, a very special place must be assigned. His most ardent admirers, however, are not to be found in his own country, and his æsthetic conceptions of pleasure, love, voluptuousness, and death have been illustrated with sufficient virtuosity only by himself. Such diverse and subtle elements are combined in his dazzling pages, such curious deficiencies are so often found opposed to such a wealth of rich excess, that it is perhaps not saying enough to classify him, as was recently done, among the partisans of that too restrained formula of 'art for art's sake.'

Last of all there is a group of novelists whose racy fantasy, often touching upon the comic, has earned them the name of 'humorists' and whose most remarkable exponents are Alfredo Panzini and Luigi Pirandello. In 1901 the former published the Little Histories of a Big World and in 1907 the Lantern of Diogenes, which, without giving proof of any very keen penetration, mingled with lively skill a healthy freshness and well-balanced, pleasing sentiment. But it is Pirandello who clearly heads this group. A disciple of Cantoni, yet endowed with a very supple philosophic spirit, he distributes his skill and exercises his powers of observation in a great many different works.

The

tices both the body and its shadow and he frequently pays more attention to the shadow than to the body; he takes in all the pleasantries of this shadow, how from time to time it lengthens and shrinks, so that it grimaces the movements of the body, which all the while thinks nothing about it and exercises no caution.'

From this listing of human frailties and vanities, Pirandello arrives at a skepticism bordering on pessimism. For him the world is governed by almost invariable fatalistic laws of which we only catch rare glimpses. To look upon the pitiful game of daily life, and to force oneself to smile at it that, in his eyes, is the attitude of the sage.

This hasty examination of the Italian novel in the opening years of the twentieth century permits us to refute the judgment passed by some peninsular critics, such as Guido Biagi, that their country possesses no novel. It is undeniable that, above the intellectual uproar that we have just been listening to, we can already distinguish voices that lift up their different cries — picturesque, human, æsthetic, or humorous. In the midst of this confusion, signs of progress seem to be appearing. It remains for us to outline a second period, the one in which Italian literature is now engaged, and to ask what these tendencies will come to as well as what the recent progress has meant.

The second period in modern Italian literature begins about 1912. That is the time when the European influences that we have already mentioned began to make themselves felt with particular force. It is the time of the highly marked confusion that I have already spoken about. And it is the hour at which that delightfully upsetting futurism appeared, when, more noticeably than in the past, the question of unity of language was raised.

Poetry, which had been neglected during the first exclusively cultural decade of the twentieth century, also took a new lease of life about 1910; but it is not the poem in verse whose rebirth we witness, it is chiefly the poem in prose, as the previously mentioned collection of Papini's and Pancrazi's Poeti d'Oggi bears witness. The first movement to stir itself is the one set in motion by the review, La Voce, which printed the work of almost every innovator to be found in Italy. Papini ran it in 1912, but the critical spirit emanating from Benedetto Croce seems to have given it a more purely literary aspect. In its pages appeared the work of such curious writers as Giovanni Amendola, who made his début with a philosophic essay on Maine de Biran and later became Colonial Minister.

But futurism took form and gathered together the most advanced spirits on La Voce. Papini, Soffici, and Palazzeschi started a new periodical that they called Lacerba, to which several French poets contributed, including Max Jacob and Apollinaire. We should here mention Marinetti, whose exploits are still famous. Except for him, all the men whom I have just named abandoned the movement, and since the war we have seen a complete reaction set in against innovation, a resolute tendency to restore law and order to Italian letters. This tendency is very definitely expressed in La Ronda, a review that was founded in Rome, in March 1919, by a group of writers including Vincenzo Cardarelli, Antonio Beldini, and Riccardo Becchalli. A return to classicism under the banner of Leopardi - that is the cry of the editors of this new magazine, whom people, for that reason, call the neoclassicists. And anyone who wants to understand Italian letters ought to consult this important document La Ronda.

There is, furthermore, a regular fight going on in these reviews between the ancients and the moderns, a fight that goes to the very heart of the whole matter. And it is a curious thing that it is now not at all unusual to see men first take the side of futurism and then join the ranks of the neoclassicists. Many cross-currents that are explained in part by the quick sensibility of the Italian spirit throw us here and there in danger of being disconcerted, and it is not easy to get one's bearings in the midst of all these variations.

Among the innovators, we cannot fail to take notice of Marinetti, a writer of French culture, the speaker of 'words of liberty,' most of whose works are written in our language. Destruction and La Bataille de Tripoli give a fierce impression of this debauched, frenzied style that characterizes the nationalist and imperialist futurism that is also found in the Neapolitan dithyramb of a Buzzi and, to be frank, in D'Annunzio, with a magnificent sense of balance, in such a piece of work as Songs from Oversea.

Entirely different, denouncing the influence of certain French poets, notably Laforgue and Francis Jammes, is another group of moderns, those intimate writers called in their own country the crepuscular poets - they include Guido Gozzana, the most remarkable of all, who died very young, the poet of provincial pettiness, of unimportant matters, inclined to shake a pure and sensitive soul free from vulgar influences; Corazzini, perhaps less of an artist, who also died young, but whose skill is greater in evoking the sorrow of the past, the secret hopelessness of our desires and of our yearnings; Govini, a poet in the real sense of the word, with a rich imagination and a delicate and subtle spirit, the author of A Group of Poems, published in 1918; Palazzeschi, a futurist from 1909