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BRIEFER MENTION
Maine Coast, by Wilbert Snow (16mo, 114 pages; Harcourt, Brace $1.75). The poetry inherent in the sea and the dwellers next to it saturates this book, the author's first. Verse forms are sometimes rather crudely handled, and occasionally the poetry remains a little outside the net cast for it, but there is vision in this verse and some fine interpretation of character. It has much the quality of Sarah Orne Jewett's tales, though it gives a more intimate presentation of the foibles and philosophy of an isolated community of fishermen and sailors.
Skeeter Kirby, by Edgar Lee Masters (12mo, 394 pages; Macmillan: $2). In this sequel to Mitch Miller, Mr Masters tries his hand at the portrait of an artist as young man. It is a garrulous, uneven piece of work giving evidence, however, of unusual sensitiveness to the material on hand and, in portions, of able execution.
Sulamith, by Alexandre Kuprin, translated by B. Guilbert Guerney (12mo, 159 pages; Brown: $2) is a far departure from Russian themes and Russian literary manners. It attempts to create a prose poem out of the splendours of Solomon's court, the frenzies of Isis-worship, and the passion of Solomon and the Shulamite. The chief aesthetic difficulty is one of texture: to harmonize one's own prose with the frequent magnificent inserts from the Song of Songs. This requires a sensitive limitation of vocabulary and a gift for rhythm and unstrained but fresh imagery, for both of which either Kuprin or his translator fail to qualify in the measure that Edgar Saltus and Oscar Wilde did in similar situations.
The Genius of America, by Stuart P. Sherman (8vo, 269 pages, Scribner: $2). The spirit and content of the book are delightful. There is great wisdom—not merely knowledge—tolerance without sentimentalism, and keen satire where satire is due. Snobbery and arrogance come in for their share of it in no ambiguous terms. Stuart Sherman is always alert to fend off scintillating and artificially-heated attacks on the genuine achievements of American writers he is quite as ready to slash at sand-built, and unwarranted American pretensions and reputations. His demands are sincerity, sense, and ideals, qualities which he himself possesses in high degree. He is good reading whether you are on his side or at the other end of his lance.
Creative Spirits of the Nineteenth Century, by Georg Brandes, translated by Rasmus B. Anderson (12mo, 478 pages; Crowell: $3). "Criticism is an art" is the sound postulate planted in the author's preface and equally sound and taken for granted are most of his conclusions. The thoroughness of Brandes is extraordinary: he marches around and around his subject, viewing it from all angles—technical, biographical, historical, and philosophical. One is wearied, however, by the slowness of his step and the lack of style in his gait, both accentuated by his clumsy translator. Granted that criticism is an art, it should be shaped, energized, and crystallized as one, so that structure and style satisfy as completely as do its penetrations, information, and judgements.
