100%

Scanned image of the page. Keyboard directions: use + to zoom in, - to zoom out, arrow keys to pan inside the viewer.

Page Options

Download this Issue

Share

Something wrong?

Something wrong with this page? Report problem.

Rights / Permissions

This collection, digitized in collaboration with the Michigan Daily and the Board for Student Publications, contains materials that are protected by copyright law. Access to these materials is provided for non-profit educational and research purposes. If you use an item from this collection, it is your responsibility to consider the work's copyright status and obtain any required permission.

November 11, 1923 - Image 18

Resource type:
Text
Publication:
The Michigan Daily, 1923-11-11

Disclaimer: Computer generated plain text may have errors. Read more about this.

PAGE SIX

THE MICHIGAN DAILY

SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 11, 1923

crt Frost at his lightest. Mere music ing of Russian literature as intensely
of words does not make good poetry. gloomy. The better-known Chekov
I can see nothing but childishness in leaves us with a sense of futility.
Hjow could life annoy me Dostievski with the melancholy mor-
Any more? bidness of existence. Chekov is a so
of the eighties, when surrounding
Life: a lighted window life was horror-strbken. People
And a closed dor. made attempts to adopt a philosophy
CARROLL LANE FENTON. of life to fit the brutal political and
social environment. That was the
time of no hope, of shilly-shallying,
s.S.s MR. BUNIN AGAIN of tears; it was the Age of Futility.
A I But Bunin, in this little collection
Keith Preston, himself a reviewer variety for their pains. Poe in his of stories, is not concerned with the
of hooks, evidently knows the ways stories accomplished a little, and so THE DREAMS OF CHANG, y Russian characteristics of this futil-
of his kind. Should anyone doubt Mr. did Oscar Wilde. But all of them are ity and passive resistance. Even in
Preston's, familiarity with the process outdone by Hecht, who achieves reB in. 'rle y A nrd the eight remaining stories, which are
of literary criticism, let him read suits that are very literally uncanny. unopf, 192.G2.A0. Russian in character, scene, and trat-
unan.hiof,121.s.0 ment,,the philosophy of the Rusian,
this: I He has a good yarn, of course, and Ivan Bunin does not belong to the which is as dreary as their vast
I took up the book at midnight it helps him out greatly, but his real school of realism predominant among steppes, Is missing. In these stories-
As the clock was striking the hour, achievement lies in style. It is that, Russian writers of the last fifty years. "An Evening in Spring," "Aglaa,"
And the moon o'er Greenwich ViHage not plot, which lifts THE FLOREN- He is a product of the revolutionry "The Grammar of Love," "A. Night
Lit up the ivory tower. TINE DAGGER far above the ranks period of Russian literature, which Conversation", "A Goodly Life," we
of the ordinary, and makes it a mys may roughly be said to estend from get glimpses of Russian village life,
I opened tIhe ook at midnight; tery tale with true worth, the '90's to the revolution of 1917. Yet with the moujik, the merchant, the
Ioedteoktmdngt;____aeihtrewot=he is of the old school, and belongs "gymnasia" youth as the principal
This review of, it was done, to the atmosphere of ancient tradi- characters. Those precious features
I had lunched and had my nightcap, b tons on which he has been reared. Me of Russian literature-the qualities of
Ere my cuckoo clock struck one!. SWEET VERSIFICA is not a modernist, and does not use depth, earnestness, simplicity-are
As the ironic author might say, I TION jthe artificial means of symbolism, im- present in these little sketches. But
cuckoo criticisml _pressions, or decadence. But he Bxnin is detached in his attitude. He
SECOND CONTEMPORARY VERSE cannot avoid the influence of his time. does not live the life of the village,
His works, eecialy his Poems, are de o ufe h anof.ispepe
I'm, well aware -of the fact that it ANTHOLOGY, edited -by Charles ilsors, eseiagey i pes, aedoes not suffer the pain its people,
colorful, and tinged with ipressio- does-not -share its visions. le Is
has become unfashionable for anyone Wharton Stork. (E. P. button & ims. merely an observer.
who ise,--r .rie to rie, o te C., 8).Seven of the fifteen newly transist- "The Grammar of Love", a story of
heights of Ii. H.. Lawrence, James "Contemporary Verse" ranks with ed short stories, or sketches, which a nobleman's devotion to a moujik wo-
Branch Cabell, and Waldo Frank, to Miss Monroe's "Poetry"' smewhat as come under the title of The Dreams of man, which last twenty years after
praise a meren.mystery tale. But then the "New Statesman" compares with Chang are not what we would call her death, is perhaps -the most sym-
I never was fashionable, so am free the "Liberator"-a milder, s nationally Russian, taking Turgienev, pathetic of the collection, although
to admit myself captivated by Mr, Ben ess.virile contemporary. For those Chekov, Andreyev and Pushkin to be this, too, .is objective. Here Bunin is
Hecht's Florentine Dagger, issued by who cannot endure the poetry of "national". They are as versatile and on familiar ground, he feels more at
M s i v t a rg o on-cosmopolitan a group of stories that home, for he is, first and last, a noble-
Messrs. Boni & Lveright. Pleasure Kreymborg, Sadburg, Simons, "Con- might have been written by a master' man of the old r'egime. In "I Say
began .with the cover, a beautiful af- temporary Verse"' makes the best of Englishman traveling abroad. "The Nothing" as in "A Night Conversa-
fair of natural linen and black; it reading, as will this anthology. But Dreams of Chang", the tale of a sea! ltion", he gives us a lucid picture of
increased with a hasty survey of the for the life of me I can see little in it captain's degeneration, is a story of the brutality of the moujik, the ugli-
five illustrations by Wallace Smith, but pretty versification. There are Odessa-but the place is incidental. ness and misery of his existence, and
and culminated in the reading of the four poems that may be really great The setting could have been Vienna,,the bareness of the moujik soul. Bun-
story itself. Not only is there origin- -those by Reese, England, Huckfield, or 'London, or New York. "Brethren" in has not Tosto's idealistic hope for
l1ty and suspense in the plot and its and Middleton. There are others by is a story of a native of Ceylon, a the peasant's spiritual awakening
arickshaw-man. "Gautami" is of the He comes later in the century, when
working-out; the very sentences a5d S. V. Benet, Glenn Ward Dresbach, Himalyain Mountains; "The Son" is the tide of peasant propaganda had
words are of themselves dark, threat- John Farrar, Joyce Kilmer, Lew Sa- distinctly Frenchi "The; Gentleman passed, leaving only a few ripples in
ening, full of mystery. If we may rett, Sara Teasdale, and Harold Vinal from San Francisco" is American or its wake.
judge from the monthly output, al- that are good, though by no means ex- English, or cosmopolitan. None of Of the collection, I would say "The
most anyone can devise a tale of ceptional; rest. are rather mediocre. the stories mentioned are Russian in' Dreams of Chang" and "The Gentle-
crime that will keep his readers guess- character, yet the finesse of the mnfrom San Francisco" are the out-
p guess- Clment Woodwho has written some' sin touch is present In the economymafrmSnFncsoarthou-
ing till the very end. But to put the storng prose, makes a specialty weak of words, and the force and signific- standing.
suspense, the pure mystery into the showing in "I Pass a Lighted Win- ance of their meaning. Bunin is not well known in this
words of the story is a far more diffi- dow", a poem in the manner of Rob- We have been in the habit of think- (Continued on Page Seven)
cult matter. English is a poor lan
guage at its very best, and its prosaic
dlullness does nt encourage the writ--fsv so c
er who uses it to indulge in syllable The habit of saving is one, once
painting. The 'old style poets tried
it, and few of them succeeded in get- sthtr l i e r
ting more that music of the pretty time goes on. It is like other
BOOK REVIEWs t OWs BS er'habits, hard to break once it has
(Continued from Page Five)
those girls who sought "pagan love' . ' been thoroughly fixed.
as he did were too respectable, too w the m hais.s
much divided against themselves to; Unlike so many other habits it is
make it real, while those who made
pagan love a vocation were too dull one that has entirely beneficial
and sordid to tolerate. Roger lost's
many of the illusions that had helped results. It insures a wholesome
him leave the southern town hwhich financial standing for you in the
he hated, yet managed to pil through{' ' o
and achieve an individuality of his community where you reside. It
own. When Janet met him, he owned
a Village bookstore, and was doing disperses the spectre of poverty
well in spirit as well as in substance.ay
He's made a good fight, and won.
The final section of the book con-
cerns the lovd-making of Roger and continue your work.
Janet. Roger, who has ceased, to be-
lieve in happiness, makes a rather Begin today to form this habit of
comical figure, albeit an honest one.t
Janet converts him-at least to the saving. Resolve to save a def-
point where he admits that they have
achieved something real.in te sum each m o n t h . The
From this it will be seen that Mr. pleasure of watching it grow
Dell has written a full story, and w ill more than compensate you
one that has movement. It is better 'co
than either "Moon-Calf" or "The 1 for the small effort it will cost

Briary Bush", for its characters por-
tray types and generations as well as you to forego a few of the un-
individuals. One may question his -
point that the modern girl is far more necessaries.
determined, more capable, and more
certain of herself than is the modern The nn Arbor Savings Bank
}boy. But he cannot quand Roger, for
they are real people, moving in areal UNIVERSITY AVENUE BRANCH
world with no strings either of the-
ory or plot that control their actions.

Back to Top

© 2024 Regents of the University of Michigan