BThE MICHIGAN DA SUNDAY, DEICEMBER 4 1923
Reviewed
- ordered close as we are taught the i from such magazines as The Dial, Po- interest challenged by novelty, but
FOR MEN LIKE G bDs trained writer briggs his work. Ra- etry, and The Measure, and one finds in the year 1923 they are irritating.
ther it m oves slowly, pondeously at such more or less familiar names as They are to be excused on the sup-
tim, gathering iforce of reality as it Bertha Ten Eyck James, Elizabeth j position that they were written during
mAS lT'O-DON GESUALDO, by Gio. progresses. Sometimes the thread of I Madox Roberts, and Marian Manly the early life of the Club.
vini Verg. Translated byP . . Don Gesualdo's fortunes is almost when turning over the pages. It may be said with coodence that
Lawrence. (Thomas Seltzer, 192,, forgotten in the ohurning about of the. Lyrics, like the por, are always the most outstanding achievement is
village gossip and intrigue. ( with us, but those of The Poetry Club Marian Manly's long narrative poem
There is always a lull In the crilcal There is a kind of tiresome famil- need not aplogize that they are in blank verse, Li Sien, which is
brsainstorm whenever a book appears iarity about the story, a reminiscence many. I like particularly "Reques" based upon a legend from the classics
that does not require a taking up of of things once well-known but half- by Maurice De Koven, which begins of China. The story is told with beau-
cudgels, for or against. Such a novel' forgotten. The world appears, wit "Press me close to your cool sandy ty and directness and with an on-
is D. M. Lawrence's translation of its eternal verities of humanity's un- breast, erring instinct for the most telling
Verga's Mastro-Don Gesualdo. In the reason and the shackles of habit and Dune-Mother. . ."imagery.
case of a book first published in 18S8 birth. It stands forth in little, all its Robert Morss Lovett of The New
it is not neceseary fox the critic as parts moving together, as if seen in And this reminds one that the habitat Republic has written the preface,
sot eea hr twheretheseparticularpoets gave t which tells how The Poetry Cb of
soothsayer to keep a sharp eye out to perspective from another age. It Iiry
watch how creative winds are shift- very like living as a god might see it.! airy nothingness a name is Chicago. the University of Chicago-perhaps
ing: any implications such a novel *M*. * * any th le wh ectesr the most ialked of group of its kind-
may have had will long since have In closing let us breathe the famil- have aid in reent came to be.
have lived in Chicago. Here we find cam; tobe
worked out their own salvation of iar word of benediction on the trans- .d T-DOROTHY TYLER
destruction. lation. Mr. Lawrence has succeeded James extolling their city, not as
Giovani Verga is known (to any in transferring the idiom ot one ofn- "hog butcher to the world," but never- "It is no consolation to better men
of us to whom he is known at all) as ""age to the idiom of another an-i theless as a place where beauty and to say to them that others also suffer;
the librettist of Mascagni's opera, guage without making the business of ugliness touch elbows. The poems of yet one must always institute compar-
"Cavalleria Rusticana." This work, the transfer too apparent. Pearl Andelson are reminiscent of! ison, and then it will be found that
Iik esuado, elons tohis aterJnoz -Panurge
like Gesualdo, belongs to his les: - , ' J : rg Adelaide Crapsey's Cinquails, though we all suffer or err only in a differ-
or Sicilian period, for he achieved the ' they lack intensity. She has this- ent way."
distinction of writing in two genrt -''"Portrait of an Old Lady": Ludwig van Beethoven, "Letters"
Burdened with the adolescent e 1UNIVERSITY POETS "Up flutters a hand to caress
tion of youth he published a series of, Midway in the prayer, illUhi llillllllii~l iiltiiiiillililll1if
novels in which, as one commentator I ' - Her Sabbath dress,
remarks, "Russian countesses en- uNlI VERSTY OF CItICAGO POETRY The fail gray of her hair"
tangle themselves in bizarre intrigues Covicivicef.'e, 192. $2.50. If there is an unsatisfatory ele-
with Florentine students.'' People other than those interested ment in this anthology of college
Then his work took a new tack. personally in th poets represented verse it is the inlusion of, a certain
The story of how this happened is a Iin Collected Vs 'by The Poetry Club amount of vers libre which has no
favorite one with the critics, for it is of the University'of Chicago will buy structura1 rhythn 'to commend it, and
seldom that one can attribute a change this little volume. For it has poems which is condemned more than faintly
in a man's work to a single immediate which may be read as poetry, and not by the content. Such things would
cause. Verga came across a ship's merely as interesting sidelights on have been read a few years ago It_
log, illiterate, but breathing the very one's literary friends. Much of the! the equani ity possessed in the pres-
ot r of relim in its crudity. This poetry included has been reprinted ence of newessary evil and with the
turned the trick; it came as balm-
to his wojn sensualist soul. He left ll a lI9E99 ilI99lslEllhl:Ils s9nse rnlwu Em'u
the ways of Fogazzaro and D'Annun- '
a for the tide of "verism," an infil-
(ration from France and ole.s
It is this second ,period whence 'istinctive W all
comes the projected trilogy of Sicilian
life, of.'which' only I Malavoglia and
Mastro-Don Gesualdo were ever com-
pleted.. It was calied I Vinti (The
peeIwa-aldIVit(Tee PConquered) and the first volume dis-
played the harsh existence of the Sie-
ilian fisherfolk. The second, Gesual---
do, tells' the 'story of- a peasant who
hoists himself by his boot-straps up - ^ h e N e w
from the soil that gave him birth._ _ __ _ _
Far from the emotional subjectiv-
lam of his early novels, the author yf ou are thinking about
toward sa ohi chrs cterstiBe 'p rseresents y u tikn b u o i a
here maintains god-like objectity decorating consult us. We
Gesualdo's struggles to wealth, and
his death made bitter by the certain B o gi you a
knowledge that his work-will be dis- willgladly gve you advice.
membered and all trace of his per- and
sonality disappear as soon as he is From our stock of high-grade
well undergrouid. F m r t o h -
There is the cold flame of- higher waU paper you may select ooks
comedy playing around the rim of
this elthly-tragedy as Verga lays out .for
the geography of Gesualdo's life Just the thingyou want. if you
Thiere :is somnethintggrimxly and -eter- ya*
nally comic in this peasant's toil, A desire paint, we can supplyC h i re
man' crafty and shrewd- beynd his
ilk,-he-sohemes and labors, gathering - you and now
g I yo alo. allpaperan
slowly and with gaining speed the fi-.
nancial reins of the community into * * * i
his hands. His marriage with a wo- paint satsfaction is guaran on
man of the local nobility raises him
out of his own class and yet his origin ~teed.
ray.-h sa:.nwthu_ cutyExhibition
bara him from this desicated ariatoc-
racy--he is a man without a country,
bearing his whole universe on hisat
shoulders, unaided.
His claim fo- immortality is his imp R%'S
estate, a vast, ungainly amalgamation3- R '
of lands and affairs, got together 91
with arduous and aastene toil, and"a- EsD lU ' eE3 M:
stamped with the impress of the man. t=
This is his passport to posterity, yet, STATE MAI
as herslowly breaks under disease and j1
family misfortune, it is his fa 'to STAEIT STREET
see it disintegrate. He digs,-far from -
his possessions,, smothered in- the: Phone 237, 203 E. W hington St.
grandeur of his daughter's house, the
establ et fr which his fields ar Consult Before uyIng
sold. as z_
The..story does note gvickly to as ,"_HMRMBMNMR RMMEMEE iM6tf9Ruiih8Utdiii