PAGE FOUR THE MICHIGAN DAia. SUNDAY, DECEMBER 9, 1923
Books Reviewed
ordered close as we are taught the from such magazines as The Dial, Po- interest challenged by novelty, but
trained writer brings his work. Ra- etry, and The Measure, and one finds in the year 1923 they are irritating.
ther it moves slowly, ponderously at such more or less familiar names as They are to be excused on the sup-
times, gathering force of reality as it Bertha Ten Eyck James, Elizabeth position that they were written during
AhTiO-DON GESUALDO, by Go. progressee. Sometimes the thread of Madox Roberts, and Marian Manly the early life of the Club.
vanni Verga. Translated by D. H. Don GesuaIdo's fortunes is almost when turning over the pages. It may be said with condence that
Lawrence. (Thomas Sel er, 1923, forgotten in the churning about of the Lyrics, like the poor, 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 a kind of tiresome famil- need not apologize that they are in blank verse, Li Sien, which is
brain 'touis 'teneve a book aphers iarity about the story, a reminiscence many. I like particularly "Requies" hased upon a legend from the classics
thatdoes not requirea taking sp os of things once well-known but half- by Maurice De Roven, which begins of China. The story is told with beau-
cudgels, for or against. Sth a novel forgotten. The world appears, withi ty and directness and with an un-
its eternal verities of humanity's un- "Press se csm to yotr cool sandy
is D. H. Lawrence's translation of breastel
V reason and the shackles of habit and ,, imagery.
Verga's Mastro-Don Gesutaldo. In thel Dune-Mother. . .
. i hirt1. It stands forth in little, all its b Robert Morss Lovett of The New
ease of a book first published in 15SS And this reminds one that the habitat .
. .r . parts moving together, as if seen in Republic has written the preface,
it is not necessary for the critic as perspective from anoti'er age. where these particular poets gave to which tells hew The Poetry Club of
s'tchs hos' creatie vtsharye u sift very like living as a god might see it. airy noiiguess sanie is Chica0. the University of Chicago-perhaps
watch how creative winds are shift- 'Many of the people who love citiesh
ing: any implications such a novel e said o i recent poetryhest talked of oup of its kind-
may have had will long since have In closing let us breathe thet famiil havelived in Chicago. Here we find came to be.
worked out their own salvation or iar word of benediction on the trans- --DOltOTHY TYLER
ir Tecsoven atd Bertha Ten Eyck
destruction, lation. M r. Lawrence has succeeded James extolling their city, not as
Giovanni Verga is known (to any in transferrin the idiom of one lan- "hog butcher to the world," but never- "It is no consolation to better men
of us to whom he is known at all) as guage to the idiom of another an- theless as a place where beauty and to sy to them that others also suffer;
the librettist of Mascagni's opera, guge without making the business of ugliness touch elbows. The poems of yet one must always institute compar-
"Cavalleria Rusticana." This work, the transfer lou apparent. Pearl Andelson are reminiscent of ison, and then it will be found that
like Gesuado, belongs to his later JAdelaide Crapsey's Cinquins, 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 genres. "Portrait of an Old Lady": Ludwig van Beethoven, "Letters"
Burdened with the adolescent emo UNIVERSITY POETS "p flutters a hand to caress
tion of youth he published a series of N T Midway in the prayer, ttilliaindtocar11eI1s1sN11111Ci{llll!
novels in which, as one commentatorI Her Sabbath dress,
remarks, "Russian countesses en- UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO POETRY The fail gray of her hair."
tangle themselves in bizarre intrigues CcticiJ3cGee, I923. 2. -.if there is an unsatisfactory ele-
with Florentine students." People other than those interested ment in this anthology of college
Then his work took a new taci. Ipersonally in the poets represented verse it is the inclusion -ol a certain
The story of how this happened is a in Collected Verse 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 structural rhythm to commend it, and
seldom that one can attribute a change this little volume. For it has poemstwhich 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 Imerely as interesting sidelights on have been rad a few years ago with
log, illiterate, but breathing the very one's literary friends. Much of the the equanimity possessed in the pres-
odor of realism in its crudity. This poetry included has been reprinted ence of nocessary evil ad with the
turned the trick; it came as balm
to his worn sensualist soul. He left I:1 lu ' * I-1i:CICrIC:fuIlfI-lEleEH fuuIE Ililts lI!i' 8LIS IID
the ways of Fogazzaro and D'Annun-
zio for the tide of "verism," an infil-
tration from France and ZIola. 3.
It is this second period whence, Ditinctive all
comes the projeted trilogy of Sicilian!
life, of which only I Malavoglia andm"
Mastro-Don Gesualdo were ever com-
pleted. It was called I Vinti (The(-
Conquered) and the first volume dis-
played the harsh existence of tfee Sic-
ilian fisherfolk. The second, Gesual- w
do, tells the story of a peasant whoa_
hoists himself by his boot-straps upe e W
from the soil that gave him birth.
Far from the emotional suhjectiv-£IaretaboutH o i a
ism of his early novels, the author yuHa e^thnking ab u
here maintains a god-like objectivity con ul. y
toward his characters. He presents decorating consult us. W e
Gesualdo'sstruggles to wealth, and ,B o o k s
his death made bitter by the certain will gladly give you advice.
knowledge that his work will be dis-
membered and all trace of his per- s kand
sonality disappear as soon as he is From our stock of high-grader
well underground. Books
There is the cold flame of higher wall paper you may select
comedy playing around the rim of
this earthly tragedy as Verga lays out just the thing ou want. If oufor
the geography of Gesualdo's jifu
There is something grimly and eter-
nally comic in this peasant's toil. A desire paint, we can supply
man crafty and shrewd beyond his Wa
ilk, he schemes and labors, gathering you also. W all paper and now
slowly and with gaining speed the fi-Jy
nancial reins of the community into paint is guas ass- On
his hands. His marriage with a wo- satisfaction-
man of the local nobility raises him t dE h i
out of his own class and yet his origin teed.E xhibiton
bars him from this desicated aristoc-
racy-he is a man without a country,
bearing his whole universe on his a
shoulders, unaided.
His claim for immortality is his ,R.-- '
estate, a vast, ungainly amalgamation WR S
of lands and affairs, got together
with arduous and austere toil, and Bookstores
stamped with the impress of the man.
This is his passport to posterity, yet, iQ- STATE MAIN
as he slowly breaks under disease and .L i a O . TE R
faily misfortune, it is his irate to tn"-o c TETSRE
see it disintegrate. He dies, far from
his possessions, smothered in the Phone 237 203 E. Washington St.
grandeur of his daughter's house, the
establishment for which his fields are Consult Us Before Buying
sold.
The tory does notgo quickly to an j aaEnulaf i jflii!SiMl iff 1 t E : , ttt#!!Ettit fltltftlhIllttfltUttiitfllNt;:h'