The Portland daily press., 1891-04-02
CON CORNING BOOKS
BY K. CAvAzzA.

The Epic Of the Inner Life. By John F.
Genung. In his translation and comment
upon the great first epic Of humanity, the
Book of Job. Professor Genung has followed
way all his own, and has been able to in
| vest the poem with new light and meaning
for modern times. Instead of insisting at
all costs upon the didactic value of the poem,
treating 1t as formal disputation finished
| by a competent charge to the jury Of all man.
| kind justifying to them the ways OF God
he reads the Book of Job as marvellous
poem which expresses the confusion of
righteous man under seemingly causeless
affection, the doubts. the terrors, the contra
dictions which assail his spirit that still
maintains its integrity and stretches upward
through the darkness, with an instinct Of
faith nobler than any assurance of reason.
As Professor Genung notes. the Book of
Job is too much like life to lend itself to
plain moral conclusion. 1t is too genuine to
60 straight as crow flies, to its aim, but
goes stumbling and deviating, among the
stones and the brambles of the hard earth.
The literary difficulties OF the Book of Job
have been increased by its arbitrary division
into chapters and verses, and also by the natu-
raj predisposition Of councils of Its translators
to emphasize everywhere religious and moral
didacticism and to blunt the fine edge of its
poetry by an averaging Of the individual
views and readings Of these Interpreters.
Professor Genung, on the contrary. brings to
it the illumination of his one mind, and the
simple endeavor to see the poem as 1t was
written and remains. He finds it to be the
epic of solitary soul; with the barest set
ting of exterior objects. The ash-heap out
side the city walls and the hardly less arid
friends of Job are the witnesses Of his su-
perb battle. Too often-as Professor Gen.
ung observes-the comment of religious
writers brings forward disproportionately
| the human element. to the neglect of the
| divine, reducing to dialogue of the specula-
lions of company:of bewildered mortals
with thunderbolt of decision to end 1.-THE
superb vindication.
To which both heaven and earth have set their
hand.
For the words In which Dante described
his Commedia, apply also to the song of Job.
To neglect the significance Of the prologue
n heaven, is indeed, to miss the meaning of
the poem. AS to Its literary form, Professor
Genung explains it as in line with Lord
Tennyson's Maud and In Memoriam-ane epic
developed by sequence of lyrics. His CON-
ment upon the restless, trivial, vulgar Satan
| of the prologue is interesting. Yet finer and
| sounder comment even than his has lately
been made in a volume Of religious essays
| by Rev. A. jackson, in which Satan is repre-
scented as the spirit that tries and Sits the soul
| of men, that was able to prove how little of
dry chaff mingled with the fine wheat of the
character of JOB. Perhaps we may say that
in the trial of Job for his fitness to be
saint, the poet has allotted to Satan precisely
the part Of the druocato del diduolo; that is,
he brings to light whatever Of evil may be in
| the life of the candidate for canonization, as
| is required by the rule of the process, and is
summoned there on purpose that he may be
defeated.
Professor Genung's translation will recon-
mend itself by its poetic beauty land by the
many points of verbal light which it casts
upon poem whose splendor of eloquent
verify has not been surpassed in course of
the ages. Boston: Houghton. Miffin & Co. !;
Portland; Loring, Short & Harmony Price
$125.
A New England Nun, and Other Stories.
By Mary E. Wilkins. AS writer of short
stories, no one in America has more charm
and efficiency than Miss Wilkins. Her tenn
permanent is delightful; that Of an idealist
by nature who is also realist by conviction.
Therefore she is never prOsaic or heavy In
her narrative; sometimes the vein of poetry
runs unseen, like brook amid tall grass,
then leaps into the light, flashing jewels
upon the meadow. The sweetness and So
briefly of her art give a delicate modelling to
her truly dramatic conceptions. She under
stands with extreme intelligence and sympa-
thy the life of New England village. the
repressions from which it sometimes breaks
away with an impulse stronger than itself,
the hard shell of habit, the curious reserves,
the unspoken tendernesses. the unexpected
TURNS of the will which reverse the action of
years. All these things, and many more,
Miss wilkins embodies in great number OF
types, delicately different, and all undenia'
BILE as real life. There is Louisa, the nun
like woman to whom the minute niceties, the
religious suppression of dust or flies. was
dearer than the broader existence that might
have been hers; the curious neighbor who
caused the black silk gown, joint possession
Of two quantity proud sisters, to be burned
by frecracker in order to discover the in
nocent secret; the maidens, different only as
this years rose from the rose of yesterday,
and their tender romance; the really superb
drama Of the revolt Of mother" with its
touching close of victorious Submissions
variety of personages and stories that show
equally the creative gift and the fine, certain
touch in delineation. AS an example of Miss
wilkins poetic feeling, passage may be
cited from the story of the Village Singer,
rather cruelty replaced in the singing. seats
by young soprano, and who dies consumed
by fever of wounded sentiment, forgiving
her rival:
"Candace lay and listened. Her face had
holy and radiant expression. When Alma
stopped singing 1t did not disappear, but she
looked up and spoke, and 1t was like Sec
ondary glimpse of the old shape of forest
tree through the smoke and flame of the
TRANSPORTING fire the instant before It falls,
You fiatted little On-soul,' said Candace."
New York; Harper & Brothers: Portland:
Loring. Short 81 Harmony