The sun. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1916-1920, 1919-06-29


COidS d agHOH is an original eOmpOsl-
ton. The book is written in the spirit
and style of Rabelais and the MEDIEVAL
French ''fabhauZ," half prose, half verse
which fact will hardly surprise the read
ers who had already detected the poet
lurking in Jean ChriStophe behind til
novelist and the musician. We ike that
seventeenth century incarnation of the
French Jacques Bonhomme, completely
cleared of German "sehnsueht" and dis
guising his social pessimism and diseon-
tent under the "rire gaulois.' Why did
ROLAND go across the Rhine to fetch a
German Jean Christophe when COlas
Breugnon was at handf
The war has inspired many French
poets and among others the late Edmond
Rostand, whose war poems are now pub
lislled by Fasquale in Paris under the title
of lie Foi de Ia Aars$illaise The Flight
Of The HarseiIIaisel. Some of the worst
and also of the best ROstsnd will he found
in the volume. Among other poems for the
American reader we may point to The
Song Of the Stars, which recalls Whit
mans Song Of the Banner at Daybredk; ;
to the piece entitled Hello, mailing the
first arrival Of American soldiers on the
Marne. Ia charge, Condolences (On the
sinking Of the Lusitania, and others re-
mind one of the best satires of Victor
Hugo in his Ckdtiments.
The gem of the collection is probably
L6toiIe entire les peupIiers The Star
Among the Poplar Trees with dra-
matte evocation of the French trooper in
the past ages and fine philosophy of
French patriotism in the form of cate
chism
TO the reade, tired of war tragedies
we recommend the brothers Tharaud's Les
Heures Marocaines Hours ~ Morocco
and Jean Giraudoux's Amicd America.
The brothers Tharaud made a name for
themselves before the war with La Ser
Udnte Maitresse The Mistress Servant
aud La Tr0gedie de RapailIGc, and more
recently A L'OmJre de la Croir In the
ShadoW of the Cross Theirs is a new
and very artistic realism. II is Flaubert's
art and method to which, in the Heres
Narocoines. the Tharauds have added the
glamour of Pierre Lott without his pessi-
mism. The book is an entirely original
addition to French colonial literature.
One at least of the Tharauds has been
during the war on the staff of that fine
French proconsul of North Africa, Gen.
Lyautey, who saved Morocco for France,
then fighting for life, with all her re-
sources thrown into the fray, on the
Marine Morocco, in the Tharauds' book,
enters French literature as did America in
Chateaubriand's novels and the near and
far East in those of Lott. All the lure
and fascination of picturesque Africa
hold in the Tharauds prose rs they did
in the paintings of Delacroix and Eugene
Fromentin.
Jean Grandeur in his 4mica America
could be labelled a French Henry James
if he were not so much like a reincarna-
ton of that philosopher of French tlirt
in the eighteenth century, Marivaux.
Sometimes a eonceited "pointilliste," al
ways an original artist and the most fas-
chatting of French present day "ima-
gists," Jean Giraudoux has invented a
new way of writing. His are the mag
ination and technics of japanese artist
For some time Harvard student, then
an instructor of the Harvard regiment,
his artistic originality makes Giraudoux
find a United States Of his own. The
book, finely printed and illustrated by
Maxine Dethomas, will stand, despite a
few eccentrieities, as a sample of modern
French art at its newest and its eleverest
w.
Books of essays and criticism are many.
Among them, those who have already read