The weekly times-record. (Valley City, N.D.) 1912-1922, 1921-03-24

0Ilulul. AntcT LIE dECCh ilIlytIlOlO&N
! was revealed to him, making a last
ing impression upon his mind. But i
was the Bible that gave him that
/ limpid style which makes his mos
| fantastic tales seem so real. tt
quote him: "For years no style seem.
ed to me natural but that of the Bible
and 4 feared chat would never be-
come a writer when saw that other
people did not use it. 5
For some fifteen years he has been
a rather frequent and increasingly val
ued Contributor to English and Anglo
Irish periodicals. Among his publica-
tions are five volumes: "The Gods of
Pegana," "Time and the Gods. 1906;
"The Sword Of Wellran," 1908; "a
.Dreamer's Tales" 1910; and sThe
Book of Wonder" 1912. All are col
lections Of prose pieces that defy ac-
copied classification. They are fairy
tales, short stories, essays, and prose
poems at the tame time.
Among his plays are "The Glitter
Unknown Warrior, "the Gods of the
Mountain, 1.-THE Golden DOOM, "The
Lost Silk Hat, "The Tents of the
Arabs; The Night at an Inn, "The
Queens Enemies. and "The Laugh
ter of The Gods. all Of them written
between 1909 and 1917.
In his desire to, escape from the
burden and heat of the present day,
Lord Dunsany is merely doing as
.Maesterlinck, Claude, D'Annunzio,
Hauptmann, Synge and others, have all
at one time or another done before
him. Though his province is more I'm
real than real, it is possible to locate
roughly the region in which he most
OFTEN sets his plots as somewhere in
the East Of Antiquity. Like many Of
his contemporaries he has felt the
spell of the Orient Its age. its con-
tinuity, its simple speech, its poetical
mysticism. He is obsessed by it's SON
orous names upon which he plays
strange variations, and by it's pictures
que divinities, which he reincarnates
for his own fantastic purposes. How
ever, his East is No Mans East. and
he is not only the master, but the
maker of the countries to which he
takes US on such fascinating jaunts.
Through all his plays the greatest
possible economy of means has been
observed, so that not word, not a
tone not gesture is wasted in OBJ
tanning the desired effect. The char
acters speak simply, like Maeter-
linck's, but always to the poift. Lord
Dunsany has his own way of making
use of frequent repetition as means
of marking an accent Or keying up q
progression, as in the opening lines of
The Gods of the Mountain. Three
begars are discussing the state of
their calling; it is the part of the third
to elaborate the ideas that arise, while
the second is merely an echo. &
More important than his fantastic
settings and strange divinities is his
tendency to generalize action and
characters. He starts with an idea
embodied in some widely known
phase of human experience. The de-
takes place in world con-
structed on arbitrarily simple lines.
Of detailed physical setting his. plays
have little enough. of social back
ground they have practically nothing.
This is at once strength and weak
ness; strength in that the action
stands out with striking vividness, a
weakness in that it never attains it's
full meaning. r. ~. .a,.
Several of his plays have been pro-
duced in this country and with imme-
date success ~