Idling in Italy Part 3

Before the Great War he had practically pa.s.sed from the stage of letters. That epochal occurrence resurrected him. We can wait to hear what posterity will say of him.

CHAPTER IV THE FUTURIST SCHOOL OF ITALIAN WRITERS

The Italians are a people of great emotional complexity, displaying a strange mixture of idealism and realism. They are at present engaged in constructing an edifice which shall be the admiration of the world for all time, to wit, a third Italy. Naturally the designers, the architects, the builders and the prospective inhabitants hope that it will be more ideal, more commodious, more adapted to its purposes than its predecessors. To the sympathetic observer, however, they appear to limit themselves narrowly to old building material.

There is nothing which mirrors the individual and composite mind of a country so illuminatingly as its literature. The man craving for power prefers the allegiance of a country's song-writers to that of its lawgivers. That a tremendous change has taken place to-day, not only in the songs of Italy but in all her literature, must be admitted. This change has been in process for a generation and is going on with increasing rapidity.

Italian literature is now going through a phase quite as distinct as that which characterized the romanticism initiated by Manzoni and which ended with the advent of Carducci. It would be difficult to find a word which would adequately express the spirit of it-perhaps the most descriptive one is protest. The new writers protest against the social, political, and religious acceptances of the past fifty years. They object to the acceptance of alleged facts substantiated only by tradition; they refuse adherence to teachings, doctrines, modes of thought and expression merely because they are old; they reject dogma originating in self-const.i.tuted authority, no matter how long or by whom it has been sanctioned and privileged, no matter how securely rooted. They will have none of the conventionalism which is out of harmony with the present conditions of life and with the present yearning for liberty. They stand against the teaching that the flesh must be punished in order that the soul may be purified, as they do against all slavish stereotypy, moss-covered convention, and archaic laws.

They claim instead that the best of life is to be found in purposeful action; that life should be speeded up, and that every one should be encouraged to live fully for the advantage that may come to himself, to those to whom he is beholden, and to the world. They advocate the strenuous life and invite the new and unforeseen, while urging exploration of untrodden fields and especially determination of things called inaccessible and unrealizable. They advocate equal life for men and women, and seek to give to such words as "patriotism" and "idealism" a fuller significance, so that the former shall not mean the heroic idealization of commercial, industrial, and artistic solidarity of a people but a love of liberty and a knowledge, recognition, and appreciation of what other people and other countries are attempting and accomplis.h.i.+ng; and that the latter may be applied to the affairs of life and not to the affairs of the imagination.

This movement, in Italy, was begun by a group of men who called themselves Futurists and, if that name can be dissociated from the connotation that is given to it when applied to art, I see no objection to it. It has been influenced by the French Symbolists of the preceding generation, Baudelaire, de Goncourt, Villiers de l'Isle-Adam, Mallarme, Verlaine, Huysmans, Rimbaud, whose work so profoundly influenced the course of French literature. Like this school the self-styled futuristic writers of Italy revolt against rhetoric and against tradition. Therefore they reject equally the ardent cla.s.sicism of Carducci and D'Annunzio's decadent blend of idealism and realism, the cra.s.s, slavish Gallicism of Brocchi, the Scandinavian genuflections of Bracco and the Shavian imitations of Pirandello. In protest against all these they seek the full liberty of the written word, as the evangel of socialism seeks the liberty of the individual. Not from other writers but from reality itself, or from the depths of their own imaginations, they have received a vision and this vision they demand the right to evoke in others, by what words or what images they will. The art of expression should be speeded up, abbreviated, and epitomized, while the love of profound essentials is cultivated. To borrow from England's singer of materialistic grandeur and promise, they

" ... want the world much more the world; Men to men and women to women-all Adventure, courage, instinct, pa.s.sion, power."

And in addition, as true Futurists, they want us to have constantly in mind what happened to Lot's wife when she looked back to see how high the flames rose over Sodom and Gomorrah.

The leaders of the Futuristic movement in Italy were Guillaume Apollinaire, then editor of Les Soirees de Paris, and F. T. Marinetti of Milan.

One thing can be said of Signor Marinetti, the pope of Futurism, which no one, I fancy, will deny. He is the most amusing writer in Italy. His idea of beauty is a ma.s.sive building of concrete in course of construction with the scaffoldings lovingly embracing it. His idea of ugliness is a curve of any kind-save in the feminine body. "Parole in liberta," words free from syntactical shackles are the words with which we shall fight the battle of the future. They are the dynamite which will blow asunder literary Monte Testaccio, in which are buried the useless literary labors of his forebears but which shall also prepare the soil for a fertility that it has never possessed. Dynamism is the master-key. No artificer of the past or wizard of the future can construct a lock that it will not readily open, and as for political manacles they are as fragile as rubber bands when confronted with the doctrines of his new book, "Democrazia Futurista."

Signor Marinetti has no delusions of grandeur; he only pretends that he has. Nor is he the victim of a mental disorder which is characterized by loss of insight and megalomania. It is gratifying to be able to make this diagnosis of one of Italy's literary leaders. It offsets the diagnosis of general paresis made of Woodrow Wilson by one of Mr. Marinetti's fellow citizens and published with such elaborate attempts of substantiation in the Giornale di Italia. He merely overestimates his intellectual and emotional possessions, but he says many clever things and makes some prophecies that are likely to come through. The last European ruler who talked and acted as Signor Marinetti does got a bad spill, as is now fairly widely known. In reality, Marinetti is a Bolshevik who amuses himself behind a mask, but not all the principles of Bolshevism are bad by any means, nor even are they new. The most telling way of making a statement is to overstate it. The most successful way of getting a bad smell out of a house is to burn the house; then, if you have a good plan and plenty of time, money, and building material, you can construct yourself a house free from bad odors. However, there are other ways of making it a very livable and beautiful house, but why one should object to Mr. Marinetti's building his own house his own way is difficult to understand, unless in so doing it he makes himself such a nuisance to his neighbors that they cannot tolerate him. So far he has not done that, but when he joins force with Signor Bruno Corra, as he has in "L'Isola dei Baci" ("The Island of Kisses"), he comes perilously near it.

Apollinaire, a Pole whose real name was Kostrowitski, was born in Rome and lived in Italy until late childhood, when he went to France, where he remained until his death in 1919. He had a tremendous influence upon many of the young symbolist writers of Italy, comparable to that exercised by Stephane Mallarme on the young writers in the '80's and '90's. One of them wrote at the time of his death: "Hero of thought and of art, idealist, philosopher, genuine poet, prophetic theorist and critic, sublime soul, comrade, joyous, generous, he was also in the last years of his life a hero of humanity."

The most important figure of the school has been Giovanni Papini, who has gathered about him in Florence a coterie which includes Ardengo Soffici, the painter, critic, and novelist; Aldo Palazzeschi, poet; Alberto Savinio, wanderer, musician, and litterateur; and a long list of names more or less ancillary to Marinetti, some of which I shall mention later.

Papini, who is considered at length in another chapter, does not admit that he is a Futurist. As he puts it, he did not marry Futurism; it was for him one of many intellectual adventures, a mistress that left an indelible impression on him. He simply pa.s.sed through Futurism's influence and at the same time gave momentum to the best of that school, to Palazzeschi, Govoni, Boccioni, Folgore. Then he proceeded alone, after having become persuaded that it had become too popular and consequently less refined and select, and after the hazardous and aristocratic little group had become a species of low, bigoted democracy into which any one could enter who dangled a rosary of incomprehensible words. He left it in company with Soffici and Palazzeschi and soon Carra and others followed his example. Thus, on the death of Boccioni, the first generation of Futuristic writers reformed or disappeared.

Then there are many young men carrying the banner of literature in Italy to-day who do not call themselves Futurist, and whose writings contain less of the grotesque, which has been made familiar to Italian readers by Marinetti's "Zang Tumb Tumb." They are men of the stamp of Antonio Beltramelli, Mario Mariani, Luigi Morselli, Gino Rocca, Salvator Gotta, Lorenzo Montano, Vincenzo Cardarelli, Raffale Calzini, Enrico Cavacchioli, Alfredo Grilli, and a score of others who not alone have ideas but who keenly sense the composite world-thought, who believe that the era of Big Business will reach its apogee when it weds Big Justice, and who know how to express their ideas with explosive rhythmic eloquence and with distinction of form.

It would be presumptuous on my part to attempt to select the winners entered in the great sweepstakes of literary fame in Italy, with no qualification for prophecy or judgment than a love of literature and a lifelong ardent consumption of it. I shall, therefore, content myself with brief discussion of the work of some of these younger writers with the particular end in view of suggesting to others the pleasure and profit that may result from more intimate acquaintance with them.

About ten years ago there began to appear in the Florentine publication, La Voce, a series of articles critical and interpretative of French art. It is difficult now to believe that Cezanne, Courbet, Renoir, Pica.s.so, Henri Rousseau, Gauguin, Van Gogh, and the school of impressionists and neo-impressionists was so little known in Italy as they were at the time of the appearance of these articles from the pen of Ardengo Soffici, a painter by training and profession enrolled in the Futuristic movement. He was, in reality, the first to speak in Italy with appreciation and intelligence of the tendencies in French art shown in the last half-century which have to-day had such a stamp of profound approval put upon them. These criticisms attracted much attention from the first, and they have since been republished under the t.i.tle of "Scoperte e Ma.s.sacri" ("Discoveries and Ma.s.sacres"), and to-day they const.i.tute a trustworthy guide to the schools mentioned both in presentation and in description.

They were quite unlike previous criticisms, more particularly in a note of challenge, of insolence, and of prophecy. His judgments were stated with a firmness and tranquillity that savored of the dogmatic, and, although time has shown him to have been mistaken in his estimate of some of the artists discussed-Gauguin, for instance-it has corroborated most of them with remarkable accuracy. In a small way he did for Italian readers what Mr. MacColl did for English readers in his "Nineteenth Century Art," for, like that writer, he is an artist with a fastidious temperament who knows how to write.

Since that time Signor Soffici has published nearly a score of books-romances, criticisms, fragments which show him to be a clear thinker with a pungent style, writing what he thinks and not what he cribs from others, and not continually advertising himself as the last cry of intelligence or the most perfect type of superman. His first book was called "Ignoto Toscano" ("An Unknown Tuscan"), and appeared in 1909, but it was not until the publication of "Lemmonio Boreo" two years later that it was realized that there had appeared a writer with a definite message: a protest against the utter triviality and purposelessness of Italian middle-cla.s.s life.

The hero, an artist, who would reform many customs of the land, went about the countryside accompanied by two aids, one chosen for physical strength, the other for his "promoter" type of mind. Their encounters with the predatory innkeeper, with the peculating clerk, with the industrious stone-breaker of the roads, with the pilferer of the farm or the barn, and with the pulchritudinous peasant sitting picturesquely in her cart or gossiping in the village const.i.tute the substance of the book. It was planned to have it run into several volumes, but it stopped after the first one, without accomplis.h.i.+ng any of the reforms that the hero had essayed.

Then the writer reverted to art again and published a book on Cubism and one on Cubism and Futurism. Soon he published Giornale di Bordo, a diary of sentiment and philosophy-thoughts engendered by various environments, by reading, and by reflection. In the most casual way the author reveals his impressionable and poetic nature. They are not profound or epoch-making thoughts. They are merely the thoughts of a sane, healthy, artistic mind bathing and refres.h.i.+ng itself in the beauties of nature and contrasting them with the ugliness of most of man's handiwork.

Then came two books about the outgrowth of the military life. "Kubilek" is named after a hill on the Bainsizza Tableland where the author fought and was wounded. It gives a picture of the Italian as a soul which will be recognized as true to life by every one who has had to do with him. No one can read it without feeling an admiration and an affection for that extraordinarily loyal being the Italian soldier who tolerates hards.h.i.+p with equanimity and without complaint and who is so appreciative of anything done for his comfort or welfare. "La Ritirata del Friuli" ("The Retreat from Friuli") is not up to the author's standard.

The next book, a very small one, "La Giostra dei Sensi" ("The Joust of the Senses"), is a portrayal of the capacity shown by a "lost soul" for radiating unselfish love upon an individual who comes to her for meretricious contact but who stays to add to his spiritual stature. The scene is laid in Naples and the author utilizes the sheer beauty of the place and picturesqueness of the people to give an artistic setting for the description of the jousts. It could not possibly be published in England unless the publisher aspired to "languish" in prison.

Of the many questions I have asked in Italy none has been so unsatisfactorily answered as "Do you let your young folk read that book and what effect does it have?" No one could think of calling Soffici a p.o.r.nographic writer. Indeed, it is no exaggeration to say that he is one of the most respected and admired of all the young school of Italian writers, and yet there are pa.s.sages in the book now under discussion coa.r.s.er and more vulgar than any in the "Satyricon." Despite this it is not a circ.u.mstance to the recent book of a seventeen-year-old girl of Rome, Margherita Emplosi Gherardi, ent.i.tled "Il Nudo nelle Anime." It is dedicated to all those who deny that the youthful mind has not the capacity, discernment, liberty, and daring to envisage and interpret the painful mysteries of the human soul. There are few things more disgusting in literature, "Gamiana" excluded, than the sketch ent.i.tled "The Impure Hour," for women only.

His remaining books, "Statue e Fantocci" ("Statues and Dolls"), are made up chiefly of critical reviews, many of which have appeared in journals. They show that the writer has a mastery of literary technic and an understanding of modern art and literature creditable to himself and to his country. He can be satirical, caustic, sarcastic, but he is never brutal. He can be an ardent admirer, a valorous champion, a sympathetic interpreter, a critical friend, and a prejudiced judge, but he is never an implacable, insensate enemy, nor a literary fiend. Moreover, one does not gather from his writings that he is what is called the "whole thing" from the literary standpoint.

Signor Soffici has got some bad habits from Papini. Among these are: saying old things as if they never had been said before; taking on an air of complacency after the delivery of a sentiment or a conviction in no wise epoch-making; believing that all his geese are swans and the geese of others decoys; that his every thought is a jewel which people are frenzied to possess unless they are too stupid; and saying trivial things with the subtly conveyed insinuation that the reader should, if he is perspicacious and cultured, find a deep significance in them.

He is yet a long way from his full stature, but he is growing.

Aldo Palazzeschi (1885-) is one of the youngest of the Futuristic group who has gained enduring fame as a poet. His first volume of verses, "Cavalli Bianchi" ("White Horses"), which was published when he was twenty years old, showed him to be a youth of sensibility and originality, with capacity for tuneful verse and for dainty sentiment daintily expressed. The publication of a second volume, ent.i.tled "Lanterna" ("The Lantern"), two years later, fully justified the expectations of those who were attracted by the little gems of his early verse. But it was not until 1909, on the publication of a volume ent.i.tled "The Poems of Aldo Palazzeschi," that it was realized that there had come upon the scene a poet who might quite easily get a fame equal to that of Carducci or Pascoli.

His poems not only showed the influence of Apollinaire and Marinetti, but also of Whitman, of Mallarme, of Rimbaud, of Laforgue, and of other French writers. The dyed-in-the-wool critics saw in much of his work clownishness and infantilism, especially in such productions as "E lasciatemi divertire." They thought it should be construed: "And let me divert myself with insane-asylum poetry." They were quite right from their standpoint, but a fellow poet whose emotional mechanism is not so equilibrated as that of the sort of man called normal, would be likely to see in it something of beauty and of merit which the latter could not see, and ask: "Why should not the poet divert himself?" It is to him what exercise is to the average man, and he speaks of it, in fact is proud of it, just as the average man is proud of his golf score when he gets it in that Elysian field, "under ninety."

Those who do not see in Palazzeschi's poetry an adhesion to a certain school of philosophy, an advocacy of certain ethical systems, a restatement of others' thoughts and teachings, miss the very essence of his contribution. This is his capacity to present the world around us in colors which, if not new, at least have been recognized only since the advent of the impressionistic painter. So illuminated, it presents facets of beauty that make appeal to that which within us mediates and interprets pleasure.

In addition to this, he has an extraordinary sense of the fantastic, the grotesque, the panoplied. His eye is microscopic and his mind is telescopic, and his soul waves tend to a rhythm which is akin to that of genius when he reveals them and describes them to others, as he does, for instance, in the "Villa Celeste" ("The Celestial House"); the average man (who is attuned to interpret some poetic waves) realizes that the soul of this young man is the generating station of genuine poetical energy. He puts a reflector before his soul and it reflects the waves in our direction.

"Io metto una lente dinanzi al mio cuore, per farlo vedere alla gente."

Among the youngest of the Italian litterateurs who are giving great promise is Alberto Savinio, who is not only an interesting writer but an accomplished musician, composer, and performer. Of Sicilian origin, he was born in Tuscany and has lived in various parts of central Europe. He first came to conspicuous notice through his articles in Les Soirees de Paris. To the average reader he is known as a traveller and a narrator of his observations and experiences in the form of comments and short stories. Latterly, however, he has published a queer book ent.i.tled "Hermaphrodito," which is difficult briefly to characterize without doing it injustice. It is a book that a clever man might write in the early stages of delirium tremens, providing he returned to it after recovery and added the chapters "Isabella Ha.s.son" and "La Partenza dell' Argonauti." In the latter especially he shows himself capable of writing temperate, vivacious, robust prose, of making inviting descriptions of places, and of revealing man's conduct and his motives.

When the war broke out he returned to Italy and his contributions soon began to appear in different journals, more particularly in the Voce of Florence and the Brigati of Bologna. Since then he has received even greater praise than was meted out to him in Paris, and he gives promise, should his development continue, of getting a place amongst the modern writers.

Another young writer of the same kidney, though by no means of such promise, is Mario Venditti. He is a type of juvenile writer in Italy who excites a curiosity to know how he succeeds in getting some of his writings published. He appears to have a writing formula: take of substantives whose meaning is known to few save dictionary experts, archaic or uncommon adjectives, adverbs, or adverbial phrases taken from other languages, excerpts from scientific writings, especially philosophy and medicine, and string them together so that when they are read aloud there will be a certain sonorous, musical effect, and at the same time suggest a color accompaniment. He reminds of a properly brought-up and well-educated boy who, when he reaches the age of p.u.b.erty, insists upon wearing what are called "outlandish" clothes, a combination of the apparel of the clown and that of the fas.h.i.+on-plate, to which he attaches ornate tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs and incongruous decoration. In such costume he struts about with a nonchalance and swagger of self-appreciation which is more irritating even than his sartorial affectations. Many modern literary youths seem to have to go through a period of this kind, just as the children of "First Families," unfortunately, must have mumps and measles. Like the victims of those diseases the majority of them go through unscathed, but every now and then one of them is intellectually enfeebled and genetically sterilized.

Signor Venditti has not a.s.sured us by the publication of "Il Burattino e la Pialla" that he is not a victim.

When is a Futurist not a Futurist? A very difficult question that, for readers answer it one way and writers another. Some writers are Futuristic on alternate days, or every seventh day. One of these is Enrico Cavacchioli, a Sicilian living in Milan, the dramatic critic of the Secolo and the director of Il Mondo and of the publis.h.i.+ng-house of Vitagliano. His reputation as a man of letters stands in no relation to his futurist poems. It does, however, to his compositions for the theatre, and especially to his great success, "Uccello del Paradiso" ("Bird of Paradise"). His last contribution, "Quella che t'a.s.somiglia" ("That Which Resembles You"), which he calls a vision in three acts, is a satire on the present-day interest in the occult and supernatural.

When the promising and brilliant young writer of the Florentine group, Renato Serra, was killed in the war, Italy lost one of its most gifted critics since De Sanctis. Despite his youth he had, when he was called to the colors, already won a conspicuous position as a man of letters. Alfredo Panzini dedicated his "Madonna di Mama" to him, and made touching allusions to his qualities of soul and potential greatness. In 1914 he published a survey of contemporary Italian literature ("Le Lettere"), and the five years which have elapsed since then have shown that his estimates and judgments were unusually sound. His was neither the academic idealistic criticism of the old school nor the historic philosophic criticism of Croce. He attempted to interpret writers, plans, and performances and to contrast them with ideals he had himself conceived or worked out from study of the masters. His last work, "Scritti Critici" ("Critical Writings"), was published in 1919. They show a subtle and profound a.n.a.lysis, an original point of view, and equilibrium in expression and in form. His style is simple, his statements clear, his presentations convincing.

Another young writer of this group, a man of great promise, was Scipio Slattaper. He gave his life for his country in the early days of the war.

Corrado Govoni has, for the past decade, been considered by some to be Italy's most promising poet. There is definite infantilism in his work, a distractibility, a discursiveness, that has stood in the way of meriting such estimate. Although still a young man (thirty-five), he has eight volumes of poetry that bear his name. Papini was his impresario but he no longer treats him as one of his favored family. His first volume was called "Le fiale" ("The Honeycomb"), the next "Armonia in Grigio ed in Silenzio" ("Harmony in Gray and in Silence"). They were truly juvenile. The third volume, "Fuochi d'Artifizio" ("Fireworks"), showed the influence of Rodenbach, of James, and of the modern French school.

In 1907 he published "Aborti," which showed his mental growth and which is one of his best even to the present time.

In 1911 he issued a volume ent.i.tled "Electric Poetry" ("Poesie elettriche"), whose futurist cover was the only futuristic feature it had. There is no humming, puffing, whirring to convey that steam-and-gasoline-engine modernity which it should have in order to justify the name. Its lines are too refined, too p.u.s.s.y-foot, too pathetic, too tender-minded for that. Were it not for the perfect equality of the s.e.xes to-day we would be tempted to say they had a feminine quality. Daintiness does not express it; neither does unvirile.

There is none of this quality in his next production-the "Hymn on the Death of Sergio." "Neve" ("The Snow") appeared in 1914; "Rarefazione" ("Rarefactions") in 1915. The latter is a weird collection of childish figures designed by the poet and commented upon by him to such effect as to demonstrate a state of latent infantilism. In the same year he published a volume ent.i.tled "The Inauguration of the Spring" ("L'Inaugurazione della Primavera"), which contains most of Govoni's best work in poems. His last book, a series of short stories, "La Santa Verde" ("The Ardent Saint"), adds nothing to his fame. Most of them are insignificant, colorless, reliefless, purposeless.

An attempt has been made by champions of Corrado Govoni to show that "Base rivals, who true wit and merit hate" are forming a cabal to prevent his getting his deserts. Fiumi, his last champion, does not materially advance his claim.

Such, in all their diversity, are the Futurists. There is no common formula which describes them. They have a programme which, like that of the Socialists, must from its very nature lack specificity. They are not very definitely organized and many who enrolled under their banner in the enthusiasm of youth soon deserted the cause. But meanwhile they got sufficient inspiration and impetus to throw off the shackles of tradition and to taste the pleasure of exploration. More often they get purged of a kind of literary preciosity which makes for their well-being and usefulness. The programme of the Futurist is of little importance in itself, but it is of great importance as a symptom of tendencies now agitating the minds of the younger generation in Italy. It may be that their efforts will const.i.tute the small end of the wedge by which Romanticism and Verism shall be burst asunder like the Dragon of Bel's Temple.

CHAPTER V GIOVANNI PAPINI AND THE FUTURISTIC LITERARY MOVEMENT IN ITALY

In one of his "Appreciations"-depreciations would be the more fitting word-Signor Papini says he seems to have read or to have said that in every man there are at least four men: the real man, the man he would like to be, the man he thinks he is, and the man others think he is. He is sure to have read it, for he has read widely. Undoubtedly he has also said it, for he has made a specialty of saying things that have been said before-even that he has said before.

As for the man he thinks he is, he has written a long autobiography with plentiful data, from which it may be deduced that he is a man with great possibilities and a great mission, to wit, to precipitate in Italy a spiritual revolution, to bring to his countrymen the gospel that it is time to be up and doing and that intoxication with past successes will not condone present inertness. He has been chosen to teach men that the best of life is to be found in purposeful action regardless of inconsistencies, contradictions, and imperfections; that the ego should be guided peripherally not centrically; that introspection is the stepping-stone to mental involution. In reality, he is but one of many who are proclaiming those tidings in Italy.

The distinction between what he would like to be and what he thinks he is, is not so marked as in more timid and less articulate souls. Substantially, it is this same calling of prophecy which is his aim. As for the man he is, time and his own accomplishments alone will show. Now, at the zenith of his creative power, he is still a man of promise, a carrier-pigeon freighted with an important message who, instead of delivering it, exhausts himself beating his wings in a luminous void.

In Giovanni Papini these four aspects stand out very distinctly. Let us take them up in inverse order, since what others think of a man is soon stated and what he really is is a vague goal, to be approached only distantly, even at the end of this paper. Mr. Reginald Turner says: "Papini is by far the most interesting and most important living writer of Italy. 'L'Uomo Finito' has become a cla.s.sic in Italy; it is written in the most distinguished Italian; it can be read again and again with increasing profit and interest ... its Italian is impeccable and clear. Mr. J. S. Barnes calls him the most notable personality on the stage of Italian letters to-day," and Signor G. Prezzolini writes: "His mind is so vast, so human, that it will win its way into the intellectual patrimony of Europe." I cannot go all the way with these adherents of Signor Papini. I have talked with scores of cultured Italians about his writings and I have heard it said, "He has acquired an enviable mastery of the Italian language," but I have never once heard praise of his "impeccable and clear Italian"; nor do I hold with Mr. Barnes that he is unquestionably the most notable personality save D'Annunzio on the stage of Italian letters to-day. We would scarcely call Mr. Shaw the most notable personality on the stage of English letters to-day. Surely it would be an injustice to Mr. Kipling, Mr. Wells, and Mr. Conrad. It might be unjust to Mr. Swinnerton.