The Best Short Stories of 1917 Part 91

*Past, The.

DELARUE-MADRUS, LUCIE. (_French._)

*Death of the Dead, The.

HEINE, ANSELMA. (_German._)

*Vision, The.

LE BRAZ, ANATOLE. (_French._)

Christmas Treasure, The.

LEV, BERNARD. (_Bohemian._)

Bert, the Scamp.

*Marfa's a.s.sumption.

MADEIROS E ALBUQUERQUE, JOSe DE. (_Brazilian._)

*Vengeance of Felix, The.

NETTO, COELHO. (_Brazilian._)

*Pigeons, The.

PHILIPPE, CHARLES-LOUIS. (_French._)

*Meeting, The.

RINCK, C. A. (_German._)

Song, The.

SALTYKOV, M. Y. ("N. SCHEDRIN.") (_Russian._)

*Hungry Officials and the Accommodating Muzhik, The.

"SKITALETS." (_Russian._)

*"And the Forest Burned."

TCHEKHOV, ANTON. (_Russian._)

Dus.h.i.+tchka.

*Old Age.

THE BEST BOOKS OF SHORT STORIES OF 1917: A CRITICAL a.n.a.lYSIS

CHRISTMAS TALES OF FLANDERS, ill.u.s.trated by _Jean de Bosschere_ (Dodd, Mead & Co.). If you like Andersen's Fairy Tales, here is a book which comes as truly from the heart of a people. Many old folk legends are here set down just as they came from the lips of old people in Flanders, and as they have never grown old in that countryside let us hope that they will take root equally well here. The volume is superbly ill.u.s.trated with many pictures from the whimsical fancy of Jean de Bosschere. These pictures are indescribable, but they will rejoice the heart of any child, old or young.

FROM DEATH TO LIFE by _A. Apukhtin_, translated by _R. Frank_ and _E.

Huybers_ (R. Frank). This story, which so happily inaugurates a series of translations from Russian literature, is a poetic study in life after death, chronicling the experiences of a soul between death and rebirth.

The translators have succeeded in reflecting successfully the fine imaginative style of this prose poem, which deserves to be widely known.

It tempts us to wish that other stories by Apukhtin may soon find an English translator.

TALES OF THE REVOLUTION by _Michael Artzibashev_, translated by _Percy Pinkerton_. (B. W. Huebsch.) The five tales by Artzibashev included in this volume all have the same quality of bitter irony and mordant self-a.n.a.lysis. The psychological revelation of the mind that has made the later phases of the present Russian Revolution possible is complete, and I know of no book that presents more clearly and truthfully the rudderless pessimism of these particular spiritual reactions. Such courageous dissection of the diseased mind has never been undertaken in American or English fiction, and though its realism is appalling, it is healthful in its naked frankness.

THE FRIENDS by _Stacy Aumonier_ (The Century Co.). When "The Friends"

was published two years ago in The Century Magazine, it was evident at once that an important new short-story writer had arrived. The homely humanity of his characterization was but the evidence of a rich imaginative talent that found self-expression in the more quiet ways of life. I said at the time that I believed "The Friends" to be one the two best short stories of 1915, and others felt it to be the best story of the year. To "The Friends" have now been added in this volume two other stories of almost equal distinction,--"The Packet" and "'In the Way of Business.'" While Mr. Aumonier has a certain didactic intention in these stories, he has kept it entirely subordinate to the artistry of his exposition, and it is the few characters which he has added to English fiction that we remember after his somewhat obvious moral has been conveyed. His short stories have the same flavor of belated Victorianism that one enjoys in the novels of William De Morgan, and he is equally noteworthy in his chosen field.

IRISH IDYLLS by _Jane Barlow_ (Dodd, Mead & Co.). This new edition of "Irish Idylls" should introduce the admirable studies of Miss Barlow to a new audience that may not be familiar with what was a pioneer volume in its day. Published in 1893, it almost marked the beginning of the Irish literary movement, and so many fine writers followed Miss Barlow that she has been most unfairly concealed by their shadows. Her studies of the lives and deaths, joys and sorrows, of Connemara peasants are none the less real because they are the product of observation by one who did not live among them. They show, as Miss Barlow says, that "there are plenty of things beside turf to be found in a bog." It is true that they represent a slight spirit of condescension, entirely absent from the work of Padraic Colum, for instance, but they approach far more closely to the heart of the Irish fishermen and farmers than the work of any other English type of mind; and although Miss Barlow is best known today by her poetry, I have always felt that she conveyed more poetry into "Irish Idylls" than into any other of her books. The volume is a necessary and permanent edition to any small collection of modern Irish literature.

DAY AND NIGHT STORIES by _Algernon Blackwood_ (E. P. Dutton & Co.). In these fifteen short stories Mr. Blackwood has adequately maintained the quality of his best previous animistic work. To those who found a new imaginative world in "The Centaur" and "Pan's Garden," the old familiar magic still has power in many of these stories,--almost completely in "The Touch of Pan" and "Initiation." Hardly inferior to these stories for their pa.s.sionate reality are "The Other Wing," "The Occupant of the Room," "The Tryst," and "H. S. H." There is no story in this volume which would not have made the reputation of a new writer, and I can hardly find a better introduction than "Day and Night Stories" to the beauty of Mr. Blackwood's imaginative life. He serves the same altar of beauty in our day that John Keats served a century ago, and I cannot but believe that his magic will gain greater poignancy as generations pa.s.s.

THE DERELICT by _Phyllis Bottome_ (The Century Co.). This collection of Miss Bottome's short stories, many of which have previously appeared in the Century Magazine during the past two years, gives a more complete revelation of her talent than either of her novels. I suspect that the short story is her true literary medium, and certainly there are at least six of these eight short stories which I should be compelled to list with three stars in my annual Roll of Honor. In subject and mood they range from tragedy to social comedy. Elsewhere in this volume I have discussed "'Ironstone,'" which seems to me the best of these stories. A subtle irony pervades them, but it is so definitely concealed that its insistence is never evident.

OLD CHRISTMAS, AND OTHER KENTUCKY TALES IN VERSE by _William Aspenwall Bradley_ (The Houghton-Mifflin Co.). In this series of vignettes in verse Mr. Bradley has presented the Kentucky mountaineer as imaginatively as Robert Frost has presented the farmer-folk of New Hamps.h.i.+re in "North of Boston" and "Mountain Interval." The racy humor of these narratives is thoroughly indigenous, and Mr. Bradley's work has a vivid dramatic power which challenges successfully a comparison with the stories of John Fox, Jr. These poems prove Mr. Bradley's rightful claim to be the first adequate imaginative interpreter of the people who live in the c.u.mberland Mountains.

THE FIGHTING MEN by _Alden Brooks_ (Charles Scribner's Sons). Of these six stories four have been published in Collier's Weekly during the past two years, and elsewhere I have had occasion to comment upon their excellence. These narratives may be regarded as separate cantos of a war epic, which is fairly comparable for its vividness of portrayal to Stephen Crane's masterpiece, "The Red Badge of Courage." Few writers, other than these two, have been able to portray the naked ugliness of warfare, and the pa.s.sions which warfare engenders, with more brutal power. Time alone will tell whether these stories have a chance of permanence, but I am disposed to rank them with that other portrait of the mercilessness of war, "Under Fire," by Henri Barbusse.

LIMEHOUSE NIGHTS by _Thomas Burke_ (Robert M. McBride & Co.). These colorful stories of life in London's Chinatown are in my humble belief destined never to grow old. This volume is the most important volume of short stories by a new English writer to appear during 1917, and is only surpa.s.sed by Daniel Corkery's volume "A Munster Twilight." Such patterned prose in fiction has not been known since the days of Walter Pater, and Mr. Burke's sense of the almost intolerable beauty of ugly things has a persuasive fascination for the reader who may have a strong prejudice against his subjects. Such horror as Mr. Burke has imagined is almost impossible to portray convincingly, yet the author has softened its starkness into patterns of gracious beauty and musical rhythmic speech.

RINCONETE AND CORTADILLO by _Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra_, translated from the Spanish by _Mariano J. Lorente_, with a preface by _R. B.

Cunninghame Graham_ (The Four Seas Co.). This is an excellent translation by a Spanish man of letters of what is perhaps the best exemplary Novel by Cervantes. As Mr. Cunninghame Graham points out in his delightful introduction, "Rinconete and Cortadillo" is perhaps the best sketch of Spanish low-life that has come down to us. It is highly amoral, despite its sub-t.i.tle, and all the more delightful perhaps on that account. I hope that the translator may be persuaded, if the volume goes into the second edition it so richly deserves, to omit his very contentious preface, which can be of interest only to himself and two other people. Then our delight in this volume would be complete.

THE DUEL (Macmillan), THE HOUSE WITH THE MEZZANINE (Scribner), THE LADY WITH THE DOG (Macmillan), THE PARTY (Macmillan), and ROTHSCHILD'S FIDDLE (Boni and Liveright) by _Anton Chekhov_. TO THE DARLING, which was the first volume, so far as I know, of Chekhov, to be presented to the American public, five new collections of Chekhov's tales have been added during the past year in excellent English renderings. Three of these volumes are translated by Constance Garnett, whose superb translations of Turgenieff and Dostoievsky are well known to American readers.

Because Chekhov ranks with Poe and De Maupa.s.sant as one of the three supreme masters of the short story, it is a matter of signal importance that these translations should appear, and in them every mood of Russian life is reflected with subtle artistry and a pa.s.sionate reality of creative vision. Chekhov is destined to exert greater and greater influence on the American short story as the translations of his work increase, and these five volumes prove him to be fully equal to Dostoievsky in sustained and varied spiritual observation. These stories range through the entire gamut of human emotion from sublime tragedy to the richest and most golden comedy. If I were to choose a single author of short stories for my library on a desert island, my choice would inevitably turn to these volumes.

THOSE TIMES AND THESE by _Irvin S. Cobb_ (George H. Doran Co.). This is quite the best volume of short stories that Mr. Cobb has yet published.

Since "The Escape of Mr. Trimm," which was his first short story, was printed in the Sat.u.r.day Evening Post seven years ago, Mr. Cobb's literary development has been rapid, if not sure; but he may now with this volume lay claim fairly to the mantle of Mark Twain for the rich humanity with which he has endowed his substance and the inimitable humor of his characterizations. In "The Family Tree" and "Cinnamon Seed and Sandy Bottom" Mr. Cobb has added two stories of permanent value to American literature, and in "Mr. Felsburg Gets Even" and "And There Was Light" Mr. Cobb's literary art is almost as well sustained. My only quarrel with him in this book is for the inclusion of "A Kiss for Kindness," where a fine short-story possibility seems to have been entirely missed by the author, perhaps because, as he ingenuously confessed shortly afterward, he had just become an abandoned farmer.

RUNNING FREE by _James B. Connolly_ (Charles Scribner's Sons). Of the ten short stories included by Mr. Connolly in this collection, four are among the best he has ever written: "Breath O' Dawn," "The Sea-Birds,"

"The Medicine s.h.i.+p," and "One Wireless Night." With the simplicity of speech which characterizes all of Mr. Connolly's work, he relates his story for the story's sake. Because he is an Irishman he is an incorrigible romanticist, and I suspect that characterization interests him for the story's sake rather than for itself alone. But now that Richard Harding Davis is dead, I suppose that James B. Connolly may fairly take his place as our best born yarner, with all a yarner's privileges.

TEEPEE NEIGHBORS by _Grace Coolidge_ (The Four Seas Co.). This quiet little book of narratives and Indian portraits by Miss Coolidge deserves more attention than it has yet received, and for its qualities of quiet pathos and sympathetic insight into the Indian character I a.s.sociate it as of equal value with Margaret Prescott Montague's stories of blind children in West Virginia.

A MUNSTER TWILIGHT by _Daniel Corkery_ (Frederick A. Stokes Co.). I have never read a new volume of short stories with such a sense of discovery as I felt when these tales came to my hand. Because the volume appears to have attracted absolutely no attention as yet in this country, I wish to emphasize my firm belief that this is the most memorable volume of short stories published in English within the past five years. It makes us eager to read Mr. Corkery's new novel, "The Threshold of Quiet," in order that we may see if such a glorious imaginative sweep can be maintained in a novel as the reader will find in any single short story of this volume. Here you will find the very heart of Ireland's spiritual adventure revealed in folk speech of inevitable beauty. There is not a story in the book which does not disclose new aspects after repeated readings. A craftsmans.h.i.+p so fine and vigorous is seldom related with such artistic humility. "A Munster Twilight" proves that there are still great men in Ireland.

BROUGHT FORWARD, FAITH, HOPE, CHARITY, PROGRESS, and SUCCESS by _R. B.

Cunninghame Graham_ (Frederick A. Stokes Co.). It is an extraordinary fact that a short-story writer so deservedly well-known in England as Mr. Cunninghame Graham, whose sketches of life in many parts of the globe have been published at frequent intervals through the past decade, is yet entirely unknown in this country. To be sure, such has been the fate of W. H. Hudson until very recently. These six volumes certainly rank, by virtue of the quality of their style and the imaginative reality of their substance, with the best work of Mr. Hudson, and the parallel is the more complete because both writers have made the vanished life of the South American plains real to the English mind. Mr.

Cunninghame Graham is one of the great travel writers, and ranks with Borrow and Ford, but he is more impartially interested in character than either Borrow or Ford, and has a far more vivid feeling for the spiritual values of landscape. It may be that these stories are for the few only, but I am loth to believe it. The life of the pampas and the life of the Moroccan desert live in these pages with an actuality as great as the life of the American plains lives in the work of Hamlin Garland, and there is an epic sweep in Mr. Cunninghame Graham's vision that I find in no other contemporary English writer.

THE ECHO OF VOICES by _Richard Curle_ (Alfred A. Knopf). It is very rarely that a disciple as faithful as Mr. Curle publishes a volume which his master would be proud to sign, but I think that the reader will detect in this book the authentic voice of Joseph Conrad. Mr. Conrad's own personal enthusiasm for the book is an ingratiating introduction to the reader, but in these eight stories Mr. Curle can certainly afford to stand alone. Preoccupied as he is with the mystery of human existence, and the effect of circ.u.mstance upon the character, he portrays eight widely different human types, almost all of them with a certain pathetic futility of aspect, so surely and finely that they live before us. It is an interesting fact that the three best short story books in English of 1917 come from the other side of the water. "Limehouse Nights," "A Munster Twilight," and "The Echo of Voices" make this year so memorable in fiction that later years may well prove disappointing.