One Hundred Best Books | Page 7

19. SUDERMANN. SONG OF SONGS. Translation into English
published by Huebsch of New York.
Sudermann is the most remarkable and characteristic of modern
German writers. His massive and laborious realism, his firm and
exhaustive exposition of turbulent and troubled hearts, his heavy
sledge-hammer style, his comprehension of the shadowy background of
the most ponderous sensuality, are all found at their best in this solemn
and sordid and pitiable tale.
20. HAUPTMANN. THE FOOL IN CHRIST, _translation published

by Huebsch, New York_.
Hauptmann seems, of all recent Teutonic authors, the one who has in
the highest degree that tender imaginative sentiment mixed with rugged
and humorous piety which one finds in the old German Protestant
Mystics and in such works of art as the engravings of Albert Durer and
the Wooden Madonna of Nuremburg. "The Fool in Christ"--outside
some of the characters in Dostoievsky--is the nearest modern approach
to a literary interpretation of what remains timeless and permanent in
the Christ-Idea.
21. IBSEN. Any edition of Ibsen containing the WILD DUCK.
Ibsen is still the most formidable of obstinate individualists. Absolute
self-reliance is the note he constantly strikes. He is obsessed by the
psychology of moral problems; but for him there are no universal
ethical laws--"the golden rule is that there is no golden rule"--thus
while in the Pillars of Society he advocates candid confession and
honest revelation of the truth of things; in the "Wild Duck" he attacks
the pig-headed meddler, who comes "dunning us with claims of the
Ideal." Ultimately, though absorbed in "matters of conscience," it is as
an artist rather than as a philosopher that he visualizes the world.

22. STRINDBERG. THE CONFESSIONS OF A FOOL.
Strindberg has obtained, because of his own neurotic and almost
feminine clairvoyance, a diabolical insight into the perversities of the
feminine character. This merciless insight manifested in all his works
reaches its intensest degree in the "Confessions of a Fool," where the
woman implicated surpasses the perversities of the normal as greatly as
the lashing energy with which he pursues her to her inmost retreats
surpasses the vengeance of any ordinary lover.

23. EMERSON. _Routledge's complete works of Emerson, or any other
edition containing everything in one volume_.
The clear, chaste, remote and distinguished wisdom of Emerson with
its shrewd preacher's wit and country-bred humor, will always be of
stirring and tonic value to certain kindred minds. Others will prove him
of little worth; but it is to be noted that Nietzsche found him a sane and
noble influence principally on the ground of his serene detachment

from the phenomena of sin and disease and death. He will always
remain suggestive and stimulating to those who demand a spiritual
interpretation of the Universe but reluct at committing themselves to
any particular creed.

24. WALT WHITMAN. _The complete unexpurgated edition of all his
poems, with his prose works and Mr. Traubel's books about him as a
further elucidation_.
Walt Whitman is the only Optimist and perhaps the only prophet of
Democracy one can read without shame. The magical beauty of his
style at its best has not even yet received complete justice. He has the
power of restoring us to courage and joy even under circumstances of
aggravated gloom. He puts us in some indescribable manner "en
rapport" with the large, cool, liquid spaces and with the immense and
transparent depths.
More than any he is the poet of passionate friendship and the poet of all
those exquisite evasive emotions which arise when our loves and our
regrets are blended with the presence of Nature.

25. EDGAR LEE MASTERS. SPOON RIVER ANTHOLOGY,
published by Macmillan.
After Whitman and Poe, Mr. Masters is by far the most original and
interesting of American poets. There is something Chaucerian about the
quizzical and whimsical manner in which he tells his brief and homely
stories. His characters are penetrated with the bleak and yet cheerful
tone of the "Middle West." Something quaint, humorous and astringent
emerges as their dominant note.
Mr. Masters has the massive ironical observation and the shrewd
humane wit of the great English novelists of the eighteenth century. His
dead people reveal "the true truth" of their sordid and troubled lives.
The little chances, the unguessed-at accidents, the undeserved blows of
a capricious destiny, which batter so many of us into helpless inertness,
are the aspects of life which interest him most.

26. THEODORE DREISER. THE TITAN.
Of all modern novelists Theodore Dreiser most entirely catches the

spirit of America. Here is the huge torrential stream of material
energies. Here are the men and women, so pushed and driven and
parched and bleached, by the enormous forces of industry and
commerce, that all distinction in them seems to be reduced to a strange
colorlessness; while the primordial animal cravings, greedy, earth-born,