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.