HAT value may we set on our

WHAT

present day literature? If a list be drawn up, and we compare contemporary writers with those of a few years ago, without doubt illusions will be pretty well shattered. We need not go back even to the time of Manzoni and Leopardi to be made aware of our poverty, we have only to think of a time not so far removed from us, when Carducci, Pascoli, D'Annunzio, and Verga flourished. To-day there is not a writer amongst us who is on a par with any one of these. We have reached a crisis-perhaps it would be better to call it a period of rest. And in all fairness, is not a nation which has produced almost at the same time four great writers, entitled to this rest?

D'Annunzio, it is true, is still amongst us. Yes, he lives, but he no longer creates. To-day he can only repeat himself; he turns out imitations; he refurbishes old forms; he fritters away his time spinning out airy nothings. His language is as sensual as ever, but the natural flow of honest feeling is lacking there is sound without substance. Considered solely as a craftsman, he is still great; indeed he is our greatest contemporary-there is no disputing that fact. At present there is no one in our country who knows how to write like him. With the utmost care he can polish a sentence until every word gleams brightly in its setting, but withal he knows well how to hide any painful striving after artistry, color or

expression. The dictionary is graven on his memory, and he never misses the finer shades of meaning attached to every verb and adjective. Even when he grows dull, and his sentences become more involved than in a product of the bizarre seventeenth century one cannot help but see in him the expert linguist and splendid exponent of a literature that glitters and sparkles.

However, all this brilliancy is merely reflected like a ray of light glinting on a window pane; through it all there is never a hint of a deeper meaning. There is form, and movement, and cadence-perfect artistry-all shining gold and silver-but there is no single word to bring us comfort, to inspire goodness or to touch us in any way. After all, it may be that D'Annunzio feels this lack himself. "Neither in books nor in pictures, not in living words nor in dead words, not even in words which never find expression must we seek to discover these things-we must look elsewhere," so says D'Annunzio in his book, Il Venturiero senza Ventura. We almost expect to see him turn heavenwards and to feel the first faint longing for the Divine. But our hope is vain! D'Annunzio is incapable of renunciation. "There is no such thing as interior or exterior beauty; there is neither spiritual beauty nor material beauty." Therefore, in his opinion spirit and matter are the same. The desire to gratify the senses has for him the same value as the desire of the re

ligious man for God. That is why D'Annunzio gives equal rank to Mary and Venus, Jesus and Bacchus, Catholicism and paganism. Such a man could not hold seriously to a faith. Open to every conflicting influence he professes the same degree of enthusiasm-no more, no less-for a treatise on asceticism by a monk of the fourteenth century, as he does for a finely chiseled medal of Pisanello. He goes into raptures over the beautiful form of a greyhound or of a horse, but the story of a miracle affects him in the same way. It is this wilful blindness to proper distinctions which condemns him. A devotee of Pan, he will scarcely accept anything which is not in harmony with his sensuous temperament.

"It behooves me, to gather unto myself some human mysteries, or some unwonted agreement between my own mental outlook and that of the generality of men." As a matter of fact, he does gather a few points of agreement, but how can he steal the secrets of love when he knows not love? And how can he pierce the miracle of existence, which is after all only an act of love, if he does not know how to rise superior to his own passions? He confines himself to exterior forms and his art is all music and color. It is at times, rather heavy, at other times marked by extreme delicacy, but at all times it bears the impress of the aristocrat. Once in a while we discover, to our great joy, that he can be simple and sincere-in his graphic descriptions, and in those visions he unfolds with such crystalline clearness-it is then one feels that here, indeed, is a writer "to the manner born," and it is easy to understand how he can lift to lyric heights the dullest theme.

"My whole life is lovingly bound up in my art," he says. Quite true,

but this very statement shows us into what an abyss it leads him. He loves a glowing word, a well turned phrase he loves art, but he does not love man, nor nature, nor any created thing. It is love of self which predominates. Words, phrases, art itself, these are simply means which he uses to test his skill as a craftsman, and to stir the flaming passion of self-love almost to the point of intoxication. It is an egoism that is absolute-and atrocious. He locks himself up in a splendid castle, and cuts himself off from all contact with God and man. But does he not realize his misery? "I have become like a beast. With some strange kind of godlike bestiality I am drunk. I have fed upon the enchanted herbs of Circe, and I am bewitched with her fabled forage." In his madness, he never lifts his gaze. He is unconscious of the sweeping grandeur of the infinite and the universal. He remains in his gilded castle, crowned with flowers and basking in the reflected rays of the most varied hues. But no one who yearns for guidance and love will ever turn to him for an alms of spiritual manna.

After the generation of great poets: Carducci, Pascoli, D'Annunzio, and Verga, we can consider Papini as our best writer. His Life of Christ has brought him worldwide renown. Submitting to Christ, and humbly accepting the Catholic faith, he has gained a deeper wisdom. He is not publishing much at the present time, but he is working all the while on several volumes, one of which is a book of verse, Bread and Wine, another, a treatise on man, and still another a book of Catholic apologetics. But

in all these volumes Papini is striving to produce works of deep thought and careful workmanship that will not only merit recognition on account of their perfect style, but will serve as a source of comfort, consolation, and joy to all those who live in these sad days.

After the Life of Christ, came that unfortunate undertaking, The Wild Man's Dictionary. This book, Papini published in collaboration with another Catholic, Domenico Giuliotti, a slashing writer like the French Léon Bloy, though inferior to him in talent. The book was written rather hastily to furnish distraction to the writers, and to amuse their readers. It was a failure. Compounded of paradox, violent criticism, and buffoonery, it failed to interest Italians in general and Catholics in particular. The public expected much more than this from the conversion of Papini, and meeting with his old familiar satanical spirit, seeing him cut the usual capers, offering them once more the same display of fireworks, and hearing that strident, scolding voice with which they were so well acquainted, they even questioned the reality of his conversion. The book survived for only a few weeks. The authors had planned to publish a dozen volumes within the space of a few months, but they stopped abruptly and the Dictionary came to an end. With it perished also, however, many pages which had a freshness and strange beauty of their own, revealing longings for those things in life which are sound, and simple, and traditional, and which glowed with an ardent sympathy for the faith of Christ and the beauty of Mary His Mother.

All these are now scattered and forgotten. Of late, nothing has

come from Papini save two Introductions: one of them being for the works of a friend who died a few years ago, the philosopher Mario Calderoni, and this Introduction gives evidence of the strength of their intellectual sympathy and the warmth of feeling between them. The other Introduction is for a new edition of the Gospels. Here, Papini again takes up the same line of argument he used in the first pages of the Life of Christ:

"For any one who knows how to read aright, the history of man resembles the turning of orbits about a fixed point, and that point is the Cross of Christ. Cross of Christ. The ancient era was a time of preparation and prophecy. The new era witnessed its development and accomplishment. The same law rules the history of books and for the past nineteen centuries all literature gravitates about these four potent little books."

Amongst the writers who are showing signs of progress, must be named Emilio Cecchi. He is a native of Florence but engaged as a journalist at Rome, and consequently his efforts are scattered about in various daily papers and magazines. Occasionally, however, he collects some of his best pieces of prose and gives us a book, as The Day of Beautiful Women, which appeared in 1924. His critical essays take rank amongst the best in Italy and his work on the English Literature of the Nineteenth Century is regarded as foundational. He has in course of preparation several works, amongst them, a revision and a more extended treatment of his History of English Literature. This will be published by La Voce at

Florence. Cecchi is richly dowered with the artistic sense, and the constant study he gives to the works of other writers has developed in him a style which is often classical.

"A coral necklace in a crystal vase, a stamp with the picture of the beheading of Louis XVI., a Mass book blackened with age-many a time have I seen these objects in the show window of the antiquary's shop, and close beside them, the photograph of a sleeping child. But the child clasping her doll, never knew what sad company surrounded her. Whilst she slept, some one brought her there, and sleep grew more enchanting and what the child saw in sleep seemed faint, and far away, and very sweet."

The passage just quoted moves along with a serenity which is quite in the manner of Manzoni. But Cecchi's prose does not always flow so calmly and limpidly; there are times when it is all sparkling, and as fantastic as curling clouds of smoke. His use of the paradox comes from Chesterton, whose style has had considerable influence upon him. But he tries to build up his sentences like a nineteenth century writer, and his constant endeavor is to be clear-following in this the Italian tradition.

Having mentioned Manzoni, it is only natural that a word should be said about the Italian novel. Many novels are written in Italy, but we are obliged to admit that all of them have only a relative value. We lack that temperament which is required in a writer of romances or a writer of tragedies. In the whole of our literature, we can only boast of two romances: Manzoni's I Promessi Sposi, and one of much less impor

tance by Verga, I Malavoglia. All the rest are of little value, mere feeble attempts, stories, and tales drawn out a bit for the sake of length, but having only a passing interest.

Bruno Cicognani, a Florentine writer, has given us a long story in La Velia. It is probably the best work of its kind which appeared in the year 1923; but how far removed from it is that power of the real writers of fiction. When we think of Dostoievsky or Balzac or Defoe or even of Manzoni, our fiction writers of the present day seem like amateurs without the slightest experience. Last year, Cicognani collected into one volume, his Sei novelle de novo conio and Gente di conoscenza, the first edition of both these volumes being exhausted. They contain simple tales, shot through with sympathy and sprightliness, maybe a little too meticulous, but well done none the less. There are youthful memories and detailed descriptions of the varied types amongst the bourgeoisie, their homes, and their habits. The general tone is one of calm and the dialogues are lively. Tales of this sort faithfully follow Italian tradition and they put us in mind of Franco Sacchetti, rather than Boccaccio.

A young man who has written many a romance, putting into each one of them a dash of sentiment, and gentle suavity, is Marino Moretti. Overwhelmed with grief at his mother's death, he can find no surcease from that bitter sorrow save through constant thought of her and with a wealth of love, he dedicates to her his last two volumes. The first is the better of the two. It is a description of his mother's life in its relation to his own. It is more than a romance,