39. ROMAIN ROLLAND. JEAN CHRISTOPHE. _Translated by Gilbert Cannan_.

Rolland's "Christophe" is without doubt the most remarkable book that
has appeared in Europe since Nietzsche's "Ecce Homo."

It is a profoundly suggestive treatise upon the relations between art
and life. It contains a deep and heroic philosophy--the philosophy of
the worship of the mysterious life-force as God; and of the reaching
out beyond the turmoil of good and evil towards some vast and dimly
articulated reconciliation. Since "Wilhelm Meister" no book has been
written more valuable as an intellectual ladder to the higher levels
of æsthetic thought and feeling.

Massive and dramatic, powerful and suggestive, it magnetizes us into
an acceptance of its daring and optimistic hopes for the world; of its
noble suggestions of a spiritual synthesis of the opposing
race-traditions of Europe. Of all the books mentioned in this list it
is the one which the compiler would most strongly recommend to the
notice of those anxious to win a firmer intellectual standing-ground.



40. GABRIELE D'ANNUNZIO. THE FLAME OF LIFE. THE TRIUMPH OF DEATH.
_Translated by Arthur Hornblow_.

D'Annunzio is the most truly Italian, the most inveterately Latin, of
all recent writers. Without light and shade, without "nuance,"
without humor or irony, he compels our attention by the clear-cut,
monumental images he projects, by the purple and scarlet splendor of
his imperial dreams.