Page:Poet Lore, volume 4, 1892.djvu/20

 processes in the diseased mind of the young soldier are most accurately traced by the author.

An old picture of Saint Xaverius figures in a story of that name. ‘Idylly utrpení a bídy’ (Idylls of Suffering and Misery), ‘Silhouetty,’ ‘Štrajchpudlíci,’ ‘Messiáš’ (The Messiah, 1883), and other stories and sketches, are devoted to the lives of workmen, which they often present in dark and gloomy pictures.

‘The Messiah,’ a romance of socialistic tendencies, in two volumes, is undoubtedly one of the best works of Arbes. The expression “the romantic school,” which we used above, is arbitrary. The heroes of Arbes are, nominally at least, Bohemians, but as it is not the national traits of their character, but only what is purely human, that Arbes pictures in his works, we assigned him to the romantic writers. Otherwise, if we regard only his peculiar mode of writing, we shall find him isolated among Bohemian authors: he never imitates others nor can be imitated himself.

These seem to be the main ideas which Arbes enunciates: life is a continual struggle; society is a tyrant that tries to suppress any of its members who, by their moral strength, rise above the common level; religion is insufficient to guarantee a happy life. The doctrine of heredity is accepted, yet it is never worked out into such dreadful consequences as it is in the romances of Zola.

It is true that the novels of Arbes are not entirely free from faults: his desire to show life as it is, which borders on realism, sometimes compels him to sacrifice artistic beauty to naked truth; deep philosophical reflections are often carried to a great length; frequent episodes and effective details destroy the uniformity and harmony of the whole, and some of the novels are merely autobiographical.

Yet we admire the great mastery with which he depicts the inner life to men; we must acknowledge his great merit: he introduced into Bohemian literature a more truthful presentation of life, and his works did much towards disseminating the advanced doctrines of modern philosophy. It is to be regretted that in Bohemia authors must respect their reader a little too much and have to “harmonize” their works with the latter’s views. Besides, the Catholic hierarchy