Page:The Best Continental Short Stories of 1923–1924.djvu/13



The increasing popularity of the short story throughout the world may be directly attributed to the influence of modern civilization. The Industrial Revolution of the past century has been supplemented today by an Artistic Revolution whose basis is the application of the time-saving devices of industry to artistic production. Literature more than any other art is the reflection of the æsthetic develop ment of a nation. Hence, with the growing tendency towards efficiency and standardization, the short story has achieved an importance second to no other branch of literature.

Psychologically the public is able to obtain the same reaction from a well constructed short story as from a novel ten times as long. This represents an economy of time and money for the reader. The writer has learned to depict a life story whether tragic or comic in twenty odd pages as vividly as in two hundred and fifty. Moreover the short story, by reason of its brevity, permits the author to revise his work in a way which the exigencies of modern life render difficult in the case of a novel. It has thus become possible to produce a story far more correct artistically than would otherwise be the case, with a minimum of labor. Perhaps this is not the reason for the remarkable growth in popularity of the short story, but certainly in Continental Europe, the importance of the short story in the literary life of each country is in direct proportion to the economic development. In Italy, Germany, Czechoslovakia, Sweden, and Latvia, where one finds practically the same standard of life or civilization as you will in the Anglo-Saxon countries, the short story has attained the same prestige as in America, England, and France. On the contrary, in those countries where life is still more or less mediæval, the production of short stories is practically minimum.

The task accordingly of choosing the best short story published in each country since July, 1923, is none too easy.