Page:The Dial vol. 15 (July 1 - December 16, 1893).djvu/69

1893,]

on his works, while they proceed to imitate him as fast as they can. Many still swear by Henrik Ibsen, and especially by his last esoteric dramas. French symbolists also are finding imitators and eulogists among our youngest writers, and Baudelaire has been canonized by a few young poets who 'have read him.

The writer makes particular mention of the interest aroused in Denmark by the Shelley centenary, and of Dr. A. Hansen's translation of "Prometheus Unbound." A sumptuous monograph on Thorvaldsen is among the noteworthy books of the year, but the name of the author is not given. A great coöperative work on the Denmark of to-day is also mentioned. A dictionary of Danish national biography is being edited by Herr Hegel of the Gyldendalske firm of publishers. Other books of importance are Professor P. Hansen's "History of the Royal Danish Theatre," Dr. Vedel's work upon Dante, and his "Kulturbaerere" ("Bearers of Culture"), the latter being studies of Boccaccio, Petrarch, Chauncer, and others.

Herr Hugo Tigerschiöld, who writes from Sweden, thus characterizes the most important book of the year:

The death of Countess Leffler-Cajanello was the most serious loss of Swedish letters during the year; a posthumous sketch of her friend, Professor Sonja Kovalevski, is among the books of the mentioned by the writer of this article. Another posthumous work of importance gives to the public the letters and memoirs of the great chemist Scheele, and proves, we are told, "to demonstration the claims of Scheele to be regarded as the discoverer of oxygen." The following extract from the Swedish article is of much interest:

The article on Italy is the work of Signori Ruggero Bonghi and Giovanni Zannoni, and the following extracts are taken from the opening paragraphs:

"It is scarcely fifteen years since the domination of current Italian literature by one or the other of two schools of poetic thought—if, indeed, they deserve the name—seemed inevitable, and that two possible ways only were open to it, one of which it must follow. The tendency of the one school was to revert to classical models, more particularly Horace, both in subject-matter and in form; the other followed in the steps of the latest examples of the French naturalistic school, borrowing all its worst features and all its exaggerations."