Page:Von Heidenstam - Sweden's laureate, selected poems of Verner von Heidenstam (1919).djvu/17



The English-reading countries of the world, more particularly the United States, have in the late decade or so been growing rapidly cosmopolitan. This has come about from the increase of culture through education and travel, from the growth of immigration and commerce, and of late, naturally, from the war. Never have Americans given nearly such attention to contemporary foreign literature as they have been giving recently. The situation is analogous to that of Elizabethan England, when everyone was talking about the latest French or Italian or Spanish writer; and the auguries are fair that this country may be developing a Renaissance of art that will far outstrip our somewhat meager achievements in the past.

With this remarkable stimulus of interest in European and even Asiatic literature, it seems purely an accident that our attention has only very tardily been directed to the beauties of Swedish poetry. In the influx of foreign books, novels have led the way: Russian, French, Italian, Spanish, and South American novels. Plays, too, have been arriving to a considerable extent. But even foreign poets, thanks to recent advances in the art of verse translation, have in many cases gained a foothold here. We have only