Alfred Dablin is so essentially' the philosopher turned novelist that. fow of his renders aro'aware that hho is in practice asa doctor in Berlin, Doblin's distinctive quality is to.be found both in his insistence on Iandscupe as part of the human drama played before it, and the epic breadth of his exposition. Twanty years ago he wrote a Chin-exe romance, "The Three Leaps of Wang Lun," and two years ago a magnificent tale of life at its most i Mountains, Men, and "Lesser works lie between, ut these two alone would be ssu ficient for many men's life-work.
Leonhard Frank is a writer for' the reader's easier moments, when the spirit is less braced for rarefied heights. Untouched by international-iam, he is an interpreter, pure and lo, of the everyday German. soul. A South German, he rose to fame as writer of one of the best of those uneasy stories of adolescence where the schoolmaster broods ike some dark fate over the dreams of youth. In that firs remarkable story, "The Judgment, vengeance is wreaked on the schoolmaster twenty years after. Latterly' he has grown more gentle. "The Robber Band" and the "Ochsenfurt Male Quartett" are fine provincial pictures of post-war conditions in Germany at their worst. Probably the finest literary achievement of this Inter period is last year's lone-short story, "Karl and Anna," which is now being filmed as an outstanding artistic production.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.