Theodore Dreiser has made his name world-famous by his work
as -44 realistic novelist,, a carver of huge masses, hacking away, biciv.by blow; until at lost he-achieves a sort of macrocosm of ja Moods, Cadenced and Declaimed. (Constable, 15s.) we have another aspect of him. He has evidently written these "moods" in moments of relaxation, jotting them down during periods of exhaustion, his hand trembling from the larger effort, so that it could not attune itself to the stillness and Intensity necessary for the mastery of the lyric. The free- verse he uses here is not the result of experiment so much as a disinclination to work in accepted forms. The cadences frequently fall away from the rhythm of the thought and emotion which they should uphold, and so the miniature structure 'falls, because its maker hal not realized that -it should Stand only in obedience to those same laws by which the mammoth bridges, for which he is famous, maintain their equilibrium.
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