A Short History of German (Methuen. 6s.)
Shorter Notices • Literature. By Gilbert Waterhouse.
PROFESSOR WATERnonsE's book is intended primarily for university
students, but also for the general reader. As usual with books of this kind, in which a vast subject is compressed into a small volume, the matter is organised far too simply under a few generalisations that mislead even more than they guide. This defect does not so much distort the judgements on the great names of the past (where the author is influenced by tradition) as it does judgements on German writers of the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Professor Waterhouse is also far too prone to fling about such vague epithets as " decadent " and in so doing it is not even clear in Many cases whether he is merely repeating the superficial judgement of the more conventional of his predecessors or whether the superficiality is wholly his own. To bring together Franz Kafka and Franz Werfel in one undiscriminating sentence without even hinting to the reader that the former is an original writer of genius and the latter a negligible mediocrity is an example of how little practical use such histories are to the reader who is really looking for guidance.
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