An Anthology of German Poetry, 1880-1940. By Jethro Bithell (Methuen.
Jos. 6d.) IT might seem rather hazardous in war-time to publish, in the .original, a collection of modern German poetry. But both Mr. Bithell and his publishers have ample justification for their enterprise. Thomas Mann has lately made a convincing plea for the maintenance of German studies ; there is nowhere, except this country and America, where such an anthology as this could be published today, for not only are several of the best poets exiled from Germany and their past work proscribed, but some of their poems—notably by one of the best of them, Max Herrmann-Neisse, who died in London recently—are here given for the first time. Lastly, there is the fact that the German mind, and even the rise of the Nazi movement, cannot be fully understood without reference to German poetry. The year 1880 is a logical beginning for the anthology, for it marks the inten- sification of Prussian centralism and industrialism which was reflected in the Naturalist poets, such as Arno Holz and Karl Henckell. Thereafter three main tendencies, all carefully described by Mr. Bithell in his introduction, can be distinguished —the Symbolists, led by Stefan George, whose austere nationalist idealism had a profound influence on two generations, coming down to our own time ; the Expressionists, such as Franz Werfel, active before 1914, but intensified by the defeat and disillusion- ment of 1918, and the " Neue Sachlichkeit," or New Realism, which led back to Nature and the Homeland and so indirectly harmonised with the beginnings of National Socialism. Mr. Bithell's book is well suited to senior schools and university students as well as the general reader. There are the inevitable regrettable omissions, but on the whole the book illustrates yen. well the past sixty years in German lyric poetry.
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