Fantastic Novels
TWILIGHT. By Count Keyserling. (Robert -Holden. 7s. 6d.)—The three carefully translated tales contained in this volume introduce us to the pale and mournful wcrld of the Baltic provinces, where ancient baronial dwellings brood among great forests, where the snipe rise from the marshes against a rosy sunset, and the long twilight prevails against both night and day. The name-story is the longest and the most important. It certainly does communicate the oppres- sion of these dim old castles, in which the dim old people sit waiting, waiting, having outlived their charm and even their dignity, everything but the tradition of their obsolete order, while the feverish young people, restive at the inexorable etiquette of their days, depart only to return frustrated, and to dream their -lives away. The name of 'Furgeniev.is some- times mentioned with Count Keyserling's ; but the Russian's clear vision of great spiritual issues could not encompass creatures so devitalized—creatures so made of mere pathos. Fastrade gives some promise of becoming a Turgeniev heroine, sweet as well-water, but when her lover's folly undoes him she too is helpless, blindly obedient to her tradition. The impres- sion of Twilight is memorable, however. As the baffled, strangely childish figures meet and part, we feel the sad beauty and power of the forest, rein-scented in the sun, marvellous under the burthen of the snows. " Harmony " presents the small aristocratic figure of Annemarie the narcissus-lady, exquisite, aesthete, living in her clear house among tulips and hyacinths, and the clouds of her lilac-trees, refusing, refusing even to nonchalant death, any crude reality that mars her unison. The last story is a genre study of a Lithua- nian peasant bride. We are left indeed with a sense of a " twilight " world, changeless, passive, perishing of cold.
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