ery capital of Europe
pours forth his lyrico-cosmic effusions, and the hero of his historical
novel _The Messenger of God_ (1911) is a Swiss dominic who at the
conclusion of the Thirty Years' War collects a motley rabble about him
for new works of peace and single-handed makes of himself the restorer
of a devastated community. But with all the scope of the theme there is
a lack of genuine historical color; and compared with the great
historical novel of Ricarda Huch, this anachronistic picture of the
past seems like the story of another Robinson Crusoe. Schaffner's forte
is after all the ground upon which he stood at the beginning; it is
seen in the little idylls from the life of the laboring classes which
make up the contents of his two collections, _The Lantern_ (1905) and
_The Golden Oddity_ (1912). In the first collection, the story of _The
Blacksmiths_ is a gem of narration; and so is the story here
reproduced, _The Iron Idol_, which also serves to illustrate the
pedagogical tendency of all of Schaffner's work. The huge machine is a
symbol for cooperative activity, to which the individual may not put
himself in opposition; and the restless spirit that essays opposition
is transformed against his will from a disturber of the peace into the
founder of a happy wedlock.

The final couple of our choice are two authors who have departed from
the ways of _Heimatkunst_. Jakob Wassermann, born in 1873 at Fuerth,
begins at least as a delineator of the things of his home; for his
first product, _The Jews of Zirndorf_ (1897) is in its first part a
legendary picture taken from the history of the Fuerth ghetto, and in
its second part there comes into the foreground the figure of Agathon
Geyer, a Jewish messiah of the present, whose deep-seated longing to
see God conquers the narrow spirit of the law, of slavery and
asceticism. A pendant to this work is Wassermann's second novel, _The
Story of Young Renate Fuchs_ (1900). The development of the new woman
is intended to be represented in this book, the woman who through all
confusion and filthiness keeps her adamantine soul unscathed, to the
moment when she attains her destiny, namely, to spend a night of love
with the dying Agathon Geyer and to bear him the first child of a
better time, Beatus, the fortunate. Sultry sensuality and outrageous
bombast characterize the work, the action of which is not clearly set
forth, but floats in a sea of nebulous somnambulistic vagueness.
Visio