文档介绍：REZANOV
REZANOV
BY GERTRUDE ATHERTON
1
REZANOV
INTRODUCTION
A long list of works Gertrude Atherton has to her credit as a writer.
She is indisputably a woman of genius. Not that her genius is
distinctively feminine, though she is in matters historical a pas- sionate
partisan. Most of the critics who approve her work agree that in the main
she views life with somewhat of the masculine spirit of liberality. She is
as much the realist as one can be who is saturated with the romance that is
California, her birthplace and her home, if such a true cosmopolite as she
can be said to have a home. In all she has written there is abounding life;
her grasp of character is firm; her style has a warm, glowing plasticity,
frequently a rhythm variously expressive of all the wide range of feeling
which a writer must have to make his or her books living things. She
does no less well in the depiction of men than in the portraiture of women.
All stand out of their vivid environment distinctly and they are all
personalities of power-- even, occasionally, of "that strong power called
weakness." And they all wear something of a glory imparted to them by
the sympathy of their creator and interpreter. High upon any roster of our
best American writers we must enroll the name of Mrs. Atherton.
Of all her books I like best this "Rezanov," though I have not found
many to agree with me. It is not so pretentious as others more frequently
commended. It is a simple story, almost one might say an incident or an
anecdote. It is not literally sophisticated. For me that is its unfailing
charm. I find in it not a little of the strange, primeval quality that makes
me think of "Aucassin and Nico- lette." For it is not so much a novel as
an his- torical idyl, not to be read without a persisting suffusion of
sympathy and never to be remembered without a recurring tenderness.
Remembered, did I say? It is ettable. There are few books of
American origin that resist so well