Thrombosis

HEART OF EUROPE -- edited by Klaus Mann & Hermann Kesten -- Fischer ($5).

This book is an encyclopedic anthology of European writing between Europe's two greatest wars. Into its 935 pages, the editors (Thomas Mann's son, Klaus, and German Novelist Hermann Kesten) have packed scraps of novels, shreds of biographies, short stories, essays, poems by 140 authors from 21 Continental countries. No British writers are included, but among the great Europeans are: Marcel Proust, Romain Holland, Benedetto Croce, Maxim Gorki, Thomas Mann, Maurice Maeterlinck. Among those less familiar to U.S. readers: Czech Poet Rainer Maria Rilke, Czech Novelist Franz Kafka, Ger man Playwright Ernst Toller, Spanish Philosopher Miguel de Unamuno, Russian Novelist Alexei Tolstoi.

Between the years 1920 and 1940, Eu rope suffered a spiritual agony unparalleled since the French Revolution. But readers are not likely to discover that fact from Heart of Europe. In part this is because the editors, suffering the handi caps of space and copyright that usually beset anthologists, hive included only fragments of each author's work. Marcel Proust, whose Remembrance of Things Past totals 2,265 pages, is represented by five pages ("The Death of Bergotte") from his The Captive. Andre Gide is rep resented by six pages from Les Nouvelles Nourritures. Thomas Mann contributes 13 pages from The Beloved Returns, 17 from Freud, Goethe, Wagner. Benedetto Croce is represented not by his philosophic works but by eight pages from European Literature in the Nineteenth Century.

But the weakness of Heart of Europe as a cardiograph of Europe's spiritual crisis is due less to its fragmentary inclusions than to its massive omissions. None of the writing in this anthology has had any pro found influence on the world. Of the books that have really influenced European minds since 1920, Erich Maria Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front and Arnold Zweig's The Case of Sergeant Grischa are not even mentioned; Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf comes under the editors' ban against "fascist elements" in "style and ideology"; books by Lenin and Trotzky (easily the most brilliant writing that has appeared in Russia since the Revolution) and Oswald Spengler's The Decline of the West are ruled out by the editors' decision to stick to "creative "writing.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.