nary representation and mythical creation are indeed the program
which Wassermann lays out for himself in a theoretical treatise, _The
Art of Narrative_. Ernst von Wolzogen, the discoverer of Wassermann,
and a critic who has perhaps contributed to an over-estimate of him,
declares that this author, who stood, especially at first, under the
influence of the most Asiatic of all the Russian novelists,
Dostojewski, is the sole Oriental among the present generation of
literary Jews. "A fancy which in its luxurious revelling in blood,
splendor, and magnificence seems to us as Oriental as his meditative
dreaminess and the subtle satisfaction with which he traces the
subterranean, labyrinthine paths of the life of the soul"--these are
the salient features which Wolzogen finds in the work of Wassermann.

One side of this characterization is confirmed by the next two works,
the novels _Moloch_ (1903) and _Alexander in Babylon_ (1904). In the
former, a rustic of uncorrupted feeling and fanatical sense of justice
loses his honesty and goes to ruin in the mendacity of urban ways of
doing business; and in the latter, the Grecian hero and man of action
is dragged into the intoxication of Oriental luxury, voluptous cruelty,
and dazzling magnificence.

The other side expresses itself in the attempted psychological solution
of the riddles of criminality. It is characteristic of Wassermann's
predilection for these matters that in his novel _Kasper Hauser or
Sluggishness of Heart_ (1909) he seeks to interpret anew and on the
basis of scrupulous attention to all the documents in the case the
oft-treated story of the mysterious foundling who came to light in
Nuremberg in 1828 and who was supposed to be a cast-off prince of
Baden. Moreover, of the three narratives in the volume entitled _The
Sisters_ (1906), two are fantastically constructed criminal cases which
endeavor suggestively to explain the unusual and the baffling by
reference to mysterious undercurrents in the soul. One of these two
stories is the _Clarissa Mirabel_ here translated, and no word need be
said of the technical virtuosity with which the most exquisite climax
is attained through the utmost economy of means.

Many critics regard Wassermann as the pioneer of a new epic style. Even
those who do not share this opinion cannot deny him tenacity of purpose
and a clear conception of what it is that he aims to accomplish.
Wassermann has selected the Oriental softness of the air