Wanderers Twain. Modjeska and Sienkiewicz: A View from California by Arthur PruddenColeman; Marion Moore ColemanReview by: Peer HultbergThe Slavonic and East European Review, Vol. 44, No. 103 (Jul., 1966), pp. 527-528Published by: the Modern Humanities Research Association and University College London, School ofSlavonic and East European StudiesStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4205818 .

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REVIEWS 527

central eastern Europe. Professor Ludat has provided a detailed introduc? tion explaining the history of the survey and more than thirty pages of notes to the survey itself, elucidating many points.

London F. L. Carsten

Kann, Robert A. Das Nationalitdtenproblem der Habsburgermonarchie. Volume I: Das Reich und die Volker. Volume II: Ideen und Plane zur Reichs-

reform. Veroffentlichungen der Arbeitsgemeinschaft Ost, Volumes IV and V. Verlag Hermann Bohlaus Nachf, Graz/Cologne, 1964. 472 and 457 pages. 7 maps. Bibliography. Index.

The first edition of this work on the problem of the nationalities in the

Habsburg monarchy during the last century of its history was published in New York in 1950 under the title The Multinational Empire. Its

publication in German fifteen years later shows that it has established itself as a standard work, indispensable to anyone interested in this field. The present edition is not merely a translation, but the contents have been carefully revised by the author, some chapters have been rewritten, and the bibliography has been brought up to date; it includes books

published as recently as 1963. Of particular interest to professional his? torians and to students alike are the sections in the first volume dealing consecutively with the nationalities of the Habsburg monarchy: the

Germans, Magyars, Czechs, Poles, Croats and Italians (those with an

independent national history within the monarchy), the Slovaks, Serbs, Slovenes, Rumanians and Ruthenians (those without an independent history within the monarchy). The second volume contains a historical discussion of the ideas and plans of a reform of the monarchy: a sad tale of missed opportunities. Throughout the treatment is cautious and well balanced. Professor Kann, although clearly regretting the dissolution of the Habsburg monarchy, is by no means uncritical of the policy of its

governments and its ruling groups. He is also rightly critical of much of the recent literature on the subject: while describing E. Crankshaw's Fall of the House of Habsburg merely as 'popular' ('popularwissenschaft- lich'), he states of A. J. P. Taylor's Habsburg Monarchy that its factual basis is 'weak' and its allegations 'not seldom paradox'.

London F. L. Carsten

Coleman, Arthur Prudden and Coleman, Marion Moore. Wanderers Twain. Modjeska and Sienkiewicz: a view from California. Cherry Hill-

Books, Cheshire, Conn., 1964. ix +109 pages. Index.

Mrs Coleman is justly celebrated for her great contribution to the

knowledge of Polish culture in English-speaking countries. Her excellent

Bibliography of Polish Literature in English Translation is an invaluable work of reference. Wanderers Twain, written together with her husband, describes the influence of America on two great Polish figures of the late

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528 THE SLAVONIC REVIEW

19th century, the actress Helena Modjeska (Modrzejewska) and the novelist Henryk Sienkiewicz.

The book expresses the authors' deep admiration of these two artists. It is however beyond doubt that they feel greater affection for Modrze?

jewska; she is much more fully depicted than Sienkiewicz. Attempting to illustrate how 'in her art, as in her life, Modjeska was one of the rare souls who can turn the blackest ugliness into something fair, the greatest sin into holiness' they may perhaps have accepted Modrzejewska's auto?

biography rather too uncritically, but they manage to convey an im?

pression that one of the reasons for the great success in America of this

actress, who had two illegitimate children before she was twenty-five, was her ability to exploit on the stage a certain kind of Victorian puritanism.

The stature of Sienkiewicz, on the other hand, dwindles in this book to that of a mere squire to Modrzejewska (probably the reverse of the real

relationship). The authors play down his success in Poland at the time of his going to America. His literary achievements at this time were not only 'various articles and reviews and one original story', but also a novel pub? lished in book form a few days before he left, and several of his best known short stories. Many of the chapters on Sienkiewicz are no more than para? phrases of some of his short stories and of the climactic scenes of his best known novels.

The index is compiled with admirable precision.

London Peer Hultberg

Chukovsky, K. Crocodile. Translated by Richard Coe. Illustrated by Alan Howard. Faber and Faber, London, 1964.

Korney Chukovsky tells us in an introduction to his fairy-tale in verse Krokodil that he wrote it on his way to Moscow from Helsinki during the first world war. He was travelling by train with his small son who was ill and he started telling this skazka to the rhythm of the train to lull his son to sleep. Since then this enchanting and delightful story-poem with its exciting rhythm has been enjoyed and even learned by heart by countless Russian children.

The main character of Chukovsky's poem is a crocodile who comes to

Leningrad (in those days Petrograd) and discovers that animals are kept in cages. On his return to Africa he organises an invasion of the animals who come to liberate their captive brothers. The freeing of the animals from the zoo forms the climax. By agreement between animals and human

beings the iron bars of the cages are destroyed. Swords are beaten into

ploughshares: 'Mbi pyao>5i nojiOMaeM,/Mbi nyjin 3aKonaeM. . . .' The animals saw off their horns and claws: ' A Bbl ce6e cnHUHTe/KonbiTa h

pora!' The lamb and the wolf go sailing down the Neva together. Paradise

(it might be communist utopia or Christian paradise) reigns on earth: 'H HacTynnjia Tor^a 6jiaro#aTb. . . .'

The author of the English version has taken the original story and

adapted it to English circumstances. He has made no attempt to translate

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