THE AMERICAN-SCAN DIN A VI AN REVIEW 
279 
recent novel which may be considered as a sequel to his previous book 
Beyond the Distant Blue Mountains (Gyldendal) gives a colorful pic¬ 
ture of an artist colony and the life of its members in Munich during 
the war. Emil Rasmussen is the born narrator. He offers an enter¬ 
taining and exciting plot, while at the same time his characters hold 
the reader’s unbroken attention. There are many who take offense at 
his erotic descriptions which, here as in other novels by this author, are 
written with a frankness and candor that border on the cynical. I am, 
however, of the opinion that these descriptions are not prompted by an 
inclination to be sensational, but simply by an ardent desire to mention 
everything by its right name, to conceal nothing—a tendency which rs 
foreign to most Scandinavian, English, and American authors, but 
which is frequently found in literature by writers of the Latin races. 
Emil Rasmussen is neither poet nor psychologist as Hjorto, but he is 
an interesting and entertaining narrator. 
One of our most finished and highly cultivated writers, Sven 
Lange, has after many years of silence again published a book. Ac¬ 
cording to his age he belongs to the lyric generation of the nineties, but 
he was almost a stranger among his contemporaries. While the others 
were lyric poets pure and simple, he developed into a psychologist of 
rare thought and feeling. His dramas belong to the most interesting 
of his time; one of them, Samson and Delilah, has had a great success 
on the American stage during the past season. 
Among the novels written in his youth, the most important and 
most impressive is Deeds of the Heart (Hjertets Gerninger), in the 
first chapter of which Sven Lange has given an exceedingly interest¬ 
ing portrait of Henrik Ibsen. His last novel Cupid's Faces (Eros' 
Ansigter, Dansk Litersert Forlag) is a love story. While in his ear¬ 
lier works Lange dealt exclusively with the bourgeoisie, he presents in 
this book a touching picture of a young girl of the people. It is im¬ 
bued with a tender love and plastic strength and gives a most charm¬ 
ing and yet powerful portrait. 
Two novelists, both somewhat younger than Sven Lange, have 
published new books: Paul Levin and Simon Koch. Paul Levin, 
among whose earlier works we find excellent books on subjects from 
the history of literature (for example Victor Hugo and Naturalism in 
France) has become one of our most popular novelists. Almost all of 
his novels are glorifications of the home in the same vein as Jonas Lie, 
and his popularity, no doubt, is chiefly due to this fact. He writes a 
clear and elegant style, easy without being careless, his composition is 
forceful and, like that of Jonas Lie and Herman Bang, characterized 
by an impressionistic reality. His latest novel Marianne's Mother 
(Mariannes Mor, Gyldendal) is one of his most charming works. 
About the beginning of the present century Simon Koch pub¬ 
lished a number of novels which contained free and independent obser- 
