LA BALLERINA, 13 harlfrIna Ballet Dancer'). This short realistic novel, by Matilde Serao, which first appeared in the Nuova Antologia (No. 165, 1899), and then in the form of a novel (Catania, 2 vols., 1899) portrays the trials of a poor young Neapolitan girl, Carmela Menino, in her efforts to earn a livelihood in the rank and file of the ballet dancers employed at the San Carlo Theatre in Naples and at other resorts in the vicinity. The interest of the romance centres in the description of the sinister conditions that pre vail rather than in the characters themselves, which are of secondary importance and whose sensuality and material needs furnish the dominating motive of their every action. In the case of the heroine of the novel, Carmela Menino, however, it is not sensuality, but a kind of religious sentimentality, together with her poverty, which is the mainspring of her conduct in life. This sentimentality is the cause of her fetich worship for her godmother, the ballet artist, Amina Boschetti, and of her loyalty to the memory of the latter years after her death. It also figures prominently at the end of the novel in the night watch of Carmela Menino at the bedside of the prodigal suicide, Count Ferdinando Terzi di Torre grande. The entire descriptive material is characterized by that vividness and realism dis played in the best of the author's earlier books: II paese di Cuccagna,' 1891 Land of showing those keen powers of observation which have placed Matilde Serao in the front rank of the contemporary writers of fiction in Italy. Among the salient features clearly drawn in 'La Ballerina,) three stand out conspicuously: (1) The rottenness of the entire ballet system as carried on in Naples.
So vivid and effective is the description of the ballet conditions, analagous to that of the lot tery system in (11 paese di Cuccagna,) as to create a strong impulse on the part of the reader never to lose an opportunity, if ever one be presented, of doing his best to purge the entire system. (2) The very important role that sentimentality plays in the life of the Neapolitan youth of both sexes, nullifying the possible advantages which the use of ordinary common sense would, in all likelihood, provide. The well-nigh uncontrollable desire of the youth of Naples to pose continually as million aires is exposed so forcefully as to bring out strikingly the absurdity of creating so false a situation. (3) The distinction between the feel ing of reverence, akin to love, as seen in Carmela Menino's life, and the varied and multitudinous congeners of love as seen in the lives of the sensual ballet personnel of which Carmela Menino is one of the links. The inane relations between the ballet dancers and their sentimental lovers contrast rudely with the sincere sentimental loyalty and worship, not, however, very well accounted for by the author, shown by Carmela Menino toward the victim of the suicide with which the romance ends, thus producing a strong revulsion from the false pleasures of life. Together with amore) ((Good-bye Love)) and it perdono) the (La bal lerina) is among the best of the author's later novels. A translation of it was published in England without the translator's name, and is sued in London 1901. JAMES GEDDES, JR.