“TOO YOUNG AT THIRTY”

Evening Star, Issue 18650, 3 June 1924, Page 8

“TOO YOUNG AT THIRTY”

If over there was an age when youthful geniuses ought to (lontisa, .surely it is this one. But where arc. they ? asks Norman Ackland in Lite London ' ’Evening News.’ Certainly not in politics, for nearly all the pi ambient personalities in the various groups scattered over Europe are well over fifty. And if they arc not visible in politics, it is not because, they are devoted to the arts. If we tusk for a good novel by an English writer, it is probable that we shall be offered one by Wells (who vs fifty-eight), Conrad (sixty-six), Galsworthy (fifty-seven), or Arnold Bennett (fifty-six). The, thre-e most popular British dramatists are Barrio (who is sixty-four), Henry Arthur Jones (seventy-two), and William Archer (sixty-seven). The best-known English poets are Hardy (eighty-three) and Kipling (fifty-eight). None of Ireland’s front-rank novelists, dramatists, poets, or painters, can claim to be youthful. Shaw is sixty-seven, Yeats fifty-eight, Lavery sixty-seven, and Orpen forty-five; James Stephens and Padriac Collum are fast approaching middle age. The leading French writers are distinctly elderly. Anatole Franco is eighty; Reno Bazin and Henri Bordeaux, the leaders of the anti-Sodalist movement in literature, aro seventy-o.no and fifty-four respectively; Remain Roll and is fiftyeight. The Belgians, Maeterlinck and Gbaud, are sixty-one and sixty-three: Vicente Blasco Ibanez, the greatest Spanish novelist, is fifty-seven. There are, however, two notable exceptions. Karl Oapek, just over thirty, has gained fame by his two great creations,’ ‘ The Insect Play ’ and ‘ ILD.R.’ His strange philosophy may be, due to the fact that no is steeped in the atmosphere of ancient Prague, with its alchemists and necromancers, and yet is a worshipper of Dostoievski.

Eugene O’Neill, author of ‘Anna Christie,’ was born in New York of Irish parentage thirty-two years ago. The son of an actor, he had been a seaman, a gold miner, a clerk, a packer, and an actor ero lao Tias.jasextts-lDiMu