THE BOOK OF MASKS

BY

REMY DE GOURMONT

Translated by

JACK LEWIS

Introduction by

LUDWIG LEWISOHN

JOHN W. LUCE AND COMPANY

BOSTON

MCMXXI

Illustrations are the 30 masks by Félix Valloton, from the original French edition of this book Le livre des masques, vol. 1 — also available at **http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/16886**

CONTENTS

TRANSLATIONS FROM THE TEXT

INTRODUCTION

To take critical questions seriously, even passionately, is one of the marks of a genuinely civilized society. It points to both personal disinterestedness and to an imaginative absorption in fundamentals. The American who watches eagerly some tilt in that great critical battle which has gone on for ages and has now reached our shores, is released from his slavery to the immediate and the parochial; he has ceased to flinch at the free exercise of thought; he has begun to examine his mind as his fathers examined only their conscience; he is a little less concerned for speed and a little more for direction; he is almost a philosopher and has risen from mere heated gregariousness to voluntary co-operation in a spiritual order. His equipment is, as a rule, still meagre, and so his partisanship is not always an instructed one. He may be overwhelmed by the formidable philosophical apparatus of one critic or merely