Great Short Stories of the World [antikvár]

Preface npHIS collection marks the first attempt to bring together in a single .L volume a characteristic group of the outstanding examples of the Short Story as it has been practiced from the earliest days of civilization down to the present generation, by writers of almost every nation or race that has made any considerable contribution to the art of telling stories. It is a panorama extending over the entire globe, showing the high points in the age-old endeavor of man to entertain and instruct his fellow-creatures, rather than an academic arrangement of texts illustrating the historical development of an art form. No art seems more spontaneous than that of the short story, and while it may be proved that lyrical poetry preceded it in the history of literary evolution, it is certain that stories of some sort were told as soon as man became articulate. The period covered in the present collection embraces aearly five thousand years, but there can be no reasonable doubt that the Egyptian tales that open the volume, the first of their kind known to us, are no more than the finished products of an art that was practiced thousands of years before these were written. And since the beginning of civilization as we know it, there has been no break in the tradition of tale-telling: the story is a fundamental need in the heart of man, and the demand for the satisfaction of that need is quite as persistent and insatiable to-day as it was before man discovered how to make stone weapons. Of recent years there has been a good deal of theorizing about the Short Story as an art form. A whole literature of theory has come into being in order to explain the work of Maupassant and Poe and O. Henry, as well as to guide the would-be writer. Several theorists have maintained that the Short Story (as opposed to the story that is short) is an invention of the Nineteenth Century, that it must be unified, that it must concern itself with but a single anecdote or episode or situation, that it must be of a certain length; in a word, that it must conform to certain a -priori principles. These theories are often interesting and ingenious, but so far as they have influenced the writers of stories, they are of little importance. The editors of this collection nave approacned their task oi selection with open minds: they have not allowed themselves to be influenced by