Produced by Jana Srna and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.) [ Transcriber's Notes: Every effort has been made to replicate this text as faithfully as possible, including inconsistencies in spelling and hyphenation. Some corrections of spelling have been made. They are listed at the end of the text. Italic text has been marked with _underscores_. ] PROPHETS OF DISSENT BOOKS BY OTTO HELLER HENRIK IBSEN: PLAYS AND PROBLEMS STUDIES IN MODERN GERMAN LITERATURE LESSING'S "MINNA VON BARNHELM" in English Prophets of Dissent: Essays on Maeterlinck, Strindberg, Nietzsche and Tolstoy by Otto Heller Professor of Modern European Literature in Washington University (St. Louis) Is there a thing in this world that can be separated from the inconceivable? Maeterlinck, "Our Eternity" New York Mcmxviii Alfred A Knopf COPYRIGHT, 1918, BY ALFRED A. KNOPF PRINTED IN UNITED STATES OF AMERICA To HELLEN SEARS staunchest of friends Preface The collocation of authors so widely at variance in their moral and artistic aims as are those assembled in this little book may be defended by the safe and simple argument that all of these authors have exerted, each in his own way, an influence of singular range and potency. By fairly general consent they are the foremost literary expositors of important modern tendencies. It is, therefore, of no consequence whether or not their ways of thinking fit into our particular frame of mind; what really matters is that in this small group of writers more clearly perhaps than in any other similarly restricted group the basic issues of the modern struggle for social transformation appear to be clearly and sharply joined. That in viewing them as indicators of contrarious ideal currents due allowance must be made for peculiarities of temperament, both individual and racial, and, correspondingly, for the purely "personal equation" in their spiritual attitudes, does not detract to any material degree from their generic significance.