Swan Song.

The article provides information on two books, "Death in Venice," by Thomas Mann, translated by Kenneth Burke; "Jonah," by Robert Nathan. The very title "Death in Venice" evokes immediately the gravely sensuous mood which pervades the book, and each story, dealing as it does with the physical or spiritual death of an artist in the midst of the failing splendors of his art, is a sort death in Venice. Robert Nathan's "Jonah" is an ironic fantasy upon the life of the Biblical hero. It gets its charm from a mingling of satire and sympathy in the treatment of Old Testament characters as seen through the eyes of a modern Jew who smiles at the tribal narrowness of their ideas while warming to their humanity.