SOURCE: "Galsworthy's Apple Tree and the Longus Tradition," in Studies in the Twentieth Century, No. 9, Spring, 1972, pp. 83-8.

Gesner is a Panamanian-born American educator and critic. In the following essay, she determines the influence of classical Greek and Renaissance literature on Galsworthy's short story "The Apple Tree. "

Galsworthy leaves his reader in little doubt of his intention to cast a Greek mood over his finest short story, "The Apple Tree." As the story opens, the dominant Greek chord is introduced. Ashurst, the leading character, is alone near a country roadside reading of the Cyprian (Aphrodite) in Murray's translation of the Hippolytus of Euripides, and meditating on the unachievable elysium of "the Apple Tree, the singing, and the gold," the elysium which may be perceived for brief moments of a human life, but which in reality may never be captured and held except in art. This reading announces the...