siveness to national moods is characteristic of national life.
Sologub's works comprise two novels, The Little Demon and Drops of Blood, a volume of poems, some essays, and about a dozen volumes of short tales. This volume, which my wife and I have selected and translated, is offered as a foretaste of some very remarkable work.
Russia is the land of such short tales. Long novels are exceptional and not very popular. Nearly all Russian writers of note to-day are either poets or essayists or short-story writers. Tchekhof, who wrote some twenty volumes of little tales, really made the short story popular. "I have made a way for this sort of writing," he is reported to have said to Kuprin. "After me it will be easy for others to go on writing such tales." The prophecy has been fulfilled. More than eighty per cent of the fiction published since his death has been collections of little stories.
Fedor Sologub is one of the cleverest of these writers of tales. He has reduced the short story to a minimum, and some of his cleverest efforts do not exceed half a page
ix
