Literary Notes.
This book is one of the most important of the Russian works that have been made accessible to English readers in some years. The significance of Alexander Kuprin in modern Russian literature cannot easily be overrated. The only work by him that appeared in English previous to the issuing of this volume, is the "Duel," a long tale describing the cheerless life of an officer in a remote provincial town. The present volume contains four of Kuprin's best stories: The River of Life, Captain Ribnikov, The Outrage, and The Witch (Olyessia.)
In the first of these tales Kuprin describes for us in the manner of subtle realism, ugly bits of life in a hotel of the cheapest kind. There are vividly drawn sketches of the vulgar proprietress, who makes you think of Chaucer's easy-mannered Wife of Bath; the former Lieutenant, whom drink and opium have ruined; the dirty, neglected children of the "lady" of the house. The vile, carefree, carnal life of these people, in their third-class hotel, is set forth with masterly realism. But there is much more in this story than mere realistic description. One night there comes to the inn a quiet, well-mannered student, no longer young, and takes a room. Left alone, the student sits down to write his last letter. Simply, without pose or affectation, he writes out the sorrowful tale of his life: the sufferings of his childhood, the hardship of later years, the fervent hopes for the betterment of mankind that fired his breast, and his vain sacrifices for his fellowmen. And now, his faith gone, his own weakness made manifest, the thoughtful scholar, in whom had lived a great pity for humanity, shoots himself. The hotel his aroused. The police come. But after the customary legal formalities, the degrading revelry of the "hotel" begins once more: vodka flows freely, and the proprietress and the police-inspector dance in great abandon to the strains that come from a music-box. Meanwhile, "what was once a student now lay in the cold cellar of an anatomical theatre, in a zinc box on ice... Oil his bare right leg above the knee in gross ink-figures was written '14'. That was his number in the anatomical theatre."
The story leaves an impression of grim power, and a quiet, but bitter irony. In writing it, Kuprin has used his favorite method, that of subtle and inevitable contrast,—the method he used in the short tale, Anathema, translated in the April number of the Russian Review.
Captain Ribnikov is a rattling story of a Japanese spy, whose complete command of himself, and of the Russian language, and whose consummate histrionic power, easily permit him to pass as a Russian officer. How a woman, as may be expected, is the means of his undoing, is the plot of a very gripping story. The Outrage is a satiric bit which tels how the representatives of a society of amalgamated and very superior thieves appear before the committee which is investigating the Jewish massacres. They ask to be freed of all suspicion of
