Tales of the Wilderness

Tales of the Wilderness [with
accents]

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Title: Tales of the Wilderness
Author: Boris Pilniak
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TALES OF THE WILDERNESS
By
BORIS ANDREYEVICH VOGAU (Boris Pilniak, pseud.)
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY
PRINCE D. S. MIRSKY
TRANSLATED INTO ENGLISH BY
F. O'DEMPSEY

CONTENTS
THE SNOW A YEAR OF THEIR LIVES A THOUSAND YEARS
OVER THE RAVINE ALWAYS ON DETACHMENT THE SNOW
WIND THE FOREST MANOR THE BIELOKONSKY ESTATE
DEATH THE HEIRS THE CROSSWAYS

INTRODUCTION
I
RUSSIAN FICTION SINCE CHEKHOV
The English reading public knows next to nothing of contemporary
Russian Literature. In the great age of the Russian Realistic Novel,
which begins with Turgeniev and finishes with Chekhov, the English
reader is tolerably at home. But what came after the death of Chekhov
is still unknown or, what is worse, misrepresented. Second and third-
rate writers, like Merezhkovsky, Andreyev, and Artsybashev, have
found their way into England and are still supposed to be the best
Russian twentieth century fiction can offer. The names of really

significant writers, like Remizov and Andrey Bely, have not even been
heard of. This state of affairs makes it necessary, in introducing a
contemporary Russian writer to the English public, to give at least a
few indications of his place in the general picture of modern Russian
Literature.
The date of Chekhov's death (1904) may be taken to mark the end of a
long and glorious period of literary achievement. It is conveniently near
the dividing line of two centuries, and it coincides rather exactly with
the moment when Russian Literature definitely ceased to be dominated
by Realism and the Novel. In the two or three years that followed the
death of Chekhov Russian Literature underwent a complete and drastic
transformation. The principal feature of the new literature became the
decisive preponderance of Poetry over Prose and of Manner over
Matter--a state of things exactly opposite to that which prevailed during
what we may conveniently call the Victorian age. Poetry in
contemporary Russian Literature is not only of greater intrinsic merit
than prose, but almost all the prose there is has to such an extent been
permeated with the methods and standards of poetry that in the more
extreme cases it is almost impossible to tell whether what is printed as
prose is really prose or verse.
Contemporary Russian Poetry is a vigorous organic growth. It is a
self-contained movement developing along logically consistent lines. It
has produced much that is of the very first order. The poetry of
Theodore Sologub, of Innocent Annensky, [Footnote: The reader will
notice the quotations from Annensky in the first story of this volume.]
of Vyacheslav Ivanov, and of Alexander Blok, is to our best
understanding of that perennial quality that will last. They have been
followed by younger poets, more debatable and more debated, many of
them intensely and daringly original, but all of them firmly planted in
the living tradition of yesterday. They learn from their elders and teach
their juniors--the true touchstone of an organic and vigorous movement.
What is perhaps still more significant--the level of minor poetry is
extraordinarily high, and every verse-producer is, in varying degrees, a
conscious and efficient craftsman.
The case with prose is very different. The old nineteenth century
realistic tradition is dead. It died, practically, very soon after Chekhov.
It has produced a certain amount of good, even excellent, work within

these last twenty years, but this work is disconnected, sterile of
influence, and more or less belated; at the best it has the doubtful
privilege of at once