Tales of the Wilderness | Page 2

becoming classical and above the age. Such for
instance was the case of Bunin's solitary masterpiece _The Gentleman
from San Francisco_, and of that wonderful series of Gorky's
autobiographical books, the fourth of which appeared but a few months
ago. These, however, can hardly be included in the domain of Fiction,
any more than his deservedly famous Reminiscences of Tolstoy. But
Gorky, and that excellent though minor writer, Kuprin, are the only
belated representatives of the fine nineteenth century tradition. For
even Bunin is a poet and a stylist rather than a story teller: his most
characteristic "stories" are works of pure atmosphere, as diffuse and as
skeletonless as a picture by Claude Monet.
The Symbolists of the early twentieth century (all the great poets of the
generation were Symbolists) tried also to create a prose of their own.
They tried many directions but they did not succeed in creating a style
or founding a tradition. The masterpiece of this Symbolist prose is
Theodore Sologub's great novel _The Little Demon_[Footnote: English
translation.] (by the way a very inadequate rendering of the Russian
title). It is a great novel, probably the most perfect Russian novel since
the death of Dostoyevsky. It breaks away very decidedly from Realism
and all the traditions of the nineteenth century. It is symbolic, synthetic,
and poetical. But it is so intensely personal and its achievements are so
intimately conditioned by the author's idiosyncrasies that it was quite
plainly impossible to imitate it, or even to learn from it. This is still
more the case with the later works of Sologub, like the charming but
baffling and disconcerting romance of Queen Ortruda.
The other Symbolists produced nothing of the same calibre, and they
failed to attract the public. The bestsellers of the period after 1905 were,
naturally enough, hybrid writers like Andreyev. The cheap effect of his
cadenced prose, his dreary and monotonous rhetoric, his sensational
way of treating "essential problems" were just what the intelligentsia
wanted at the time; it is also just what nobody is likely to want again.
Another writer of "problem stories" was Artsybashev. His notorious
Sanin (1907) is very typical of a certain phase of Russian life. It has
acquired a somewhat unaccountable popularity among the budding
English intelligentsia. From the literary point of view its value is nil.

Artsybashev and Andreyev were very second-rate writers; they had no
knowledge of their art and their taste was deplorably bad and crude, but
at least they were in a way, sincere, and gave expression to the genuine
vacuum and desolation of their hearts. But around them sprung up a
literature which sold as well and better than they did, but was openly
meretricious and, fortunately, ephemeral. If it has done nothing else the
great Revolution of 1917 has at least done one good thing in making a
clean sweep of all this interrevolutionary (1905- 1917) fiction.
All this literature appealed to certain sides of the "intellectual" heart,
but it could not slake the thirst for fiction. It was rather natural that the
reading public turned to foreign novelists in preference to the native
ones. It may be confidently said that three- quarters of what the
ordinary Russian novel-reader read in the years preceding the
Revolution were translated novels. The book-market was swamped
with translations, Polish, German, Scandinavian, English, French and
Spanish. Knut Hamsun, H. G. Wells, and Jack London were certainly
more popular than any living Russian novelist, except perhaps the
Russian Miss Dell, Mme. Verbitsky. In writers like Jack London and H.
G. Wells the reader found what he missed in the Russian novelists--a
good story thrillingly told. For no reader, be he ever so Russian, will
indefinitely put up with a diet of "problems" and imitation poetry.
While all these things were going on on the surface of things and
sharing between themselves the whole of the book-market, a secret
undercurrent was burrowing out its bed, scarcely noticed at first but
which turned out to be the main prolongation of the Russian novel. The
principal characteristic of this undercurrent was the revival of realism
and of that untranslatable Russian thing "byt," [Footnote: "Byt" is the
life of a definite community at a definite time in its individual, as
opposed to universally human, features.] but a revival under new forms
and in a new spirit. The pioneers of this movement were Andrey Bely
and Remizov. There was little in common between the two men, except
that both were possessed with a startlingly original genius, and both
directed it towards the utilization of Russian "byt" for new artistic ends.
Andrey Bely was, and is, a poet rather than a novelist. His prose from
the very beginning exhibits in its extreme form the Symbolist tendency
towards wiping away the difference between poetry and prose: in