Tales of the Wilderness | Page 6

Lev Lunts, one of the Serapion Brothers, in a violent and well-founded invective against modern Russian fiction. [Footnote: In Gorky's miscellany, Beseda. N3, 1923.] But though he sees the right way out pretty clearly Lunts has not seriously tried his hand at the novel. [Footnote: As I write I hear of the death of Lev Lunts at the age of 22. His principal work is a good tragedy of pure action without "atmosphere" or psychology (in the same _Beseda_, N2).] A characteristic sign of the times is a novel by Sergey Bobrov, [Footnote: The Specification of Iditol. Iditol being the name of an imaginary chemical discovery.] a "precious" poet and a good critic, where he adopts the methods of the film-drama with its rapid development and complicated plot, and carefully avoids everything picturesque or striking in his style. But the common run of fiction in the Soviet magazines continues as it was, and it is to be feared that there is something intrinsically opposed to the "perfective" narrative in the constitution of the contemporary Russian novelist.

II
BORIS PILNIAK
Boris Pilniak (or in more correct transliteration, Pil'nyak) is the pseudonym of Boris Andreyevich Wogau. He is not of pure Russian blood, but a descendant of German colonists; a fact which incidently proves the force of assimilation inherent in the Russian milieu and the capacity to be assimilated, so typical of Germans. For it is difficult to deny Pilniak the appellation of a typical Russian.
Pilniak is about thirty-five years of age. His short stories began to appear in periodicals before the War, and his first book appeared in 1918. It contained four stories, two of which are included in the present volume (Death and _Over the Ravine_). A second volume appeared in 1920 (including the _Crossways, The Bielokonsky Estate, The Snow Wind, A Year of Their Lives_, and _A Thousand Years_). These volumes attracted comparatively little attention, though considering the great scarcity of fiction in those years they were certainly notable events. But _Ivan-da-Marya_ and _The Bare Year_, published in 1922, produced a regular boom, and Pilniak jumped into the limelight of all-Russian celebrity. The cause of the success of these volumes, or rather the attention attracted by them, lay in their subject- matter: Pilniak was the first novelist to approach the subject of "Soviet _Byt_," to attempt to utilise the everyday life and routine of Soviet officialdom, and to paint the new forms Russian life had taken since the Revolution. Since 1922 editions and reprints of Pilniak's stories have been numerous, and as he follows the rather regrettable usage of making up every new book of his unpublished stories with reprints of earlier work the bibliography of his works is rather complicated and entangled, besides being entirely uninteresting to the English reader.
The most interesting portion of Pilniak's works are no doubt his longer stories of "Soviet life" written since 1921. Unfortunately they are practically untranslatable. His proceedings, imitated from Bely and Remizov, would seem incongruous to the English reader, and the translation would be laid aside in despair or in disgust, in spite of all its burning interest of actuality. None of the stories included in this volume belong to this last manner of Pilniak's, but in order to give a certain idea of what it is like I will attempt a specimen-translation of the beginning of his story The Third Metropolis (dated May-June 1922), reproducing all his typographical mannerisms, which are in their turn reproduced rather unintelligently, from his great masters, Remizov and Bely. The story, by the way, is dedicated "To A. M. Remizov, the Master in whose Workshop I was an apprentice."

THE THIRD METROPOLIS
CHAPTER I
NOW OPEN
By the District Department for Popinstruct [Footnote: That is "District Department for popular instruction"--in "Russian," Uotnarobraz.] provided with every commodity.
--BATHS--
(former Church school in garden) for public use with capacity to receive 500 persons in an 8-hour working-day.
Hours of baths:
Monday--municipal children's asylums (free)
Tuesdays, Friday, Saturday--males
Wednesday, Thursday--females
Price for washing adults--50kop.gold children--25kop.gold
DISDEPOPINSTRUCT [Footnote: That is "District Department for popular instruction"--in "Russian," Uotnarobraz.]
Times: Lent of the eighth year of the World War and of the downfall of European Civilisation (see Spengler)--and sixth Lent since the great Russian Revolution; in other words: March, Spring, breaking-up of the ice--when the Russian Empire exploded in the great revolution the way Rupert's drops explode, casting off--Estia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, the Monarchy, Chernov, Martov, the Dardanelles--- Russian Civilisation,--Russian blizzards---
--and when--- --Europe-- was: --nothing but one Ersatz from end to end-- (Ersatz--a German word --means the adverb "instead.")
_Place_: there is no place of action. Russia, Europe, the world, fraternity.
Dramatis person?: there are none. Russia, Europe, the world, belief, disbelief,--civilisation, blizzards, thunderstorms, the image of the Holy Virgin. People,--men in overcoats with collars turned up, go- alones, of course;--women;--but women are my sadness,--to me who am a romanticist--
--the only thing, the most beautiful, the greatest joy.
All