Tales of the Wilderness | Page 8

Bunin and very unlike the usual idea we have of Pilniak. The only thing Pilniak was incapable of taking from his model was Bunin's wonderfully rich and full Russian, a shortcoming which is least likely to be felt in translation.
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The other two Buninesque stories, The Belokonsky Estate and _The Heirs_, are stories (again, can the word "story" be applied to this rampantly "imperfective" style?) of the Revolution. They display the same qualities of sober measure and solid texture which are not usually associated with the name of Pilniak. These two stories ought to be read side by side, for they are correlative. In The Belokonsky Estate the representative of "the old order," Prince Constantine, is drawn to an almost heroical scale and the "new man" cuts a poor and contemptible figure by his side. In the other story the old order is represented by a studied selection of all its worst types. I do not think that the stories were meant as a deliberate contrast, they are just the outcome of the natural lack of preconceived idea which is typical of Pilniak and of his passive, receptive, plastical mind. As long as he does not go out of his way to give expression to vague and incoherent ideas, the outcome of his muddle-headed meditations on Russian History, this very shortcoming (if shortcoming it be) becomes something of a virtue, and Pilniak--an honest membrana vibrating with unbiassed indifference to every sound from the outer world.
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The reader may miss the more elaborate and sensational stories of Soviet life. But I have a word of consolation for him--they are eminently unreadable, and for myself I would never have read them had it not been for the hard duties of a literary critic. In this case as in others I prefer to go direct to the fountain-source and read Bely's Petersburg and the books of Remizov, which for all the difficulties they put in the way of the reader and of the translator will at least amply repay their efforts. But Pilniak has also substantial virtues: the power to make things live; an openness to life and an acute vision. If he throws away the borrowed methods that suit him as little as a peacock's feathers may suit a crow, he will no doubt develop rather along the lines of the better stories included in this volume, than in the direction of his more ambitious novels. And I imagine that his _opus magnum_, if, in some distant future he ever comes to write one, will be more like the good old realism of the nineteenth century than like the intense and troubled art of his present masters; I venture to prophesy that he will finally turn out something like a Soviet (or post-Soviet) Trollope, rather than a vulgarised Andrey Bely.
D. S. MIRSKY.
_May_, 1924.

TALES OF THE WILDERNESS
THE SNOW
I
The tinkling of postillion-bells broke the stillness of the crisp winter night--a coachman driving from the station perhaps. They rang out near the farm, were heard descending into a hollow; then, as the horses commenced to trot, they jingled briskly into the country, their echoes at last dying away beyond the common.
Polunin and his guest, Arkhipov, were playing chess in his study. Vera Lvovna was minding the infant; she talked with Alena for a while; then went into the drawing-room, and rummaged among the books there.
Polunin's study was large, candles burnt on the desk, books were scattered about here and there; an antique firearm dimly shone above a wide, leather-covered sofa. The silent, moonlit night peered in through the blindless windows, through one of which was passed a wire. The telegraph-post stood close beside it, and its wires hummed ceaselessly in the room somewhere in a corner of the ceiling--a monotonous, barely audible sound, like a snow-storm.
The two men sat in silence, Polunin broad-shouldered and bearded, Arkhipov lean, wiry, and bald.
Alena entered bringing in curdled milk and cheese-cakes. She was a modest young woman with quiet eyes, and wore a white kerchief.
"Won't you please partake of our simple fare?" she asked shyly, inclining her head and folding her hands across her bosom.
Silent and absent-minded, the chess-players sat down to table and supped. Alena was about to join them, but just then her child began to cry, and she hurriedly left the room. The tea-urn softly simmered and seethed, emitting a low, hissing sound in unison with that of the wires. The men took up their tea and returned to their chess. Vera Lvovna returned from the drawing-room; and, taking a seat on the sofa beside her husband, sat there without stirring, with the fixed, motionless eyes of a nocturnal bird.
"Have you examined the Goya, Vera Lvovna?" Polunin asked suddenly.
"I just glanced through the _History of Art_;