Yama (The Pit) | Page 2

is that of a prostitute, despite all her tirings and trappings; a depiction truly deserving to be designated a portrait: the portrait supreme of the harlot eternal--Shakespeare's Cleopatra.
Furthermore, it will be observed that such depictions, for the most part, are primarily portraits of prostitutes, and not pictures of prostitution. It is also a singular fact that war, another scourge has met with similar treatment. We have the pretty, spotless grenadiers and cuirassiers of Meissonier in plenty; Vereshchagin is still alone in the grim starkness of his wind-swept, snow-covered battle-fields, with black crows wheeling over the crumpled masses of gray...
And, curiously enough, it is another great Russian, Kuprin, who is supreme--if not unique--as a painter of the universal scourge of prostitution, per se; and not as an incidental background for portraits. True, he may not have entirely escaped the strange allure, aforementioned, of the femininity he paints; for femininity--even though fallen, corrupt, abased, is still femininity, one of the miracles of life, to Kuprin, the lover of life. But, even if he may be said to have used too much of the oil of sentimentality in mixing his colours for the portraits, his portraits are subordinate to the background; and there his eye is true and keen, his hand steady and unflinching, his colours and brushwork unimpeachable. Whether, like his own Platonov--who may be called to some extent an autobiographical figure, and many of whose experiences are Kuprin's own--"came upon the brothel" and gathered his material unconsciously, "without any ulterior thoughts of writing, "we do not know, nor need we rummage in his dirty linen, as he puts it. Suffice it to say here--to cite but two instances--that almost anyone acquainted with Russia will tell you the full name of the rich, gay, southern port city of K--; that any Odessite will tell you that Treppel's is merely transplanted, for fictional reasons, from his own city to K--...
Alexandre I. Kuprin was born in 1870; 1909 marked the twenty-fifth anniversary of his literary activity. He attained his fame only upon the publication of his amazing, epical novel, "The Duel"-- which, just like "YAMA," is an arraignment; an arraignment of militaristic corruption. Russian criticism has styled him the poet of life. If Chekhov was the Wunderkind of Russian letters, Kuprin is its enfant terrible. His range of subjects is enormous; his power of observation and his versatility extraordinary. Gambrinus alone would justify his place among the literary giants of Europe. Some of his picaresques, "THE INSULT," "HORSE-THIEVES," and "OFF THE STREET"--the last in the form of a monologue--are sheer tours de force. "Olessiya" is possessed of a weird, unearthly beauty; "The Shulamite" is a prose-poem of antiquity. He deals with the life of the moujik in "Back-woods" and "The Swamp"; of the Jews, in "The Jewess" and "The Coward"; of the soldiers, in "The Cadets," "The Interrogation," "The Night Watch," "Delirium"; of the actors, in "How I Was an Actor" and "In Retirement." We have circus life in "'Allez!'" "In The Circus," "Lolly," "The Clown"-- the last a one-act playlet; factory life, in "Moloch"; provincial life, in "Small Fry"; bohemian life, in "Captain Ribnicov" and "The River of Life"--which no one but Kuprin could have written. There are animal stories and flower stories; stories for children --and for neuropaths; one story is dedicated to a jockey; another to a circus clown; a third, if I remember rightly, to a race- horse... "Yama" created an enormous sensation upon the publication of the first part in volume three of the "Sbornik Zemliya"--"The Earth Anthology"--in 1909; the second part appeared in volume fifteen, in 1914; the third, in volume sixteen, in 1915. Both the original parts and the last revised edition have been followed in this translation. The greater part of the stories listed above are available in translations, under various titles; the list, of course, is merely a handful from the vast bulk of the fecund Kuprin's writings, nor is any group of titles exhaustive of its kind. "The Star of Solomon," his latest collection of stories, bears the imprint of Helsingfors, 1920.
It must not be thought, despite its locale, that Kuprin's "Yama" is a picture of Russian prostitution solely; it is intrinsically universal. All that is necessary is to change the kopecks into cents, pennies, sous or pfennings; compute the versts into miles or metres; Jennka may be Eugenie or Jeannette; and for Yama, simply read Whitechapel, Montmartre, or the Barbary Coast. That is why "Yama" is a "tremendous, staggering, and truthful book--a terrific book." It has been called notorious, lurid--even oleographic. So are, perhaps, the picaresques of Murillo, the pictorial satires of Hogarth, the bizarreries of Goya...
The best introduction to "Yama," however, can be given in Kuprin's own words, as uttered by the reporter Platonov. "They do write," he says, "... but it