Yama (The Pit) | Page 3

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 is all either a lie, or
theatrical effects for children of tender years, or else a cunning symbolism,
comprehensible only to the sages of the future. But the life itself no one as yet has
touched...
"But the material here is in reality tremendous, downright crushing, terrible... And not at
all terrible are the loud phrases about the traffic in women's flesh, about the white slaves,
about prostitution being a corroding fester of large cities, and so on, and so on... an old
hurdy-gurdy of which all have tired! No, horrible are the everyday, accustomed trifles;
these business- like, daily, commercial reckonings; this thousand-year-old science of
amatory practice; this prosaic usage, determined by the ages. In these unnoticeable
nothings are completely dissolved such feelings as resentment, humiliation, shame. There
remains a dry profession, a contract, an agreement, a well-nigh honest petty trade, no
better, no worse than, say, the trade in groceries. Do you understand, gentlemen, that all
the horror is in just this-- that there is no horror! Bourgeois work days--and that is all...
"More awful than all awful words, a hundredfold more awful--is some such little prosaic
stroke or other as will suddenly knock you all in a heap, like a blow on the forehead..."
It is in such little prosaic strokes; everyday, accustomed, characteristic trifles; minute
particles of life, that Kuprin excels. The detailism which crowds his pages is like the
stippling of Whistler; or the enumerations of the Bible; or the chiselling of Rodin, that
endows the back of the Thinker with meaning.
"We all pass by these characteristic trifles indifferently, like the blind, as though not
seeing them scattered about under our feet. But an artist will come, and he will look over
them carefully, and he will pick them up. And suddenly he will so skillfully turn in the
sun a minute particle of life, that we shall all cry out: 'Oh, my God! But I
myself--myself!--have seen this with my own eyes. Only it simply did not enter my head
to turn my close attention upon it.' But our Russian artists of the word--the most
conscientious and sincere artists in the whole world--for some reason have up to this time
passed over prostitution and the brothel. Why? Really, it is difficult for me to answer that.
Perhaps because of squeamishness, perhaps out of pusillanimity, out of fear of being
signalized as a pornographic writer; finally from the apprehension that our gossiping
criticism will identify the artistic work of the writer with his personal life and will start
rummaging in his dirty linen. Or perhaps they can find neither the time, nor the
self-denial, nor the self- possession to plunge in head first into this life and to watch it
right up close, without prejudice, without sonorous phrases, without a sheepish pity, in all
its monstrous simplicity and everyday activity... That material... is truly unencompassable
in its significance and weightiness... The words of others do not suffice--even though
they be the most exact--even observations, made with a little note-book and a bit of
pencil, do not suffice. One must grow accustomed to this life, without being cunningly
wise..."

"I believe, that not now, not soon--after fifty years or so--but there will come a writer of
genius, and precisely a Russian one, who will absorb within himself all the burdens and
all the abominations of this life and will cast them forth to us in the form of simple, fine,
and deathlessly--caustic images. And we shall all say: 'Why, now, we ourselves have
seen and known all this, but we could not even suppose that this is so horrible! In this
coming artist I believe with all my heart."
Kuprin is too sincere, too big, to have written this with himself in mind; yet no reader of
the scathing, searing arraignment called "Yama," will question that the great, the gigantic
Kuprin has shown "the burdens and abominations" of prostitution, in "simple, fine, and
deathlessly-caustic images"; has shown that "all the horror is in just this--that there is no
horror..." For it is as a pitiless reflection of a "singular," sinister reality that "Yama"
stands unsurpassed.
B. G. GUERNEY.
New York City, January, 1922.

TRANSLATOR'S NOTE.
A word must be said of Kuprin's style. He is by no means a purist; his pages bristle with
neologisms and foreign--or, rather, outlandish--words; nor has he any hesitancy in
adapting and Russianizing such words. He coins words; he is, at times, actually
Borrowesque, and not only does he resort to colloquialisms and slang, but to