Tales of the Wilderness
Pilniak, Boris, 1894-1937
English
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TALES OF THE WILDERNESS
By
BORIS ANDREYEVICH VOGAU (Boris Pilniak, pseud.)
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY
PRINCE D. S. MIRSKY
TRANSLATED INTO ENGLISH BY
F. O'DEMPSEY
CONTENTS
THE SNOW
A YEAR OF THEIR LIVES
A THOUSAND YEARS
OVER THE RAVINE
ALWAYS ON DETACHMENT
THE SNOW WIND
THE FOREST MANOR
THE BIELOKONSKY ESTATE
DEATH
THE HEIRS
THE CROSSWAYS
INTRODUCTION
I
RUSSIAN FICTION SINCE CHEKHOV
The English reading public knows next to nothing of contemporary
Russian Literature. In the great age of the Russian Realistic Novel,
which begins with Turgeniev and finishes with Chekhov, the English
reader is tolerably at home. But what came after the death of Chekhov
is still unknown or, what is worse, misrepresented. Second and third-
rate writers, like Merezhkovsky, Andreyev, and Artsybashev, have
found their way into England and are still supposed to be the best
Russian twentieth century fiction can offer. The names of really
significant writers, like Remizov and Andrey Bely, have not even been
heard of. This state of affairs makes it necessary, in introducing a
contemporary Russian writer to the English public, to give at least a
few indications of his place in the general picture of modern Russian
Literature.
The date of Chekhov's death (1904) may be taken to mark the end of a
long and glorious period of literary achievement. It is conveniently
near the dividing line of two centuries, and it coincides rather
exactly with the moment when Russian Literature definitely ceased to
be dominated by Realism and the Novel. In the two or three years that
followed the death of Chekhov Russian Literature underwent a complete
and drastic transformation. The principal feature of the new
literature became the decisive preponderance of Poetry over Prose and
of Manner over Matter--a state of things exactly opposite to that
which prevailed during what we may conveniently call the Victorian
age. Poetry in contemporary Russian Literature is not only of greater
intrinsic merit than prose, but almost all the prose there is has to
such an extent been permeated with the methods and standards of
poetry that in the more extreme cases it is almost impossible to tell
whether what is printed as prose is really prose or verse.
Contemporary Russian Poetry is a vigorous organic growth. It is a
self-contained movement developing along logically consistent lines.
It has produced much that is of the very first order. The poetry of
Theodore Sologub, of Innocent Annensky, [Footnote: The reader will
notice the quotations from Annensky in the first story of this
volume.] of Vyacheslav Ivanov, and of Alexander Blok, is to our best
understanding of that perennial quality that will last. They have
been followed by younger poets, more debatable and more debated, many
of them intensely and daringly original, but all of them firmly
planted in the living tradition of yesterday. They learn from their
elders and teach their juniors--the true touchstone of an organic and
vigorous movement. What is perhaps still more significant--the level
of minor poetry is extraordinarily high, and every verse-producer is,
in varying degrees, a conscious and efficient craftsman.
The case with prose is very different. The old nineteenth century
realistic tradition is dead. It died, practically, very soon after
Chekhov. It has produced a certain amount of good, even excellent,
work within these last twenty years, but this work is disconnected,
sterile of influence, and more or less belated; at the best it has
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