"Oh how incomprehensible for us, how mysterious, how strange are the
very simplest happenings in life. And we, not understanding them,
unable to penetrate their significance, heap one event upon another,
plait them together, join them, make acquaintances and marriages,
write books, say sermons, found ministries, carry on war or trade,
make new inventions and then after all, create history! And yet every
time I think of the immensity and complexity, the incomprehensible and
elemental accidentoriness of the whole hurly-burly of life, then my own
little life seems but a miserable speck of dust lost in the whirl of a
hurricane."
So in a paragraph in one of his sketches Alexander Kuprin gives his
feelings about his life and his work, and in that expression perhaps we
see his characteristic attitude towards the world of which he writes.
One of the strongest tales in this collection, "Tempting Providence,"
is very representative of Kuprin in this vein.
After Chekhof the most popular tale-writer in Russia is Kuprin, the
author of fourteen volumes of effusive, touching and humorous stories.
He is read by the great mass of the Russian reading public, and his
works can be bought at any railway bookstall in the Empire. He is
devoured by the students, loved by the bourgeois, and admired even by
intellectual and fastidious Russians. It is impossible not to admire
this natural torrent of Russian thoughts and words and sentiments. His
lively pages are a reflection of Russia herself, and without having
been once in the country it would be possible to get a fair notion of
its surface life by reading these tales in translation. Perhaps the
greatest of living Russian novelists is Kuprin--exalted, hysterical,
sentimental, Rabelaisian Kuprin. He comes to you with a handful of
wild flowers in one red, hairy hand and a shovelful of rubbish in the
other--his shiny, lachrymose but unfathomable features pouring floods
of tears or rolling and bursting in guffaws of laughter. His is a rank
verbiage--he gives birth to words, ideas, examples in tens where other
writers go by units and threes.
He is occasionally coarse, occasionally sentimental, but he gives great
delight to his readers; his are rough-hewn lumps of conversation and
life. With him everything is taken from life. He seems to be a master
of detail, and the characteristic of his style is a tendency to give
the most diverting lists. Often paragraph after paragraph, if you
look into the style, would be found to be lists of delicious details
reported in a conversational manner. Thus, opening a volume at random,
you can easily find an example:--
"Imagine the village we had reached--all overblown with snow; the
inevitable village idiot, Serozha, walking almost naked in the snow;
the priest, who won't play cards the day before a festival but writes
denunciations to the village starosta instead--a stupid, artful man,
and an adept at getting alms, speaking an atrocious Petersburg Russian.
If you have grasped what society was like in the village you know to
what point of boredom and stupefaction we attained. We had already
got tired of bear-hunting, hare-hunting with hounds, pistol-shooting
at a target through three rooms, writing humorous verses. It must be
confessed we quarrelled."
He is also the inventor of amusing sentences which can almost be used
as proverbs:--
He knew which end of the asparagus to eat.
Or,
We looked at our neighbours through a microscope; they at us through a
telescope.
Every one of Kuprin's stories has the necessary Attic salt. He is like
our English Kipling, whom he greatly admires, and about whom he has
written in one of his books an appreciative essay. He is also something
like the American O. Henry, especially in the matter of his lists of
details and his apt metaphors, but he has not the artifice nor the
everlasting American smile. Kuprin, moreover, takes his matter from
life and writes with great ease and carelessness; O. Henry put together
from life and re-wrote twelve times.
Above all things Kuprin is a sentimental author, preferring an impulse
to a reason, and abandoning logic whenever his feelings are touched.
He likes to feel the reader with the tears in his eyes and then to
go forward with him in the unity of emotional friendship. There is,
however, under this excitement a rather self-centred cynic despising
the things he does not love, a satirical genius. His humour is nearly
always at the expense of some person, institution or class of society.
Thus "The Song and the Dance" is at the expense of the peasantry, "The
Last Word" at the expense of the lower _intelligentia,_ "The White
Poodle" at the expense of those rich bourgeois who have villas on the
Crimean shores, "Anathema" at the expense of the Church, "Mechanical
Justice" at the expense of the professor, and so on. And it is part of
Kuprin's sentiment to love dogs almost as much as men, and he tells no
tales at dogs' expense. "The White Poodle" and "Dogs' Happiness" are
two of his dog tales.
The tales selected are taken from various volumes, and two of them,
"The Elephant" and "The White Poodle," from a volume specially designed
by him for reading aloud to children. They are in very simple and
colloquial and humorous Russian, and are delightful to read aloud.
Kuprin, who is a living Russian tale-writer, though considerably less
productive than in his earlier years, spent a great deal of time in
the Crimea, which is evidently favourite country to him. Chekhof also
lived in the Crimea and tended lovingly his rose garden at Yalta.
His neighbour, Kuprin, wrote one of the most charming reminiscent
essays on Chekhof and his life in "To the Glory of the Living and the
Dead," which also contains the Kipling essay. Many of Kuprin's stories
relate to the Crimea, and the longest of these given in this selection
contains a description of Crimean life, and gives (pp. 154--157) a
wonderful impression of a Crimean summer night. Kuprin has also lived
in England and has written tales of London life, and has occasional
references to English characteristics. But I have avoided carrying
coals to Newcastle.
As compared with Sologub, whose volume of beautiful tales, "The
Sweet-scented Name," has found so many friends in England, Kuprin
may be said to be nearer to the earth, less in the clouds. He is a
satirical realist, whereas Sologub is a fantastic realist. Sologub
discloses the devils and the angels in men and women, but Kuprin is
cheerfully human. Both have a certain satirical genius, but Kuprin is
read by everyone, whereas it would be hardly one in ten that could
follow Sologub. In comparison with Chekhof I should say Kuprin was
a little more inventive, and as regards a picture of life Kuprin is
nearer to the present moment. Nearly all these Russian tale-writers
excel in describing the life of townspeople. Very little study of the
peasantry has been made, though there are one or two notable exceptions.
Kuprin made his name in writing stories of life in the Russian army.
He did not describe the common soldier as did his likeness, Kipling,
but rather the life of the officers. His most famous books on the
subject are "Cadets," "Staff-Captain Ribnikof"[1] and "The Duel."[1]
He extended his popularity with somewhat lurid and oleographic
descriptions of the night haunt and night life, and wrote the notorious
novel, lately completed, entitled "_Yama_"--"The Pit." He has written
a great deal about the relationship of men and women. His weakness
is the subject of women. Whenever they come into question he becomes
self-conscious and awkward, putting his subject in the wrong light,
protesting too much, and finally writing that which is not fitting just
because "all is permitted" and "why shouldn't we?" His poorest work is
his coarse work. Nothing ugly is worth reproducing, however curious the
ugliness may be. We do not want the ugly, and are interested more in
brightest Russia than in darkest Russia. My purpose is to give what
is beautiful, or in any case what is interesting but not ugly, in the
living Russian literature of to-day. Consequently I have made, together
with my wife, a choice of Kuprin. We have read all his stories through
and taken fifteen of those which make him a great writer, just those
which should enrich us. Here is Kuprin's humour, sentiment, pathos,
and delightful and entertaining verbosity. Of this work all but three
tales were translated by my wife, and these three by myself. I have
communicated the contents to Kuprin, who sanctions the publication.