Artzibasheff is an extremist. The suicidal "motif" in the
"Breaking-point" is worked out with an appalling and devastating
thoroughness.
Pessimism, in a superficial sense, could hardly go further; though
compared with Dostoievsky's insight into the "infinite" in character,
one is conscious of a certain closing of doors and narrowing of
issues. "Sanine" himself is a sort of idealization of the sublimated
common sense which seems to be this writer's selected virtue.
Artzibasheff appears to advocate, as the wisest and sanest way of
dealing with life, a certain robust and contemptuous self-assertion,
kindly, genial, without baseness or malice; but free from any scruple
and quite untroubled by remorse.
If regarded seriously--as he appears to be intended to be--as an
approximate human ideal, one cannot help feeling that in spite of his
humorous anarchism and subjective zest for life, Sanine has in him
something sententious and tiresome. He is, so to speak, an immoral
prig; nor do his vivacious spirits compensate us for the lack of
delicacy and irony in him. On the other hand there is something
direct, downright and "honest" about his clear-thinking, and his
shameless eroticism which wins our liking and affection, if not our
admiration. Artzibasheff is indeed one of the few writers who dare
excite our sympathy not only for the seduced in this world but for the
seducer.