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