s; no overwhelming
personality has emerged from the rebellious froth of new theories. If
ever the "man on horseback" does appear in Russia, it is very doubtful
if he will bestride a Pegasus.

Of bigger and sterner calibre than any of the productions of the
others is Sanine, a novel by Michael Artzibaschev, that is being
widely read not only in Russia but in all the world. It was written as
long ago as 1903 the author tells us. He is of Tartar origin, born
1878, of parents in whose veins flowed Russian, French, Georgian, and
Polish blood. He is of humble origin, as is Gorky, and being of a
consumptive tendency, he lives in the Crimea. He began as a
journalist. His photograph reveals him as a young man of a fine,
sensitive type, truly an apostle of pity and pain. He passionately
espouses the cause of the poor and downtrodden, as his extraordinary
revolutionary short stories--The Millionaire among the rest--show.
Since Turgenieff's Fathers and Sons, no tale like Metal Worker
Schevyrjow has appeared in European literature. In it the bedrock of
Slavic fatalism, an anarchistic pessimism is reached. It has been done
into French by Jacques Povolozky. The Russian author reveals plentiful
traces of Tolstoy, Turgenieff, Dostoievsky, and Gorky in his pages;
Tchekov, too, is not absent. But the new note is the influence of Max
Stirner. Michael Artzibaschev calmly grafts the disparate ideas of
Dostoievsky and Max Stirner in his Sanine, and the result is a hero
who is at once a superman and a scoundrel--or are the two fairly
synonymous? This clear-eyed, broad-shouldered Sanine passes through
the little town where he was born, leaving behind him a trail of
mishaps and misfortunes. He is depicted with a marvellous art, though
it is impossible to sympathise with him. He upsets a love-affair of
his sister's, he quarrels with and insults her lover, who commits
suicide; he also drives to self-destruction a wretched little Hebrew
who has become a freethinker and can't stand the strain of his
apostasy; he is the remote cause of another suicide, that of a
weakling, a student full of "modern" ideas, but whose will is quite
sapped. Turgenieff's Fathers and Sons is recalled more than once,
especially the character of Bazarov, the nihilist. Furthermore, when
this student fails to reap the benefit of a good girl's love, Sanine
steps in and ruins her. Even incest is hinted at. All this sounds
incredible in our bare recital, but in the flow and glow