of the richly
coloured narrative everything is plausible, nay, of the stuff of life.
As realists the Russians easily lead all other nations in fiction.
There are descriptions of woodlands that recall a little scene from
Turgenieff's Sportsman's Sketches; there are episodes, such as the
bacchanal in the monastery, a moonlit ride in the canoe with a
realistic seduction episode, and the several quarrels that would have
pleased both Tolstoy and Dostoievsky; there is an old mujik who seems
to have stepped out of Dostoievsky, yet is evidently a portrait taken
from life. The weak mother, the passionate sister, the sweet womanly
quality of the deceived girl, these are portraits worthy of a master.
Sanine is not the Rogoszin, and his sister is not the Nastasia
Philipovna, of Dostoievsky's The Idiot; for all that they are distinct
and worthy additions to the vast picture-gallery of Russian fiction.

Sanine himself hardly appeals to our novel readers, for whom a
golf-stick and a motor-car are symbols of the true hero. In a word, he
is real flesh and blood. He goes as mysteriously as he came. The novel
that followed, Breaking Point, is a lugubrious orgy of death and
erotic madness, a symphony of suicide and love and the disgust of
life. Artzibaschev is now in English garb. Thus far Sanine is his
masterpiece.

V

ARNOLD SCHOENBERG

I

Two decades ago, more or less, John M. Robertson published several
volumes chiefly concerned with the gentle art of criticism. Mr.
Robertson introduced to the English-reading world the critical
theories of Emile Hennequin, whose essays on Poe, Dostoievsky, and
Turgenieff may be remembered. It is a cardinal doctrine of Hennequin
and Robertson that, as the personal element plays the chief role in
everything the critic writes, he himself should be the first to submit
to a grilling; in a word, to be put through his paces and tell us in
advance of his likes and dislikes, his prejudices and passions.
Naturally, it doesn't take long to discover the particular bias of a
critic's mind. He writes himself down whenever he puts pen to paper.

For instance, there is the historic duel between Anatole France, a
free-lance among critics, and Ferdinand Brunetiere, intrenched behind
the bastions of tradition, not to mention the _Revue des Deux Mondes_.
That discussion, while amusing, was so much threshing of aca