in love with her for a long time. Parallel to
the history of Lida, the life story of Karsavina is presented. Yuri
falls in love with this young and pretty school-teacher. But,
although she returns Yuri's love, the young girl, in a moment of
passion, gives herself to Sanine, whom she does not love. Disgusted
with life, feeling himself weak, neurasthenic, and sick, Yuri, only
twenty-six years of age, commits suicide. Karsavina, terribly
affected by this act of despair, leaves Sanine. And the latter,
after Yuri's funeral, disappears from the city....

All the characters in the book, from Sanine to Karsavina, are
continually preyed upon by carnal desires. Long passages of funereal
scenes alternate with pictures of the transports of love and the
descriptions of masculine and feminine bodies. "Your body proclaims
the truth, your reason lies." This is the "leitmotiv" of all the
theories that the characters in the book preach.

Let us hasten to add to the praise of the Russian public, that the
enormous success of "Sanine" was not justified by the extreme
licentiousness of the book, but by the eloquence with which the
author claims the right of free love for man and woman.

Although its success was less than that of "Sanine," Artzybashev's
second novel, "Morning Shadows," is more interesting and is more
realistic than his first.

Tired of their sometimes happy, sometimes monotonous existence, two
young people from the provinces, Lisa and Dora, go to St. Petersburg
to take some courses there and to join the revolutionary movement.
They have read Nietzsche, and want to "live dangerously." In order
to realize this project, Lisa has not hesitated to break off her
engagement with the charming and naive Lieutenant Savinov. However,
their existence in the capital is nothing but a long and bitter
deception: Dora's literary ambitions disappointed! the love of Lisa,
who has given herself to the student Korenyev, disappointed! In a
fit of despair Lisa kills herself, and her friend, who has not had
the courage to follow her example, falls victim to a terrorist
outrage which the author describes with rare power.

In his recent novel, "Before Expiration,"--which recalls "Sanine" to
our minds again,--Artzybashev has found some ingenious variations on
the old theme, "love and death." The story of the love affairs of
the painter Mikhailov, a cynical and brutal Lovelace who abandons
his mistresses when they are with child, is intermingled