n contemporary youth that we
are going to study them separately in this book, not excepting
Tchekoff, whose influence is still enormous.

Since the death of the prophet of Yasnaya-Polyana,[1] Russian
literature cannot boast of any writers who compare with Turgenev,
Dostoyevsky, Goncharov, or the dramatist Ostrovsky. The cause is to
be traced rather to circumstances than to the authors themselves.
For social life to furnish material suitable for the artist's
description, it must first of all have types which show a certain
consistency, a more or less determined attitude. But it is futile to
look for either stability or precision in Russian life since Russia
has been going through continual crises. It would be just as
difficult for literature to record rapid changes of ideas, as for an
artist to copy a model that cannot pose for him. Besides, most
contemporary writers are struggling hard for the means of
subsistence.

[1] Tolstoy.

Sometimes their effort to get food has so sapped their strength that
they have not had enough time to finish their studies, nor enough
tranquillity of soul to apply their talents to an impartial view of
life and to incorporating in their work the documents which they
have collected. Even in the writing of the best Russian authors of
to-day one often feels that there is something unfinished, or hasty,
as if their thoughts had not matured.

I do not think that it will be superfluous to add that all Russian
literature for the past century has been able to express only a very
small part of what it had to say. The Russian writer continually
suffers from the constraint which forces him to check the flight of
his inspiration in order to escape from the foolish and often stupid
sternness of the pitiless censor. The poet Nekrasov shows us in one
of his poems an old soldier who has become a printer, and who speaks
in the following manner of Pushkin:

"He was a good man, tipped very generously, but he never ceased to
rage against the censor. When he saw his manuscripts marked with red
crosses, he became furious. One day, in order to console him, I
said:

"'Bah! why torment yourself?'

"'Why,' he cried, 'but it is blood that is flowing,--blood,--my
blood!'"

A great deal of blood was thus shed. And in order to accentuate the
action of the censor the police dealt cruel blows to the authors.
One day Pushkin was called to the head of the department. They
believed that they had recognized in one