honest, the most genuine, the most ungainly, and the most unformed of all world literatures. Village-like, she was indifferent to her appearance, to her dress, to what 'others might think,' and did not concern herself at all with the effects produced." Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky poured out their tremendous wealth of nature, as prodigally as life herself; and if their creation was often chaotic, its chaos possessed the unseen order of nature; aiming at completeness rather than at selection. One remembers Mr. Arthur Symons's happy phrase about Tolstoy's "abnormal normality."

What has happened then is this:

1. Life has been shattered into a thousand fragments, and each part has created its own literary specialist. The development of the short story was one logical outcome.

2. Life, having become in a sense "artificial," it has naturally developed stylism; art and decoration have begun to complement nature. Refined perceptions have to a degree replaced natural intuitions.

This is so in so far as it concerns the big towns, the capitals, where modern life is at least lived intensely, and without compromise. The provinces, however, have produced yet a third effect in the creative artist-they have developed in him a keen sense of the hopeless tediousness of "provinciality," all life being viewed as provinciality.

This third effect is perhaps the most significant, since it has found two of the best artists of the time to express its natureAnton Chekhov and Feodor Sologub. Chekhov is the main span bridging the old and the new; Sologub is the final span projecting far on the other side.

It is curious to note that both these fine artists should have found belated recognition in Russia as well as in England. Gorky, dazzled by his romanticism, his brilliant palette of colours, his Nietzschean heroes; Artsibashev temporarily by his "show of strength" in Sanin; but neither artist has his roots as deep in the soil, or has exercised as powerful an influence on literature as Chekhov and Sologub, for the simple reason that Nietzscheism and the Russian spirit are contradictions; there is all Russian literature to prove this. It was Dostoyevsky who said that all Russian fiction has its origins in Gogol's story The Cloak; and this is the truth. Chekhov and Sologub are true descendants of Gogol.

I.

No writer reflects the new tendencies so ably as Feodor Sologub. Before I go into the details of these, let me present

the few personal facts that we have about Sologub. His real name is Feodor Kuzmich Teternikov. Fifty-two years old, he began life as a schoolmaster-an important fact, as we shall see presently. His first published story appeared in the Severny Viestnik in 1894, but it was not until 1907 that he achieved sudden fame with his novel The Little Demon.

This is all we know of a man whose works are in their twentieth volume, and whose place as a poet is hardly less secure than his place as a novelist. He has avoided all personal advertisement. Such nutshell "autobiographies" as Gorky is known by to English readers are very much in vogue in Russia, and on being requested by the editor of a literary almanac for his autobiography, Sologub replied: "I cannot give you my autobiography, as I do not think that my personality can be of sufficient interest to anyone. And I haven't the time to waste on such unnecessary business as an autobiography." At the beginning of his "Complete Works," however, there is a poem in prose, which is a kind of spiritual, mystic autobiography. It is only upon reading Sologub's writings that some of its obscurities become clear. Here is a translation of it:

"Born not the first time, and not the first to complete a circle of external transformations, I simply and calmly reveal my soul. I reveal it in the hope that the intimate part of me shall become the universal.

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The dark, earthly, human soul, flaming with sweet and bitter ecstasies, becomes more refined, and goes on ascending the never-ending ladder of perfectionments-toward abodes forever desired and forever unattainable. "It thirsts for a miracle, and is granted one.

"And is the earthly life-My Life-not a miracle? Life is so fragmentary, so disjointed, and yet so much of a oneness.

"For I am everything, and in everything, and only I; there is nothing else, there never was, and there never shall be.

"I possess things, but I do not possess You. You and I are the same. "Come to Me, love Me."

II.

Sologub is the first of Russian "stylists." He has not only taken full advantage of the flexibility of the Russian language and extracted the greatest possible euphony from it, but he has also devised a phraseology that sometimes expresses an extraordinary poignancy of mood in a few simple words. He gives the sense of atmosphere with so few and so simple strokes. Whenever he is obscure, it is because his art often tends towards. "the condition of music." Sologub himself in the only interview he had ever granted tried to explain his obscurity. It does not matter, he observed, that one person understands a story in one

way, and one in another. In this, to his mind, consists the whole idea of creation.

"My ego-that which is called Sologub-is a total, as it were, of various hereditary influences. Who will distinguish that which is myself in my work from that which is my grandfather? But it has been granted me to incarnate in words an emotion which had been prepared perhaps by several generations of men. Do not think that I refrain from explaining my work because I do not wish to. Perhaps I simply cannot. I was in such a mood, and such a poem was the result. In those poetical lines I said what I had wished to say at that moment. It's quite true that I had exerted myself to find the most fitting words to harmonise with my mood. If the result is obscure, how can I explain more clearly in a special interview a mood that I have left behind me, and forgotten."

Nevertheless, the author felt that, however exceptional his mood in this story or in that poem, it would find a "responsive soul" somewhere.

This statement may be a poet's exaggeration; it is nevertheless true that the best of Sologub's work is of such subtlety as to stimulate the reader's imagination to an amazing degree. He exercises extraordinary powers of seduction, and draws the reader into the vortex of his own mood. There is a lure in the hidden meanings of his words, which fascinate and at the same time compel the reader to share actively in the author's introspections. It becomes quite clear what he means by his intention of making "the intimate part" of him "become the universal."

After Sologub's avowal, that he was to be found in his work, it is not to be wondered at that several Russian critics have taken him at his word, and read his life into his productions, somewhat in the manner that Mr. Frank Harris has done in his study of Shakespeare, but with a good deal more cause. This was especially true of his masterpiece, The Little Demon; undoubtedly the critics erred in not making a distinction between the facts of his material and his creative penetration into them. The chief nail upon which they hung their theory and conclusion was the fact that Sologub's creation, the sordid, malicious Peredonov, was a schoolmaster-and that Sologub himself had been a schoolmaster. But there are many schoolmasters in Sologub's stories, and these schoolmasters are not all wicked men.

III.

Sologub began The Little Demon in 1892. It was published serially in 1905, and for the first time complete in 1907. It was an instantaneous success, and was soon in its third edition. The seventh edition was published lately. And yet before 1907

the author had written some very beautiful short stories and poems without any marked recognition.

The critic Amfiteatrov compared The Little Demon with Gogol's Dead Souls. Both stories, true epics in spirit, have in common a quality rare in Russian fiction—a sense of comedy-this in spite of their tragic backgrounds. At the same time the word Peredonovstchina, so called after tutor Peredonov, came into being, and this word, though applied by some critics to the state of "provinciality" of Russian life, is interpreted by others to refer to universal human conditions. The latter interpretation is the right one; Sologub leaves no doubt as to this in his poems and shorter stories. In one of his Little Tales he tells us of a knight who had captured Death and put her in gaol. As he was about to execute her, he said:

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Death, I want to cut off your head, you've done a lot of harm upon the earth.' But Death was silent. The Knight, who loved justice, continued I'll give you a chance, defend yourself if you can. What have you to say for yourself?' Death answered: 'I'll say nothing just yet; let Life put in a word for me.' And the Knight suddenly saw Life standing beside him, a robust, red-cheeked, expressionless woman. She began to say such filthy and ungodly things that the brave and invincible Knight began to tremble and made haste to open the gaol. Death then went out, and men once more began to die. The Knight himself died when his time came, and he told no one what he had heard from that robust, brazen woman, Life."

It is generally agreed that what the Knight heard Life say Sologub has told in The Little Demon. Life is provinciality, life is tediousness, a thing without meaning-in short, Peredonov. stchina. "We did not know, we had not observed before, that pettiness, commonplaceness could be so innocent, so titanic, so inspired," writes Chukovsky. "We laughed over it with Gogol, we derided it with Schedriñ, we felt sad over it with Chekhov-but only Sologub showed it to us in its full Michelangelesque proportions. . . .. Its place is in the Sistine Chapel, and it is only by chance that it fell to Skorodozh."

Skorodozh is a small town, and Peredonov is a schoolmaster there. Peredonov lives with his mistress Varvara; is bound to her only by the supposed friendliness towards her of a princess, who has promised him-so Varvara assures him by means of forged letters-an inspector's place in the event of their marriage. This place is Peredonov's one great ambition and chimera. Varvara's one thought is to marry Peredonov. He seems to be a person of some importance in the town, and younger, more attractive women than Varvara have designs on him. At the same time he suspects the sheepish-faced Volodin, who often visits his house, of desiring Varvara. The whole atmosphere

of the place is one of mutual distrust and suspicion; these are bred by assiduous self-seeking on the part of everyone. Peredonov's own candidacy for the post of school inspector makes him imagine himself persecuted by his enemies, and it brings out all his crude and naïve cunning. He visits officials, lodges complaints, and urges them not to believe the rumours spread about him, though none of the officials had heard anything until Peredonov himself had mentioned them. His inspector's position not yet assured, his malice grows; he finds a delight in chastising innocent pupils and in tormenting his cat. He is deeply superstitious, and he sees evil omens everywhere and in everything. He sees terrible visions, and a little grey beastSologub's own little beast, the nedotikomka1-appears before him again and again:

"One strange circumstance puzzled him. There ran from somewhere a strange, indescribable creature-a small, grey, and nimble nedotikomka. It mocked and it trembled, and circled round Peredonov. When he stretched out his hand to catch it, it swiftly glided out of sight, hid itself behind the door or the cupboard, but reappeared a moment later, and trembled and mocked again-the grey, ugly, and nimble creature."

There is something gigantic about Peredonov in spite of all his pettiness, something supremely honest in spite of all his malice. He, at any rate, recognises the nedotikomka as the spirit of evil, and makes an effort to fight it, though he gradually feels himself lost. If he could only get that inspector's position everything would be all right. He is desperately alone. Everything is hostile to him, and his brooding is the brooding of some demoniacal Hamlet. This is how it was even at the beginning of his difficulties:

"In the midst of the depression of these streets and houses, under estranged skies, upon the unclean and impotent earth, walked Peredonov, tormented by confused fears-there was no comfort for him in the heights and no consolation upon the earth, because now, as before, he looked upon the world with dead eyes, like some demon despairing in his dismal loneliness from fear and from yearning."

Later, the author expresses himself even more definitely about his hero's blind aspirations. Varvara, once having inveigled Peredonov into marrying her, plays upon his weaknesses; on one occasion she hides herself and makes a peculiar noise to taunt him by arousing his superstitious fears. "It only seems to you," answered Varvara to his question. "Surely not every

(1) Sologub begins one of his personal poems:
"The grey nedotikomka

Wriggles and turns, round and round me.