Gambrinus
alone would justify his place among the literary giants of Europe.
Some of his picaresques, "THE INSULT," "HORSE-THIEVES," and "OFF
THE STREET"--the last in the form of a monologue--are sheer tours
de force. "Olessiya" is possessed of a weird, unearthly beauty;
"The Shulamite" is a prose-poem of antiquity. He deals with the
life of the moujik in "Back-woods" and "The Swamp"; of the Jews,
in "The Jewess" and "The Coward"; of the soldiers, in "The
Cadets," "The Interrogation," "The Night Watch," "Delirium"; of
the actors, in "How I Was an Actor" and "In Retirement." We have
circus life in "'Allez!'" "In The Circus," "Lolly," "The Clown"--
the last a one-act playlet; factory life, in "Moloch"; provincial
life, in "Small Fry"; bohemian life, in "Captain Ribnicov" and
"The River of Life"--which no one but Kuprin could have written.
There are animal stories and flower stories; stories for children
--and for neuropaths; one story is dedicated to a jockey; another
to a circus clown; a third, if I remember rightly, to a race-
horse... "Yama" created an enormous sensation upon the publication
of the first part in volume three of the "Sbornik Zemliya"--"The
Earth Anthology"--in 1909; the second part appeared in volume
fifteen, in 1914; the third, in volume sixteen, in 1915.
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