..
"More awful than all awful words, a hundredfold more awful--is
some such little prosaic stroke or other as will suddenly knock
you all in a heap, like a blow on the forehead..."
It is in such little prosaic strokes; everyday, accustomed,
characteristic trifles; minute particles of life, that Kuprin
excels. The detailism which crowds his pages is like the stippling
of Whistler; or the enumerations of the Bible; or the chiselling
of Rodin, that endows the back of the Thinker with meaning.
"We all pass by these characteristic trifles indifferently, like
the blind, as though not seeing them scattered about under our
feet. But an artist will come, and he will look over them
carefully, and he will pick them up. And suddenly he will so
skillfully turn in the sun a minute particle of life, that we
shall all cry out: 'Oh, my God! But I myself--myself!--have seen
this with my own eyes. Only it simply did not enter my head to
turn my close attention upon it.' But our Russian artists of the
word--the most conscientious and sincere artists in the whole
world--for some reason have up to this time passed over
prostitution and the brothel.
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