And we
shall all say: 'Why, now, we ourselves have seen and known all
this, but we could not even suppose that this is so horrible! In
this coming artist I believe with all my heart."
Kuprin is too sincere, too big, to have written this with himself
in mind; yet no reader of the scathing, searing arraignment called
"Yama," will question that the great, the gigantic Kuprin has
shown "the burdens and abominations" of prostitution, in "simple,
fine, and deathlessly-caustic images"; has shown that "all the
horror is in just this--that there is no horror..." For it is as a
pitiless reflection of a "singular," sinister reality that "Yama"
stands unsurpassed.
B. G. GUERNEY.
New York City, January, 1922.
TRANSLATOR'S NOTE.
A word must be said of Kuprin's style. He is by no means a purist;
his pages bristle with neologisms and foreign--or, rather,
outlandish--words; nor has he any hesitancy in adapting and
Russianizing such words. He coins words; he is, at times, actually
Borrowesque, and not only does he resort to colloquialisms and
slang, but to dialect, cant, and even actual argot.
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