CONSTABLE’S RUSSIAN LIBRARY UNDER THE
EDITORSHIP OF STEPHEN GRAHAM
THE REPUBLIC OF
THE SOUTHERN CROSS
| CONSTABLE’S RUSSIAN LIBRARY |
| Edited with Introductions |
| By STEPHEN GRAHAM |
| THE SWEET SCENTED NAME |
| By Fedor Sologub |
| WAR AND CHRISTIANITY |
| THREE CONVERSATIONS |
| By Vladimir Solovyof |
| THE WAY OF THE CROSS |
| By V. Doroshevitch |
| A SLAV SOUL AND OTHER STORIES |
| By Alexander Kuprin |
| THE EMIGRANT |
| By L. F. Dostoieffshaya |
| THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD |
| By Vladimir Solovyof |
| THE REPUBLIC OF THE SOUTHERN CROSS |
| AND OTHER STORIES |
| By Valery Brussof |
THE REPUBLIC OF
THE SOUTHERN CROSS
AND OTHER STORIES
BY
VALERY BRUSSOF
WITH AN INTRODUCTORY ESSAY BY
STEPHEN GRAHAM
LONDON
CONSTABLE AND COMPANY LTD.
1918
| CONTENTS |
INTRODUCTION
VALERY BRUSSOF
VALERY BRUSSOF is a celebrated Russian writer of the present time. He isin the front rank of contemporary literature, and is undoubtedly verygifted, being considered by some to be the greatest of living Russianpoets, and being in addition a critic of penetration and judgment, awriter of short tales, and the author of one long historical novel fromthe life of Germany in the sixteenth century.
He is a Russian of strong European tastes and temperament, a sort ofMediterraneanised Russian, with greater affinities in France and Italythan in his native land; an artificial production in the midst of theRussian literary world. A hard, polished, and even mercilesspersonality, he has little in common with the compassionate spirits ofRussia. If Kuprin or Gorky may be taken as characteristic of modernRussia, Brussof is their opposite. He sheds no tears with the reader, hemakes no passionate and “unmanly” defiance of the world, but isrestrained and concentrated and wrapped up in himself and his ideas. Theaverage{vi} length of a sentence of Dostoieffsky is probably abouttwenty-five words, of Kuprin thirty, but of Brussof only twenty, and ifyou take the staccato “Republic of the Southern Cross,” only twelve. Hisfine virile style is admired by Russians for its brevity and directness.He has been called a maker of sentences in bronze.
It is curious, however, that the theme of his writing has little incommon with the virility of his style. As far as our Western point ofview is concerned it is considered rather feminine than masculine todoubt the reality of our waking life and to give credence to dreams. Yetsuch is undoubtedly the preoccupation of Brussof in these stories.
He says in his preface to the second edition of that collection whichbears the title The Axis of the Earth, “the stories are written toshow, in various ways,