A SLAV SOUL
AND OTHER STORIES
BY
ALEXANDER KUPRIN
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY
STEPHEN GRAHAM
NEW YORK
G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS
1916
CONTENTS
| I. | A SLAV SOUL | |
| II. | THE SONG AND THE DANCE | |
| III. | EASTER DAY | |
| IV. | THE IDIOT | |
| V. | THE PICTURE | |
| VI. | HAMLET | |
| VII. | MECHANICAL JUSTICE | |
| VIII. | THE LAST WORD | |
| IX. | THE WHITE POODLE | |
| X. | THE ELEPHANT | |
| XI. | DOGS’ HAPPINESS | |
| XII. | A CLUMP OF LILACS | |
| XIII. | ANATHEMA | |
| XIV. | TEMPTING PROVIDENCE | |
| XV. | CAIN |
INTRODUCTION
ALEXANDER KUPRIN
“Oh how incomprehensible for us, how mysterious, how strange are thevery simplest happenings in life. And we, not understanding them,unable to penetrate their significance, heap one event upon another,plait them together, join them, make acquaintances and marriages,write books, say sermons, found ministries, carry on war or trade,make new inventions and then after all, create history! And yet everytime I think of the immensity and complexity, the incomprehensible andelemental accidentoriness of the whole hurly-burly of life, then my ownlittle life seems but a miserable speck of dust lost in the whirl of ahurricane.”
So in a paragraph in one of his sketches Al