] of Vyacheslav Ivanov, and of Alexander Blok, is to our best
understanding of that perennial quality that will last. They have
been followed by younger poets, more debatable and more debated, many
of them intensely and daringly original, but all of them firmly
planted in the living tradition of yesterday. They learn from their
elders and teach their juniors--the true touchstone of an organic and
vigorous movement. What is perhaps still more significant--the level
of minor poetry is extraordinarily high, and every verse-producer is,
in varying degrees, a conscious and efficient craftsman.
The case with prose is very different. The old nineteenth century
realistic tradition is dead. It died, practically, very soon after
Chekhov. It has produced a certain amount of good, even excellent,
work within these last twenty years, but this work is disconnected,
sterile of influence, and more or less belated; at the best it has
the doubtful privilege of at once becoming classical and above the
age. Such for instance was the case of Bunin's solitary masterpiece
_The Gentleman from San Francisco_, and of that wonderful series of
Gorky's autobiographical books, the fourth of which appeared but a
few months ago. These, however, can hardly be included in the domain
of Fiction, any more than his deservedly famous _Reminiscences of
Tolstoy_.
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