The bestsellers of the period after
1905 were, naturally enough, hybrid writers like Andreyev. The cheap
effect of his cadenced prose, his dreary and monotonous rhetoric, his
sensational way of treating "essential problems" were just what the
intelligentsia wanted at the time; it is also just what nobody is
likely to want again. Another writer of "problem stories" was
Artsybashev. His notorious _Sanin_ (1907) is very typical of a
certain phase of Russian life. It has acquired a somewhat
unaccountable popularity among the budding English intelligentsia.
From the literary point of view its value is nil. Artsybashev and
Andreyev were very second-rate writers; they had no knowledge of
their art and their taste was deplorably bad and crude, but at least
they were in a way, sincere, and gave expression to the genuine
vacuum and desolation of their hearts. But around them sprung up a
literature which sold as well and better than they did, but was
openly meretricious and, fortunately, ephemeral. If it has done
nothing else the great Revolution of 1917 has at least done one good
thing in making a clean sweep of all this interrevolutionary (1905-
1917) fiction.
All this literature appealed to certain sides of the "intellectual"
heart, but it could not slake the thirst for fiction. It was rather
natural that the reading public turned to foreign novelists in
preference to the native ones.
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