It may be confidently said that three-
quarters of what the ordinary Russian novel-reader read in the years
preceding the Revolution were translated novels. The book-market was
swamped with translations, Polish, German, Scandinavian, English,
French and Spanish. Knut Hamsun, H. G. Wells, and Jack London were
certainly more popular than any living Russian novelist, except
perhaps the Russian Miss Dell, Mme. Verbitsky. In writers like Jack
London and H. G. Wells the reader found what he missed in the Russian
novelists--a good story thrillingly told. For no reader, be he ever
so Russian, will indefinitely put up with a diet of "problems" and
imitation poetry.
While all these things were going on on the surface of things and
sharing between themselves the whole of the book-market, a secret
undercurrent was burrowing out its bed, scarcely noticed at first but
which turned out to be the main prolongation of the Russian novel.
The principal characteristic of this undercurrent was the revival of
realism and of that untranslatable Russian thing "byt," [Footnote:
"Byt" is the life of a definite community at a definite time in its
individual, as opposed to universally human, features.] but a revival
under new forms and in a new spirit. The pioneers of this movement
were Andrey Bely and Remizov. There was little in common between the
two men, except that both were possessed with a startlingly original
genius, and both directed it towards the utilization of Russian "byt"
for new artistic ends.
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