By the District Department for Popinstruct [Footnote: That is "District Department for popular instruction"--in "Russian," _Uotnarobraz_.] provided with every commodity.
(former Church school in garden) for public use with capacity to receive 500 persons in an 8-hour working-day.
Monday--municipal children's asylums (free)
Price for washing adults--50kop.gold children--25kop.gold
DISDEPOPINSTRUCT [Footnote: That is "District Department for popular instruction"--in "Russian," _Uotnarobraz_.]
Times: Lent of the eighth year of the World War and of the downfall of European Civilisation (see Spengler)--and sixth Lent since the great Russian Revolution; in other words: March, Spring, breaking-up of the ice--when the Russian Empire exploded in the great revolution the way Rupert's drops explode, casting off--Estia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, the Monarchy, Chernov, Martov, the Dardanelles--- Russian Civilisation,--Russian blizzards---
--and when--- --Europe-- was: --nothing but one Ersatz from end to end-- (Ersatz--a German word --means the adverb "instead.")
_Place_: there is no place of action. Russia, Europe, the world, fraternity.
Dramatis personæ: there are none. Russia, Europe, the world, belief, disbelief,--civilisation, blizzards, thunderstorms, the image of the Holy Virgin. People,--men in overcoats with collars turned up, go- alones, of course;--women;--but women are my sadness,--to me who am a romanticist--
--the only thing, the most beautiful, the greatest joy.
All this does after all make itself into some sort of sense, but the process by which this is at length attained is lengthy, tedious, and full of pitfalls to the reader who is unfamiliar with some dozen modern Russian writers and is innocent of "Soviet life."
In the impossibility of giving an intelligible English version of the _Bare Year_ and its companions, the stories contained in this volume have been selected from the early and less sensational part of Pilniak's writings and will be considerably less staggering to the average English intelligence.
There are two things an English reader is in the habit of expecting when approaching a new Russian writer: first he expects much--and complains when he does not get it; to be appreciated by an English reader the Russian writer must be a Turgenev or a Chekhov, short of that he is no use. Secondly in every Russian book he expects to find "ideas" and "a philosophy." If the eventual English reader approaches Pilniak with these standards, he will be disappointed; Pilniak is not a second Dostoyevsky, and he has singularly few "ideas." It is not that he has no ambition in the way of ideas, but they are incoherent and cheap. The sort of historical speculations he indulges in may be appreciated at their right value on reading _A Thousand Years_. In later books he is still more self-indulgent in this direction, and many of his "stories" are a sort of muddle-headed historical disquisitions rather than stories in any acceptable sense of the word. Andrey Bely and his famous _Petersburg_ are responsible for this habit of Pilniak's, as well as for many others of his perversities.