near the dividing line of two centuries, and it coincides rather
exactly with the moment when Russian Literature definitely ceased to
be dominated by Realism and the Novel. In the two or three years that
followed the death of Chekhov Russian Literature underwent a complete
and drastic transformation. The principal feature of the new
literature became the decisive preponderance of Poetry over Prose and
of Manner over Matter--a state of things exactly opposite to that
which prevailed during what we may conveniently call the Victorian
age. Poetry in contemporary Russian Literature is not only of greater
intrinsic merit than prose, but almost all the prose there is has to
such an extent been permeated with the methods and standards of
poetry that in the more extreme cases it is almost impossible to tell
whether what is printed as prose is really prose or verse.

Contemporary Russian Poetry is a vigorous organic growth. It is a
self-contained movement developing along logically consistent lines.
It has produced much that is of the very first order. The poetry of
Theodore Sologub, of Innocent Annensky, [Footnote: The reader will
notice the quotations from Annensky in the first story of this
volume.] 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