Snowdrop." His real strength lay, however, in the drama of manners, giving
realistic pictures of Russian life among the Russian city classes and the
minor nobility. Here he was recognized, from the time of the appearance on
the stage of his first pieces, in 1853 and the following years, as without
a rival among Russian authors for the theatre. Of this realistic drama the
present volume gives four characteristic examples.

The tone of "Poverty Is No Crime" (1854), written only four years after "A
Family Affair," is in sharp contrast with that of its predecessor. In the
earlier play Ostróvsky had adopted a satiric tone that proved him a worthy
disciple of Gógol, the great founder of Russian realism. Not one lovable
character appears in that gloomy picture of merchant life in Moscow; even
the old mother repels us by her stupidity more than she attracts us by her
kindliness. No ray of light penetrates the "realm of darkness"--to borrow
a famous phrase from a Russian critic--conjured up before us by the young
dramatist. In "Poverty Is No Crime" we see the other side of the medal.
Ostróvsky had now been affected by the Slavophile school of writers and
thinkers, who found in the traditions of Russian society treasures of
kindliness and love that they contrasted with the superficial glitter of
Western civilization. Life in Russia is varied as elsewhere, and Ostróvsky
could change his tone without doing violence to realistic truth. The
tradesmen had not wholly lost the patriarchal charm of their peasant
fathers. A poor apprentice is the hero of "Poverty Is No Crime," and a
wealthy manufacturer the villain of the piece. Good-heartedness is the
touchstone by which Ostróvsky tries character, and this may be hidden
beneath even a drunken and degraded exterior. The scapegrace, Lyubím
Tortsóv, has a sound Russian soul, and at the end of the play rouses his
hard, grasping brother, who has been infatuated by a passion for aping
foreign fashions, to his native Russian worth.