that any Odessite will tell you that Treppel's is merely
transplanted, for fictional reasons, from his own city to K--...

Alexandre I. Kuprin was born in 1870; 1909 marked the twenty-fifth
anniversary of his literary activity. He attained his fame only
upon the publication of his amazing, epical novel, "The Duel"--
which, just like "YAMA," is an arraignment; an arraignment of
militaristic corruption. Russian criticism has styled him the poet
of life. If Chekhov was the Wunderkind of Russian letters, Kuprin
is its enfant terrible. His range of subjects is enormous; his
power of observation and his versatility extraordinary. Gambrinus
alone would justify his place among the literary giants of Europe.
Some of his picaresques, "THE INSULT," "HORSE-THIEVES," and "OFF
THE STREET"--the last in the form of a monologue--are sheer tours
de force. "Olessiya" is possessed of a weird, unearthly beauty;
"The Shulamite" is a prose-poem of antiquity. He deals with the
life of the moujik in "Back-woods" and "The Swamp"; of the Jews,
in "The Jewess" and "The Coward"; of the soldiers, in "The
Cadets," "The Interrogation," "The Night Watch," "Delirium"; of
the actors, in "How I Was an Actor" and "In Retirement." We have
circus life in "'Allez!'" "In The Circus," "Lolly," "The Clown"--
the last a one-act playlet; factory life, in "Moloch"; provincial
life, in "Small Fry"; bohemian life, in "Captain Ribnicov" and
"The River of Life"--which no one but Kuprin could have written.
There are animal stories and flower stories; stories for children
--and for neuropaths; one story is dedicated to a jockey; another
to a circus clown; a third, if I remember rightly, to a race-
horse... "Yama" created an enormous sensation upon the publication
of the first part in volume three of the "Sbornik Zemliya"--"The
Earth Anthology"--in 1909; the second part appeared in volume