Miss Harrison, in her notable essay on the Aspects of the Russian
Verb, [Footnote: _Aspects and Aorists_, by Jane Harrison, Cambridge
University Press, 1919.] makes an interesting distinction between the
"perfective" and "imperfective" style in fiction. The perfective is
the ordinary style of an honest narrative. The "imperfective" is
where nothing definitely happens but only goes on indefinitely
"becoming." Russian Literature (as the Russian language, according to
Miss Harrison) has a tendency towards the "imperfective." But never
has this "imperfective" been so exclusively paramount as now. In all
these stories of thrilling events the writers have a most cunning way
of concealing the adventure under such a thick veil of detail,
description, poetical effusion, idiom, and metaphor, that it can only
with difficulty be discovered by the very experienced reader. To
choose such adventures for subjects and then deliberately to make no
use of them and concentrate all attention on style and atmosphere, is
really a _tour de force_, the crowning glory and the _reductio ad
absurdum_ of this imperfective tendency.

These extremities, which are largely conditioned by the whole past of
Russian Literature, must naturally lead to a reaction. The reading
public cannot be satisfied with such a literature. Nor are the
critics. A reaction against all this style is setting in, but it
remains in the domain of theory and has not produced work of any
importance. And it is doubtful whether it will. If even Leskov with
his wonderful genius for pure narrative has failed to influence the
moderns in any way except by his mannerisms of speech, the case seems
indeed desperate. Those who are most thirsty for good stories
properly told turn their eyes westwards, towards "Stevenson and
Dumas" and E. A. T. Hoffmann. Better imitate Pierre Benois than go on
in the way you are doing, says Lev Lunts, one of the Serapion