PREFACE

_"Sanine" is a thoroughly uncomfortable book, but it has a fierce
energy which has carried it in a very short space of time into almost
every country in Europe and at last into this country, where books,
like everything else, are expected to be comfortable. It has roused
fury both in Russia and in Germany, but, being rather a furious effort
itself, it has thriven on that, and reached an enormous success. That
is not necessarily testimony of a book's value or even of its power. On
the other hand, no book becomes international merely by its capacity
for shocking moral prejudices, or by its ability to titillate the
curiosity of the senses. Every nation has its own writers who can shock
and titillate. But not every nation has the torment of its existence
coming to such a crisis that books like "Sanine" can spring to life in
it. This book was written in the despair which seized the Intelligenzia
of Russia after the last abortive revolution, when the Constitution
which was no constitution was wrung out of the grand dukes. Even
suppose the revolution had succeeded, the intellectuals must have asked
themselves, even suppose they had mastered the grand dukes and captured
the army, would they have done more than altered the machinery of
government, reduced the quantity of political injustice, amended the
principles of taxation, and possibly changed the colours of the postage
stamps? Could they have made society less oppressive to the life of the
individual? Like all intellectuals, M. Artzibashef is fascinated by the
brutality of human life, and filled with hatred of his own disgust at
it. As with all artists, it is necessary for him to shake free of his
own disgust, or there will be an end of his art. Intellectual and an