The author enters his "hero's" condition so deeply that even people and objects and scenery are rendered, as it were, through Peredonov's eyes—and the mood created by this subjective treatment helps to inveigle the reader into comprehending the chief character.
The beautiful Sasha-Liudmilla episode relieves the Peredonovian atmosphere as a dab of vermilion relieves grey. But what the author shows us is that even such an idyllic love episode is affected by contact with this atmosphere, and that its beauty and innocence become obscured under the tissue of lies as under a coat of grey dust. This, as well as other aspects of "The Little Demon," are dealt with at length in my article on Feodor Sologub in "The Fortnightly Review" (September, 1915), and if I refrain from going over the ground again, it is because I hope that the tale is simple and clear enough to provide its own comment.
Finally, I may be pardoned for speaking of the difficulties of translating "The Little Demon." Not only is the original extraordinarily racy in parts and rich in current Russian slang—at times almost obscure in meaning, but the characters occasionally indulge in puns or speak in rhymes—rhyme-speaking is not uncommon among the peasant classes in Russia. In every case the translators have striven to give the English equivalent; where the difficulty was of a nature rendering this impossible, the translators have had to make use of absolutely unavoidable footnotes. The translators have also made every effort to preserve the mood of Sologubian descriptive prose, which is not always an easy matter, when you consider the natural pliancy of Russian and the comparatively rigid nature of English.
JOHN COURNOS
December 1915
[AUTHOR'S PREFACE]
TO THE SECOND RUSSIAN EDITION, 1908
This novel, "The Little Demon," was begun in 1892 and finished in 1902. It originally appeared in 1905 in the periodical "Voprosi Zhizni," but without its final chapters. It was first published in its complete form in March, 1907, in the "Shipovnik" edition.
There are two dissenting opinions among those I have seen expressed in print as well as among those I have chanced to hear personally:
There are some who think that the author, being a very wicked man, wished to draw his own portrait, and has represented himself in the person of the instructor Peredonov. To judge from his frankness it would appear that the author did not have the slightest wish to justify or to idealise himself, and has painted his face in the blackest colours. He has accomplished this rather astonishing undertaking in order to ascend a kind of Golgotha, and to expiate his sins for some reason or other. The result is an interesting and harmless novel.