What the new realists who dominate our Western schools of philosophy would say to Valery Brussof would be curious. He is not an hysterical type of writer and is not emotionally convinced of the truth of his writing, but wilfully persistent, affirming unreality intellectually and defending his conception with a sort of masculine impressionism. He drives his idea to the reader’s mind clad in complete armour, no tenderness, no apologetics, no willingness to please a lady’s eye in the use of his words and phrases.
The theme of several of the stories might have been worked out readily by our Mr. Algernon Blackwood, but so would have been more discursive, and the mystery of them better hidden. But Brussof, as it were, draws the skull and crossbones at the top of the page before he writes a word and then goes on. Inevitably the interest is reflected from the stories to the personality of the author.
It should be said that a slight strain of madness seems to cast a sort of glamour on an artist in Russia, whereas in the West, unless the artist be a musician, it is certainly a handicap. One of the strongest prejudices against taking Nietzsche seriously in England is that he finished his days in an asylum. And it is as prejudicial to be thought pas normal in France as to have lost a mental balance with us. But Russia, with her epileptic Dostoieffsky, hypochondriac Gogol, inebriate Nekrasof, has other traditions, and it is not unfitting that the artist who made hundreds of marvellous studies of a primeval demon, the most clever painter of modern Russia, Michael Vrubel, should have painted as his last picture before removal to an asylum, Valery Brussof, the author of these tales, a reproduction of this portrait serving aptly as a frontispiece for this book.
Both Bernard Shaw and H. G. Wells have been described as average or standard types of intelligence, and both are proud of level-headedness. But in the Russian literary world claims of that kind are not put forward nowadays. In fact, Russia, though most heartily progressive—perhaps too heartily from our point of view—does not reckon the credibility of the earth and light and truth and ordinary measurement as in any way superior to the credibility of the world of fantasy. It is worth while writing in Russia, not so much to affirm the real as to find and then set in ever more striking pose the paradoxes of human life.
Brussof’s poetry, for which he enjoys a great reputation, is dedicated to the same ideas as his stories, though in them he is before all else a most polished craftsman and cares more for perfection of technique than for anything else.
His poetry is not difficult, and can be recommended for those who read Russian and prefer to study up-to-date matter. In my opinion, however, the best volumes of Balmont have more lyrical beauty than the best of Brussof. There is, moreover, a good deal of erotic verse which is bankrupt of real vital thought, as there are stories of this kind not by any means commendable for British consumption. Brussof evidently reads English, and one or two of his poems are reminiscent of better things at home.
In the midst of his wide literary activities Brussof is also an interesting critic, and I know few more elucidative volumes than “Dalekie i Bliskie, Near and Far,” a collection of essays on the Russian poets.
STEPHEN GRAHAM.