CONTEMPORARY RUSSIAN LITERATURE. By Prince D. S. lflirsky. (Routledge. 12s.
6d. net.) Tins manual is copious and comprehensive ; an excellently detailed guide through a profusion of talent. Russian literature as a whole seems to Western eyes to be on a plane of more disruptive and ecstatic energy than any other literature, and even the smallest writers catch something of that strange- ness. Virtues of solidity and form are rare ; the Russian
character seems as yet too dispersed to express itself in systematized works. Quickness of intuition is almost uni- versal, however ; Prince Mirsky deals with some hundreds of writers, and all of them deserve notice in a literary history.
We would warn readers against taking Prince Mirsky's judg- ments too naively. He is frankly prejudiced in his opinions, and he is nowhere explicit in his standards. On the whole he is unsympathetic towards mysticism, and this is a striking disqualification for a writer on Russia. His treatment of Merezhkovsky is particularly shallow ; and it is almost beyond belief that a critic with an eye for distinctions should compare Alexander Blok's great poem The Twelve with " Kubla Khan or the first part of Faust." Still, the book is full of informa- tion, and, however unbalanced they may be, the sketches of Chekhov, Gorky, Kuprin, Andriev, Sologub, Rosanov, Blok and other writers will prove very useful to English readers of Russian Literature.
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