Yama (The Pit)

Chapter 5 No.5

Word Count: 531 | Released on: 06/12/2017

hanged on Yamskaya Street. Enormous shufflings commenced. From Treppel girls were transferred to Anna Markovna, from Anna Markovna into a rouble establishment, and f

of Imatra! Sitting in the daytime at Anna Markovna's, he was saying, squintin

nt establishment. If we'll float her down the stream, then you'll make a hundred roubles f

a person over! But just imagine, I'm

He was seeking an appropriate

I'm convinced, Madam Shaibes, that th

ting a Nietzscheism

uchy old man, but in moments of need

her outfit costs fifty roubles, Mr. Shatzky will receive twenty-five roubles, fifty roubles will be left for y

r own sweet will, whole nights through. There tremendous health and great nervous force were requisite. Sonka once began shivering from terror, in the night, when Th

sten-the thirty-sixth

evening to her. But cowardice, or a special Hebrew fastidiousness, or, perhaps, even physical aversion, would not permit him to take the girl and carry her away with him from the house. He would sit whole nights through near her, and, as of yore, patiently

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Yama (The Pit)

Alexandra Kuprin Literature

“\"With us, you see,\" Kuprin makes the reporter Platonov, his mouthpiece, say in Yama, \"they write about detectives, about lawyers, about inspectors of the revenue, about pedagogues, about attorneys, about the police, about officers, about sensual ladies, about engineers, about baritones\u2014and really, by God, altogether well\u2014cleverly, with finesse and talent. But, after all, all these people are rubbish, and their life is not life, but some sort of conjured up, spectral, unnecessary delirium of world culture. But there are two singular realities\u2014ancient as humanity itself: the prostitute and the moujik. And about them we know nothing, save some tinsel, gingerbread, debauched depictions in literature...\" And, curiously enough, it is another great Russian, Kuprin, who is supreme\u2014if not unique\u2014as a painter of the universal scourge of prostitution, per se; and not as an incidental background for portraits. True, he may not have entirely escaped the strange allure, aforementioned, of the femininity he paints; for femininity\u2014even though fallen, corrupt, abased, is still femininity, one of the miracles of life, to Kuprin, the lover of life. But, even if he may be said to have used too much of the oil of sentimentality in mixing his colours for the portraits, his portraits are subordinate to the background; and there his eye is true and keen, his hand steady and unflinching, his colours and brushwork unimpeachable.”