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                 CONSTABLE’S RUSSIAN LIBRARY UNDER THE
                     EDITORSHIP OF STEPHEN GRAHAM




                            THE REPUBLIC OF
                          THE SOUTHERN CROSS




                      CONSTABLE’S RUSSIAN LIBRARY

                      _Edited with Introductions_

                           By STEPHEN GRAHAM


                        THE SWEET SCENTED NAME

                          By Fedor Sologub

                        WAR AND CHRISTIANITY
                         THREE CONVERSATIONS

                          By Vladimir Solovyof

                        THE WAY OF THE CROSS

                           By V. Doroshevitch

                        A SLAV SOUL AND OTHER STORIES

                          By Alexander Kuprin

                        THE EMIGRANT

                          By L. F. Dostoieffshaya

                        THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

                          By Vladimir Solovyof

                        THE REPUBLIC OF THE SOUTHERN CROSS
                         AND OTHER STORIES

                          By Valery Brussof




                            THE REPUBLIC OF
                          THE SOUTHERN CROSS

                           AND OTHER STORIES

                                  BY
                            VALERY BRUSSOF

                     WITH AN INTRODUCTORY ESSAY BY
                            STEPHEN GRAHAM

                                LONDON
                      CONSTABLE AND COMPANY LTD.
                                 1918




INTRODUCTION

VALERY BRUSSOF


Valery Brussof is a celebrated Russian writer of the present time. He is
in the front rank of contemporary literature, and is undoubtedly very
gifted, being considered by some to be the greatest of living Russian
poets, and being in addition a critic of penetration and judgment, a
writer of short tales, and the author of one long historical novel from
the life of Germany in the sixteenth century.

He is a Russian of strong European tastes and temperament, a sort of
Mediterraneanised Russian, with greater affinities in France and Italy
than in his native land; an artificial production in the midst of the
Russian literary world. A hard, polished, and even merciless
personality, he has little in common with the compassionate spirits of
Russia. If Kuprin or Gorky may be taken as characteristic of modern
Russia, Brussof is their opposite. He sheds no tears with the reader, he
makes no passionate and “unmanly” defiance of the world, but is
restrained and concentrated and wrapped up in himself and his ideas. The
average length of a sentence of Dostoieffsky is probably about
twenty-five words, of Kuprin thirty, but of Brussof only twenty, and if
you take the staccato “Republic of the Southern Cross,” only twelve. His
fine virile style is admired by Russians for its brevity and directness.
He has been called a maker of sentences in bronze.

It is curious, however, that the theme of his writing has little in
common with the virility of his style. As far as our Western point of
view is concerned it is considered rather feminine than masculine to
doubt the reality of our waking life and to give credence to dreams. Yet
such is undoubtedly the preoccupation of Brussof in these stories.

He says in his preface to the second edition of that collection which
bears the title _The Axis of the Earth_, “the stories are written to
show, in various ways, that there is no fixed boundary line between the
world of reality and that of the imagination, between the dreaming and
the waking world, life and fantasy; that what we commonly call
‘imaginary’ may be the greatest reality of the world, and that which all
call reality the most dreadful delirium.”

This volume, to which we have given the title of _The Republic of the
Southern Cross_ contains the best of Brussof’s tales, and they all
exemplify this particular attitude towards life. Six tales are taken
from _The Axis of the Earth_, but “For Herself or Another” is taken
from the volume entitled _Nights and Days_, and “Rhea Silvia” and
“Eluli, son of Eluli,” from the book bearing the title of _Rhea Silvia_,
in the Russian Universal Library.

In Russia, as I have previously pointed out, the short story is
considered of much more literary importance than it is here. It is the
fashion to write short stories, and readers remember those they have
read and refer to them, as we do to the distinctive and memorable poems
on our intimate bookshelves. But, then, as a rule in Russia a short
story must possess as its foundation some particular literary idea and
conception. The story written for the sake of the story is almost
unknown, and as a general rule the sort of love story and “love
interest” so indispensable with us is not asked there. It often happens,
therefore, that a volume of short tales makes a real and vital
contribution to literature. I think possibly that these specimen volumes
of Russian stories which I have edited from Sologub Kuprin and Brussof
may be helpful in our own literary world as affording new conceptions,
new models, and showing new possibilities of literary form. Brussof’s
volume is an emotional study of reality and unreality cast in the form
of brilliant tales.

       *       *       *       *       *

“Rhea Silvia,” the longest and perhaps the best, tells of the dream
which becomes reality in the Golden House of Nero which had been lost;
the subterranean Rome where a Goth can meet a crazed girl who imagines
she is the vestal Rhea Silvia, the mother of Romulus and Remus who
founded Rome itself, and that the Goth, one of the barbarian destroyers
of Rome, is the god Mars; the whole before and after intermingled.

       *       *       *       *       *

In “The Republic of the Southern Cross” Brussof projects himself several
centuries into the future and imagines an industrial community of
millions of workers, so divorced from reality that they are living at
the South Pole where no life is possible, in a huge town called Star
City where no star is visible, because they have built an immense opaque
roof to the town--literally a “lid,” as they imagine it in New York,
where they give you the freedom of the city “with the lid off”; where
the polar cold is defied by machinery which keeps the temperature at the
same point for ever, and the six months’ polar night--and, indeed, no
night--is ever known, because the great box is kept constantly
illuminated by electric light; Star City, where the Town Hall is
actually built on the _spot_ of the South Pole, the centre of the town,
whence you can only walk northward, whence the six main roads, with
thirteen-story buildings on each side, go out like meridians of
longitude, and the cross-roads are concentric circles of latitude; Star
City, stricken at last by the disease of contradiction, which creates
anarchy between the ideal and the real, impulse and action, as if the
approximation of latitude and longitude had hypnotised men’s souls;
plague-stricken Star City, where the only refuge is the Town Hall where
all earthly meridians become one, is all used with appalling power by
Brussof to suggest his mental conceit. I once read outside a Russian
theatre, “People of weak will are asked to refrain from taking tickets
for this drama.” A similar caution might be addressed to those who turn
to read “The Republic of the Southern Cross.”

       *       *       *       *       *

“The Mirror,” into which the vain woman looks and sees a reflection
which is not quite herself, who detects the particular personality of
her reflection, becomes afraid of it, is finally overcome by it and
forced to step into the mirror and let the reflection get out and walk
about the world, is subtly suggestive of the instability of what we call
the real, the solid ground under our feet. A characteristic detail is
that the special mirror before which the woman stands is a revolving
one, and when she gets angry she can make it go round like the earth on
its axis, and as the glass goes over and under, in again and out again,
so it is, as it were, night and day, dream and waking, reality and
unreality.

The drunken locksmith, seeing the seventh-century-old Italian bust of a
woman in the house to which he has been called to repair a desk, and
becoming obsessed with the idea that it is the face of a woman whose
love he betrayed, the woman of his bright and fortunate days, who tells
the long sad story which is more real to him than the realities of the
prison or the doss-house, though he does not himself know whether the
story be truth or whether he invented it, is another hauntingly
suggestive tale.

       *       *       *       *       *

In “Eluli, son of Eluli,” two excavators in the French Congo discover a
marvellous Phœnician tomb somewhere about the equatorial line and
only partially decipher the curse on those who shall disturb the rest of
the sleeping Eluli whose tomb it is. It is in a fever-stricken district
of exhausting climate, and the older and weaker of the archæologists
becomes obsessed with the reality of the dead Eluli, son of Eluli, who
visits his bedside and pronounces over him the awful curse. Both men
eventually perish. Only the normal and stronger man, namely, the one
further away from the axis of reality, remained untouched and unseeing.

       *       *       *       *       *

“For Herself or Another,” one of the cleverest tales in this
selection, describes the doubt that a Russian tourist has that a
fellow-countrywoman whom he sees in the crowd is or is not his
long-cast-off sweetheart. She is so like as to be a perfect double. It
seems impossible that such similarity between two persons should exist.
The man conceives the idea that the woman is feigning to be someone else
merely to punish him. He is so persistent that she for her part agrees
to pretend that she is indeed his old-time friend, and some of the most
tantalising description is that in which she seems to pretend that she
is that she is.

       *       *       *       *       *

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.




CONTENTS


                                                    PAGE

   I. THE REPUBLIC OF THE SOUTHERN CROSS               1

  II. THE MARBLE BUST                                 33

 III. FOR HERSELF OR FOR ANOTHER                      41

  IV. IN THE MIRROR                                   55

   V. PROTECTION                                      73

  VI. THE “BEMOL” SHOP OF STATIONERY                  84

 VII. RHEA SILVIA                                     94

VIII. ELULI, SON OF ELULI                            140

  IX. IN THE TOWER                                   155




THE REPUBLIC OF THE SOUTHERN CROSS


There have appeared lately a whole series of descriptions of the
dreadful catastrophe which has overtaken the Republic of the Southern
Cross. They are strikingly various, and give many details of a
manifestly fantastic and improbable character. Evidently the writers of
these descriptions have lent a too ready ear to the narratives of the
survivors from Star City (_Zvezdny_), the inhabitants of which, as is
common knowledge, were all stricken with a psychical distemper. For that
reason we consider it opportune to give an account here of all the
reliable evidence which we have as yet of this tragedy of the Southern
Pole.

The Republic of the Southern Cross came into being some forty years ago,
as a development from three hundred steel works established in the
Southern Polar regions. In a circular note sent to each and every
Government of the whole world, the new state expressed its pretensions
to all lands, whether mainland or island, within the limits of the
Antarctic circle, as also all parts of these lands stretching beyond
the line. It announced its readiness to purchase from the various other
states affected the lands which they considered to be under their
special protectorate. The pretensions of the new Republic did not meet
with any opposition on the part of the fifteen great powers of the
world. Debateable points concerning certain islands lying entirely
outside the Polar circle, but closely related to the Southern Polar
state were settled by special treaties. On the fulfilment of the various
formalities the Republic of the Southern Cross was received into the
family of world states, and its representatives were recognised by all
Governments.

The chief city of the Republic, having the name of Zvezdny, was situated
at the actual Pole itself. At that imaginary point where the earth’s
axis passes and all earthly meridians become one, stood the Town Hall,
and the roof with its pointed towers looked upon the nadir of the
heavens. The streets of the town extended along meridians from the Town
Hall and these meridians were intersected by other streets in concentric
circles. The height of all the buildings was the same, as was also their
external appearance. There were no windows in the walls, as all the
houses were lit by electricity and the streets were lighted by
electricity. Because of the severity of the climate, an impenetrable and
opaque roof had been built over the town, with powerful ventilators for
a constant change of air. These localities of the globe have but one day
in six months, and one long night also of six months, but the streets of
Zvezdny were always lighted by a bright and even light. In the same way
in all seasons of the year the temperature of the streets was kept at
one and the same height.

According to the last census the population of Zvezdny had reached two
and a half millions. The whole of the remaining population of the
Republic, numbering fifty millions, were concentrated in the
neighbourhood of the ports and factories. These other points were also
marked by the settlement of millions of people in towns which in
external characteristics were reminiscent of Zvezdny. Thanks to a clever
application of electric power, the entrance to the local havens remained
open all the year round. Overhead electric railways connected the most
populated parts of the Republic, and every day tens of thousands of
people and millions of kilogrammes of material passed along these roads
from one town to another. The interior of the country remained
uninhabited. Travellers looking out of the train window saw before them
only monotonous wildernesses, white in winter, and overgrown with
wretched grass during the three months of summer. Wild animals had long
since been destroyed, and for human beings there was no means of
sustenance. The more remarkable was the hustling life of the ports and
industrial centres. In order to give some understanding of the life, it
is perhaps enough to say that of late years about seven-tenths of the
whole of the world’s output