second part appeared in volume fifteen, in 1914; the third, in
volume sixteen, in 1915. Both the original parts and the last revised
edition have been followed in this translation. The greater part of the
stories listed above are available in translations, under various
titles; the list, of course, is merely a handful from the vast bulk of
the fecund Kuprin's writings, nor is any group of titles exhaustive of
its kind. "The Star of Solomon," his latest collection of stories,
bears the imprint of Helsingfors, 1920.

It must not be thought, despite its locale, that Kuprin's "Yama" is a
picture of Russian prostitution solely; it is intrinsically universal.
All that is necessary is to change the kopecks into cents, pennies,
sous or pfennings; compute the versts into miles or metres; Jennka may
be Eugenie or Jeannette; and for Yama, simply read Whitechapel,
Montmartre, or the Barbary Coast. That is why "Yama" is a "tremendous,
staggering, and truthful book--a terrific book." It has been called
notorious, lurid--even oleographic. So are, perhaps, the picaresques of
Murillo, the pictorial satires of Hogarth, the bizarreries of Goya...

The best introduction to "Yama," however, can be given in Kuprin's own
words, as uttered by the reporter Platonov. "They do write," he says,
"... but it is all either a lie, or theatrical effects for children of
tender years, or else a cunning symbolism, comprehensible only to the
sages of the future. But the life itself no one as yet has touched...

"But the material here is in reality tremendous, downright crushing,
terrible... And not at all terrible are the loud phrases about the
traffic in women's flesh, about the white slaves, about prostitution
being a corroding fester of large cities, and so on, and so on... an
old hurdy-gurdy of which all have tired! No, horrible are the everyday,
accustomed trifles; these business-like, daily, commercial reckonings;
this thousand-year-old science of amatory practice; this prosaic usage,
determined by the ages. In these unnoticeable nothings are completely
dissolved such feelings as resentment, humiliation, shame. There
remains a dry profession, a contract, an agreement, a well-nigh honest
petty trade, no better, no worse than, say, the trade in groceries. Do
you understand, gentlemen, that all the horror is in just this--that
there is no horror! Bourgeois work days--and that is all...

"More awful than all awful words, a hundredfold more awful--is s