he
passed away in the next year.

As a dramatist, Ostrovsky is above all else a realist; no more thoroughly
natural dramas than his were ever composed. Yet as a master of realistic
technique he must not be compared with Ibsen, or even with many less
noted men among modern dramatists. His plays have not the neat, concise
construction that we prize to-day. Pages of dialogue sometimes serve no
purpose except to make a trifle clearer the character of the actors, or
perhaps slightly to heighten the impression of commonplace reality. Even
in "Sin and Sorrow" and "A Protegee" whole passages merely illustrate the
background against which the plot is set rather than help forward the
action itself. Many plays, such as "A Family Affair," end with relatively
unimportant pieces of dialogue. Of others we are left to guess even the
conclusion of the main action: will Nadya in "A Protegee" submit to her
degrading fate, or will she seek refuge in the pond?

Ostrovsky rarely uses the drama to treat of great moral or social problems.
He is not a revolutionary thinker or an opponent of existing society; his
ideal, like that of his predecessor Gogol, is of honesty, kindliness,
generosity, and loyalty in a broad, general way to the traditions of the
past. He attacks serfdom not as an isolated leader of a forlorn hope, but
as an adherent of a great party of moderate reformers.

Thus Ostrovsky's strength lies in a sedate, rather commonplace realism. One
of the most national of authors, he loses much in translation.[1] His style
is racy, smacking of the street or the counting-house; he is one of the
greatest masters of the Russian vernacular. To translate his Moscow slang
into the equivalent dialect of New York would be merely to transfer
Broadway associations to the Ilyinka. A translator can only strive to
be colloquial and familiar, giving up the effort to render the varying
atmosphere of the different plays. And Ostrovsky's characters are as
natural as his language. Pig-headed merchants; apprentices, knavish or
honest as the case may be; young girls with a touch of poetry in their
natures, who sober down into kindly housewives; tyrannical serf-owners and
weak-willed sons of noble families: such is the material of which he builds
his entertaining, wholesome, mildly thoughtful dramas. Men and women live
and love, trade and cheat in Ostrovsky as they do in the world around us.
Now and then a murder or a suicide appears in his pages as it does