he fools, the
Hamlets and the Don Quixotes, the lazy and the active, and so forth)
into two categories, or to speak more accurately, they are distributed
between two extremes: some are endowed, so to speak, with a good
self-consciousness, while the others have a bad self-consciousness. One
man lives and enjoys all his sensations; if he eats he rejoices, if he
looks at the sky he rejoices. In short, for such a man, the mere process
of living is happiness. But it is quite the reverse with the other sort
of man; you may plate him with gold, and he will continue to grumble;
nothing satisfies him; success in life affords him no pleasure, even if
it be perfectly self-evident. The man simply is incapable of
experiencing satisfaction; he is incapable, and that is the end of the
matter." And in view of his personal disabilities, it is not remarkable
that all his heroes should have belonged to the latter category, in a
greater or less degree, some of the incidents narrated being drawn
directly from his own experiences. Such are "The Red Flower," his best
story, which presents the hallucinations of a madman, "The Coward,"
"Night," "Attalea Princeps," and "That Which Never Happened." On the
other hand, the following have no personal element: "The Meeting," "The
Orderly and the Officer," "The Diary of Soldier Ivanoff," "The Bears,"
"Nadezhda Nikolaevna," and "Proud Aggei."

Another writer who has won some fame, especially by his charming
sketches of Siberian life, written during his exile in Siberia, is
Grigory Alexandrovitch Matchtet, born in 1852. These sketches, such as
"The Second Truth," "We Have Conquered," "A Worldly Affair," are both
true to nature and artistic, and produce a deep impression.

Much more talented and famous is Vladimir Galaktionovitch Korolenko
(1853), also the author of fascinating Siberian sketches, and of a more
ambitious work, "The Blind Musician." One point to be noted about
Korolenko is that he never joined the pessimists, or the party which
professed pseudo-peasant tendencies, and followed Count L. N. Tolstoy's
ideas, but has always preserved his independence. His first work, a
delightful fantasy, entitled "Makar's Dream," appeared in 1885.
Korolenko has been sent to Siberia several times, but now lives in
Russia proper,[48] and publishes a high-class monthly journal.

Until quite recently opinion was divided as to whether Korolenko or
Tchekoff was the more talented, and the coming "great author." As