FICTIO N.
TWO STORIES BY DOSTOEVSKY.t
Tan two stories contained in the present volume, the last of Mrs. Garnett's translations of Dostoevsky's works, are in groat • The Secede of the Cinema. By Valentla Steer. London : C. Arthur Pearson. 12s. net .1 t The Norris of Dostocvsky. Translated by COUBMICO Garnett. London Heinemann. L. 64.1 °entreat to one another. The first, The Friend of the Family, or Stepantehikovo and its Inhabitants, is a very amusing farce of the real Russian type ; that is to say, there is something mediaeval about the callousness with which the charming and simple characters are " scored off:" It is a marvellous tale of comic intrigue which concerns the inhabitants of a country house, incidentally givingan extraordinaty picture of what a squire's life in Russia must have been or, for all we know, is now hi the remoter districts. Doatoevsky does mention in passing that " my uncle's house was a regular Noah's Ark," but the household does not really seem particularly extraordinary to him. It consisted, first of all, of the Colonel and his old, half-witted, tyrannical mother the General's lady, the Colonel's two children, their governess, the old lady's daughter, her four minor " lady companions," her particular confidante, a nephew sheltering himself after financial disasters, a half-witted heiress whom the old lady wanted to marry off to the simple-hearted Colonel who is the hero, and last'but greatest, Foma Fomitch. These are the chief characters, and they are attended by a swarm of absurd footmen, footboys, and serfs, male and female. The plot is the most elaborate imaginable---:a violent storm not so much in a tea-cup as in an egg-cup. The grandiosity of the favourite and the terror which every one felt of him are well conveyed to the reader. The whole tale reminds us of one of those brightly coloured wooden peasant dolls which roll about but cannot be upset, smiling peasant men or women, arms akimbo. The other story, Nyeiochka Nyezvanov, is a tragedy, first of a drunken violinist and then of his step-daughter ; most of the characters in it live on the verge of hysteria. The two stories, which are short novels rather"than long short stories, throw each other up in their sharp contrast-.
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