The mere business of plot--whether in his plays or stories--is not the
important matter. The important matter is a certain sudden and
pathetic illumination thrown upon the essential truth by some casual
grouping of persons or of things--some emphatic or symbolic
gesture--some significant movement among the silent "listeners."
52. ARTZIBASHEFF. SANINE, _translation published by Huebsch_.
Artzibasheff is an extremist. The suicidal "motif" in the
"Breaking-point" is worked out with an appalling and devastating
thoroughness.
Pessimism, in a superficial sense, could hardly go further; though
compared with Dostoievsky's insight into the "infinite" in character,
one is conscious of a certain closing of doors and narrowing of
issues. "Sanine" himself is a sort of idealization of the sublimated
common sense which seems to be this writer's selected virtue.
Artzibasheff appears to advocate, as the wisest and sanest way of
dealing with life, a certain robust and contemptuous self-assertion,
kindly, genial, without baseness or malice; but free from any scruple
and quite untroubled by remorse.
If regarded seriously--as he appears to be intended to be--as an
approximate human ideal, one cannot help feeling that in spite of his
humorous anarchism and subjective zest for life, Sanine has in him
something sententious and tiresome.
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