Not the greatest, but the most sensational, novel published in Russia during the last five years is Sanin, by Artsybashev. It is not sensational in the incidents, though two men commit suicide, and two girls are ruined; it is sensational in its ideas. To make a sensation in contemporary Russian literature is an achievement, where pathology is now rampant. But Artsybashev accomplished it, and his novel made a tremendous noise, the echoes of which quickly were heard all over curious and eclectic Germany, and have even stirred Paris. Since the failure of the Revolution, there has been a marked revolt in Russia against three great ideas that have at different times dominated Russian literature: the quiet pessimism of Turgenev, the Christian non-resistance religion of Tolstoi, and the familiar Russian type of will-less philosophy. Even before the Revolution Gorki had expressed the spirit of revolt; but his position, extreme as it appears to an Anglo-Saxon, has been left far behind by Artsybashev, who, with the genuine Russian love of the reductio ad absurdum, ​Page:Phelps - Essays on Russian Novelists.djvu/265 ​Page:Phelps - Essays on Russian Novelists.djvu/266 ​Page:Phelps - Essays on Russian Novelists.djvu/267 ​Page:Phelps - Essays on Russian Novelists.djvu/268 ​Page:Phelps - Essays on Russian Novelists.djvu/269 ​Page:Phelps - Essays on Russian Novelists.djvu/270 ​Page:Phelps - Essays on Russian Novelists.djvu/271 ​Page:Phelps - Essays on Russian Novelists.djvu/272 ​Page:Phelps - Essays on Russian Novelists.djvu/273 ​Page:Phelps - Essays on Russian Novelists.djvu/274 ​Page:Phelps - Essays on Russian Novelists.djvu/275 ​Page:Phelps - Essays on Russian Novelists.djvu/276 ​and fair fight; they ought to welcome it as a complete unmasking of the foe. If the life according to Sanin is really practicable, if it is a good substitute for the life according to the Christian Gospel, it is desirable that it should be clearly set forth, and its working capacity demonstrated. For the real test of Christianity, and the only one given by its Founder, is its practical value as a way of life. It can never be successfully attacked by historical research or by destructive criticism—all such attacks leave it precisely as they found it. Those who are determined to destroy Christianity, and among its relentless foes have always been numbered men of great courage and great ability, must prove that its promises of peace and rest to those who really follow it are false, and that its influence on society and on the individual is bad.