In submitting this book to the American public the translator hasthis to say.

The artistic and psychological sides of the novel are hardly tobe discussed in a preface. Great as the art of a writer may beand profound as his psychology may seem to one, the impressionis largely a matter of individual variations, and this side mustnaturally be left to each individual’s judgment and sensibilities.

There is, however, one side of the matter which deserves particularmention and motivated emphasis.

It is perhaps for the first time in the history of the last fewdecades that a Russian book, inspired by Russian life, written inRussia and in the Russian language, should see its first light notin Russia but abroad, and not in the language it was originallywritten but translated into a foreign tongue. During the darkestyears of Russian history, in the ’forties, ’sixties, ’eighties and’nineties of the last century, many Russian writers were forced byoppression and reaction to live abroad and to write abroad, yettheir writings would reach Russia, as they were intended primarilyfor the Russian reader and Russian life. Most of Turgeniev’s novelswere written while he was in France, and with the exception of hislast short story which he dictated on his deathbed, all his novelsand stories were written in Russian. Hertzen, Kropotkin, and at onetime Dostoyevski, were similarly obliged to write while away fromtheir native land.

Here is a book written by an artist who lived and still lives inRussia, and whose intimate love for Russia and her suffering is sogreat that he finds it impossible to leave Russia even in thesedays of stress and sorrow. But his book may not appear in thecountry where it was written. It is a great tragedy—this spiritualloneliness of the artist who cannot speak to his own people. Inbringing out this book in English, the author tries to addresshimself to the world without having the opportunity of being heardby his own people. This situation, however, is to a great extentsymbolic of the spiritual mission of Zamiatin, for no matter whatthe language in which he originally writes, and no matter howtypically national his artistic perception and intuition, he isessentially universal and his vision transcends the boundariesof a purely national art. Moreover, is it not true that the moregenuinely national a man’s art, and the more sincerely national hispersonality, the more is he universal? Abraham Lincoln is more thanan American national figure, and I doubt if the appeal Lincoln’spersonality makes would be universal as it is if he were not sotypically American. It is difficult to find personalities morenational than Tolstoi or Dostoyevski, and this is perhaps the reasonwhy they stand out as two of the most typically universal minds witha universal appeal that the nineteenth century gave us.

Zamiatin is not so great as the men referred to above, but despitehis youth, he already proves to be the bearer of that quality ofgreatness which characterizes a personality with a universal appeal.

We is, as Zamiatin himself calls it, the most jocular and themost earnest thing he has

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