Page:Evgenii Zamyatin - We (Zilboorg translation).pdf/3

Rh FOREWORD

In submitting this book to the American public the translator has this to say:

The artistic and psychological aspects of the novel are hardly to be discussed in a Foreword. Great as the art of the writer may be and profound as his psychological insight may seem to one, the impression is largely a matter of individual reactions, and this aspect must naturally be left to each individual's judgment and sensibilities.

There is, however, one side of the matter which deserves particular mention and even emphasis.

This is perhaps the first time in the history of the last few decades that a Russian book, inspired by Russian life, written in Russia and in the Russian language, should see its first light not in Russia but abroad, and not in the language in which it was originally written, but translated into a foreign tongue. During the darkest years of Russian history, in the forties, sixties, eighties and nineties of the last century many Russian writers were forced by oppression and reaction to live abroad and to write abroad, yet their writings would reach Russia, as they were intended primarily for the Russian reader and Russian life. Most of Turgenev's novels were written while he was in France, and with the exception of his last short story, which he dictated on his deathbed, all his novels and stories were written in Russian. Hertzen, Kropotkin, and at one time Dostoevsky, were similarly obliged to write while away from their native land.