Yama, Aleksandr Kuprin [grave mercy TXT] 📗

—⁠Trans. ↩

Orenburg has as high a reputation for woolens as Sheffield has for steel. —⁠Trans. ↩

Schoolbooks (taking their names from their authors), upon which generation after generation of gymnazists have been brought up. —⁠Trans. ↩

This story is Lit No. 29, by Guy de Maupassant. —⁠Trans. ↩

In English, a “toff”; in American, a “swell.” —⁠Trans. ↩

“My mastery of the German language is a trifle worse than that of the French, but I can always keep up my end in parlor small talk.” ↩

“O, splendid!⁠ ⁠… You have a bewitching Riga enunciation, the most correct of all the German ones. And so, let us continue in my tongue. That is far sweeter to my ear⁠—my mother tongue. All right?” ↩

“All right.” ↩

“In the very end you will give in, as though unwillingly, as though against your will, as though from infatuation, a momentary caprice, and⁠—which is the main thing⁠—as though on the sly from me. You understand? For this the fools pay enormous money. However, it seems I will not have to teach you.” ↩

“Yes, my dear madam. You say very wise things. But this is no longer small talk; it is, rather, serious conversation⁠ ⁠…” ↩

Zolotorotzi⁠—a subtle euphemism for cleaners of cesspools and carters of the wealth contained therein. —⁠Trans. ↩

The first edition in English consisted⁠—if the publisher is to be believed⁠—of 1,225 copies, retailing from ten to sixty dollars per copy; the next edition⁠—with the same qualification of its publisher’s statement⁠—was of 1,550 copies, also prohibitively priced. This revised, augmented edition is the third. —⁠Trans. ↩

In a delightful letter to me Kuprin has written: “I am not at all mistaken in saying that Yama was translated in all lands and realms⁠—with the possible exception of the Touaregs and the Bottoludi.⁠ ⁠… I must say that in England and in Holland neither Yama nor Sulamith was allowed: the first for its naked truth; the second for its light-minded attitude toward the Bible.⁠ ⁠…” I myself, as a bookseller, have had occasion to supply Yama in Yiddish. And since the above was written, this version of Yama has been published in England and has met with deserved success. —⁠Trans. ↩

List of Illustrations

A visiting card, reading “Eumenii Poluectovich, Egmont⁠—Lavretzki, Dramatic Artist of Metropolitan Theatres.” There is an illustration of a dramatic mask in the top left.

Colophon

Yama
was published between 1909 and 1915 by
Aleksandr Kuprin.
It was translated from Russian in 1922 by
Bernard Guilbert Guerney.

This ebook was produced for
Standard Ebooks
by
Robin Whittleton,
and is based on a transcription produced in 2003 by
Robert Rowe, Charles Franks and The Online Distributed Proofreading Team
for
Project Gutenberg
and on digital scans available at the
Internet Archive.

The cover page is adapted from
Vampire,
a painting completed in 1893 by
Edvard Munch.
The cover and title pages feature the
League Spartan and Sorts Mill Goudy
typefaces created in 2014 and 2009 by
The League of Moveable Type.

The first edition of this ebook was released on
December 21, 2020, 11:13 p.m.
You can check for updates to this ebook, view its revision history, or download it for different ereading systems at
standardebooks.org/ebooks/aleksandr-kuprin/yama/bernard-guilbert-guerney.

The volunteer-driven Standard Ebooks project relies on readers like you to submit typos, corrections, and other improvements. Anyone can contribute at standardebooks.org.

Uncopyright

May you do good and not evil.
May you find forgiveness for yourself and forgive others.
May you share freely, never taking more than you give.

Copyright pages exist to tell you can’t do something. Unlike them, this Uncopyright page exists to tell you, among other things, that the writing and artwork in this ebook are believed to be in the U.S. public domain. The U.S. public domain represents our collective cultural heritage, and items in it are free for anyone in the U.S. to do almost anything at all with, without having to get permission. Public domain items are free of copyright restrictions.

Copyright laws are different around the world. If you’re not located in the U.S., check with your local laws before using this ebook.

Non-authorship activities performed on public domain items⁠—so-called “sweat of the brow” work⁠—don’t create a new copyright. That means nobody can claim a new copyright on a public domain item for, among other things, work like digitization, markup, or typography. Regardless, to dispel any possible doubt on the copyright status of this ebook, Standard Ebooks L3C, its contributors, and the contributors to this ebook release this ebook under the terms in the CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication, thus dedicating to the worldwide public domain all of the work they’ve done on this ebook, including but not limited to metadata, the titlepage, imprint, colophon, this Uncopyright, and any changes or enhancements to, or markup on, the original text and artwork. This dedication doesn’t change the copyright status of the underlying works, which, though believed to already be in the U.S. public domain, may not yet be in the public domain of other countries. We make this dedication in the interest of enriching our global cultural heritage, to promote free and libre culture around the world, and to give back to the unrestricted culture that has given all of us so much.