They say that when Alexander Kuprin returned to Russia in 1937, the powers that be decided that he would live in a small house in Gatchina, where he had lived from 1911 to 1919. This was a little green house, number 19 on Elizavetinskaya Ulitsa (present Dostoevsky Street), a minute dacha that is dwarfed by today’s cottages in on the outskirts of Moscow.

Kuprin had resided here up until the time he escaped from Russia in 1919. And so they decided to return him to this spot. A parade, orchestra and numerous guests gathered round for the event. And the occasion called for a speech. But, to the organizers disbelief, Kuprin had disappeared. Where had he gone? It turns out that he ran off at the train station with one of the old watchmen who remembered him well from the old times, drank some moonshine (which his doctor’s forbid him from drinking) and reminisced about the past. Remember Zaikin? Remember how I went up in the hot air balloon? Now things have changed… And so there, in the corner of the cafeteria, he celebrated his homecoming, and no one dared drag him out. Or so the legend goes.

The apocryphal story is only partially true. Kuprin really did return to Gatchina and spent the summer of 1938 in a house neighboring his old abode (at the dacha of engineer Belogrud). But there was no official homecoming ceremony and no parade. The residents of Gatchina remembered Kuprin well: he had believed it his duty to write for the local paper and in general showed due concern for the development of the town. And interesting people often came to visit him. Neither Kuprin nor his wife found the strength of spirit to visit “the green house” (as they called their dacha) and only gazed upon it from afar. Its new residents brought them strawberry starts, which Kuprin planted. He was a very capricious gardener and only grew what he loved – Daffodils and strawberries. And he managed to eat the strawberries first fruit. He died two months later, on August 25, 1938, from stomach cancer.

The rumors that he was out of his mind when he returned to Russia are also not true and seem to be connected with attempts to belittle his triumphant return to Russia as nothing more than Soviet propaganda. It is true that he returned to Russia at hideous and terrible time, a time that he had no comprehension of, just like the better half of the country’s population. But it would be inaccurate to say that Kuprin was fooled into coming back to Russia for the sake of propaganda. Such rumors were spread by poetess Zinaida Gippius, a smart but also irreconcilable and hopelessly narrow-minded woman. Kuprin knew where he was headed, and he had written a large volume of negative articles about Bolshevik Russia immediately following the Revolution and in the immediate years after emigrating.

Russian literature has traditionally displayed the Russian people in rather positive, although this love for simple folk was something of a put-on. But with Kuprin, it was different. He did not consider himself to be separate from the people, and literature gave him neither fame nor fortune. In 1914 he even dreamed of returning to his newspaper career. However, he was afraid that others would remind him of his critical articles. There were particularly negative sketches of Lenin, whom he approached in 1918 with a newspaper project and for whom he had a strong dislike (Kuprin proposed to the Soviet leader that a newspaper should be published for village folk). The myth that Lenin charmed all the Russian intelligentsia is not true. Kuprin saw through him, noting his nearsightedness (which doctors only diagnosed in 1921). “His remarks in conversation were always tinged with irony, a habit developed through numerous debates.” “In essence, I thought, this person, so simple, polite and healthy, is much more frightening than Neron, Tiberius or Ivan the Terrible. They, despite their monstrosity, were at least human… But this is something like a stone, like a crag that has broken off from the mountain heights and careens downward, destroying everything in its path…” 

One would have to be rather courageous to write this about Lenin and then return to Russia. It’s no surprise that he shied away from conversations and was disturbed every time someone knocked on the door.

Kuprin suffered the unfortunate fate of being categorized as a second-class classic, as his taste was called into question. Nonetheless, he is one of the most read of the Russian classics. Several of his works would be the pride of a source for any European literary giant. I would venture to say that there is very little the treasures of Russian literature that compares to the power of The Duel (Poedinok), Capitan Rybnikov, The Sacred Lie, Listrigony and Gambrinus, not to mention Sulamif, Olesya and Sea Sickness.

Is the problem of taste an issue with Kuprin. Yes, in every other story. Is there an overabundance of literary mechanisms? Sure. Naïve moralizations, newspaper conclusions and artificial climaxes? Plenty. But does all spoil his work? Only slightly. To the contrary, it humanizes it. But inhumanity is always contemptuous and condescending toward ordinary human morals, which is why aesthetes of all colors, elitists and the so-called stylists openly snub Kuprin. And it seems that Kuprin understood this quite well. His best, in my opinion, novel – Solomon’s Star – is about this.

The story is about a kind and mild-mannered civil servant named Tsvet, who suddenly discovers that he has inherited an estate in Belarus (which Kuprin loved dearly). His trip to the estate is arranged by a very mawkishly polite agent Mefody Isaevich Toffel (read Mephistopheles). At the estate Tsvet leafs through his uncles books and accidentally discovers an omnipotence formula that has bypassed several generations. And he slowly beings to control the world. Mefody follows him around, doing his best to please Tsvet, introducing him to beautiful woman, showering him with money, etc., with the aim of extracting the formula from him. After a time, Tsvet tires of his powers and the amorality that they bring. He turns the formula over to Mefody and immediately loses his powers. Before saying farewell, Tsvet asks Mefody to give him the civil servant rank of a collegiate registrar. Later he encounters that very same beautiful woman that Mefody introduced to him and she fail to recognize Tsvet. 

As the story concludes a slightly disappointed Mefody (or Mephistopheles) lectures Tsvet. My dear, you were of course very modest and didn’t hurt a fly, but what kind of opportunities have you passed by! You could have soaked the earth in blood. You could have made the world a better place. You had the power to do what mankind has dreamed of doing for centuries, and what did you want? You wanted to don the cap of a collegiate registrar?

Here Kuprin is writing about himself. After all, he himself stopped short of becoming a genius. He was all too human, which is why he was a different sort of writer. 

Do we really know a lot of Russian literary greats that make us smile with joy? Are there many Russian classics that we read over and over again with pleasure? Kuprin, with his sentiments, power and brightness, and this is his cherished grain of truth – belief in the unshakeable normality of the world – which saves us time and time again. This is the truth passed on to us by Kuprin, one of a very, very few Russian classics.

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Alexander Kuprin was born August 26, 1870, in the village of Narovchat in the Penza region. His father was a low-level civil servant who died a year after Alexander’s birth. His mother, having become a widow, moved the family to Moscow. At six years of age, Alexander was enrolled in a sports school for orphans and in 1880 he entered the Moscow Military Gymnasium, which was later transformed into the Cadet Corps. From 1888 to 1890 he studied in the Alexander Military College. His first published work was The Last Debut (1889). He served as a second lieutenant in an infantry regiment. In 1901 he moved to St. Petersburg and worked for a journal. Kuprin married twice. The first time to M. Davydova, who was the mother of his first daughter Lidia, and the second time to E. Heinrikh, with whom he had two daughters – Ksenia and Zinochka (who died in 1912). Kuprin did not welcome the October Revolution and in 1919 emmigrate. The writer ended up spending 17 years in Paris. In the spring of 1937 he returned to Russia, gravely ill. Alexander Kuprin died August 25, 1938 in Leningrad.