but by one which followed naturally from the contemplative unity of life
which he had achieved. The essential quality he discerned and desired to
represent was his argument, his string. Everything that heightened and
completed this quality accumulated about it, quite independently of
whether it would have been repelled by the old criterion of plot and
argument. There is a magnificent example of his method in the longest
story in this volume, 'The Steppe.' The quality is dominant throughout,
and by some strange compulsion it makes heterogeneous things one; it is
reinforced by the incident. Tiny events--the peasant who eats minnows
alive, the Jewish inn-keeper's brother who burned his six thousand
roubles--take on a character of portent, except that the word is too
harsh for so delicate a distortion of normal vision; rather it is a
sense of incalculability that haunts us. The emphases have all been
slightly shifted, but shifted according to a valid scheme. It is not
while we are reading, but afterwards that we wonder how so much
significance could attach to a little boy's questions in a remote
village shop:--

'"How much are these cakes?'

'"Two for a farthing.'

'Yegorushka took out of his pocket the cake given him the day before
by the Jewess and asked him:--

'"And how much do you charge for cakes like this?'

'The shopman took the cake in his hands, looked at it from all
sides, and raised one eyebrow.