Yama: The Pit

Alexander Kuprin started collecting the material for his work in Kiev in 1890s, and it is in this city that the novel's action takes place. Speaking in 1909 to a local newspaper correspondent about prototypes, he commented: "Characters I've made cannot be seen as copying real people. I picked up a lot of small details from the real life, but that was by no means copying the reality, which is something I detest doing." He added that his observations were by no means restricted to Kiev. "The Pit is [about] Odessa, Petersburg and Kiev," Kuprin said.[3]

The real life episode similar to that of singer Rovinskaya and her friends making a visit to a brothel happened in Saint Petersburg. According to the critic Alexander Izmaylov, the author was relating it to his friends as far back as 1905.[4] Zhenya's character (according to biographer O.Mstislavskaya) was partly inspired by Kuprin's encounter with his neighbour landlord's niece in Danilovskoye, his Nizny Novgorod region estate. In 1908 he asked his friend Fyodor Batyushkov for Z.Vorontsova's book Memoirs of a Café-chantant Singer (1908) which provided him numerous details, some of which he used while creating the Tamara character.[1] Platonov's monologues echo the discussions concerning prostitution that were going on in the Russian press in 1908-1909; similar views were expressed by the Saint Petersburg doctor P.E. Oboznenko.[1]

Kuprin was planning to start The Pit in the early 1900s and in 1902 he asked Mir Bozhy's editor Batyushkov if the magazine would publish a novel of that kind. As Batyushkov expressed doubts, the work was postponed. In 1907 Kuprin brought Part 1 of the novel to Mir Bozhy and the magazine announced its publication as planned for 1908, but then cancelled the publication. Kuprin signed a new deal with G.Blumenberg and D.Rebrik of the Moskovskoye Knogoizdatelstvo (Moscow Book Publishers) according to which the company would start publishing The Complete Kuprin series and include The Pit into their literary almanac Zemlya (The Land).[1]

In November 1908, while in Gatchina, the author finished Chapters 1 and 2, in December - Chapters 3 and 4. "The going gets hard. The difficulty lies in the fact that the first, say, ten chapters' action is supposed to be squeezed into just one day," Kuprin complained, speaking to Alexander Izmaylov in January.[5] Later, in order to get closer to the subject matter, Kuprin moved to Zhitomir, a city famous for its organised crime gangs engaged in the local sex industry.[6][7]

His financial situation at the time was a dire one: the Moscow Book Publishers insisted that he'd break his contract with Saint Petersburg Progress which was planning to issue The Pit as a separate edition. Until then the MBP refused to pay him the advance and at some point Kuprin had to pawn some of his property to make ends meet.[1] In March 1909, as the deadline approached, only 9 of 12 chapters of Part 1 were ready. Kurpin had to work hectically hoping that he'll be able to improve the text while proofreading, but eventually failed to do that. He was dissatisfied with the general quality of the text and with growing apprehension anticipated Lev Tolstoy's possible reaction. "Should he prove to be unsympathetic [to Part 1 of the novel], my writing process will be hindered. L.N.'s opinion is very important to me," Kuprin said in an interview."[8]

The novel's first reviewer though happened to be V.I.Istomin, a member of the Moscow censorial committee. In his report he noted that there were fragments in the novel "which give us reasons to regard it as immoral and indecent... as well as fragments belying the author's intention to treat the problem of prostitution in the most serious manner." The list of indecencies featured all the episodes of officials and officers attending a brothel. On April 25, 1909, the committee's special meeting took place. Eventually the publication of The Vol.3 of Zemlya almanac was permitted.[9] Still, when preparing The Pit for the inclusion into the Volumes VIII and IX of Adolf Marks-published The Collected Works by A.I. Kuprin (1912, 1915), Kuprin took into consideration the censorial report and removed all the bits in which the officials, officers and cadets' visiting the brothel were mentioned.[1]

The Vol.3 of Zemlya almanac with the Part 1 of Yama came out in Spring 1909 and caused quite a stir. "In Moscow people talk of just one thing: The Pit," Ivan Bunin informed Kuprin in a letter, dated May 22, 1909. All the major Russian periodicals reviewed the novel.[1]

Alexander Izmaylov argued that never since The Kreutzer Sonata had a Russian novel "touched so daringly upon morbid wounds of life." "Against the demon of lie, lust and evil greed does the Russian writer Kuprin wage his war," the critic concluded.[11] Volynh praised The Pit as a damning social document. "Horror, shuddering horror rules this kingdom of champing toads," the reviewer Botsyanovsky wrote.[12] Droog (Friend) magazine hailed the novel as "a powerful warning for parents and youngsters." The literary historian P.Kogan maintained that "before Kuprin nobody had even made an attempt to trace - hour by hour, day by day, - the everyday life of such places."[13]

There was a wave of negative response too. Volynh (No.295, October 27, 1909), as well as Vestnik Literatury later (No.8, August, 1911) argued that such naturalistic descriptions of the life in a brothel could serve only for the spreading of prostitution, not its eradication. Vatslav Vorovsky accused Kuprin of idealizing prostitutes; the Marxist critic found the whole style of the novel uncharacteristically sentimental.[14] The Pit was severely criticized by both pro-monarchist Novoye Vremya and the Symbolist Vesy magazine. The latter's reviewer Boris Sadovskoy saw the novel as 'a pit' of Kuprin's weaknesses: his "tendency to daub real life sketches, being prone to textbook didacticism and having a taste for the ugliest things in life." "Into The Pit Kuprin has stuck all that he's got and what did he get? - another Duel," the critic argued.[1]

Parts 2 and 3 of The Pit, published in 1915, made no resonance. Reviewers deplored what they saw as the lack of compositional integrity, the disparity of motifs and the author's eagerness to rely on literary clichés. "Something feuilleton-like, petty and derivative is there in the garishness of many scenes, and the general drift of the story is banal," wrote Russkiye Zapisky (Russian Notes, 1915, No.1) reviewer.[1]

One of the few critics who assessed the novel's second and third parts highly was Korney Chukovsky. "That is a different kind of Yama, it has little in common with the one we read several years ago. In the former all the action took place in just one tiny hole. This time the author takes us through thousand places - from a café-chantant to a graveyard, a morgue, a police station, a student dormitory. And this motley canvas knit of myriad of faces is based on one grandiose theme, one powerful feeling. Each character stands out in relief, you can almost touch it and that is why all this affects you so... Karbesh, Sonjka the Rule, Anna Markovna, Emma and Semyon Horizont - all of them are portrayed in such a way that I would recognize each and every one of them in a huge crowd," the critic wrote.[15]

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