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.
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