Aleksandr I. Kuprin

Aleksandr Ivanovich Kuprin (Russian: Александр Иванович Куприн; 7 September [O.S. 26 August] 1870 – 25 August 1938) was a Russian writer.

Quotes

• The material here is in reality tremendous, downright crushing, terrible... And not at all terrible are the loud phrases about the traffic in women’s flesh, about the white slaves, about prostitution being a corroding fester of large cities, and so on, and so on... an old hurdy-gurdy of which all have tired! No, horrible are the everyday, accustomed trifles, these business-like, daily, commercial reckonings, this thousand year old science of amatory practice, this prosaic usage, determined by the ages. In these unnoticeable nothings are completely dissolved such feelings as resentment, humiliation, shame. There remains a dry profession, a contract, an agreement, a well-nigh honest petty trade, no better, no worse than, say, the trade in groceries. Do you understand, gentlemen, that all the horror is in just this, that there is no horror! Bourgeois work days—and that is all. And also an after taste of an exclusive educational institution, with its naivete, harshness, sentimentality and imitativeness.
  • The Pit (1909–1915) pt. 1, ch. 9. Translated by Bernard Guilbert Guerney, Yama: The Pit (New York: The Modern Library, 1922) p. 100