not to embellish and idealize nature, but to reproduce her interesting phases; and poetry—verse, the drama, the novel—should explain nature in reproducing her; the poet must pronounce sentence. He must represent human beings as they really are, and not incarnate in them an abstract principle, good or bad; that is why in this romance men indisputably good have faults, as reality shows them to us, while bad people possess at the same time some good qualities, as is almost always the case in real life."
Tyranny knows no better use for such an author than to exile him. But Liberty can still utilize his work. Tyranny, torture Truth's heralds as it may, cannot kill Truth itself,—nay, can only add to its vitality. Tchernychewsky is in isolation, but his glad tidings to the poor and the oppressed are spreading among the peoples of the earth, and now in this translation for the first time find their way across the ocean to enlighten our New World.
