opportunity that no social satirist should neglect.
*****
Apart from the problems with which A Dilemma deals, the story is undeniably a work of art, more powerful, if not so poetic, as Silence, a little tale whose generous reception by the American public and press has prompted the present publication in English of a later and more complex study by the same, author. A Dilemma was first published in Russia in 1902, and though it did not cause the tremendous sensation aroused by In the Fog, which followed it, it nevertheless gave the critics something to talk about, and is, despite its chronological precedence, the finer story of the two.
The translator has taken warranted liberty with the title. In the Russian the story is called Misl, literally A Thought, yet possessing in this instance greater significance than the title would seem to indicate; as a study of mental perplexity, A Dilemma ought to do.
John Cournos.
