The savage
Mikhail Artsybashev was a Russian writer and playwright, and a major proponent of the literary style known as naturalism. He was the great-grandson of Tadeusz Kościuszko and the father of Boris Artzybasheff, who emigrated to the United States and became famous as an illustrator. Following the Russian Revolution, in 1923 Artsybashev emigrated to Poland where he died in 1927.
Excerpt :
Merchant Dikoy’s house and yard were situated on a big desolate square where the horse-fair was held once a year, hence its entire surface was permanently covered with hay-grind and soft decomposed manure. The name of the square was Sennoy, which means Haymarket. Through the middle of it ran a half-crumbled earthen-mound and a long ditch with rusty-coloured fetid water that never dried up. It was said that these were the re¬ mains of an old Cossack fortress and that a number of human bones had been dug up during the excavations. Stray half-savage dogs used to roam on the mound, and quite possibly the yellow bones over which they wrangled were actually human ones.
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