Olesya

Author's name: Alexander Kuprin and others

"Olesya" is a short novella written by Alexander Kuprin in late 1897 and published serially in the newspaper Kyivlyanin from October 30 to November 17, 1898. Other newspapers rejected it, explaining that the editors disagreed with the way it portrayed the peasants in the village where they worked. They argued that Kuprin portrayed them as an ignorant, aggressive, and cruel crowd, which contradicted the patriotic, roots-oriented ideas of the time. Russian literary critics describe it as "the most charming of Kuprin's rural tales." Although initially intended to be only part of a fable about power and life in the countryside, this poetic love story between an urban intellectual and a beautiful peasant girl expanded into a full-length novel and became one of Kuprin's favorites. He referred to it throughout with reverence and poetry: "It has a delicate life and is closest to my soul of all my other writings."