The Duel

Poyedinok

First published in 1905

Translated in 1916

An abridged version was published under the title "In Honour's Name" in 1907.

Biographical Note:

Alexander Kuprin was born in 1870. He passed through the Cadet School and Military College at Moscow, entered the Army as lieutenant in 1890, and resigned after seven years to devote himself to literature.

Kuprin's most famous work, he started writing The Duel in 1904. It is a work commenting on the "horror and tedium of army life" conceived in his second year in the army. The creation of this novel, linked closely with Kuprin's own days of youth, was for him a cathartic experience. "I must free myself from the heavy burden of impressions accumulated by my years of military service. I will call this novel The Duel, because it will be my duel ... with the tsarist army. The army cripples the soul, destroys all a man's finest impulses, and debases human dignity... I have to write about all I have known and seen. And with my novel I shall challenge the tsarist army to a duel," he informed his wife in a letter.

The Duel became the literary sensation of the year. In 1905 over 45 thousand copies were sold. The novel caused the controversy which went on till 1917. Critics of the left said the novel was "another nail in the coffin of autocracy," while their conservative counterparts condemned it as "a perfidious assault on the ruling order." One officer even challenged Kuprin to a duel through a Petersburg paper. On the other hand, in the summer of 1905 a group of twenty officers wrote to the author, expressing their gratitude for the novel.