SOURCE: Leighton, Lauren G. “Alexander Marlinsky: The Extravagant Prose—1830-37.” In Alexander Bestuzhev-Marlinsky, pp. 94-116. Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1975.

In the following excerpt, Leighton examines Bestuzhev's prose works produced as Alexander Marlinsky, including the sea stories, the horror stories, and the tales of the Caucasus.

The return of Alexander Bestuzhev to an active literary career under the name Alexander Marlinsky was met with heartily if privately expressed relief, and the event was probably interpreted as a harbinger of imminent political change. Far off in Siberia the exiled Decembrist Küchelbecker received a copy of Marlinsky's new tale of men and passions, “The Test,” and he noted in his diary: “There is so much life, intellect, action, and feeling in it that it may be reckoned without the least doubt among the finest prose tales in our language. … God bless whoever spared this man of talent for our fatherland! Sapienti...