<p><strong>The legend that Sologub has in mind is the active, eternally changing process of life, orderly and structural in spite of the external confusion.</strong> The author makes an effort to bring order out of apparent chaos by stripping life of its complex modern detail and reducing it to a few significant symbols, as in a rather more subtle "morality play." The modern novel is perhaps overpsychologized; eternal truths and eternal passions are perhaps too often lost sight of under the mass of unnecessary naturalistic detail.</p>