The Garnet Bracelet
The Garnet Bracelet is a short novel by Alexander Kuprin, first published in Zemlya almanac, Vol. 6, 1911. Maxim Gorky, who among others praised the novel, saw it as "the sign of a new literature coming."
History
Kuprin started writing what he first saw as a short story in Odessa in the autumn of 1910. "One of these days I'm going to send Blum a little piece, called The Garnet Bracelet," he informed friend V.S.Klestov in a letter dated September 29. But the story, getting larger and larger, took three months to be completed.The plot had a real basis, judging by Kuprin's October 15 letter to Fyodor Batyushkov. "What I do today is polish The Garnet Bracelet. This is - remember it? - the sad story of a minor telegraph clerk named P.P. Zheltkov who so hopelessly, touchingly and selflessly fell in love with Lyubimov's wife... But the progress is difficult." "Perhaps that is because I am musically ignorant. Besides, this high society language!" he complained in the November 21 letter. By December 3 the work hasn't been finished yet. "I'd rather not haste with this piece which is very dear to me," he told Batyushkov, again in a letter.
Kuprin was aware that the novel's "purity" distinguished Zheltkov with his all-consuming passion from the majority of his stories' characters. "I'll say one thing, I've never written anything more chaste," he told Batyushkov.