Shades (story)

Prus, the "lamplighter" who had striven to dispel darkness and its attendant "fear, errancy, and crime," had failed to sufficiently interest the public in his "observatory of societal facts," Nowiny.

There appears before him a world of living, mysterious, menacing things... full of uncanny experiences, of strange shapes, of striking contrasts of light and shade.

Based on an exact familiarity with nature and with scientific abstractions, which Prus knows consummately how to render concrete, the writer creates a completely original world, not encountered in other authors, of splendid visions striking by their perspectives of infinity; these translate the longings, yearnings and struggles of the human soul to the universe ("In the Light of the Moon") or bring to light a higher, religious, mythic or legendary order of the universe ("New Year" [1880]).

These far-reaching perspectives, present at the start of Prus's writing career, intensify markedly after 1882 with the failure of Nowiny [News].

The second half of the micro-story pictures the efforts of one of a number of nameless lamplighters to dispel the darkness, for as long as his limited lifespan permits.