Chapter 2
Gorki now wrote his first long story. Various friends of literature soon began to take notice of him. They sent him to the famous Vladimir Korolenko, who was then living in Nijni Novgorod, and editing the paper, _Russkoe Bogatstvo_. Korolenko was much interested in Gorki, but was unable at that time to offer the young writer any remunerative work. Gorki was obliged to eke out his living by contributing to small provincial papers. He shared the same fate as so many of his fellow journalists. None of the editors offered any sort of honorarium, but simply returned his contributions, when, as happened with one of the Odessa journals, he asked three kopecks a line from it. This same paper, however, commissioned him to write a report of the World's Fair at Nijni Novgorod in the year 1896.
Gorki gladly agreed, and his reports excited general attention. But they were shockingly remunerated, and he was forced to live under such wretched conditions that his lungs became affected.
Korolenko now exerted himself seriously on Gorki's behalf. And the advocacy of a power in the literary world effected what all his highly characteristic achievements had not accomplished for him. It made him known and desirable. New journals enlisted him as a permanent colleague on their staff. Henceforward existence was no concern to the literary vagabond, who on his own showing had had four teachers: the cook on the Volga steamer, the advocate Lanin, the idler whom he describes in Kaluschny, and Korolenko.
Seldom is it the case that an author comes to his own as early as Gorki. This was undoubtedly due to the courageous manner in which he struck out into the social currents that were agitating his country. And the rapid impression he made was due as much to the peculiar conditions of the Russian Empire as to his own talent. There, where there can be no public expression of schemes for the future, no open desire for self-development, Art is always the realisation of greater hopes than it can be where a free path has already been laid down. And it is thus that men like Gorki can exert an overwhelming influence which is absolutely inconceivable to other nationalities. It is not merely the result of their artistic temperament. It derives at least as strongly from their significance to Humanity, their effect upon culture, their aggressive energy.
On the other hand, it would be a perversion to ascribe the success of such individuals to circumstances alone, and to what they say, and the inflexible virile courage with which they say it. Talent, genius, the why and wherefore, are all factors. In Russia there are not a few who share the experiences and insight of Gorki. But they lack means of expression; they are wanting in executive ability.
Not that many capable men are not also on the scene at present. But maybe they are not the "whole man," who puts the matter together, without fear or ruth, as Gorki has done so often.
* * * * * *
_"As an implacable foe to all that is mean and paltry in the aspirations of Humanity, I demand that every individual who bears a human countenance shall really be--a MAN!"_
_"Senseless, pitiful, and repulsive is this our existence, in which the immoderate, slavish toil of the one-half incessantly enables the other to satiate itself with bread and with intellectual enjoyments."_
_From "Man." By Maxim Gorki._
* * * * * *
It is vain for Maximovich Pjeschkov not to term himself _Gorki_, the "Bitter One." He opposes a new Kingdom of Heroes in contrast to the old hero-world, to the great strategists and wholesale butchers. Bluebeard and Toggenburg, Richard Coeur-de-Lion--what are these bloody tyrants for us of to-day? It is impossible to resuscitate them as they were of old. They were,--and have become a form, in which the exuberant and universal Essence of Life no longer embodies itself.
But . . . we must have our Heroes still; heroes who master their lives after their own fashion, and who are the conquerors of fate. We cry out for men who are able to transcend the pettiness of every day, who despise it, and calmly live beyond it.
And Gorki steps forward with the revelation of the often misrepresented Destitutes--or the homeless and hearthless--who are despised, rejected, and abused. And he makes us know them for heroes, conquerors, adventurers. Not all, indeed, but many of them.
The sketch entitled "Creatures that once were Men," which is in a measure introductory to the famous "Doss-house" ("Scenes from the Abysses") is especially illuminating.
Here we have the New Romance. Here is no bygone ideal newly decked and dressed out, trimmed up with fresh finery. It is the men of our own time who are described.
Whether other nations will accept such heroes in fulfilment of their romantic aspirations may be questioned. It seems very doubtful. The "Doss-house" is for the most part too strong for a provincial public, too agitating, too revolutionary. The Germans, for example, have not the deep religious feeling of the Russian, for whom each individual is a fellow sinner, a brother to be saved. Nor have they as yet attained to that further religious sense which sees in every man a sinless soul, requiring no redemption.
To us, therefore, Gorki's "creatures that once were men" appear strange and abnormal types. The principal figure is the ex-captain and present keeper of the shelter, the former owner of a servant's registry and printing works--Aristides Kuvalda. He has failed to regulate his life, and is the leader and boon companion of a strange band. His best friend is a derelict schoolmaster, who earns a very fair income as a newspaper reporter. But what is money to a man of this type? He sallies forth, buys fruit and sweetmeats and good food with half his earnings, collects all the children of the alley in which Kuvalda's refuge is situated, and treats them down by the river with these delicacies. He lends the best part of his remaining funds to his friends, and the rest goes in vodka and his keep at the doss-house.
Other wastrels of the same type lodge with Kuvalda. They are all men who have been something. And so Gorki calls them _Bivshiye lyudi_, which may be literally translated "the Men Who Have Been" ("Creatures that once were Men ").
To our taste the story is too discursive and long-winded. The prolonged introductory descriptions, the too exact and minute particularities of external detail, especially in regard to persons, destroy the sharp edge of the impression, and obliterate its characteristics. It would have been clearer with fewer words. Honesty bids us recognise a certain incapacity for self-restraint in Gorki.
This, however, is a trifle compared with the vivid, impersonal descriptions of the conduct of the derelicts--illuminated by the heroic deed of Kuvalda, as by an unquenchable star. Kuvalda loses his mainstay when his comrade, the schoolmaster, dies. He is enraged at the brutal treatment meted out to him and to the other inhabitants of the slum by the Officials of the City and the Government. He embroils himself with ill-concealed purpose with his deadly enemy the merchant Petunikov and insults the police. His object is gained. He is beaten, and led away to prison.
Unfortunately Gorki endows his characters with too elevated a philosophy. He pours his own wine into their bottles. Vagabonds and tramps do often indeed possess a profound knowledge of life peculiar to themselves, and a store of worldly wisdom. But they express it more unconsciously, more instinctively, less sentimentally, than Gorki.
From the artistic point of view this ground-note of pathos is an abiding defect in Gorki. He is lacking in the limpid clarity of sheer light-heartedness. Humour he has indeed. But his humour is bitter as gall, and corrosive as sulphuric acid. "Kain and Artem" may be cited as an instance.
Kain is a poor little Jewish pedlar. Artem, the handsome, strong, but corrupt lover of the huckstress, is tended by him when he has been half-killed by envious and revengeful rivals. In return for this nursing, and for his rescue from need and misery, Artem protects the despised and persecuted Kain. But he has grown weary of gratitude--gratitude to the weak being ever a burden to strong men. And the lion drives away the imploring mouse, that saved him once from the nets that held him captive--and falls asleep smiling.
This sombre temperament determines the catastrophe of the other stories. They almost invariably close in the sullen gloom of a wet March evening, when we wonder afresh if the Spring is really coming.
In "Creatures that once were Men," Gorki's sinister experience and pathos are essential factors in the accusing symbolism. He relates in the unpretending style of a chronicler how the corpulent citizens reside on the hill-tops, amid well-tended gardens. When it rains the whole refuse of the upper town streams into the slums.
The new romance; Sentiment and humour; Russian middle class; The man of the future; Descriptions of nature; Superfluity of detail; The Russian proletaire; Psychology of murder; Artistic inaccuracy; Moujik and outcast; A poet's idealism.
And yet it is just this sombre pathos and experience that compel us so often to recognise in Gorki's types a new category of hero. They are characterised by their sense of boundless freedom. They have both inclination and capacity to abandon and fling aside all familiar customs, duties, and relations.
It is a world of heroes, of most romantic heroes, that Gorki delineates for us. But the romance is not after the recipes of the old novelists: ancient, mystic, seeking its ideals in the remote past. This is living, actual romance. Even though some of Gorki's heroes founder like the heroes of bygone epochs of literature upon their weakness, more of the "Bitter One's" characters are shipwrecked on a deed.
And it is this reckless parade and apotheosis of such men of action that accounts for Gorki's huge success in comparison with many another, and with the writers of the preceding generation. It is for this that the young minds of his native country rally round him--the country that is loaded with clanking fetters.
Gorki is dominated by a characteristic passion for strong, abnormal men. This type reappears in almost all his narratives. Here it is old Isergil, whose Odyssey of Love swells to saga-like magnitude. There we find the bold and fearless smuggler Chelkash, in the story of that name. Now it is the brazen, wanton, devoted Malva, who prefers the grown man to the inexperienced youth. Anon, the red Vaska, boots and janitor of the brothel. And there are numbers of other such titans.
Unfortunately Gorki endows many of them with a vein of sentimentality, on which account his works are compared with those of Auerbach, in certain, more particularly in the aesthetic, Russian circles . . . a reproach that is only partially justified. Emelyan, _e.g._, is a notorious and professional robber. He sallies forth to attack and plunder a merchant in the night. But he encounters a young girl of good social position on the bridge which he has chosen for the scene of his attack. She intends to make away with herself. And in talking to her he forgets everything else; she moves him so profoundly that he dissuades her from suicide and takes her back to her parents.
Despite its rank improbability and sentimental character this tale has a fine humour of its own. And there is, in particular, one sketch that is steeped in humour. This is the "Story of the Silver Clasp." Three casual labourers break into an old factory and steal a silver clasp. One of them relinquishes his share and takes back the clasp. And all the thanks he gets is a rating from the old housekeeper.
These, of course, are only accessory productions, artistic enough, but of a lighter character. Many of the tales unfortunately suffer from a hackneyed use of situations, materials, and ideas, suggestive of the hack writer. Gorki's cheap sentiment, and maudlin pity, often result in clap-trap and padding which are foreign to the artist proper. But this is the effect of his predilection for individuals of forcible character.
Gorki is always partial to despotic characters. And here and there he has succeeded in creating men, who take life into their own hands, instead of letting it take them in hand.
It was inevitable that a writer who makes positive affirmations about life should receive a peculiar welcome in Russia, where a gloomy pessimism has obtained the preponderance in literature. Gorki's conception of life is expressed in the words of the engine-driver Nil, in "The Bezemenovs" . . . a sympathetic figure, even if he be something of a braggart. Nil, who is almost the only cheerful and courageous man amid a handful of weaklings and degenerates, says:
"I know that Life is hard, that at times it seems impossibly harsh and cruel, and I loathe this order of things. I know that Life is a serious business, even if we have not got it fully organised, and that I must put forth all my power and capacity in order to bring about this organisation. And I shall endeavour with all the forces of my soul to be steadfast to my inward promptings: to push my way into the densest parts of life, to knead it hither and thither, to hinder some, to help on others. It is _this_ that is the joy of life!" . . .
Words like these were bound to have a stimulating and invigorating effect after the despondency of the preceding epoch. This new spirit, this new man, gripped his contemporaries in full force.
The result would undoubtedly have been even more striking if Gorki's heroes were not invariably tainted with vestiges of the old order. They are, indeed, men of action. A totally different life pulsates in Gorki's works; we are confronted with far more virile characters than in the works of other Russian authors. Even the engine driver Nil, however, fails to relieve any one of the sufferers from his troubles. He removes Polja confidently enough from her surroundings--but only leaves the greater darkness behind him. Even he is as yet unable to transform the conditions of life--and he is therefore stigmatised by a little of the Russian bluster.
"The House of the Bezemenovs" ("The Tradespeople"), Gorki's first dramatic work, describes the eternal conflict between sons and fathers. The narrow limitations of Russian commercial life, its _borné_ arrogance, its weakness and pettiness, are painted in grim, grey touches. The children of the tradesman Bezemenov may pine for other shores, where more kindly flowers bloom and scent the air. But they are not strong enough to emancipate themselves. The daughter tries to poison herself because her foster brother, the engine-driver Nil, has jilted her. But when the poison begins to work she cries out pitifully for help. The son is a student, and has been expelled from the university. He hangs about at home, and cannot find energy to plot out a new career for himself. The weariness of a whole generation is expressed in his faint-hearted, listless words, as also in the blustering but ineffective rhodomontades of the tipsy choir-singer Teterev. All cordial relations between parents and children are lacking in this house.
It is refreshing to come upon the other characters, who are of a different breed to these shop-keepers. The vodka-loving, jolly father of Polja (Bezemenov's niece, who is exploited and maltreated in this house), is, in his contented yet sentimental egoism, a true representative of the ordinary Russian, the common man. And Polja! And Nil! . . . Here is the fresh blood of the future. How sure they both are in their love. "Ah! what a beautiful world it is, isn't it? Wondrously beautiful . . . dear friend. . . . What a glorious man you are. . . ."
Albeit this work is far from being a finished drama, it none the less has its special qualities. These men often talk as glibly as if they were essayists, they often seem to be mere vehicles for programmatic manifestoes. But as a whole they are the typical quintessence of the Russian people.
Other wild and intrepid figures are to be found in the larger works that precede "The Tradespeople"--the novels "Foma Gordeyev" and "Three Men." But Gorki's new conception of life is less clearly and broadly formulated in these than in Nil, and other subsequent characters. These people rather collapse from the superabundance of their vigour and the meanness of their surroundings.
In "Foma Gordeyev" Gorki flagellates the unscrupulous Russian wholesale dealer, who knows of nought beyond profit and the grossest sensual indulgence, and lets his own flesh and blood perish if they require of him to budge a hand-breadth from his egoistic standpoint. Foma, who is not built for a merchant, and who, while ambitious of command, is too magnanimous for the sordid business of a tradesman, has to give in. And the children of his triumphant guardian can only escape poverty by accepting their surroundings.
Despite its agonies and martyrdoms, however, there is one marvellously inspiring feature about this novel,--its gorgeous descriptions of Nature, rich in life and colour. "Foma Gordeyev" is the romance of life on the Volga.
With what intimacy, familiarity, and heart-felt emotion Gorki here describes and sees! The great River, with its diversified characteristics, its ominous events, mingles with the life of Man, and flows on past us. . . .
It is this characteristic union of the Human-All-Too-Human with his impressions of Nature in so many of Gorki's works, that makes them at the outset desirable and readable to a large proportion of his public. Much of his description of life beyond the social pale would be repulsive if it were not for this interpretative nature-painting. Especially would this be the case in "Malva." This robust, free-loving, and free-living maiden attracts us by her vigorous participation in Nature, when, for instance, she leaps into the water, and sports in the element like a fish.
Gorki's countless wanderings through the Russian Steppes, his sojourns by the southern shores of the Russian Seas, are intimately interwoven with the course of Nature, and have given him poetic insight and motives which are ignored by other authors, who have grown up in the University, the Bureau, or the Coffee-houses of large towns. His life of poverty has made him rich. He has evolved some significant prose-poems from the life of Nature, and the contest of her forces. While the sketch, "Spring Voices," is a satire, bristling with tangible darts and stings, "The Bursting of the Dam" expresses the full force that rages and battles in a stormy sea. The unemancipated workers construct steep, rocky dams that jut out into the free, unbridled sea. The waves that so long rolled on merrily, without fell intent, are now confined, and beat against the hard, cold, sullen rocks. The winds and tempests join in a colossal attack upon the unyielding barriers, and the rocks are shivered in fragments.
Quite different again is the romance entitled "Three Men" (or "Three of Them"). The tales and sketches published prior to this work were merely founded on episodes, catastrophes, or descriptive passages from the author's rich store of material. They certainly conveyed the essence of the life of his characters. They disclosed the axis of these people's existence. But they are seldom free from a certain tiresome impressionism--and often make quite undue pretensions. The didactic is too obvious. Gorki is not always satisfied with saying, here is a bit of life. He tries to put in a little wisdom. His form is seldom clear and conclusive. His tales are overladen with detail and superfluity of minute description. In Germany, Gorki owes much to his translators. This is more especially obvious in the scholarly translation by August Scholz of "Makar Chudra," Gorki's first published work. At first Scholz only produced a portion of this story. Later on, when all that Gorki had written had its importance, and his commercial success was established, the whole of "Makar," which is by no means free from obscurities, was translated.
In the novel, "Three Men," Gorki leaves the world of vagrants. He describes people who are intermediate between the vagabonds and the settled classes, who find their peace and happiness neither with the tramps nor with the well-to-do. Many more than three men live in this romance through times and destinies of the utmost significance. The novel might more exactly be termed "Many Men," or even "No Men." It all depends on how you read your author. In last resort the characters of the book have all something of the humanly-inhuman about them.
This book is one of the most impressive works of our Russian author. Its large touches portray human life as it is, not only in Russia, but everywhere. The moujik who drifts into the City proletariat suffers from the life that whispers its secrets within and around him. "Why are men doomed to torment each other thus?" It frets and consumes him, weighs him down, and flogs him on again. And from this problem, which in the hands of many would only have resulted in a satire, Gorki creates a powerful tragedy. The aspiring proletaire, be he peasant or child of the artisan, is for the most part done to death with light laughter. In this the unjustified arrogance of the academic classes expresses itself too frequently. Too often they discover only the comic element in the men who have emerged from the ranks, and who, while gifted with uncommon energy and intelligence, can neither choose nor be chosen for any of the cultured professions. They fail to perceive that the influence of these men would have a refreshing and invigorating effect upon the whole life of the people. They miss the need of some such transfusion of "vulgar blood" into the higher forms of the body politic. They cannot admit that it is these very _parvenus_ who are the founders of new families and a new civilisation. Nor that many chasms must for ever be left yawning. They do not appreciate the peculiar pride which Gorki expresses in this romance, in such a classic and touching manner, in the character of the girl student. Nor do they perceive that these aspirants possess much that is lacking in themselves--and that not particularly to their credit. Gorki knows that aspiration is not fulfilled without inward struggle and travail. And it is with a subtle psychological instinct that he endows the men who are struggling upward out of adversity with a deep craving for purity. Noble souls are invariably characterised by greater sensitiveness to delicacy, and this is equally the characteristic of those who are yearning to rise above their low environment. It is not from external filth alone that a man seeks to cleanse himself, but from inward corruption also. And so he strives, and strives again, for purity--and falls the deeper in the mire.