(_Transcribed and forwarded by the author to Hans Ostwald_)" tag="{http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml}img"/>

A page from Gorki's last work (Transcribed and forwarded by the author to Hans Ostwald)

"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.

The bare-footed brigade on the Volga-quay, and Nijni Novgorod (After a sketch by Gorki)

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