Maxim Gorki | Page 7

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.
[Illustration: 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,