Maxim Gorki | Page 3

till the drops fall
off in spray.
The sky gets light, and then clouds over again.
But the weary, demoralising, despairing monotony has vanished.

Life is here.
Spring has come.
With all its atmosphere, with all its force and vigour, with its battles,
and its faith in victory.
It is somewhat after this fashion that the personality of the young
Russian author, and his influence on Russia, and on Russian Literature,
may be characterised.
In order rightly to grasp the man and his individual methods, together
with his significance for his mother-country, we must know the
environment and the relations on which Gorki entered. Thus only shall
we understand him, and find the key to his great success in Russia, and
the after-math of this success in foreign countries.
Maxim Gorki is now just thirty-seven years old. Ten years ago he was
employed in the repairing works of the railway in Tiflis as a simple
artisan. To-day he ranks among the leading intellects of Russia.
This is an abrupt leap, the crossing of a deep cleft which separates two
worlds that tower remote on either side. The audacity of the spring can
only be realised when we reflect that Maxim Gorki worked his way up
from the lowest stratum, and never had any regular schooling.
The most subtle analysis of Gorki's talent would, however, be
inadequate to cover his full significance as a writer. It is only in
connection with the evolution of Russian society and Russian literature
that Gorki, as a phenomenon, becomes intelligible.
The educated Russian does not regard his national literature merely as
the intellectual flower of his nation; it must essentially be a mirror of
actual social occurrences, of the cultural phase in which any particular
work originated.
The Russian author does not conceive his task to lie exclusively in
pandering to the aesthetic enjoyment of his readers, in exciting and

diverting them, and in providing them with sensational episodes.
Literature of this type finds no home in the Russia of to-day. Since she
first possessed a literature of her own, Russia has demanded something
more from her writers. An author must be able to express the shades of
public opinion. It is his task to give voice and form to what is
circulating through the various social classes, and setting them in
motion. What they cannot voice in words, what is only palpitating and
thrilling through them, is what he must express in language; and his
business is to create men from the universal tendencies. Nay, more, it is
his task to reorganise these tendencies.
This explains the general and lively interest felt in Russia for the
productions of belles lettres. This form of literature is regarded as the
mirror of the various phases of that astounding development which
Russia has accomplished during the last sixty years.
First came the reforms of the Fifties and Sixties. Serfdom was
abolished, class distinctions were largely broken up, local
self-government was initiated. So many reforms were introduced in the
departments of Justice, of Instruction, of Credit and Commerce, that the
ground was prepared for a totally new Russia. A vigorous blossoming
of Russian literature coincided with this period of fermentation.
Turgeniev, Gontscharov, Leo Tolstoi, and Dostoevsky found rich
nutriment for their imaginative talent in the fresh-turned prolific soil of
Russian Society. With, and alongside of, them a number of no less
gifted authors throve uninterruptedly, till the reaction in the second half
of the Sixties and in the Seventies fell like a frosty rime upon the
luxurious blooms, and shrivelled them. The giants were silenced one by
one. Leo Tolstoi remained the sole survivor.
With him none but the epigones, the friends of the people, worked on.
Few writers attained to any eminence. Among such as also won a
hearing in Germany must be mentioned Vladimir Korolenko and
Chekhov. These two belong to the group known as "the Men of the
Eighties."
[Illustration: Beggar collecting for a church fund (After a sketch by
Gorki)]

These years, which immediately preceded the appearance of Gorki,
form part of the most gloomy period of modern Russian history.
Blackest reaction followed the desperate struggles of the Nihilists in the
Seventies in all departments. At the threshold of the Century stalked the
spectre of regicide, to which Alexander II. was the doomed victim . . .
and over the future hovered the grim figure which banished its
thousands and ten thousands of gifted young intellectuals to Siberia.
This period accordingly corresponded with a definite moral
retrogression in the ethical condition of the Russian people.
There was a necessary reflection of it in the literature. This era
produced nothing of inspired or reformatory force. A profound
pessimism stifled all originality. Korolenko alone, who was living
during the greater part of this time as a political prisoner in