Contemporary Russian Novelists Part 10

"As for me," says one of them, "I don't like any peasants.... They are all dogs! They have provincial States, and they do for them....

They tremble, they are hypocrites, but they want to live; they have one protection: the soil.... However, we must tolerate the peasant, for he has a certain usefulness."

"What is a peasant?" asks another. And he answers the question himself: "The peasant is for all men a matter of food, that is to say, an animal that can be eaten. The sun, the water, the air, and the peasant are indispensable to man's existence...."

One might think that this hostility was the fruit of a feeling of envy provoked by the fact that the peasant seems to enjoy so many advantages. But, on the contrary, the "barefoot brigade" admits that the peasant subjugates his individuality for any sort of profit, and that he cannot feel the yoke which he has voluntarily taken in the hope of getting his daily bread.

These workingmen "who pitifully dig in the soil" are unfortunate slaves. "They do nothing but construct, they work perpetually, their blood and sweat are the cement of all the edifices of the earth. And yet the remuneration which they receive, although they are crushed by their work, does not give them shelter or enough food really to live on."

The enlightened cla.s.ses are always characterized in Gorky's works by violent traits. The architect Shebouyev accords a sufficiently great, but scarcely honorable, place to the category of intelligent men to whom he belongs.

"All of us," he says, "are nonent.i.ties, deprived of happiness. We are in such great numbers! And our numbers have been a power for so long a time! We are animated by so many desires, pure and honest....

Why is there so much talk among us and so little action? And, all the while, the germs are there!... All these papers, novels, articles are germs ... just germs, and nothing else.... Some of us write, others read; after reading, we discuss; after discussing, we forget what we have read. For us, life is tedious, heavy, grey, and burdensome. We live our lives, but sigh from fatigue and complain of the heavy burdens we are carrying."

The journalist Yezhov, in "Thomas Gordeyev," expresses himself in the same manner, but even more decisively:

"I should like to say to the intelligent cla.s.ses: 'You people are the best in my country! Your life is paid for by the blood and tears of ten Russian generations! How much you have cost your country! And what do you for her? What have you given to life? What have you done?...'"

The absence of all independence, of any pa.s.sion even a little sincere, the complete submission of heart and mind to the old prescribed morality, the constant effort to realize mere personal ambitions--all of these are the reproaches that Gorky addresses to cultivated man, whose moral disintegration he proves has been produced by routine and prejudice.

In contrast to them, the vagabonds are the instinctive enemies of all slavery, in any form whatsoever. The complete independence of their personality means everything to them. And no material conditions, no matter how prosperous, will induce them to make the least compromise on this point. One of these "restless" types, Konovalov, tells how, after he had bound himself to the wife of a rich merchant, he could have lived in the greatest comfort, but he abandoned everything, the easy life, and even the woman, whom he loved well enough, in order to go out and look for the unknown. This is a common adventure on the part of Gorky's heroes.

What is the cause of this restlessness?

"Well, you see," explains Konovalov, "I became weary. It was such weariness, I must tell you, little brother, that at moments I simply could not live. It seemed to me as if I were the only man on the whole earth, and, with the exception of myself, there was no living thing anywhere. And in those moments, everything was repugnant to me, everything in the world; I became a burden to myself, and if everybody were dead, I wouldn't even sigh! It must have been a disease with me, and the reason why I took to drink, for, before this time, I never drank."

For the same reasons, in "Anguish," a workingman leaves his mistress and his employer, the miller. Where does this anguish come from?

Perhaps it is the simple result of a psychological process which, Konovalov admits, is nothing other than a disease. It is very possible that, in impulsive acts, a psychiatrist would see something a.n.a.logous to alcoholism, or the symptoms of some other anomaly.

Turgenev had already a.n.a.lyzed a similar case in "The Madman." When Michael Poltev is asked what evil spirit led him to drink and to risk his life, he always refers to his anguish.

"'Why this anguish?' asks his uncle.

"'Why?... When the brain is free, one begins to think of poverty, injustice, Russia.... And that's the end! anguish hastens on.... One is ready to send a bullet through one's head! There's nothing left to do but get drunk!...'

"'And why do you a.s.sociate Russia with all of that? Why, you are nothing but a sluggard!'

"'But I can do nothing, dear uncle!... Teach me what I ought to do, to what task I ought to consecrate my life. I will do it gladly!...'"

Gorky's characters give the same explanation of their "ennui," and almost in identical terms. This disgust comes in great part from not knowing how to adapt oneself to life, nor how to become a "useful"

man.

"Take me, for instance," says Konovalov, "what am I? A vagabond ...

a drunkard, a crack-brained sort of man. There is no reason for my life. Why do I live on earth, and to whom am I useful? I have no home, no wife, no children, and I don't feel as if I wanted any. I live and am bored.... What about? No one knows. I have no life within myself, do you understand? How shall I express it? There's a spark, or force lacking in my soul...."

Another character, the shoemaker Orlov, in "Orlov and His Wife,"

especially reflects this pessimistic disposition. In the same way as Konovalov, he is born with "restlessness in his heart."

He is a shoemaker; and why?

"As if there weren't enough of them already! What pleasure is there in this trade for me? I sit in a cellar and sew. Then I shall die.

They say that the cholera is coming.... And after that? Gregory Orlov lived, made shoes--and died of the cholera. What does that signify? And why was it necessary that I should live, make shoes and die, tell me?"

These creatures are under the impression that they are superfluous; therefore their pessimistic conclusions. All of them pa.s.sionately want to be able to express the meaning of life in general, their life in particular, but the task is too much for them.

Gorky's heroes consider themselves "useless beings," but they never humiliate themselves. Their restlessness of spirit does not permit them to resign themselves to the reigning ba.n.a.lity or to take part in it without protesting. At the same time, some of them are gifted with sufficient personality to possess an unshaken faith in themselves, in their strength, which keeps them from letting the responsibility of their torments fall back upon society.

Promtov, the hero of "The Strange Companion," makes these restless seekers the descendants of the Wandering Jew: "Their peculiarity,"

he ironically says, "is, that whether rich or poor, they cannot find a suitable place for themselves on earth, and establish themselves in it. The greatest of them are satisfied with nothing: money, women, nor men."

What, then, do these "greatest" want?

Their desires evidently take a mult.i.tude of forms, and have the most diverse shades; but the greatest number of them are impatient for extraordinary happenings, eager for exploits. Some of them declare that they would be willing to throw themselves on a hundred knives if humanity could be relieved by their doing so. But simple daily activity, even if it is useful, does not satisfy them.

The shoemaker Orlov leaves his cellar, as he calls it, and accepts a position in the hospital where they are taking care of cholera patients. His devotion makes him an "indispensable man;" he is reborn, and, according to his own words, he is "ripe for life." It seems as if his end were going to be attained. But not so.

Restlessness seizes him again. Orlov questions the value of his work. He saves sick people from the cholera. Is he doing good? The greatest care is taken of these people, but how many people are there outside of the hospitals, one hundred times as many as there are inside, who are just as unfortunate, but, in spite of that fact, are not helped by any one?

"While you live," he declares, "no one will refuse to give you a drink of water. And if you are near death, not only will they not allow you to die, but they will go to some expense to stop you. They organize hospitals.... They give you wine at 'six and a half rubles a bottle.' The sick man gets well, the doctors are happy, and Orlov would like to share their joy; but he cannot, for he knows that, on leaving the threshold of the hospital, a life 'worse than the convulsions of the cholera' awaits the convalescent...." And again he is seized by the desire to drink, and to be a vagabond, and by a wish to experience new sensations.

These, then, are the vagabonds whom we can cla.s.s in the category of the "restless." After these, come those whom the author terms the "ex-men," and whom he studies, under this t.i.tle, in one of his longest stories. The ex-men are closely related to the "restless;"

however, they differ from them in that they push their opinions to an extreme, for they are, more than the others, miserable and at bay against society.

"What difference would it make if it all went to the devil," one of them philosophizes--"I should like to see the earth go to pieces suddenly, provided that I should perish the last, after having seen the others die.... I'm an ex-man, am I not? I am a pariah, then, estranged from all bonds and duties.... I can spit on everything!"

Thomas Gordeyev's father develops another thesis; a rich and rational bourgeois, he tries to inculcate in his son from his infancy--a son who later augments the ranks of the "restless"--the most perfect spirit of egotism.

"You must pity people," he says, "but do it with discernment. First, look at a man, see what good you can get out of him, and see what he is good for. If you think he is a strong man, capable of work, help him. But if you think him weak and little suited for work, abandon him without pity. Remember this: two boards have fallen into the mud, one of them is worm-eaten, the other is sound. What are you going to do? Pay no attention to the worm-eaten plank, but take out the sound one and dry it in the sun. It may be of service to you or to some one else...."

The reader will note the absolute egotism in all of Gorky's types.

The "restless" are interested only in their own misery, and they think that all men are like them; nor do they try to stop or bridle their pa.s.sions.

Strong pa.s.sions are one of the most precious privileges of mankind.

This truth is well shown in the story: "Once More About the Devil."[7] Here, the men have become shabby and insignificant since there has been propagated among them, with a new strength, the gospel of individual perfection. The demon stifles, in the heart of Ivan Ivanovich Ivanov, all the pa.s.sions that can agitate a human soul,--ambition, pity, evil, and anger; this operation makes Ivan an absolutely perfect being. On his face there appears that beat.i.tude which words cannot express. The devil has crushed all "substance"

out of him, and he is completely "empty."

[7] This was preceded by a story called "The Devil."

One understands that Gorky's heroes cannot find what would be good for them, nor feel the least satisfaction in doing their fellow men a good service. They only dream of action; their sole desire is to affirm their individuality by "manifesting" themselves, little matter how. Old Iserguille is persuaded that "in life, there is room for mighty deeds" and, if a man likes them, he will find occasion to do them. Konovalov is most enthusiastic over Zhermak,[8] to whom he feels himself akin.

[8] A celebrated brigand in the time of Ivan the Terrible who, in order to be pardoned, conquered Siberia in the name of the Tsar.

"I'd like to reduce the whole earth to dust," dreams Orlov, "or get up a crowd of comrades and kill off all the Jews ... all, to the very last one! Or, in general, do something that would place me high above all men, so that I could spit on them from up there, and cry to them: 'Dogs! Why do you live? You're all hypocritical rascals and nothing more....'"

These people demand a boundless liberty, but how obtain it? All of them dream of a certain organization which will let them feel relieved of all their duties, of all the thousands of petty things that make life hard, of all the small details, conventions, and obligations which hold such an important place in our society. But the time for heroic deeds has pa.s.sed away, and the "restless" fight in vain against the millions of men who are determined to keep their habits and advantages.