Contemporary Russian Novelists Part 9

At this period of his life, he had occasion to study at first hand certain places where he received original information which he later used in writing "Konovalov" and "The Ex-Men," which have thus acquired an autobiographical value. In fact, he worked a long while with these "ex-men;" like them, he sawed wood, and carried heavy burdens. At the same time, he devoted all his spare time to reading and thinking about problems, which became more and more "cursed" and alarming. He had found an attentive listener and interlocutor in the person of his comrade, the baker Konovalov. These two men, while baking their bread, found time to read. And the walls of the cellar heard the reading of the works of Gogol, Dostoyevsky, Karamzine, and others. Then they used to discuss the meaning of life. On holidays, Gorky and Konovalov had for the moment an opportunity to come out of the hole--this word does not exaggerate--in which they worked, to breathe the fresh air, to live a bit in nature's bosom, and to see their fellow men.

"On holidays," Gorky tells us, "we went with Konovalov down to the river, into the fields; we took a little brandy and bread with us, and, from morning till evening, we were in the open air."

They often went to an old, abandoned house which served as a refuge for a whole tribe of miserable and wandering people, who loved to tell of their wandering lives. Gorky and his companion were always well received on account of the provisions which they distributed so generously.

"Each story spread out before our eyes like a piece of lace in which the black threads predominated--they represented the truth--and where there were threads of light color--they were the lies. These people loved us in their way, and were attentive listeners, because I often read a great deal to them."

Often, these expeditions were not without their risks. One day, two of the baker's workmen happened to drown in a bog; another time, they were taken in a police raid and pa.s.sed the night in the station house.

It was also at this time that Gorky frequented the company of several students, not care-free and happy ones, but miserable young fellows like those whom Turgenev described as "nourished by physical privations and moral sufferings."

On leaving the bakery, where his health, very much weakened by the lack of air and by bad food, did not permit him to remain any longer, he joined those vagabonds, those wanderers, whose melancholy companion he had been, and whose painter and poet he was to be. In their company, he traveled through Russia in every sense of the word, now as a longsh.o.r.eman, now as a wood-chopper. Whenever he had a copeck in his pocket he bought books and newspapers and spent the night reading them. He suffered hunger and cold; he slept in the open air in summer, and, in winter, in some refuge or cellar.

The feverish activity of so keen an intellect in an organism so crushed had, as its consequence, one of the attempts at suicide which are so frequent among the younger generation of the Russians.

In 1889, at the age of twenty-one, Gorky shot himself in the chest, but he did not succeed in killing himself. Soon afterwards, he became gate-keeper for the winter at Tzaratzine; but the summer had hardly come before he began his vagabondage again, in the course of which he undertook a thousand little jobs in order to keep himself alive. On the road, he noticed those pariahs whom society does not want or who do not want society. And of these, in his short stories, he has created immortal types.

Life was still very hard for him at this time. He has given us a moving sketch of it in his story ent.i.tled: "Once in Autumn." The hero, who is none other than the author himself, pa.s.ses the night under an old, upturned boat, in the company of a prost.i.tute who is just as poor and just as abandoned as himself. They have broken into a booth in order to steal enough bread to keep them from starving.

Gorky is sad; he wants to weep; but the poor girl, miserable as she is, consoles him and covers him with kisses.

"Those were the first kisses any woman ever gave me, and they were the best, for those that I received later always cost me a lot and never gave me any joy.... At this time, I was already preparing myself to be an active and powerful force in society; it seemed to me at times that I had in part accomplished my purpose.... I dreamed of political resolutions, of social reorganization; I used to read such deep and impenetrable authors that their thoughts did not seem to be a part of them--and now a prost.i.tute warmed me with her body, and I was in debt to a miserable, shameful creature, banished by a society that did not want to accord her a place. The wind blew and groaned, the rain beat down upon the boat, the waves broke around us, and both of us, closely entwined, trembled from cold and hunger.

And Natasha consoled me; she spoke to me in a sweet, caressing voice, as only a woman can. In listening to her tender and nave words, I wept, and those tears washed away from my heart many impurities, much bitterness, sadness and hatred, all of which had acc.u.mulated there before this night."

At daybreak, they say good-bye to each other, and never see one another again.

"For more than six months, I looked in all the dives and dens in the hope of seeing that dear little Natasha once more, but it was in vain...."

We find him again at Nizhny Novgorod at the time of the call for military recruits. Gorky was reformed, for, he says, "They do not accept those who are fallen." Meanwhile, he became a kva.s.s merchant and exercised this trade for several months. Finally, he became the secretary of a lawyer, named Lanine. The latter, who had a very good reputation, took a deep interest in the poor boy whom life had treated so ill. He became interested in his intellectual development and, according to Gorky himself, had a great influence on him. At Nizhny Novgorod, as at Kazan, Gorky felt himself attracted by the circle of young people who discussed the "cursed" questions, and he soon was noticed by his comrades. They spoke of him as "a live and energetic soul."

Easy as life was for Gorky in this city, where he remained for a while, the "wanderl.u.s.t" again seized him. "Not feeling at home among these intelligent people," he traveled. From Nizhny Novgorod, he went, in 1893, to Tzaratzine; then he traveled on foot through the entire province of the Don, the Ukraine, entered into Bessarabia, and from there descended by the coast of the Crimea as far as Kuban.

In October, 1892, Gorky found himself at Tiflis, where he worked in the railroad shops. That same year, he published in a local paper his first story, "Makar Choudra," in which already a remarkable talent was evident.

Leaving Tiflis after a short sojourn there, he came to the banks of the Volga, in his native country, and began to write stories for the local papers. A happy chance made him meet Korolenko, who took a great interest in the "debutante" writer. "In the year 1893-1894,"

writes Gorky, "I made the acquaintance of Vladimir Korolenko, to whom I owe my introduction into 'great' literature. He has done a great deal for me in teaching me many things."

The important influence of Korolenko on the literary development of Gorky can best be seen in one of the latter's letters to his biographer, Mr. Gorodetsky. "Write this," he says to his biographer, "write this without changing a single word: It is Korolenko who taught Gorky to write, and if Gorky has profited but little by the teaching of Korolenko, it is the fault of Gorky alone. Write: Gorky's first teacher was the soldier-cook Smoury; his second teacher was the lawyer Lanine; the third, Alexander Kalouzhny, an 'ex-man;' the fourth, Korolenko...."

From the day when he met Korolenko, Gorky's stories appeared mostly in the more important publications. In 1895, he published "Chelkashe" in the important Petersburg review, "Russkoe Bogatsvo;"

a year later, other publications equally well known published, "Konovalov," "Malva," and "Anxiety." These works brought Gorky into the literary world, where he soon became one of the favorite writers. The critics, at first sceptical, soon joined their voices with the enthusiastic clamor of the people.

Gorky's wandering life has given his works a peculiar and universally established form. He is, above all others, the poet of the "barefoot brigade," of the vagabonds who eternally wander from one end of Russia to the other, carelessly spending the few pennies that they have succeeded in earning, and who, like the birds of the sky, have no cares for the morrow.

But this does not suffice to explain this author's popularity, especially among the younger generation. The "barefoot brigade" is not a novelty in Russian literature. We find it in the works of Reshetnikov, Uspensky, Mamine, Zha.s.sinsky, and others. It is true that, up to this time, the vagabonds had been represented as the dregs of the people, as hopeless drunkards, thieves, and murderers.

The writers who represented them were satisfied in rousing in their readers pity for the victims of this social disorder, victims so wounded by fate, that they have not even a realization of the injustice with which they are treated. And it is only in the works of the great dramatist Ostrovsky that we find any happy vagabonds, with a deep love of nature and beauty.

Gorky's vagabonds have, like Ostrovsky's, exalted feelings for natural beauties, but they possess, besides, a full consciousness of themselves, and they declare open war against society. Gorky lives the lives of his heroes; he seems to sink himself into them, and, at the same time, he idealizes them, and often uses them as his spokesmen. Far from being crushed by fate, his vagabonds clothe themselves with a certain pride in their misery; for them, the ideal existence is the one they lead, because it is free; with numerous variations, they all exalt the irresistible seduction of vagabondage:

"As for me, just listen! How many things I've seen in my fifty-eight years," says Makar Choudra. "In what country have I not been? That is the only way to live. Walk, walk, and you see everything. Don't stay long in one place: what is there out of the ordinary in that?

Just as day and night eternally run after one another, thus you must run, avoiding daily life, so that you will not cease to love it...."

"I, brother,"--says, in turn, Konovalov,--"I have decided to go all over the earth, in every sense of the word. You always see something new.... You think of nothing.... The wind blows, and you might say that it blows the dust out of your soul. You feel free and easy....

You are not troubled by any one. If you are hungry, you stop, and work to earn a few pennies; if there is no work to be had, you ask for some bread and it is given to you. So you see many countries, and the most diverse beauties...."

Likewise, in "Tedium," Kouzma Kossiyak thus clearly expresses himself:

"I would not give up my liberty for any woman, nor for any fireplace. I was born in a shed, do you hear, and it is in a shed that I am going to die; that is my fate. I am going to wander everywhere until my hair turns grey.... I get bored when I stay in the same place."

In their feeling of hostility to all authority, and all fixed things, including bourgeois happiness and economical principles, some of Gorky's characters resemble some of those superior heroes of Russian literature, like Pushkin's Evgeny Onyegin, Lermontov's Pechorine, and, finally, Turgenev's Rudin, who, in their way, are vagabonds, filled with the same independent spirit in their respective social, intellectual, or political circles.

On the other hand, Gorky's wandering beggars are closely related to those "free men" to whom M. S. Maximov attributes a historic role which was favorable to the extension of the Russian empire.

"Russia," he says, in his book, "Siberia and the Prison," "lived by vagabondage after she became a State; thanks to the vagabonds, she has extended her boundaries: for, it is they who, in order to maintain their independence, fought against the nomad tribes who attacked them from the south and the east...."

There is a marked difference between these two cla.s.ses: men of the former look for a place on this earth where they can establish themselves; while men of the other cla.s.s, those who are out of work, drunkards, and lazy men, have no taste for a sedentary life.

But if Gorky has not created the type of vagabond which is so familiar to those who know Russian literature, on the other hand, he has remodeled it with his original, energetic, and vibrantly realistic talent. His nomad "barefoot brigade," picturesquely encamped, is surrounded with a sort of terribly majestic halo in these vast stretches of country, a background against which their sombre silhouettes are set off. From the perfumed steppes to the roaring sea, they conjure up to the eye of their old co-mate the enchanting Slavic land of which they are the audacious offsprings.

And Gorky also lovingly gives them a familiar setting, painted with bold strokes, of plains and mountains which border in the distance the glaucous stretch of the sea. The sea! With what fervor does Gorky depict the anger and the peace of the sea. It always inspires, like an adored mistress:

"... The sea sleeps.

"Immense, sighing lazily along the strand, it has gone to sleep, peaceful in its huge stretch, bathed in the moonlight. As soft as velvet, and black, it mingles with the dark southern sky and sleeps profoundly, while on its surface is reflected the transparent tissue of the flaky, immobile clouds, in which is incrusted the gilded design of the stars."

Thus, like a "leitmotiv," the murmuring of the water interrupts the course of the story. And the steppe, this steppe "which has devoured so much human flesh and has drunk so much blood that it has become fat and fecund," surrounds with its immensity these miserable wandering beings and menaces them with its storm:

"Suddenly, the entire steppe undulated, enveloped with a dazzling blue light which seemed to enlarge the horizon ... the shadows trembled and disappeared for a moment ... a crash of thunder burst forth, disturbing the sky, where many black clouds were flying past....

"... At times the steppe stretched forth like an oscillating giant ... the vast stretch of blue and cloudless sky poured light down upon us, and seemed like an immense cupola of sombre color."

The wind pa.s.sed "in large and regular waves, or blew with a sharp rattle, the leaves sighed and whispered among themselves, the waves of the river washed up on the banks, monotonous, despairing, as if they were telling something terribly sad and mournful," the entire country vibrated with a powerful life that harmonized with the souls of the people.

In "Old Iserguile," Gorky writes: "I should have liked to transform myself into dust and be blown about by the wind; I should have liked to stretch myself out on the steppe like the warm waters of the river, or throw myself into the sea and rise into the sky in an opal mist; I should have liked to drink in this evening so wonderful and melancholy.... And, I know not why, I was suffering...."

Gorky's stories, always short enough, have little or no plot, and the characters are barely sketched. But, in these simple frames, he has confined the power of an art which is prolific, supple and profoundly living. Let us take, for example, "The Friends." Dancing Foot and The One Who Hopes are ordinary thieves, the terror of the villagers whose gardens they rob. One day, when they are especially desperate, they steal a thin horse which is browsing at the edge of the woods. The One Who Hopes gets an incurable sickness, and it is perhaps on account of his approaching death that he feels scruples at this crime. Dancing Foot expresses the scorn that the weakness of his companion inspires him with, but he ends by giving in and returns the animal. One hour later, The One Who Hopes falls dead in front of Dancing Foot, who is tremendously upset in spite of his affected indifference.

A dry outline cannot possibly convey the emotion contained in this little drama, where the low mentality of the characters is rendered with the mastery which Gorky usually shows in creating his elemental heroes. Among other works that should be noted are "Cain and Arteme," so poignantly ironical in its simplicity, "To Drive Away Tedium," "The Silver Clasps," "The Prisoner," and that little masterpiece, "Twenty-Six Men and a Girl," in which we see twenty-six bakers pouring out an ideal and mystical love on Tanya, the little embroiderer, who they believe, is as pure as an angel.

One day, a brutal soldier comes to defy them, and boasts that he will conquer this young girl. He succeeds. Then the twenty-six insult their fallen idol; the tragedy is not so much in the insults that they hurl at her, as in the suffering they undergo through having lost the illusion that was so dear to them.

Let us note, incidentally, the existence of a sort of comic spirit in these works which relieves the tragedy of the situations. In spite of their dark pessimism, the actors in these little dramas have an appearance of gaiety which deceives. It is by this popular humor that Gorky is the continuator of the work of Gogol; this is especially noticeable in "The Fair at Goltva."

In studying Gorky, one is often struck by the h.o.m.ogeneity of the types which he has described. Open any of his books, and you will always meet that "restless" type, dissatisfied with the ba.n.a.lity of his existence, trying to get away from it, and leaning irresistibly towards absolute liberty, far removed from social and political obligations.

Who are these "restless" people? Toward what end are they striving?

What do they represent? First, they have an immense reserve force which they do not know what to do with; they have got out of the rut, the rut which they despise, but it is hard for them to create another sort of existence for themselves. Bourgeois happiness repulses them, while all sorts of duties are hateful to them. They consider the people who are contented with this sort of a life as slaves, unworthy of the name of man, and they show the same disdain for the peasants, for the leading cla.s.ses, and for the workingmen.

The simple farmer excites the scorn of the "barefoot brigade:"