Maxim Gorki Part 1

Maxim Gorki.

by Hans Ostwald.

INTRODUCTION

It cannot be denied that the academic expression "Literature" is an ill-favoured word. It involuntarily calls up the Ant.i.thesis of Life, of Personal Experience, of the Simple Expression of Thought and Feeling. With what scorn does Verlaine exclaim in his Poems:

"And the Rest is only Literature."

The word is not employed here in Verlaine's sense. The Impersonal is to be excluded from this Collection. Notwithstanding its solid basis, the modern mode of the Essay gives full play of personal freedom in the handling of its matter.

In writing an entire History of Literature, one is unable to take equal interest in all its details. Much is included because it belongs there, but has to be described and criticised of necessity, not desire.

While the Author concentrates himself _con amore_ upon the parts which, in accordance with his temperament, attract his sympathies, or rivet his attention by their characteristic types, he accepts the rest as unavoidable stuffing, in order to escape the reproach of ignorance or defect. In the Essay there is no padding. Nothing is put in from external considerations. The Author here admits no temporising with his subject.

However foreign the theme may be to him, there is always some point of contact between himself and the strange Personality. There is certain to be some crevice through which he can insinuate himself into this alien nature, after the fashion of the cunning actor with his part. He tries to feel its feelings, to think its thoughts, to divine its instincts, to discover its impulses and its will--then retreats from it once more, and sets down what he has gathered.

Or he steeps himself intimately in the subject, till he feels that the Alien Personality is beginning to live in him. It may be months before this happens; but it comes at last. Another Being fills him; for the time his soul is captive to it, and when he begins to express himself in words, he is freed, as it were, from an evil dream, the while he is fulfilling a cherished duty.

It is a welcome task to one who feels himself congenial to some Great or Significant Man, to give expression to his cordial feelings and his inspiration. It becomes an obsession with him to communicate to others what he sees in his Idol, his Divinity. Yet it is not Inspiration for his Subject alone that makes the Essayist. Some point that has no marked attraction in itself may be inexpressibly precious to the Author as Material, presenting itself to him with some rare stamps or unexpected feature, that affords a special vehicle for the expression of his temperament. Every man favours what he can describe or set forth better than his neighbours; each seeks the Stuff that calls out his capacities, and gives him opportunity to show what he is capable of. Whether the Personality portrayed be at his Antipodes, whether or no he have one single Idea in common with him, matters nothing. The picture may in sooth be most successful when the Original is entirely remote from the delineator, in virtue of contrary temperament, or totally different mentality,--just because the traits of such a nature stand out the more sharply to the eye of the tranquil observer.

Since Montaigne wrote the first Essays, this Form has permeated every country. In France, Sainte-Beuve, in North America, Emerson, has founded his School. In Germany, Hillebranat follows the lead of Sainte-Beuve, while Hermann Grimm is a disciple of Emerson. The Essayists of To-day are Legion.

It is hard to say whether what is set out in this brief and agreeable mode will offer much resistance to the ravages of Time. In any case its permanence is not excluded. It is conceivable that men, when condemned to many months' imprisonment, might arm themselves with the Works of Sainte-Beuve for their profitable entertainment, rather than with the Writings of any other Frenchman, since they give the Quintessence of many Books and many Temperaments. As to the permanent value of the Literature of To-day, we can but express conjectures, or at most opinions, that are binding upon none. We may hope that After-Generations will interest themselves not merely in the Cla.s.sic Forms of Poetry and History, but also in this less monumental Mode of the Criticism of our Era. And if this be not the case, we may console ourselves in advance with the reflection that the After-World is not of necessity going to be cleverer than the Present--that we have indeed no guarantee that it will be able to appreciate the Qualities of our Contemporaries quite according to their merits.

So much that is New, and to us Unknown, will occupy it in the Future!

GEORGE BRANDES.

Paris, May 1904.

Characterisation; Environment; Gorki's predecessors; Reaction and pessimism; Literature and society; Gorki's youth; Hard times; A vagrant life; Journalist days; Rapid success; The new heroes; Creatures once men; Vagabond philosophy; Accusing symbolism.

Within the last few years a new and memorable note has been sounded among the familiar strains of Russian literature. It has produced a regeneration, penetrating and quickening the whole. The author who proclaimed the new voice from his very soul has not been rejected. He was welcomed on all sides with glad and ready attention. Nor was it his compatriots alone who gave ear to him. Other countries, Germany in particular, have not begrudged him a hearing; as has too often been the case for native genius. The young Russian was speedily accounted one of the most widely read in his own land and in adjacent countries.

Success has rarely been achieved so promptly as by Maxim Gorki. The path has seldom been so smooth and free from obstacles.

Not but that Gorki has had his struggles. But what are those few years, in comparison with the decades through which others have had, and still have, to strive and wrestle? His fight has rather been for the attainment of a social status, of intellectual self-mastery and freedom, than for artistic recognition. He was recognised, indeed, almost from the first moment when he came forward with his characteristic productions. Nay, he was more than recognised. He was extolled, and loved, and honoured. His works were devoured.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Maxim Gorki (in 1900)]

This startling success makes a closer consideration and appreciation of the author's works and personality inc.u.mbent on us.

A black, sullen day in March. Rain and vapour. No movement in the air. The horizon is veiled in the grey mists that rise from the earth, and blend in the near distance with the dropping pall of the Heavens.

And yet there is a general sense of coming Spring. The elder-bushes are bursting, the buds swelling. A topaz shimmer plays amid the shadowy fringes of the light birch stems, and on the budding tops of the lime-trees. The bushes are decked with catkins. The boughs of the chestnut glisten with pointed reddish buds. Fresh green patches are springing up amid the yellow matted gra.s.s of the road-side.

The air is chill, and saturated with moisture. Everything is oppressed, and exertion is a burden. . . .

Suddenly a wind springs up, and tears the monotonously tinted curtains of the sky asunder, tossing the clouds about in its powerful arms like a child at play, and unveiling a glimpse of the purest Heaven . . .

only to roll up a thick dark ball of cloud again next moment.

Everything is in motion.

The mist clears off, the trees are shaken by the wind 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 a.n.a.lysis 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 cla.s.ses, 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, cla.s.s 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."

[Ill.u.s.tration: 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.