We should not give very much for the chances of a poor friendless lad
of feeble constitution, vagrant disposition, and an overpowering taste
for excitement, who should be turned adrift to shift for himself at an
age when most young lads are still safe at school. The fortunes of such
a one, if adequately recorded, might, and no doubt would, be infinitely
more engrossing, if less edifying, than the humdrum chronicle of the
steady clerk or patient mechanic; but a prison, or workhouse infirmary,
might safely be predicted as the ultimate and inevitable receptacle of
such a piece of human flotsam.
But now let us suppose--a handy supposition, I admit--that our
imaginary little nomad were endowed with that illuminating spark we
call genius; let us suppose, too, that in late boyhood, or early
manhood, he learnt to love letters, and deliberately set about
describing his extraordinary experiences, as well as the strange
bedfellows whom misery from time to time threw in his way--what
piquant, what grotesque pen-and-ink sketches we might expect from such
an inspired ragamuffin! It would be Oliver Twist or Humphrey Clinker
telling his own tale without the softening intervention of Mr. Charles
Dickens or Mr. Tobias Smollett.
Let us further suppose not England but Russia to be the theatre of our
hero's miseries and adventures, and the interest of the story will at
once be infinitely enhanced. The odds would now be a thousand to one
against our hero's attaining to manhood at all, and a hundred thousand
to one against his ever attaining to authorship. His risks would be
out of all proportion to his chances. From first to last starvation
would constantly dog his footsteps, and Siberian exile would be the
least terrible of a score of those administrative measures by means of
which the servants of the Tsar wage unintermittent warfare against the
vagrant population of their master's immense Empire. The career, then,
of a professional tramp in Russia must needs be of tragic intensity,
and it was my good fortune, some eighteen months ago, in the pages
of "_The Pilot,_" to be the first to call the attention of English
readers to the strange history of a Russian tramp of genius, who is,
moreover, his own chronicler. Maksim Gorky--Maximus the Bitter--is
the pseudonym deliberately chosen, at the outset of his career, by
the young Muscovite author who is at the present moment (and I do
not even except the revered name of Tolstoi) by far the most popular
story-teller in the Russian Empire. The following brief biographical
sketch of this remarkable man is the best introduction I can affix to
this selection from Gorky's unique "Razskazui," in all of which the
author has, more or less, embodied his grim experiences of life beneath
the transparent veil of fiction.
Aleksyei Maksimovich Pyeshkov was born on March 14th, 1869, at
Nijni-Novgorod. His mother Barbara was the daughter of a house painter
and decorator, Vasily Kacherin; his father was Maksim Savvatiev
Pyeshkov, an upholsterer of Perm. Aleksyei's parents seem to have been
worthy, colourless people, and fairly well educated for their station;
but they dwindle into insignificance before their respective fathers.
Young Pyeshkov's two grandfathers were undeniably men of character,
self-made men of brutal energy, who terrorized their respective
families, and were as hard and cold as the money they worshipped. So
severe, indeed, was the regimen of Aleksyei's paternal grandfather,
that his own son ran away from him five times in the course of seven
years. On the fifth occasion he did not return, but walked all the way
(he was only seventeen) from Tobolsk in Siberia, where the family then
lived, to Nijni-Novgorod, where he settled down as an apprentice to a
clothier. Five years later we find him occupying a responsible position
in the office of a steamship company at Astrakhan. Gorky's maternal
grandfather may well have been the prototype of Ignat Gordyeev, the
most impressive character in Gorky's romance, "Thoma Gordyeev."
Beginning life as a raftsman on the Volga, in the course of a short
time he became a man of substance, started a dyeing factory at his
native place, Nijni-Novgorod, was elected _Starshina,_ or Chief of the
Traders' Guild there, and was generally looked up to by everyone but
his wretched daughter, whom he made more wretched still when she threw
herself away--or so he accounted it--on such a poor non-descript as
Maksim Pyeshkov.
The earlier years of Aleksyei Pyeshkov were as uneventful as are the
years of most children. In 1873, however, when he was only four years
old, he met with his first misfortune: his rolling stone of a father
died of cholera at Astrakhan. His mother re-married shortly afterwards,
and transferred him to the care of his grandfather, who seems to have
been kind to the little lad--cruel fathers are very often indulgent
grandfathers--and taught him to read with the aid of the Psalter and
other liturgical books, by way of preparing him for school, whither
he was presently sent But his regular schooling lasted no longer than
five months, for about this time his mother died of consumption, and
almost simultaneously his last natural prop gave way, his grandfather
suddenly ruining himself utterly by over-speculation. Little Aleksyei,
therefore, was obliged to exchange his schoolroom for the shop of a
cobbler to whom he was apprenticed; but after serving his master for
two months, he burnt one hand so severely with boiling pitch that he
was pronounced useless to the trade, and sent about his business.
On recovering from the effects of this accident he was apprenticed by
his kinsfolk to a draughtsman, who treated him so harshly that he ran
away, becoming first an assistant to an ikon-maker, and then a turnspit
on a steamer on the Volga. Here he met with an unexpected piece of
good luck. His new master, the cook on board the steamer, Smurny by
name, happened to be a lettered man of superior ability, and he proved
to be one of the best friends young Pyeshkov ever had. But for him,
indeed, modern Russian Literature in all probability would now have
been minus of one of its chief ornaments. Smurny awakened within the
lad a love of literature, and placed at his disposal his own little
library, a miscellaneous collection enough, in which fantastic lives
of the Greek Orthodox Saints and interminable treatises on Freemasonry
lay cheek by jowl; it was, however, an inestimable boon to Aleksyei,
and it included, at any rate, the works of one indisputable European
classic--Gogol--besides some of the novels of Alexandre Dumas. Pyeshkov
himself, in his fragmentary autobiography, insinuates that his chance
encounter with the cultured cook was a turning-point in his career.
"Till the advent of the cook," says he, "I could not endure books, or,
indeed, any sort of printed paper--passports included." Why he quitted
Smurny we are not told; but we do know that when he left the steamer
to become a gardener's assistant, he pursued his studies whenever
and wherever he had the chance. At the age of fifteen, indeed, his
thirst for learning induced him to present himself at the gates of the
University of Kazan, the great Volgan seminary, where Tolstoi had been
educated forty years earlier, in the naïve belief that instruction
of all sorts was to be had there by anyone for the simple asking. "I
was mistaken, it appeared," he observes with pathetic sarcasm, "so I
entered a biscuit factory at three roubles (6_s._) a month." He has
related his experiences of this grinding slavery in a subterranean
"stone cage" in that powerful story, "Twenty-Six of Us and one
Other."[1]
"It was a grievous evil life we lived within those thick walls....
We rose at five o'clock in the morning without having had our sleep
out, and--stupid and indifferent--at six o'clock we were sitting at
the table to make biscuits from dough already prepared for us by our
comrades while we were still sleeping.... Our master called us niggers,
and gave us rotten entrails for dinner instead of butcher's meat." No
wonder he calls this drudgery "the hardest work I ever experienced."
And here there is a blank in our biographical record--a blank, however,
which may, partially, be filled up from conjecture. To this period
belongs, I opine, the first of Pyeshkov's gipsy-like wanderings through
Russia. The most casual reader of his tales is struck at once by his
delight for the free, careless life of a vagabond. The justification,
the philosophy of that life, so to speak, he has put into the mouth
of that prince of vagabonds, Promtov[2], evidently a real person,
whose antitype Pyeshkov must have met with on his rambles, and who is
one of his best creations It was now, too, that he must have made the
acquaintance of the so-called "Buivshie Lyudi,"[2]--or "Have-beens,"
whom he has immortalized in so many of his tales, that numerous and
unhappy class who have fallen, beyond recovery, from positions of
trust or emolument. These, too, were the days when, as he tells us, "I
sawed wood, dragged loads," and, in fact, did all sorts of ill-paid,
menial labour. On the other hand, he made the acquaintance of numerous
students at Kazan, was admitted into their clubs, and his unquenchable
ardour for learning revived. We do not know what he read during
these years, but he must have read a very great deal. None can take
up his works without being impressed by the richness and variety of
his vocabulary, and it is not too much to say that no other Russian
writer ever uses, or has used, so many foreign terms (English and
French especially), or has coined so many new words from extraneous
western sources. It is also plain from internal evidence that he has
studied history, philosophy, and science with enthusiasm, and I agree
with those Russian critics who complain that he has assimilated more
Nietzschianism than is good for him, although, on the other hand, I
consider that his obligations to Nietzsche are far less considerable
than is commonly supposed. And at the same time he was consorting
freely with ruffians of every description,[4] sleeping round camp
fires with murderers and thieves, for the sake of a crust of bread,
and once would actually have starved to death but for the charity of a
kind-hearted prostitute[5] Naturally courageous, and with the buoyancy
of youth to hold him up, he seems to have endured these hardships
cheerfully enough, and a fine sunset, or a majestic seascape, or even
a glimpse of the monotonous grandeur of the endless steppe, would,
as a rule, be compensation enough for the fatigues of a hard day
at its close. But he, too, had his dark moments, and in 1888 (when
only nineteen) he tried to commit suicide from sheer wretchedness.
Fortunately the bullet struck no vital part, and he was nursed into
convalescence at a hospital in Kazan. "Having sufficiently recovered,"
says Gorky, sarcastically summing up his position at this period, "I
survived in order to devote myself to the apple-selling trade."
On quitting Kazan, Pyeshkov appeared at Tsaritsuin, where, for a time,
he was a railway porter. He was summoned from thence to his native
place, Nijni-Novgorod, to serve as a recruit. But Aleksyei was not of
the stuff of which soldiers are made. "They don't take rubbish like
me," he explains, so he eked out a living by selling lager-beer in the
streets till he attracted the attention of the benevolent advocate, A.
J. Lanin, who made young Pyeshkov his secretary.
According to Gorky's own admission, Lanin had a considerable influence
on his future development. But Gorky, who always felt himself "out of
place among intellectual folk," and has an undisguised contempt for
mere book-learning, now quitted his patron and returned to Tsaritsuin,
whence he rambled through Southern Russia, the Ukraine, and Bessarabia,
finally working his way through the Crimea and the Kuban District to
the Caucasus. The tour was rich in new experiences, and may be said to
have matured his genius, and taught him more than whole libraries of
books could have done, but he suffered terrible privations by the way.
He made a particular study during this period of the cities of Southern
Russia, their commercial activity and their shifting, nondescript
population, and that noble story, "Chelkash," which contains his finest
descriptions of nature, was the ultimate result of his experiences.
At Tiflis he worked as a navvy for a time, and in 1892 his first
printed story, "Makar Chudra," appeared in the columns of the Tiflis
journal, _Kavkaz._ I have described elsewhere[6] his dramatic
introduction to the astonished but appreciative editor on that
occasion. Returning to Nijni-Novgorod, Gorky got several subsequent
stories inserted in the principal newspapers of the various Volgan
cities; but he wrote but little at this period, and that little did not
win general favour.
In 1893 he made the acquaintance of the eminent Russian writer,
Korolenko, to whose encouragement he always attributed his ultimate
success. Korolenko urged him to have done with trifles, aim high,
and, above all things, cultivate his style. Shortly afterwards, Gorky
published his first indisputable masterpiece, "Chelkash," No. 8 of the
present collection, which opened "the big reviews" to the young author,
and made him famous. "Chelkash" was speedily followed by a whole
series of vivid stories. In 1900 appeared his first romance, "Thoma
Gordyeev," a disappointing performance on the whole, though not without
superlative merits. The descriptions of Volgan scenery are magnificent,
and the characterization is masterly. But it is far too long, and, the
narrative is swamped by floods of second-rate philosophy. A collection
of all Gorky's works, under the title of "Razskazui" (Tales), is
still in progress. At present Gorky is, without doubt, by far the most
popular author in Russia, and the authorities there have already paid
him the compliment of branding his writings as even more dangerous than
those of his veteran contemporary, Count Leo Tolstoi. He is also, I
fancy, likely to give them much more trouble in future than the Count,
as his temperament and genius are distinctly of the volcanic order.