"What, without asking, hither hurried _Whence_?
And, without asking, _Whither_ hurried hence!
Oh, many a Cup of this forbidden Wine
Must drown the memory of that insolence!"
"Foma Gordyeeff" is a big book--not only is the breadth of Russia in it,
but the expanse of life. Yet, though in each land, in this world of
marts and exchanges, this age of trade and traffic, passionate figures
rise up and demand of life what its fever is, in "Foma Gordyeeff" it is a
Russian who so rises up and demands. For Gorky, the Bitter One, is
essentially a Russian in his grasp on the facts of life and in his
treatment. All the Russian self-analysis and insistent introspection are
his. And, like all his brother Russians, ardent, passionate protest
impregnates his work. There is a purpose to it. He writes because he
has something to say which the world should hear. From that clenched
fist of his, light and airy romances, pretty and sweet and beguiling, do
not flow, but realities--yes, big and brutal and repulsive, but real.
He raises the cry of the miserable and the despised, and in a masterly
arraignment of commercialism, protests against social conditions, against
the grinding of the faces of the poor and weak, and the self-pollution of
the rich and strong, in their mad lust for place and power. It is to be
doubted strongly if the average bourgeois, smug and fat and prosperous,
can understand this man Foma Gordyeeff. The rebellion in his blood is
something to which their own does not thrill. To them it will be
inexplicable that this man, with his health and his millions, could not
go on living as his class lived, keeping regular hours at desk and stock
exchange, driving close contracts, underbidding his competitors, and
exulting in the business disasters of his fellows. It would appear so
easy, and, after such a life, well appointed and eminently respectable,
he could die. "Ah," Foma will interrupt rudely--he is given to rude
interruptions--"if to die and disappear is the end of these
money-grubbing years, why money-grub?" And the bourgeois whom he rudely
interrupted will not understand. Nor did Mayakin understand as he
laboured holily with his wayward godson.
"Why do you brag?" Foma, bursts out upon him. "What have you to brag
about? Your son--where is he? Your daughter--what is she? Ekh, you
manager of life! Come, now, you're clever, you know everything--tell me,
why do you live? Why do you accumulate money? Aren't you going to die?
Well, what then?" And Mayakin finds himself speechless and without
answer, but unshaken and unconvinced.
Receiving by heredity the fierce, bull-like nature of his father plus the
passive indomitableness and groping spirit of his mother, Foma, proud and
rebellious, is repelled by the selfish, money-seeking environment into
which he is born. Ignat, his father, and Mayakin, the godfather, and all
the horde of successful merchants singing the paean of the strong and the
praises of merciless, remorseless _laissez faire_, cannot entice him.
Why? he demands. This is a nightmare, this life! It is without
significance! What does it all mean? What is there underneath? What is
the meaning of that which is underneath?
"You do well to pity people," Ignat tells Foma, the boy, "only you must
use judgment with your pity. First consider the man, find out what he is
like, what use can be made of him; and if you see that he is a strong and
capable man, help him if you like. But if a man is weak, not inclined to
work--spit upon him and go your way. And you must know that when a man
complains about everything, and cries out and groans--he is not worth
more than two kopeks, he is not worthy of pity, and will be of no use to
you if you do help him."
Such the frank and militant commercialism, bellowed out between glasses
of strong liquor. Now comes Mayakin, speaking softly and without satire:
"Eh, my boy, what is a beggar? A beggar is a man who is forced, by fate,
to remind us of Christ; he is Christ's brother; he is the bell of the
Lord, and rings in life for the purpose of awakening our conscience, of
stirring up the satiety of man's flesh. He stands under the window and
sings, 'For Christ's sa-ake!' and by that chant he reminds us of Christ,
of His holy command to help our neighbour. But men have so ordered their
lives that it is utterly impossible for them to act in accordance with
Christ's teaching, and Jesus Christ has become entirely superfluous to
us. Not once, but, in all probability, a thousand times, we have given
Him over to be crucified, but still we cannot banish Him from our lives
so long as His poor brethren sing His name in the streets and remind us
of Him. And so now we have hit upon the idea of shutting up the beggars
in such special buildings, so that they may not roam about the streets
and stir up our consciences."
But Foma will have none of it. He is neither to be enticed nor cajoled.
The cry of his nature is for light. He must have light. And in burning
revolt he goes seeking the meaning of life. "His thoughts embraced all
those petty people who toiled at hard labour. It was strange--why did
they live? What satisfaction was it to them to live on the earth? All
they did was to perform their dirty, arduous toil, eat poorly; they were
miserably clad, addicted to drunkenness. One was sixty years old, but he
still toiled side by side with young men. And they all presented
themselves to Foma's imagination as a huge heap of worms, who were
swarming over the earth merely to eat."
He becomes the living interrogation of life. He cannot begin living
until he knows what living means, and he seeks its meaning vainly. "Why
should I try to live life when I do not know what life is?" he objects
when Mayakin strives with him to return and manage his business. Why
should men fetch and carry for him? be slaves to him and his money?
"Work is not everything to a man," he says; "it is not true that
justification lies in work . . . Some people never do any work at all,
all their lives long--yet they live better than the toilers. Why is
that? And what justification have I? And how will all the people who
give their orders justify themselves? What have they lived for? But my
idea is that everybody ought, without fail, to know solidly what he is
living for. Is it possible that a man is born to toil, accumulate money,
build a house, beget children, and--die? No; life means something in
itself. . . . A man has been born, has lived, has died--why? All of us
must consider why we are living, by God, we must! There is no sense in
our life--there is no sense at all. Some are rich--they have money
enough for a thousand men all to themselves--and they live without
occupation; others bow their backs in toil all their life, and they
haven't a penny."
But Foma can only be destructive. He is not constructive. The dim
groping spirit of his mother and the curse of his environment press too
heavily upon him, and he is crushed to debauchery and madness. He does
not drink because liquor tastes good in his mouth. In the vile
companions who purvey to his baser appetites he finds no charm. It is
all utterly despicable and sordid, but thither his quest leads him and he
follows the quest. He knows that everything is wrong, but he cannot
right it, cannot tell why. He can only attack and demolish. "What
justification have you all in the sight of God? Why do you live?" he
demands of the conclave of merchants, of life's successes. "You have not
constructed life--you have made a cesspool! You have disseminated filth
and stifling exhalations by your deeds. Have you any conscience? Do you
remember God? A five-kopek piece--that is your God! But you have
expelled your conscience!"
Like the cry of Isaiah, "Go to, now, ye rich men, weep and howl for your
misfortunes that shall come upon you," is Foma's: "You blood-suckers!
You live on other people's strength; you work with other people's hands!
For all this you shall be made to pay! You shall perish--you shall be
called to account for all! For all--to the last little tear-drop!"
Stunned by this puddle of life, unable to make sense of it, Foma
questions, and questions vainly, whether of Sofya Medynsky in her
drawing-room of beauty, or in the foulest depths of the first chance
courtesan's heart. Linboff, whose books contradict one another, cannot
help him; nor can the pilgrims on crowded steamers, nor the verse writers
and harlots in dives and boozingkens. And so, wondering, pondering,
perplexed, amazed, whirling through the mad whirlpool of life, dancing
the dance of death, groping for the nameless, indefinite something, the
magic formula, the essence, the intrinsic fact, the flash of light
through the murk and dark--the rational sanction for existence, in
short--Foma Gordyeeff goes down to madness and death.
It is not a pretty book, but it is a masterful interrogation of life--not
of life universal, but of life particular, the social life of to-day. It
is not nice; neither is the social life of to-day nice. One lays the
book down sick at heart--sick for life with all its "lyings and its
lusts." But it is a healthy book. So fearful is its portrayal of social
disease, so ruthless its stripping of the painted charms from vice, that
its tendency cannot but be strongly for good. It is a goad, to prick
sleeping human consciences awake and drive them into the battle for
humanity.
But no story is told, nothing is finished, some one will object. Surely,
when Sasha leaped overboard and swam to Foma, something happened. It was
pregnant with possibilities. Yet it was not finished, was not decisive.
She left him to go with the son of a rich vodka-maker. And all that was
best in Sofya Medynsky was quickened when she looked upon Foma with the
look of the Mother-Woman. She might have been a power for good in his
life, she might have shed light into it and lifted him up to safety and
honour and understanding. Yet she went away next day, and he never saw
her again. No story is told, nothing is finished.
Ah, but surely the story of Foma Gordyeeff is told; his life is finished,
as lives are being finished each day around us. Besides, it is the way
of life, and the art of Gorky is the art of realism. But it is a less
tedious realism than that of Tolstoy or Turgenev. It lives and breathes
from page to page with a swing and dash and go that they rarely attain.
Their mantle has fallen on his young shoulders, and he promises to wear
it royally.
Even so, but so helpless, hopeless, terrible is this life of Foma
Gordyeeff that we would be filled with profound sorrow for Gorky did we
not know that he has come up out of the Valley of Shadow. That he hopes,
we know, else would he not now be festering in a Russian prison because
he is brave enough to live the hope he feels. He knows life, why and how
it should be lived. And in conclusion, this one thing is manifest: Foma
Gordyeeff is no mere statement of an intellectual problem. For as he
lived and interrogated living, so in sweat and blood and travail has
Gorky lived.
PIEDMONT, CALIFORNIA.
_November_ 1901.