Some day we shall be indebted to the clear-visioned critic who will
expound for us the true place of the unpleasant, the terrible, even
the horrible, in fiction; and the study would not be complete without
a thorough-going examination of Russian literature generally, and the
writings of Maxim Gorki in particular.
Such an inquiry--which I must only touch upon--would doubtless focus
upon two factors of importance: the one a primary cause--the nature
of the author as conditioned by self, environment, and nationality;
the other a secondary cause--the ultimate purposes of fiction. Phrased
differently, we have the two elements: what an author writes because he
is what and where he is, and what he writes quite deliberately.
Reference has already been made, in these introductory studies, to the
sombre, hopeless, and even tragic tone of Russian life--a tone sounded
deeply in its literature. In fact, the broader the sweep of view, the
more instances stand forth to support the statement that all Muscovite
art feels the same impulse--witness in an exemplary and typical way
the paintings of Verestchagin and the music of Tschaikovsky. It is an
inviting theme, this one of why one nation should drink fiery vodka,
another phlegmatic beer, and yet another light wine. Are the national
characteristics which plainly go with drinks and foods and pleasures
causes, in the final analysis, or effects? Do servitude and stolidity
and hopelessness on the one hand, and thin-nostriled freedom and
lofty spirit on the other, arise from forces which the historian may
trace clearly to their political well-springs, or are there certain
imponderable potencies in the air of different lands which in the very
beginning of things instilled a spirit of fatalism into the Moslem,
nihilism into the Russian, emotionalism into the French, and a nervous
need for action into the American? When outward national conditions
change, or when nations are transplanted, precisely what is it in
climate that breeds essentially the same strain cycle after cycle?
So we should have to dissect, weigh, and classify all available
facts about Russia past and present in order to get an unclouded
understanding of the national temper, just as a similar study of
Gorki’s antecedents and life, for instance, would illuminate his
literary expressions. Each of these studies would be consistent
with the other, for Gorki is a national figure, though, as
all such iconoclastic spirits will, he outrussias his own
middle-class countrymen in outspoken unfaith in and defiance of the
god-of-things-as-they-are.
The second great factor for finding the place and potency of the
unpleasant, the bitter, and the terrible in fiction consists in the
purpose of fiction, which broadly is one of two: either to picture
forth life or to interpret life. When the fictional artist--granted
that he is clear-headed--sets out to hold the mirror relentlessly up
to life, he becomes an extreme realist. When he faithfully paints life
as he sees it, sincerely using his selective powers so as to present
_what he conceives to be_ types rather than mere personalities, and
thus interprets life for those of less penetrative and constructive
vision, we have a philosophical realist. When he takes liberties with
the _spirit_ of facts (not merely with the facts themselves, which may
be just as real in one order as in another), he is a romancer. When he
uses facts to support and enforce ideals of his own, he is an idealist.
Thus all fiction, so far as it has a respectable purpose at all, falls
easily into one class or the other--that which merely represents life,
or that which interprets life while it represents it. All the farther
motives--amusement, teaching, excoriation, demagoguery, what not--line
up behind these two prime purposes.
Now, how does all this bear upon the place of unpleasant fiction?
Very vitally, and we are considering Gorki--a highly morbid and at
times revolting writer--as a notable example of this rather Russian
characteristic. In him we have a spirit who looks at facts, despises
all palliations, dares greatly for his convictions, and in it all is
Russian through and through. Such a man, of such a history, in such
a period, in such a land, with such a motive of truth-telling, for
such a purpose of reform, _could_ not write pleasant, tinkly fiction.
Russians read him because Russia must read him. An author draws men
to his message either because they need it without liking it, or like
it already. First of all, Gorki is himself--a soul sensitive to the
tragic, the morbid, and the bitter--then he boldly gives Russia her
own self-made wormwood to drink while she thirsts in the hour of her
crucifixion.
With two classes I have no sympathy: writers who pander to morbid,
dirty tastes, and readers who support gruesome, nasty writers for pure
love of noisome pestilence. No more do we have need for the not-impure
and not-revolting yet depressing and pessimistic fiction which serves
no good purpose beyond that of producing revenue. The place for such
unpleasant, unhappy-beginning, tearful-middle, and sorrowful-ending
stories is precisely nowhere. But in Gorki we have a queer
contradiction of conditions: some of his most revolting fiction is as
important to the Muscovite land which bred it as light is vital to a
dark place. Yet when some one of these poignant, dreadful diagnoses of
Russian sicknesses is translated and spread abroad, say in English, it
should be read only by those who are students of the writer and his
country, and not by the young or the morbid. It is needful to expose
ulcers in a clinic, it is indecent and disgusting to parade them on the
street. In a word: the horrible in fiction needs be justified by a high
purpose.
In “The Exorcism,” a thousand-word sketch, Gorki has produced a
terrible illustration of how worse than useless such material may
be for purposes of general reading in translation, while originally
serving a tremendous moral purpose by showing his own people what
beasts some of their fellows are.
Along a village street a strange procession is moving slowly with
wild howls. The dense, wave-like crowd surrounds a cart. Tied by her
wrists to a rope attached to the cart is a slight, almost girlish
woman--entirely nude. Dazed, halting, gazing into nothing with wide,
lacklustre look, she staggers bleeding on. Now and again a tall
peasant standing in the cart, his white canine teeth showing, his
eyes bloodshot from fury, lays a lash upon the woman’s body, already
covered with unspeakable slashes and bruises. And every fiendish
brutality--detailed and repeated until the soul sickens--the men,
women, and children of the mob acclaim!
“This,” he concludes, “which I have written above, is not an
allegorical description of the persecution and torture of a prophet,
who has no honor in his own country--no, unfortunately, it is not that!
It is called an ‘exorcism.’ Thus do husbands punish their wives for
infidelity; this is a picture from life, a custom--and I beheld it
in the year 1891, on the 15th of July, in the village of Kandybovko,
Government of Kherson.”
Need I say that I have toned down the horror of this presentment,
and that I relate it, horrible still, to show the very futility of
such pictures _as_ pictures, and their very great worth, _to those
concerned_, as pleas for reform?
The readers of modern fiction need to look this question full in the
face and then make their feelings known to the magazines. There is
a place for all pathological studies, whether of society, soul, or
body, by priest, physician, sociologist, and novelist. But is that
place either the market-place, or a fiction-printing magazine whose
pages invite the scrutiny of children as well as morbid adults? If we
segregate bodily pestilence, why should the public magazine and the
public playhouse be allowed to spread contagion? Is there no difference
between an earnest fictional presentation of moral problems which
must be solved more or less publicly, and the mere skilful portrayal
of lust and degradation and easy morals, with no possible resultant
good? If a hatter took it into his head to be interested in smallpox,
what would the authorities say? Well, shall magazines be exposed for
general circulation because that same hatter, and a million of his
like, love dirty, crime-teaching, and viciously morbid fiction? Some
one must be brave enough to declare the difference between “frank”
fiction in books for those who really wish to study social problems
(and there are too many filthy books sold under the guise of social
study) and the printing of such material in the magazines which make
appeal to families for their circulation. We _can_ keep such books out
of the home and the library if we wish, but when vicious short-stories
creep into otherwise clean magazines, the damage is great enough to be
serious.
But Gorki’s fiction is not unclean, as a rule, even when it deals
with “broad” subjects. He moves directly and simply among the facts
of an unlovely and often brutalized life and tells the truth about
it without interpretation or apology. For example, here is the story
of “The Khan and His Son,” as told by a blind mendicant. It is more
romantic than most of Gorki’s work.
Mosolaīma el Asvab, an old Crimean Khan, is possessed of many women in
his harem, who love “the old eagle” for the noble fire of his spirit,
which age has not quenched. One above all others is his favorite, a
Kazak prisoner maid from the steppes of the Dnieper. Once when the
Khan’s much-loved son, Alhalla, returns from a victorious raid on the
Russians, the father exchanges with him words of affection and rashly
makes the time-honored oriental promise: “What wilt thou take from the
hand of thy father, Alhalla? Tell me, and I will give thee everything,
according to thy desire.”
And the son asks of his father the one thing the old man loves best and
leans upon in his old age--the Russian prisoner maid.
The Khan spake not--for a space he said no word, for so long as was
required to crush the shudder in his heart--and, after this pause,
he said, boldly and firmly:
“Take her! Let us finish the feast, and then thou shalt take her.”
The son knows what his request means, and soon they fall to talking of
the sacrifice required. But to the pleadings of the old Khan the son
returns only the argument of his own love for the girl. At length the
young man proposes that “in mercy to each other” they fling her into
the sea from the mountain, and in despair the Khan consents.
Summoned by her lord, the girl divines all, and asks only that she be
carried to the place of sacrifice in the arms of her “old eagle,” whom
she loves. And so they slowly journey to the cliff, and by his arms she
is flung into the sea.