The heroes of this book belong, for the most part, to that
workingman and agricultural proletariat whose role has lately been
of such great importance in the Russian political tempests. With
marvelous psychological analysis, Gorky shows how some of these
simple creatures understand the new truth, and how it gradually
penetrates their ardent souls.
Pavel Vlassov, a young, intelligent workingman, is thirsty for
knowledge, and is the apostle of the new ideal. He throws himself
heart and soul into the dangerous struggle he has undertaken against
ignorance and oppression. The Little Russian, Andrey, is all
feeling and thought, and the peasant Rybine is inflamed by action.
Sashenka is a young girl who sacrifices herself entirely to the
Idea, and the coal-man Ignatius is driven by an obscure force to
help in a cause which he does not understand. Finest of them all is
Pelaguaya Vlassov, the principal character of the book, and Pavel's
mother.
Old and grey, Pelaguaya has passed her whole life in misery. She has
never known anything but how to suffer in silence and endure without
complaint; she has never dreamed that life could be different. One
day her father had said to her:
"It's useless to make faces! There is a fool who wants to marry
you,--take him. All girls marry, all women have children; children
are, for all parents, a sorrow. And are you, yes or no, a human
being?"
She then marries the workingman Michael Vlassov, who gets drunk
every day, beats her cruelly and kicks her, and even on his
death-bed, says: "Go to the devil.... Bitch! I'll die better alone."
He dies, and his son Pavel begins to bring forbidden books into the
house. Friends come and talk; a small group is formed. Pelaguaya
listens to what is said, but understands nothing. Gradually,
however, there begins to filter into her old breast, like a stream
of joy, an understanding of something big, of something in which she
can take part. She discovers that she too is a free creature, and,
obscurely, there is formed in her mind the notion that every human
being has a right to live. Then she speaks: "The earth is tired of
carrying so much injustice and sadness, it trembles softly at the
hope of seeing the new sun which is rising in the bosom of mankind."
So the obscure and miserable woman gradually rises to the dignity of
"The Mother of the Prophet." And when Pavel accepts, like the
martyrdom of the cross, his banishment to Siberia, with a joyous
heart she sacrifices her son to the Idea.
Her soul opens wide to the new truth that is lighting it. With the
most touching abnegation, she tries to carry on the work of the
absent one. But the police are watching. One day, when she is about
to take the train to a neighboring town to spread the "good word"
there, she is recognized and apprehended. Seeing that she is lost,
the Mother, whose personality at this moment grows absolutely
symbolic, cries out to the crowd:
"'Listen to me! They condemned my son and his friends because they
were bringing the truth to everybody! We are dying from work, we are
tormented by hunger and by cold, we are always in the mire, always
in the wrong! Our life is a night, a black night!'
"'Hurrah for the old woman!' cries some one in the crowd.
"A policeman struck her in the chest; she tottered, and fell on the
bench. But she still cried:
"'All of you! get all your forces together under a single leader.'
"The big red hand of the policeman struck her in the throat, and the
nape of her neck hit against the wall.
"'Shut up, you hag!' cried the officer in a sharp voice.
"The Mother's eyes grew larger and shone brightly. Her jaw trembled.
"'They won't kill a resurrected soul!'
"'Bitch!'
"With a short swing the policeman struck her full in the face.
"Something red and black momentarily blinded the Mother; blood
filled her mouth.
"A voice from the crowd brought her to herself:
"'You haven't the right to strike her!'
"But the officers pushed her, and hit her on the head.
"'... It's not blood that will drown what's right.'...
"Dulled and weakened, the Mother tottered. But she saw many eyes
about her, glowing with a bold fire, eyes that she knew well and
that were dear to her.
"'... They will never get at the truth, even under oceans of blood!'
"The policeman seized her heavily by the throat.
"There was a rattling in her throat:
"... 'The unfortunates!'
"Some one in the crowd answered her, with a deep sigh."
* * * * *
"A Confession" is the story of a restless soul who untiringly
searches for the God of truth and goodness. Found as a child in a
village of central Russia, Matvey was first taken by a sacristan,
and, after his death, by Titov, the inspector of the domain. In
order to debase Matvey, whose superiority irritates him, Titov asks
him to participate in his extortions. Having become the son-in-law
of his adopted father, Matvey, on account of his love for his wife,
accepts the shameful life. But the God in whom Matvey has placed his
distracted confidence, seems to want to chastise him cruelly. After
having lost, one after the other, his wife and child, he goes away
at a venture. He enters a monastery where, among the dissolute
monks, whose vices are most repugnant, his soul gradually shakes off
the Christian dogma. On one of his pilgrimages, he gets to
Damascus. Among the workingmen, where chance has taken him, he feels
his heart opening to the truth, which he follows up with the
determination of a real Gorkyan hero. The life of the people appears
to him in its sublime simplicity. And it is in the midst of a
dazzling apotheosis--which reminds one of the most grandiose pages
of Zola's "Lourdes"--that he finally confesses the God of his ideal:
it is the people.
"People! you are my God, creator of all the gods that you have
formed from the beauty of your soul, in your troubled and laborious
search!
"Let there be no other gods on the earth but yourself, for you are
the only God, the creator of miracles!"
* * * * *
"The Spy" is a study of the Russian police. The novel treats of the
terrible Okhrana, whose mysterious affairs have become the
laughing-stock of all the foreign papers.
The principal character, about whom circle the police spies and
secret agents, is a poor orphan, weak and timid, called Evsey
Klimkov, whom his uncle, the forger Piotr, has taken into his house
and brought up with his son, the strong and brutal James. Beaten by
his schoolmates and by his cousin, the child lives in a perpetual
trance. Life seems formidable to him, like a jungle in which men are
the pitiless beasts. Everywhere, brute force or hypocrisy triumph;
everywhere, the weak are oppressed, downtrodden, conquered. And in
his feverish imagination, daily excited by facts which his terror
distorts, Evsey delights in conceiving another existence, all made
of love and goodness, an existence that he unceasingly opposes
against the hard realities of daily life, with the stubborn fervor
of a mystic.
Having entered the service of the old bookseller Raspopov, the young
man does his duty with the faithfulness of a beast of burden. His
home no longer pleases him at all; there, things and people are
still hostile to him; but his uncle Piotr seems enchanted with his
new position. Evsey spends his days in arranging and classifying the
books which his master has bought. A young woman, Raissa Petrovna,
keeps house for the book-dealer, and as every one knows, they live
like man and wife. In this queer environment, the faculties of the
young man become sharpened, and serve him well. It does not take
long for him to find out what they are hiding from him. A few words
addressed by Raspopov to a certain Dorimedonte Loukhine reveal to
Evsey the part that is being played by his patron. Raspopov, who is
an agent of the secret police, gives Dorimedonte--who, by the way,
is deceiving him with Raissa--the names of the buyers of the
forbidden books in which he trades. And here it is that the tragedy
suddenly breaks forth.
Raissa, tired of being tormented by Raspopov, who accuses her of
poisoning him, strangles the old man in a moment of cold anger,
under the very eyes of Evsey. Thanks to Dorimedonte, this crime goes
unpunished. Evsey, having become the lodger of the two lovers, now
enters the Okhrana, at the advice of his new master. After a while,
Raissa, haunted by remorse, commits suicide, and Dorimedonte is
killed by some revolutionists.
All the interest of the book, however, is centered in the picture of
the police institutions. From the chief Philip Philipovich to the
agent Solovyev, Gorky presents, with consummate art, the mass of
corrupt and greedy agents who wearily accomplish their tasks.
Among them, young Evsey leads a miserable and ridiculous existence.
Bruised by an invincible power, he sees himself compelled to arrest
an old man who has confided his revolutionary ideas to him; then a
young girl with whom he is in love; finally, his own cousin, a
revolutionary suspect.
Gradually his eyes are opened. He realizes that he cannot extricate
himself from the position in which he has placed himself. Tired of
leading a life which his conscience disapproves of, he thinks of
killing his superior, who has driven him to do so many infamous
deeds. He will thus get justice. His project miscarries; maddened,
he throws himself under a passing train.
* * * * *
These three remarkable works, riddled by the Russian censor, so that
the complete version has appeared only abroad, have recently been
followed by two important stories: "Among the People" and "Matvey
Kozhemyakine."
With his accustomed power, Gorky shows us, in the first of these
stories, the spread of socialism among the agricultural proletariat.
He depicts village life with its pettiness and ignominy. The village
is for the most part a backward place, hostile to everything that
makes a breach in tradition. The hatching of socialism goes on
slowly. From day to day, new obstacles, helped on by the ignorance
of the peasants, hinder those who are trying to carry out their
belief. Even the village guard, Semyon, pursues them with his
hatred.
But Igor Petrovich, the propagator of these new ideas, finds, in a
few old friends and in a village woman who becomes his mistress,
some precious helpers. Thanks to them, he gradually gets up a little
circle of firm believers who gather in a cave in the woods. Every
evening, they read, discuss, and dream of a better organization,
out there in the cave. All would have gone well, if some of them had
not betrayed the leader to the police. While being led to the city
prison, the leader spoke to the soldiers who were escorting him:
"The soldiers trembled as they clicked their bayonets; they silently
listened to the legend of the generous earth which loves those who
work it. Again, their red faces were covered with drops of melted
snow; the drops ran down their cheeks like bitter tears of
humiliation; they breathed heavily, they snuffled, and I felt that
they kept walking a little faster, as if they wanted this very day
to arrive in that fairy land.
"We are no longer prisoners and soldiers; we are simply seven
Russians. I do not forget the prison, but when I remember all that I
lived through that summer and before that, my heart fills with joy,
and I feel like crying out:
"Rejoice, beloved Russian people! Your resurrection is close at
hand!"
* * * * *
"Matvey Kozhemyakine" very brilliantly returns to Gorky's early
manner. In this book no symbolic character interprets the bold
thoughts of the author. It is simply a novel of Russian provincial
life. Its simplicity does not exclude vigor, and it reminds us at
times of Balzac.
Young Matvey is the son of an old workingman who has become rich,
thanks to his energy and dishonesty. He has grown up in a large
house, adjoining a rope-yard, with his father and several servants.
His mother, whom he never knew, left home shortly after his birth,
and entered a convent in order to escape the torments of life.
Later, Matvey's father marries a young girl, in order to provide a
mother for his son, whom he loves dearly. But his new mother is not
long in finding out the dreary life which she has to lead with the
old man. In order to escape from the tedium of it, she listens to
the interesting experiences of the wandering life of the porter
Sazanov, and gives her unfaithful love in exchange.
Unexpected circumstances disclose this shameful adultery to Matvey.
Instead of revealing it to his father, he generously guards the
secret. He even goes so far as to protect her from the fury of a
workingman, named Savka, whom Sazanov's success has rendered bold.
Through gratitude, and later through love, in the absence of
Kozhemyakine, she becomes the mistress of her step-son. On his
return, the father, finding out about this "liaison," spares his
son, but beats his wife to death, and himself, mad with fury, falls,
struck with apoplexy.
All the newspapers in the world have attacked Gorky's way of living.
As he is forced to remain away from his beloved country, the great
writer has made his home in the little island of Capri, the air of
which is propitious to his failing health. Moreover, its impressive
scenery inspires his restless genius.
Drunk with liberty, taken up with beauty, always ready to help a man
who is in political and social difficulties, Gorky, from the depths
of his peaceful retreat, wanders out over the world of ideas in
search of truth, as formerly he used to wander over the earth in
search of bread.
VI
LEONID ANDREYEV
Leonid Andreyev was born of a humble bourgeoise family in Orel, in
1871. "It was there that I began my studies," he says. "I was not a
good pupil; in the seventh form I was last in my class for a whole
year, and I had especially poor reports as to my deportment. The
most agreeable part of my schooling, which I still remember with
pleasure, was the intervals between the lessons, the 'recesses,' and
the times, rare as they were, when the instructor sent me from the
class-room for inattention or lack of respect. In the long deserted
halls a sonorous silence reigned which vibrated at the solitary
noise of my steps; on all sides the closed doors, shutting in rooms
full of pupils; a sunbeam--a free beam--played with the dust which
had been raised during recess and which had not yet had time to
settle; all of it was mysterious, interesting, full of a particular
and secret meaning."
Andreyev's father, who was a geometrician, died while he was still
at school, and the family was without resources. The young man did
not hesitate, however, in setting out for St. Petersburg, where he
entered the university, hoping to gain a livelihood by giving
lessons. But it was hard to secure what he wanted. "I knew what
terrible misery was," Andreyev tells us; "during my first years in
St. Petersburg I was hungry more than once, and sometimes I did not
eat for two days."
His first literary productions date from this sombre epoch. Andreyev
gives us remarkably graphic details of this misery. One day, he gave
a daily paper a story about the tribulations of an ever-hungry
student: his own life!
"I wept like a child in writing these pages," he confesses. "I had
put down all of my sufferings. I was still affected by my great
sadness when I took the manuscript to the editor. I was told to come
back in a few weeks to find out whether it had been accepted. I
returned with a light heart, keeping down my anguish in expectation
of the decision. It came to me in the form of a loud burst of
laughter from the editor, who declared that my work was absolutely
worthless...."
Nevertheless, he energetically pursued his studies, which he
completed at the University of Moscow. "There," he tells us, "life
was, from a material standpoint, less unbearable; my friends and
the aid society came to my assistance; but I recall my life at the
University of St. Petersburg with genuine pleasure; the various
classes of students are there more differentiated and an individual
can more easily find a sympathetic surrounding among such distinct
groups."
Some time after that, Andreyev, disgusted with life, attempted
suicide. "In January, 1894," he writes, "I tried to shoot myself,
but without any appreciable result. I was punished by religious
penance, imposed upon me by authority, and a sickness of the heart
which, although not dangerous, was persistent. During this time I
made one or two equally unsuccessful literary attempts, and I gave
myself up with success to painting, which I have loved since
childhood; I then painted portraits to order for from 5 to 10
rubles....
"In 1897, I received my counsellor's degree and I took up that
profession in Moscow. For want of time I did not succeed in getting
any sort of a 'clientele'; in all, I pleaded but one civil case,
which, however, I lost completely, and several gratuitous criminal
cases. However, I was actively working in reporting these cases for
an important paper."
Finally, two strangely impressionistic stories: "Silence," and "He
Was...," published in an important Petersburg review, brought the
author into prominence. From that time, he devoted himself entirely
to literature.
* * * * *
Andreyev is considered, to-day, as one of the most brilliant
representatives of the new constellation of Russian writers, in
which he takes a place immediately next to Tchekoff, whom he
resembles in the melancholy tone of his work. In him, as in
Tchekoff, the number of people who suffer from life, either crushed
or mutilated by it, by far exceed the number of happy ones;
moreover, the best of his stories are short and sketchy like those
of Tchekoff. Andreyev is then, so to speak, his spiritual son. But
he is a sickly son, who carries the melancholy element to its
farthest limit. The grey tones of Tchekoff have, in Andreyev, become
black; his rather sad humor has been transformed into tragic irony;
his subtle impressionability into morbid sensibility. The two
writers have had the same visions of the anomalies and the horrors
of existence; but, where Tchekoff has only a disenchanted smile,
Andreyev has stopped, dismayed; the sensation of horror and
suffering which springs from his stories has become an obsession
with him; it does not penetrate merely the souls of his heroes, but,
as in Poe, it penetrates even the descriptions of nature.
Thus, the "near and terrible" disk of the moon hovers over the earth
like the "gigantic menace of an approaching but unknown evil"; the
river congeals in "mute terror," and silence is particularly
menacing. Night always comes "black and bad," and fills human hearts
with shadows. When it falls, the very branches of the trees
"contract, filled with terror." Under the influence of the
disturbing sounds of the tocsin, the high linden-trees "suddenly
begin to talk, only to become quiet again immediately and lapse into
a sullen silence." The tocsin itself is animated. "Its distinct
tones spread with rapid intensity. Like a herald of evil who has not
the time to look behind him, and whose eyes are large with fright,
the tocsin desperately calls men to the fatal mire."[9]
[9] This passage is a sort of a variation on the theme that Poe
has developed in a masterful way in his poem, "The Bells."
Most of Andreyev's characters, like those of Dostoyevsky, are
abnormal, madmen and neurasthenics in whom are distinguishable
marked traces of degeneration and psychic perversion. They are
beings who have been fatally wounded in their life-struggle, whose
minds now are completely or partially powerless. Too weak to fight
against the cruel exigencies of reality, they turn their thoughts
upon themselves and naturally arrive at the most desolate
conclusions, and commit the most senseless acts. Some, a prey to the
mania of pride, despairing because of their weakness and their
"nothingness," look--as does Serge Petrovich--for relief in suicide.
Others, who have resigned themselves to their sad lives, become
passive observers, become transformed into living corpses whose sole
desire is peace; such a one is the hero of "At the Window." Others
still instinctively choke in themselves the best tendencies of their
characters and are passionately fond of futile and senseless
amusements, by means of which they enjoy themselves like children,
until a catastrophe makes them "come back to themselves." This is
the idea of the original story called "The Grand Slam." In "The Lie"
Andreyev depicts the pathological process in the soul of a man who,
crushed by the falsehood of his own solitary existence, becomes
insane at the idea that truth is inaccessible to human reason and
that the reign of the Lie is invincible. The hero of "The
Thought"[10] reveres but one thing in the world--his own thought.
Wrapped up in this one idea, he admires the force and finesse of it,
while his reason, detached from reality and having only him for an
end, begins to weaken, becomes gradually perverted to the point
where this man, harassed by a terrible doubt, begins to ask himself
whether he is insane. In the long and pathetic story, "The Life of a
Priest," we are shown the disturbance of the religious feelings of a
country priest who, although he has an ardent and strong soul, is
crushed by his moral isolation among the ignorant people of a
miserable village. It is again this moral isolation that is
analyzed in "Silence," in which story it is the cause of a domestic
tragedy. The same cause provokes a rupture between a father and a
son in "The Obscure Distance," and brings with it in some way the
death of the neurasthenic student.
[10] In the English translation this book is called "A Dilemma."
In general, the stories of Andreyev, after passing through various
catastrophes, lead the reader back to this theme,--the moral
isolation of a human being, who feels that the world has become
deserted, and life a game of shadows. The abyss which separates
Andreyev's heroes from other men makes them weak, numb, and
miserable. It seems, in fact, that there is no greater misfortune
than for a man to feel himself alone in the midst of his
fellow-creatures.
Finally, in "The Gulf," a somewhat imaginary thesis is developed,
based on the terrible vitality which certain vile instincts keep
even in the purest and most innocent minds, while the story "He
Was..." shows us the inside of a clinic, in which there are two
dying men whose illusions of life persist till the supreme moment.
* * * * *
If we carefully study a few of Andreyev's characters we can more
easily understand his feelings and his style. Here is, for
instance, Serge Petrovich, a student. Although he is not very
intelligent, he is above the average. His mind is preoccupied with
all sorts of questions; he reads Nietzsche, he ponders over many
things, but he does not know how to think for himself. The fact that
there are people who can find a way to express themselves appears to
him as an inaccessible ideal; while mediocre minds have no
attraction for him at all. It is from this feeling that all his
sufferings come. So "a horse, carrying a heavy burden, breathes
hard, falls to the ground, but is forced to rise and proceed by
stinging lashes from a whip."
These lashes are the vision of the superman, of the one who
rightfully possesses strength, happiness, and liberty. At times a
thick mist envelops the thoughts of Serge Petrovich, but the light
of the superman dispels this, and he sees his road before him as if
it had been drawn or told him by another.