The bare-footed brigade on the Volga-quay, and Nijni Novgorod (After a sketch by Gorki)
This sombre temperament determines the catastrophe of the other stories. They almost invariably close in the sullen gloom of a wet March evening, when we wonder afresh if the Spring is really coming.
In "Creatures that once were Men," Gorki's sinister experience and pathos are essential factors in the accusing symbolism. He relates in the unpretending style of a chronicler how the corpulent citizens reside on the hill-tops, amid well-tended gardens. When it rains the whole refuse of the upper town streams into the slums.
The new romance; Sentiment and humour; Russian middle class; The man of the future; Descriptions of nature; Superfluity of detail; The Russian proletaire; Psychology of murder; Artistic inaccuracy; Moujik and outcast; A poet's idealism.
And yet it is just this sombre pathos and experience that compel us so often to recognise in Gorki's types a new category of hero. They are characterised by their sense of boundless freedom. They have both inclination and capacity to abandon and fling aside all familiar customs, duties, and relations.
It is a world of heroes, of most romantic heroes, that Gorki delineates for us. But the romance is not after the recipes of the old novelists: ancient, mystic, seeking its ideals in the remote past. This is living, actual romance. Even though some of Gorki's heroes founder like the heroes of bygone epochs of literature upon their weakness, more of the "Bitter One's" characters are shipwrecked on a deed.
And it is this reckless parade and apotheosis of such men of action that accounts for Gorki's huge success in comparison with many another, and with the writers of the preceding generation. It is for this that the young minds of his native country rally round him—the country that is loaded with clanking fetters.
Gorki is dominated by a characteristic passion for strong, abnormal men. This type reappears in almost all his narratives. Here it is old Isergil, whose Odyssey of Love swells to saga-like magnitude. There we find the bold and fearless smuggler Chelkash, in the story of that name. Now it is the brazen, wanton, devoted Malva, who prefers the grown man to the inexperienced youth. Anon, the red Vaska, boots and janitor of the brothel. And there are numbers of other such titans.