With what intimacy, familiarity, and heart-felt emotion Gorki here describes and sees! The great River, with its diversified characteristics, its ominous events, mingles with the life of Man, and flows on past us.…
It is this characteristic union of the Human-All-Too-Human with his impressions of Nature in so many of Gorki's works, that makes them at the outset desirable and readable to a large proportion of his public. Much of his description of life beyond the social pale would be repulsive if it were not for this interpretative nature-painting. Especially would this be the case in "Malva." This robust, free-loving, and free-living maiden attracts us by her vigorous participation in Nature, when, for instance, she leaps into the water, and sports in the element like a fish.
Gorki's countless wanderings through the Russian Steppes, his sojourns by the southern shores of the Russian Seas, are intimately interwoven with the course of Nature, and have given him poetic insight and motives which are ignored by other authors, who have grown up in the University, the Bureau, or the Coffee-houses of large towns. His life of poverty has made him rich. He has evolved some significant prose-poems from the life of Nature, and the contest of her forces. While the sketch, "Spring Voices," is a satire, bristling with tangible darts and stings, "The Bursting of the Dam" expresses the full force that rages and battles in a stormy sea. The unemancipated workers construct steep, rocky dams that jut out into the free, unbridled sea. The waves that so long rolled on merrily, without fell intent, are now confined, and beat against the hard, cold, sullen rocks. The winds and tempests join in a colossal attack upon the unyielding barriers, and the rocks are shivered in fragments.
A confabulation (Act II. of "The Doss-house")
Quite different again is the romance entitled "Three Men" (or "Three of Them"). The tales and sketches published prior to this work were merely founded on episodes, catastrophes, or descriptive passages from the author's rich store of material. They certainly conveyed the essence of the life of his characters. They disclosed the axis of these people's existence. But they are seldom free from a certain tiresome impressionism—and often make quite undue pretensions. The didactic is too obvious. Gorki is not always satisfied with saying, here is a bit of life. He tries to put in a little wisdom. His form is seldom clear and conclusive. His tales are overladen with detail and superfluity of minute description. In Germany, Gorki owes much to his translators. This is more especially obvious in the scholarly translation by August Scholz of "Makar Chudra," Gorki's first published work. At first Scholz only produced a portion of this story. Later on, when all that Gorki had written had its importance, and his commercial success was established, the whole of "Makar," which is by no means free from obscurities, was translated.
In the novel, "Three Men," Gorki leaves the world of vagrants. He describes people who are intermediate between the vagabonds and the settled classes, who find their peace and happiness neither with the tramps nor with the well-to-do. Many more than three men live in this romance through times and destinies of the utmost significance. The novel might more exactly be termed "Many Men," or even "No Men." It all depends on how you read your author. In last resort the characters of the book have all something of the humanly-inhuman about them.
This book is one of the most impressive works of our Russian author. Its large touches portray human life as it is, not only in Russia, but everywhere. The moujik who drifts into the City proletariat suffers from the life that whispers its secrets within and around him. "Why are men doomed to torment each other thus?" It frets and consumes him, weighs him down, and flogs him on again. And from this problem, which in the hands of many would only have resulted in a satire, Gorki creates a powerful tragedy. The aspiring proletaire, be he peasant or child of the artisan, is for the most part done to death with light laughter. In this the unjustified arrogance of the academic classes expresses itself too frequently. Too often they discover only the comic element in the men who have emerged from the ranks, and who, while gifted with uncommon energy and intelligence, can neither choose nor be chosen for any of the cultured professions. They fail to perceive that the influence of these men would have a refreshing and invigorating effect upon the whole life of the people. They miss the need of some such transfusion of "vulgar blood" into the higher forms of the body politic. They cannot admit that it is these very parvenus who are the founders of new families and a new civilisation. Nor that many chasms must for ever be left yawning. They do not appreciate the peculiar pride which Gorki expresses in this romance, in such a classic and touching manner, in the character of the girl student. Nor do they perceive that these aspirants possess much that is lacking in themselves—and that not particularly to their credit. Gorki knows that aspiration is not fulfilled without inward struggle and travail. And it is with a subtle psychological instinct that he endows the men who are struggling upward out of adversity with a deep craving for purity. Noble souls are invariably characterised by greater sensitiveness to delicacy, and this is equally the characteristic of those who are yearning to rise above their low environment. It is not from external filth alone that a man seeks to cleanse himself, but from inward corruption also. And so he strives, and strives again, for purity—and falls the deeper in the mire.