Concluding scene (Act III. of "The Doss-house")
Few writers share the happy recklessness peculiar to Gorki. He is free from false modesty, like his young moujik, who is compelled by his desire for purity—not by any conventional remorse—to proclaim his relations with his landlady and commercial partner, the shopkeeper's wife, before all their acquaintances, at one of her entertainments—and also to announce himself as the murderer of the old money-lender. Nor is it the guilty sense of Raskolnikov that impels this moujik to confession and reparation. It is his repugnance for the men in contrast with whom he stands out as an ideal and promising figure.
And it is here that Gorki seems to us almost to surpass Dostoevsky. Raskolnikov is a murderer on theory, a penitent out of weakness. Gorki's murderer, however, kills from inward compulsion. His act, his acknowledgment of it, all is sheer naïve necessity. Here is a man who feels no compunction for having crushed a worm.
Who, in last resort, is the man that repents his deeds? Of all the criminals we have encountered in doss-houses, shelters, and labour-colonies, scarce a single one. And the deed came nearly always like a flash from the blue. Implacable, dire, and for the most part unconscious compulsion, but no premeditated volition, drove them to it. And here Gorki is a true creator, even if as artist he ranks below Dostoevsky.
The actor (From "The Doss-house")
The characterisation of the men is beyond reproach. Each has his purpose, and bears upon the murderer: the women, however, are not wholly satisfactory.
Gorki is crushingly ruthless to the wives of the householders and officials. He heaps them with vices. They are not merely vulgar in money matters. They are pitiful in their sexual affairs, and, in fact, in all relations. Gorki's harlots on the contrary always have some compelling, touching, noble trait. One of the prostitutes bewails her wasted life. Another craves to share all the sufferings of the man who has committed murder for her sake. A third is possessed with a sudden passion for truth. And that in the Justice Room, though she knows that her lover, sitting opposite her, is doomed if she deserts him.