At this point Gorki seems, indeed, to have deliberately abjured his intimate knowledge of certain classes of the community. A prostitute always lies to the end. Particularly for the benefit of her lover. Her life is essentially not calculated to make her a fanatic for truth. If she learns anything, indeed, in her persecuted and despised profession, it is the art of lying. Never during a prolonged acquaintance with brothels and houses of bad repute have we encountered a truth-loving prostitute. Gorki, however, needed her for his work. Her confession removes the last obstacle to the confession of the murderer. It cuts away the last prop beneath the undermined dam.
And yet it first arouses our suspicion of the probity and reality of Gorki's types. Why should he be so emotional in some places while in others he can be so hard and harsh? He has not yet arrived at representation without prejudice.
And then we ask: "How far can his characterisations in general be accepted?"
Gorki often sacrifices probability to polemics. Too often he is merely the emotional controversialist. Bias and Life are with him not always welded into the harmonious whole, which one is entitled to claim from the genuine artist.
To the Teutonic mind the individual works of Gorki, e.g., the novel, "Three Men," still appear gloomy and sombre. As a whole, too, they affect us sadly; they are oppressive.
Yet we must remember that Gorki attacks life with a certain primitive force and urgency, and that he has a passion for courageous and capable individuals. It is here that his experiences are to his advantage. They have steeled him. Each of his works presents at least one energetic, defiant man—as a rule, one who is outside the pale of society. In one of his sketches, Chelkash is a smuggler, a reckless fellow, who induces a poor peasant to serve as his accomplice in a nocturnal burglary. This rustic is a contemptible creature. His avarice prompts him to fall on the smuggler and murder him for the sake of his gold pieces. The wounded Chelkash flings the money at him contemptuously. Gorki portrays the much-belauded moujik as a pitiable money-grubber, a detestable associate, who loses all higher motives in his struggle for the means of existence.
Vasilissa (Keeper of the "Doss-house")
This, at any rate, is Gorki's belief: it is neither the householders nor the peasants who are the custodians and promoters of what is human and noble. For Gorki, magnanimity and honour are found almost exclusively among the degenerates and outlaws. This clear vision and imaginative insight that forces Gorki into the arms of the men who are outcasts from the life of the community must not be misinterpreted. All great writers put their trust in kings, or rogues, or revolutionaries. Vigour and energetic enterprise flourish only where daily anxieties have had to be outworn. The poet needs men who stand erect, and live apart from the opinions of universal orthodoxy.