Maxim Gorki (in 1900)
This startling success makes a closer consideration and appreciation of the author's works and personality incumbent on us.
A black, sullen day in March. Rain and vapour. No movement in the air. The horizon is veiled in the grey mists that rise from the earth, and blend in the near distance with the dropping pall of the Heavens.
And yet there is a general sense of coming Spring. The elder-bushes are bursting, the buds swelling. A topaz shimmer plays amid the shadowy fringes of the light birch stems, and on the budding tops of the lime-trees. The bushes are decked with catkins. The boughs of the chestnut glisten with pointed reddish buds. Fresh green patches are springing up amid the yellow matted grass of the road-side.
The air is chill, and saturated with moisture. Everything is oppressed, and exertion is a burden.…
Suddenly a wind springs up, and tears the monotonously tinted curtains of the sky asunder, tossing the clouds about in its powerful arms like a child at play, and unveiling a glimpse of the purest Heaven… only to roll up a thick dark ball of cloud again next moment. Everything is in motion.
The mist clears off, the trees are shaken by the wind till the drops fall off in spray.
The sky gets light, and then clouds over again.
But the weary, demoralising, despairing monotony has vanished.