Life is here.
Spring has come.
With all its atmosphere, with all its force and vigour, with its battles, and its faith in victory.
It is somewhat after this fashion that the personality of the young Russian author, and his influence on Russia, and on Russian Literature, may be characterised.
In order rightly to grasp the man and his individual methods, together with his significance for his mother-country, we must know the environment and the relations on which Gorki entered. Thus only shall we understand him, and find the key to his great success in Russia, and the after-math of this success in foreign countries.
Maxim Gorki is now just thirty-seven years old. Ten years ago he was employed in the repairing works of the railway in Tiflis as a simple artisan. To-day he ranks among the leading intellects of Russia.
This is an abrupt leap, the crossing of a deep cleft which separates two worlds that tower remote on either side. The audacity of the spring can only be realised when we reflect that Maxim Gorki worked his way up from the lowest stratum, and never had any regular schooling.
The most subtle analysis of Gorki's talent would, however, be inadequate to cover his full significance as a writer. It is only in connection with the evolution of Russian society and Russian literature that Gorki, as a phenomenon, becomes intelligible.
The educated Russian does not regard his national literature merely as the intellectual flower of his nation; it must essentially be a mirror of actual social occurrences, of the cultural phase in which any particular work originated.
The Russian author does not conceive his task to lie exclusively in pandering to the aesthetic enjoyment of his readers, in exciting and diverting them, and in providing them with sensational episodes. Literature of this type finds no home in the Russia of to-day. Since she first possessed a literature of her own, Russia has demanded something more from her writers. An author must be able to express the shades of public opinion. It is his task to give voice and form to what is circulating through the various social classes, and setting them in motion. What they cannot voice in words, what is only palpitating and thrilling through them, is what he must express in language; and his business is to create men from the universal tendencies. Nay, more, it is his task to reorganise these tendencies.