CREATURES THAT ONCE WERE MEN

By MAXIM GORKY

Translated from the Russian by J. M. SHIRAZI and Others
Introduction by G. K. CHESTERTON

THE MODERN LIBRARY
PUBLISHERSNEW YORK
Copyright, 1918, by
BONI & LIVERIGHT, INC.
Manufactured in the United States of America
for The Modern Library, Inc., by H. Wolff

INTRODUCTION . . . . . . . . . . . . V
Creatures That Once were Men . . . . 13
Twenty-Six Men and a Girl . . . . .104
Chelkash . . . . . . . . . . . . . .125
My Fellow-Traveller . . . . . . . .178
On a Raft . . . . . . . . . . . . .229

INTRODUCTION

By G. K. CHESTERTON

It is certainly a curious fact that so many of the voices of what is called our modern religion have come from countries which are not only simple, but may even be called barbaric. A nation like Norway has a great realistic drama without having ever had either a great classical drama or a great romantic drama. A nation like Russia makes us feel its modern fiction when we have never felt its ancient fiction. It has produced its Gissing without producing its Scott. Everything that is most sad and scientific, everything that is most grim and analytical, everything that can truly be called most modern, everything that can without unreasonableness be called most morbid, comes from these fresh and untried and unexhausted nationalities. Out of these infant peoples come the oldest voices of the earth.

This contradiction, like many other contradictions, is one which ought first of all to be registered as a mere fact; long before we attempt to explain why things contradict themselves, we ought, if we are honest men and good critics, to register the preliminary truth that things do contradict themselves. In this case, as I say, there are many possible and suggestive explanations. It may be, to take an example, that our modern Europe is so exhausted that even the vigorous expression of that exhaustion is difficult for every one except the most robust.

CREATURES THAT ONCE WERE MEN

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION