For Korolenko, the sufferings of existence atone for its injustice; he does not perceive the iniquities that surround him except through the prism of sorrow.
From the very beginning of his literary career, in his first book, "Episodes in the Life of a Seeker," Korolenko shows himself to be a seeker after truth. With him, the understanding of life, so ardently sought after, is never summed up in a single solution. He dreams of it constantly; at times, he seems to have found it, but he loses track of it again and starts all over.
This groping about resulted in a moral crisis in which he looked forward to death with joy. Beset with the thought of suicide, he often prowled around railroad platforms and looked at the car-wheels.
"I went there and came back again," he writes, "depressed by my realization of the stupidity of life. The snow was falling all around me, and shaping itself into a frozen carpet, the telegraph poles shivered as if they were cold through and through, and on the other side of the road, on a slope, shone the sad little light of the watchman's tower. There, in the darkness, lived a whole family. Through the shadows the little red fire seemed to be as desolate as the family. The children were scrofulous and suffered; the mother was thin and sickly. To procreate and to bury! Such was the life of the father, probably the most unfortunate of all, because the household depended wholly upon him, and he saw no gleam of hope anywhere. He bore this condition of things, because, in his simplicity, he believed in a superior will, and thought that his misery was inevitable. The resignation of this man, the terrible bareness of his obscure existence, oppressed me. If I could bear the sight of it, it was only because I hoped; I thought that we should soon find the road which makes life happier, more agreeable to every one. How, where, in what manner? What a mystery! But the future beauty of life was in the search for it."
The observations that Korolenko was able to make were many and diverse. By going all over Russia he gathered inexhaustible riches, in the form of anecdotes and actual experiences. This can be easily realized when we consider the sumptuous variety of his descriptions. Where do we not go, and whom do we not meet in his books? First, we are in a peaceful little town of the southwest, then in the thick woods of Poliyessye, in the snow-covered and frozen Siberian forests, or in the valleys of Sakhaline, inhabited by half-breed Russians and escaped convicts, not to mention the innumerable sectarians who fill the Siberian prisons. And Korolenko never repeats. Not even a detail occurs more than once. Each of his works is a little world in itself. The author, moreover, unlike other writers, is never satisfied with pale sketches; each character is shown in full relief, each picture is absolutely finished. This wholeness, this finish which does not hurt the harmony of the proportions, is a precious quality, very rare in our time.
The "Sketches of a Siberian Tourist," published in 1896, in which bandits of various odd types tell thrilling tales of nocturnal attacks and other adventures, is a kind of artistic novel. The postillion is the most original character in the book. Huge of stature, audacious and clever, he exercises a mysterious influence over the brigands, whom he inspires with a superstitious terror. Most of them, thinking him invulnerable, do not dare attack the travelers whom he is driving.
That same year another work of Korolenko's appeared, called: "In Bad Company,"—a sort of autobiography which added to his renown. The story, poetically simple, is laid in a provincial town. The hero is a little, seven-year-old boy called Volodya. He is the son of the local judge. The mother has been dead for a long time, and the father, in his sorrow, more or less loses track of his children, who roam about unwatched.