"'But I can do nothing, dear uncle!... Teach me what I ought to do, to what task I ought to consecrate my life. I will do it gladly!...'"
Gorky's characters give the same explanation of their "ennui," and almost in identical terms. This disgust comes in great part from not knowing how to adapt oneself to life, nor how to become a "useful" man.
"Take me, for instance," says Konovalov, "what am I? A vagabond ... a drunkard, a crack-brained sort of man. There is no reason for my life. Why do I live on earth, and to whom am I useful? I have no home, no wife, no children, and I don't feel as if I wanted any. I live and am bored.... What about? No one knows. I have no life within myself, do you understand? How shall I express it? There's a spark, or force lacking in my soul...."
Another character, the shoemaker Orlov, in "Orlov and His Wife," especially reflects this pessimistic disposition. In the same way as Konovalov, he is born with "restlessness in his heart."
He is a shoemaker; and why?
"As if there weren't enough of them already! What pleasure is there in this trade for me? I sit in a cellar and sew. Then I shall die. They say that the cholera is coming.... And after that? Gregory Orlov lived, made shoes—and died of the cholera. What does that signify? And why was it necessary that I should live, make shoes and die, tell me?"
These creatures are under the impression that they are superfluous; therefore their pessimistic conclusions. All of them [passionately] want to be able to express the meaning of life in general, their life in particular, but the task is too much for them.
Gorky's heroes consider themselves "useless beings," but they never humiliate themselves. Their restlessness of spirit does not permit them to resign themselves to the reigning banality or to take part in it without protesting. At the same time, some of them are gifted with sufficient personality to possess an unshaken faith in themselves, in their strength, which keeps them from letting the responsibility of their torments fall back upon society.
Promtov, the hero of "The Strange Companion," makes these restless seekers the descendants of the Wandering Jew: "Their peculiarity," he ironically says, "is, that whether rich or poor, they cannot find a suitable place for themselves on earth, and establish themselves in it. The greatest of them are satisfied with nothing: money, women, nor men."
What, then, do these "greatest" want?