However, he has very neatly set forth what he considers the task of the author. According to him, the man of to-day has lost courage; he interests himself too little in life, his desire to live with dignity has grown weaker, "an odor of putrefaction surrounds him, cowardice and slavery corrupt his heart, laziness binds his hands and his mind." But, at the same time, life grows in breadth and depth, and, from day to day, men are learning to question. And it is the writer who ought to answer their questions; but he should not content himself with straightening out the balance sheet of social deterioration, and in giving photographs of daily life. The writer must also awaken in the hearts of men a desire for liberty, and speak energetically, in order to infuse in man an ardent desire to create other forms of life.... "It seems to me," says Gorky, "that we desire new dreams, gracious inventions, unforeseen things, because the life which we have created is poor, dreary, and tedious. The reality which formerly we wanted so ardently, has frozen us and broken us down.... What is there to do? Let us try: perhaps invention and imagination will aid man in raising himself so that he may again glance for a moment at the place which he has lost on earth."
All of Gorky's characters curse life, but without ceasing to love it, because they "have the taste for life." Their complaints are only a means by which the author hopes to raise up around him "that revengeful shame and the taste for life" of which he so often speaks. Here is the artful Mayakine, who, indignant at the debasement of the younger generation, is ready to take the most cruel means in order "to infuse fire into the veins" of his contemporaries. Varenka Olessova, the heroine of a story, incessantly repeats that people would be more interesting if they were more animated, if they laughed, played, sang more, if they were more audacious, stronger, and even more coarse and vulgar. Gorky admires also the beautiful type, vigorous, with a rudimentary mentality, which meets with his approval simply because he sees in it a nature which is complete, untouched, and filled with a love of life.
Gorky suffers miseries inherent in the mere fact of existence, but he has found no remedy; he looks for consolations in the cult of beauty, in the strength of free individuality, in the flight towards a superior ideal. But he does not know where to find this superior ideal, which vivifies everything. This is perhaps the reason why people have thought they saw in his work the Nietzschean influence, which praises an insistence on individuality in defiance of current conventions, and gives us just as vague a solution as Gorky does.
But this enthusiasm for an ideal, vague as it is, this passionate appeal for energy in the struggle, has awakened powerful echoes in the hearts of the Russians, especially the younger of them. Gorky suddenly became their favorite author, and it is to this warm reception that he owes a great part of his renown. He has carried the young along with him, and they have put their ideals in the place which he had left empty.
If we now pass on to the first novels and dramas of Gorky, we shall be struck by the fact that, in spite of the talent shown in them, they are very inferior to his short stories. His former mastery is not found, except in his later novels, which we shall take occasion to mention presently.
"Thomas Gordeyev" contains some very fine passages, but is not very successful as a whole. Thomas's father is a merchant on the banks of the Volga; he is an energetic man who carries out all his ideas. Whatever he is engaged on, whether business affairs, or a debauch, or repentance thereof, he gives himself entirely to the impression of the moment. Like other men of his class, moreover, he lives a life which is a singular mixture of refinement and savagery. He spends his time in drinking and working, as much for himself as for his only son, Thomas, whose mother died in giving birth to him. The child grows up under the care of his aunt and shows a serious disposition toward study. Gradually, he feels the motives that make men act, and he questions his father about them.
Before dying, the latter says to his son: "Don't count on men, don't count on great events." In spite of the wealth which he inherits Thomas is not happy; he has no friends; his colleagues, the merchants, and especially his father's old friend, Mayakine, are repulsive to him on account of their cupidity and their unscrupulousness. Thomas does not love money and does not understand its power, two things that people cannot forgive him for. Besides, he does not know how to make use of the forces that are burning within him. After having vainly sought for moral relief in debauchery, he ends by proposing to strike a bargain with Mayakine so that he can be freed from responsibility and go out and look for happiness. He will give Mayakine his personal fortune if the latter will look after his business affairs. But the old roué, who hopes to get possession of the fortune in a surer way, refuses, and their conversation turns into a quarrel.
As he does not work, Thomas indulges in many extravagances in company with a journalist of very advanced ideas. Finally, one day when he is at a fête at which are present all the wealthy members of the merchant class, the young man, disgusted with their vices, rises to apostrophize them in the most bitter terms. They throw themselves on him, and he is arrested as a madman and put into an asylum. He comes out, only to abandon himself to drink.
In "The Three," Gorky tells us the life story of Ilya Lounyev, a poor creature, born in poverty, whose life is full of deceptions, misfortunes, even crimes. Several times, Ilya has tried to lead a decent life; but it is his sincerity that makes him lose his position with the merchant for whom he works. He has believed in beauty and in the purity of love, and he is deceived by the woman he loves. Gradually all the baseness of the world becomes clear to him. In a moment of jealousy he kills his mistress's lover, an old miser. Several months later he publicly confesses his crime, and, in order to escape from human justice, he commits suicide.