With his accustomed power, Gorky shows us, in the first of these stories, the spread of socialism among the agricultural proletariat. He depicts village life with its pettiness and ignominy. The village is for the most part a backward place, hostile to everything that makes a breach in tradition. The hatching of socialism goes on slowly. From day to day, new obstacles, helped on by the ignorance of the peasants, hinder those who are trying to carry out their belief. Even the village guard, Semyon, pursues them with his hatred.
But Igor Petrovich, the propagator of these new ideas, finds, in a few old friends and in a village woman who becomes his mistress, some precious helpers. Thanks to them, he gradually gets up a little circle of firm believers who gather in a cave in the woods. Every evening, they read, discuss, and dream of a better organization, out there in the cave. All would have gone well, if some of them had not betrayed the leader to the police. While being led to the city prison, the leader spoke to the soldiers who were escorting him:
"The soldiers trembled as they clicked their bayonets; they silently listened to the legend of the generous earth which loves those who work it. Again, their red faces were covered with drops of melted snow; the drops ran down their cheeks like bitter tears of humiliation; they breathed heavily, they snuffled, and I felt that they kept walking a little faster, as if they wanted this very day to arrive in that fairy land.
"We are no longer prisoners and soldiers; we are simply seven Russians. I do not forget the prison, but when I remember all that I lived through that summer and before that, my heart fills with joy, and I feel like crying out:
"Rejoice, beloved Russian people! Your resurrection is close at hand!"
"Matvey Kozhemyakine" very brilliantly returns to Gorky's early manner. In this book no symbolic character interprets the bold thoughts of the author. It is simply a novel of Russian provincial life. Its simplicity does not exclude vigor, and it reminds us at times of Balzac.
Young Matvey is the son of an old workingman who has become rich, thanks to his energy and dishonesty. He has grown up in a large house, adjoining a rope-yard, with his father and several servants. His mother, whom he never knew, left home shortly after his birth, and entered a convent in order to escape the torments of life. Later, Matvey's father marries a young girl, in order to provide a mother for his son, whom he loves dearly. But his new mother is not long in finding out the dreary life which she has to lead with the old man. In order to escape from the tedium of it, she listens to the interesting experiences of the wandering life of the porter Sazanov, and gives her unfaithful love in exchange.
Unexpected circumstances disclose this shameful adultery to Matvey. Instead of revealing it to his father, he generously guards the secret. He even goes so far as to protect her from the fury of a workingman, named Savka, whom Sazanov's success has rendered bold. Through gratitude, and later through love, in the absence of Kozhemyakine, she becomes the mistress of her step-son. On his return, the father, finding out about this "liaison," spares his son, but beats his wife to death, and himself, mad with fury, falls, struck with apoplexy.
All the newspapers in the world have attacked Gorky's way of living. As he is forced to remain away from his beloved country, the great writer has made his home in the little island of Capri, the air of which is propitious to his failing health. Moreover, its impressive scenery inspires his restless genius.