One may reasonably question the correctness of this differentiation, seeing that when we scratch a Russian we do not find a dreamer. We should be inclined to say exactly the reverse; that the gentle, dreaming, poetic soul was that of the Slav—and that Gorky would find the educated Tartar considerably nearer his ideal than any characteristic Slav.
The article entitled “Two Souls” made a considerable stir, the magazine went quickly out of print, and a great number of criticisms were made in the Press and on the platform. Their general tone was that Gorky was out of his true medium and had better go back to his art. As a result Gorky wrote “A Letter to the Reader” as a sort of collective answer to “the more or less ironical or angry comments of my colleagues of the pen,” and sarcastically quoted Lescov: “On the Russian people it is good to look from afar, especially when he prays and believes”; and he went on to excuse his being “a bad publicist” and to plead that his words should have weight as being those of one who had lived through a great deal and knew Russian life at least as well as any of his opponents.
In this reply he exhibited a rather curious attitude towards Anglo-Russian friendship which it would be well for English people to note—a belief that we seek friendship with Russia merely to exploit her materially and to keep her in a commercial bondage similar to that which she has suffered from the Germans.
“Our Russian philosophers argue in this way (says Gorky). The alliance with England is worthy of the greatness of the Russian people because it will lead to the union of the nations under the standard of the true spiritual culture of the mystical East. There are only two world Powers—Russia and England. And these two States have, as the foundation of their power, the lands and peoples of the religious East, rather than of the materialistic West. To these two is the problem of uniting culturally India, China, Japan. And when this union of the peoples of the mystic East takes place, the earth will be given ultimate liberty in peace. But for that end it is necessary that Russia keep true to her mission and establish her culture upon the mystical revelations leading to peace and love.”
But Gorky bids these philosophers be undeceived. It is no use, he says, their getting rid of German capitalists simply to make way for English ones. That was what English friendship meant. Such a book, for instance, as “The Way of Martha and the Way of Mary” met with so much approval because in picturing us as holy lazy-bones and unpractical persons it allowed the English capitalist to rub his hands with glee, seeing in Russia a future British colony such as Africa or India. Whilst Russia is in her present state, friendship with any European Power must be the friendship of the earthenware pot and the iron kettle. Russia has to fight not for “ultimate liberty,” but for the simplest civil rights as citizens. We must try to give the people education and try to train their will toward life.
No doubt Gorky makes an appeal in these words; and if the average Russian were asked what were the foundations of Anglo-Russian friendship apart from the needs of the war, he would answer, Commercial exploitation. Trade, it is true, is put jealously forward as something to be captured after the war; but it seems a pity that Russians should not realise the depth, the sincerity of our interest in their characteristic religion, literature, and life. Whatever political tendency our interest may help, it is nevertheless true that England obtains from Russia spiritual help; and a great deal of that which Gorky condemns in his own nation is coming to our help to redeem us from commercialism and materialism. It is something of a paradox that the bright spirits of Russia should hate the melancholy vistas of Tambof and Kaluga and that the bright spirits of England should hate the gloom of Newcastle and Leeds, that one should look with love from England to the wandering pilgrims of Tambof and the other should sigh for the clamour of wheels where “man at least is master.” But paradox is tolerable where misunderstanding is not. For paradoxes abound in truth, and truth is made up of such paradoxes.
Later on in his essay Gorky remarks that stormy and revolutionary eras have produced great men, and his first example is Shakespeare, who flourished “in the stormy time of Queen Elizabeth.” But rather, they were “spacious days”; and great men, great thoughts are almost always born in spacious days, halcyon days, when the dove broods on waters. Strength is with calmness, not with noise and quarrellings and revolutions. The critics are probably right when they say, “Return to Art.” Art is creative, whereas argument is generally destructive. And Maxim Gorky evidently wishes to create.
Maxim Gorky may be called the leader of the porazhentsi, the people who believe in defeat. He has lately added to “Two Souls” and “A Letter to the Reader”—the “Letters of William Simpleton, a Knowing Stranger.”[5] But it is what we call “half-baked.” Gorky has read an enormous number of books since he tucked his blouse inside and became respectable, but it is difficult to see where he, or the reader, has profited. He does not know where he is.
IX
RUSSIA IN 1916
I was in Russia at the beginning of the war and during the first months of conflict, and I witnessed the superb enthusiasm with which she rose to fight. Again I was in Russia last year, when, owing to the general shortage of shells west and east, Germany was able to turn her superiority to account by retaking Galicia and ravaging Poland, and I saw the humiliation almost amounting to despair of Russia then. And therefore returning once more to Russia in June, 1916, I could form a fairly just idea of the spirit of Russia to-day.