GORKI THE BITTER
Some day we shall be indebted to the clear-visioned critic who will expound for us the true place of the unpleasant, the terrible, even the horrible, in fiction; and the study would not be complete without a thorough-going examination of Russian literature generally, and the writings of Maxim Gorki in particular.
Such an inquiry—which I must only touch upon—would doubtless focus upon two factors of importance: the one a primary cause—the nature of the author as conditioned by self, environment, and nationality; the other a secondary cause—the ultimate purposes of fiction. Phrased differently, we have the two elements: what an author writes because he is what and where he is, and what he writes quite deliberately.
Reference has already been made, in these introductory studies, to the sombre, hopeless, and even tragic tone of Russian life—a tone sounded deeply in its literature. In fact, the broader the sweep of view, the more instances stand forth to support the statement that all Muscovite art feels the same impulse—witness in an exemplary and typical way the paintings of Verestchagin and the music of Tschaikovsky. It is an inviting theme, this one of why one nation should drink fiery vodka, another phlegmatic beer, and yet another light wine. Are the national characteristics which plainly go with drinks and foods and pleasures causes, in the final analysis, or effects? Do servitude and stolidity and hopelessness on the one hand, and thin-nostriled freedom and lofty spirit on the other, arise from forces which the historian may trace clearly to their political well-springs, or are there certain imponderable potencies in the air of different lands which in the very beginning of things instilled a spirit of fatalism into the Moslem, nihilism into the Russian, emotionalism into the French, and a nervous need for action into the American? When outward national conditions change, or when nations are transplanted, precisely what is it in climate that breeds essentially the same strain cycle after cycle?
So we should have to dissect, weigh, and classify all available facts about Russia past and present in order to get an unclouded understanding of the national temper, just as a similar study of Gorki’s antecedents and life, for instance, would illuminate his literary expressions. Each of these studies would be consistent with the other, for Gorki is a national figure, though, as all such iconoclastic spirits will, he outrussias his own middle-class countrymen in outspoken unfaith in and defiance of the god-of-things-as-they-are.
The second great factor for finding the place and potency of the unpleasant, the bitter, and the terrible in fiction consists in the purpose of fiction, which broadly is one of two: either to picture forth life or to interpret life. When the fictional artist—granted that he is clear-headed—sets out to hold the mirror relentlessly up to life, he becomes an extreme realist. When he faithfully paints life as he sees it, sincerely using his selective powers so as to present what he conceives to be types rather than mere personalities, and thus interprets life for those of less penetrative and constructive vision, we have a philosophical realist. When he takes liberties with the spirit of facts (not merely with the facts themselves, which may be just as real in one order as in another), he is a romancer. When he uses facts to support and enforce ideals of his own, he is an idealist.
Thus all fiction, so far as it has a respectable purpose at all, falls easily into one class or the other—that which merely represents life, or that which interprets life while it represents it. All the farther motives—amusement, teaching, excoriation, demagoguery, what not—line up behind these two prime purposes.
Now, how does all this bear upon the place of unpleasant fiction? Very vitally, and we are considering Gorki—a highly morbid and at times revolting writer—as a notable example of this rather Russian characteristic. In him we have a spirit who looks at facts, despises all palliations, dares greatly for his convictions, and in it all is Russian through and through. Such a man, of such a history, in such a period, in such a land, with such a motive of truth-telling, for such a purpose of reform, could not write pleasant, tinkly fiction. Russians read him because Russia must read him. An author draws men to his message either because they need it without liking it, or like it already. First of all, Gorki is himself—a soul sensitive to the tragic, the morbid, and the bitter—then he boldly gives Russia her own self-made wormwood to drink while she thirsts in the hour of her crucifixion.
With two classes I have no sympathy: writers who pander to morbid, dirty tastes, and readers who support gruesome, nasty writers for pure love of noisome pestilence. No more do we have need for the not-impure and not-revolting yet depressing and pessimistic fiction which serves no good purpose beyond that of producing revenue. The place for such unpleasant, unhappy-beginning, tearful-middle, and sorrowful-ending stories is precisely nowhere. But in Gorki we have a queer contradiction of conditions: some of his most revolting fiction is as important to the Muscovite land which bred it as light is vital to a dark place. Yet when some one of these poignant, dreadful diagnoses of Russian sicknesses is translated and spread abroad, say in English, it should be read only by those who are students of the writer and his country, and not by the young or the morbid. It is needful to expose ulcers in a clinic, it is indecent and disgusting to parade them on the street. In a word: the horrible in fiction needs be justified by a high purpose.
In “The Exorcism,” a thousand-word sketch, Gorki has produced a terrible illustration of how worse than useless such material may be for purposes of general reading in translation, while originally serving a tremendous moral purpose by showing his own people what beasts some of their fellows are.