His next story, “In Bad Company,” appeared in the same year, and added still more to the young author’s popularity. It is a general favourite in Russia to this day. Though its style is slightly tainted with a flowery Polish exuberance, the descriptions of the old feudal ruins are full of poetry, the children are drawn with sympathy and insight, and the vagabond Turkevich, in his tragi-comic rôle of the Prophet Jeremiah, sounds an unmistakable note of protest.
“The Murmuring Forest” was published in 1886, and is a darkly romantic tale of the dreaming pine forests of Southern Russia, written in the style of an ancient legend. Here the protest of the Cossack Opanas and the forester Raman is blind and rude and brings death to their highborn oppressor, but the plot is laid in feudal times and the need of the serfs was great. The voice of the wind in the tree-tops dominates the unfolding of the simple story like a resonant chord, and when at last fierce justice is done to the tyrant Count, its advent seems as inevitable as the breaking of the thunder-storm that, during the whole course of the tale, has been brewing over the forest.
“The Day of Atonement” is one of Korolenko’s lightest and gayest stories. In describing the merry life of the South, the Little Russian’s kindly humour joins hands with his glowing imagination, and we have a vivid glimpse of a cosy village surrounded by cherry gardens and bathed in warm moonlight; of black-eyed girls, of timid, bustling Jews, of superstitious townsmen, of a canny miller; in short, of all the busy, active life of a town within the Jewish Pale.
But grave or gay, merry or sad, Korolenko is above all things an optimist in his outlook on the world. Through thick and thin, through sorrow and misfortune, the poor, artless heroes of his stories all turn their faces towards the light. The writer’s kind heart never ceases its search for the “eternally human” in every man, and deeply does he sympathise with mankind’s unquenchable desire for freedom and justice, which can face evil unafraid. He himself has said in a letter to a friend: “The Universe is not the sport of accidental forces. Determinism, Evolution, and all other theories lead one to confess that there is a law which is drawing us toward something; toward something which we call ‘good’ in all its manifestations, that is to say toward kindness, truth, right, beauty, and justice.”
That is the burden of Korolenko’s message to the world, embodied in all his writings.
On his return from Siberia, Korolenko went to live in Nijni-Novgorod and there took an active part in bettering the conditions of life among “the insulted and the injured” whom he loved. In a year of famine he worked hard to organise free kitchens for the starving poor, and many energetic articles from his pen were published in the papers. He also continued to produce stories, sketches, and several longer novels, of which the best known is the “Blind Musician.”
In 1894 he made a journey to England and America, and on his return wrote an amusing record of his travels entitled: “Without a Tongue.”
In 1895 he became the editor of the magazine, Russkoye Bogatsvo, and since that date the great story writer has definitely devoted himself to journalism, and has now become one of Russia’s greatest publicists.
The Russian heart is essentially charitable and full of human kindness. Thoroughly democratic in their relations with one another, the Russian people have the misfortune to labour under the harshest political régime in Europe. Like many of his countrymen, Korolenko now devotes his life to the cause of the suffering and the downtrodden, and to helping those who are the victims of social and political injustice.