The Young Maxim Gorky 1868–1902 9780231898249

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The Young Maxim Gorky 1868 - 1902

The Young Maxim Gorky 1868 - 1902 Filia Holtzman

Columbia University Press • New York • 1948

Columbia University Press, New York Copyright 1948

Published in Creat Britain and India by Geoffrey Cumberlege Oxford University Press, London and Bombay MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMEBICA

Acknowledgments

T h i s study of the Young Maxim Gorky has gained in innumerable ways from the advice of those who have read it in manuscript. It was my exceptional good fortune to work under the expert guidance of Professor Ernest J. Simmons, chairman of the East European Languages Department, Columbia University, whose vast knowledge and love for Russian literature makes contact with him not only a matter of special privilege but also one of great inspiration. I am deeply indebted to Professor Clarence A. Manning, Columbia University, under whom this investigation was begun, and whose constructive and helpful suggestions contributed much to the improvement of the manuscript. I am very grateful to Professor Arthur P. Coleman, of the same university, for his personal encouragement and valuable criticism. To my husband, I extend my sincerest thanks for his inordinate patience with my frequently uneven temper during the progress of this work. My greatest debt is to my mother. Were it not for her compelling conviction that a woman's horizon should not be limited by a home, a husband, and children, this book might never have been written. Filia Brooklyn, New York September, 1947

Holtzman

Contents Introduction

ix

1

A Writer's Beginning

2

Young Journalist and Critic

25

3

Folldorist

41

4

"Socialist Humanist"

61

5

At the Revolutionary Smithy

88

6

Poet of the Russian Revolution

114

7

In Search of a Hero

133

8

Artist; a Romantic and Socialist Realist

153

9

Literary Relationships with Korolenko, Chekhov, and Tolstoy 172

10

3

Between Two Worlds

195

Notes

199

Bibliography

227

Index

243

Introduction

R u s s i a n literature was submerged in hopelessness and gloom, when a young railway clerk, Alexei Maximych Peshkov, published his first short story in a Tiflis newspaper, September 12,1892. 1 The writer signed his name "Maxim Gorky," and the story was entitled "Makar Chudra." Then came his other stories, calling the reader to vast open steppes, to a laughing sea, to sunshine and song, to heroic action, to daring adventure. With these stories the young Gorky heralded a new epoch in Russian literature. The Russian reading public found it novel not to have to pity or shed tears. It was strangely disturbing to note that Gorky's colorful nomads were so filled with dignity and pride that they refused to cower, cringe, or beg. It was even more disconcerting to watch dirty, hungry, ill-smelling social outcasts march along with heads high and nothing but contempt and derision for the well-fed, well-clothed, respectable, and law-abiding spectators. What curious folk were these, who placed freedom above love and preferred death to a life of compromise and defeat? Maxim Gorky's work was an expression of his life. A product of the grim ranks of the underprivileged, he proved that poverty, suffering, and even humiliation need not break one. For himself, as for his kings in rags, he asked no sympathy. It is therefore no great wonder that Russia,

X

Introduction

especially young Russia, fed up with the Chekhovian mood of tragic frustration, noisily welcomed a writer who, despite crushing adversities, expressed an inexorable faith in the future of man and a defiant optimism which was entirely alien to the morbid fin de siècle Russian literature. Maxim Gorky the writer came to be known as "The Stormy Petrel." 2 The term is no less descriptive of Gorky the man. Born on the "mother of Russian rivers," Maxim Gorky, a passionate and tireless foe of all that dwarfs the human personality and manacles the human spirit, is frequently associated in the popular mind with the Robin Hoods of the Volga—Stepan Razin and Emelian Pugachev. His story is, indeed, of the stuff that goes into the forging of popular folklore and national epic.

The Young Maxim Gorky 1868 - 1902

1 A Writer's Beginning I n 1931, during the tenth anniversary celebration of Soviet Georgia, Maxim Gorky, remembering his early life in the Republic's capital, Tiflis, wrote: I can never forget that in this very city were made myfirstfaltering steps along the path which I was to follow these past forty years. It can be said that the majestic features of this landscape and the romantic gentleness of its people gave me the inspiration which transferred me from tramp into writer.1 This statement is perhaps something of an exaggeration. For on November 1,1894, 2 his first day in picturesque Tiflis, the Alexei Peshkov who sat on a bench near the Viriiskii Bridge was very far from being "inspired" by either the "majestic scenery" of his surroundings or the "romantic gentleness" of the Georgian people. He had just completed a four-month tramp on foot from Odessa to Tiflis and was hungry and weary to the point of numbness. Among the riffraff of the busy Odessa wharves, where Peshkov before the journey had been working as a stevedore, had been a handsome, well-dressed Georgian princeling whom Gorky had befriended. Fearing it was too easy for such a character to sink into "the lower depths," he had volunteered to tramp with him to Tiflis. The story of this journey was admirably described by Maxim Gorky in "My Fellow Traveller." 3 On this four-month vagabondage, from August to Novem-

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A Writer's Beginning

ber, 1891, Alexei Peshkov did all the work and all the worrying for his Georgian companion, Sharko Ptadze, alias Tsulukidze. Though this was the year of the great Russian famine, Peshkov turned out to be a very good provider. He took whatever work came his way: carrying a sackful of melons from the market place for a priest's wife, or putting out or lighting the fires on the Sabbath for an Orthodox Jewish home, or clearing an orchard of dry twigs for a Crimean farmer; anything that would feed the two youths, especially the bottomless stomach of the prince. But Sharko, failing to understand Peshkov's solicitude, cheated, abused, and frankly poked fun at his benefactor. The two met with many adventures on their long and weary trek. Sometimes they parted to meet at some crossroad a few days later, and Sharko was always both surprised and amused that Peshkov kept his word. When " M y Fellow Traveller" was translated into Georgian, in 1903, and published in a Georgian newspaper, a man named Tsulukidze appeared at the newspaper's editorial office and pleaded to put in his defense. His version, however, in the main corroborated rather than refuted Gorky's narrative. Peshkov treated me well. He felt sorry for me, because I was unaccustomed to stand such hardships, and when we had little bread he gave the largest part to me. . . . Much suffering and sorrow did we live through together.4 When the two traveling companions finally reached Tiflis, the princeling, promising him a home and regular employment, asked Alexei to wait for him at the Viriiskii Bridge. But six hours of waiting finally convinced Alexei that Sharko Ptadze would never come again. Wearily Alexei Peshkov

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5

dragged himself up from the bench and went into a nearby inn. There, quite unwittingly, he was drawn into a drunken brawl, and when the police rushed in to restore order he was arrested. It thus came about that his first night's lodging in the capital of sunny Georgia was provided gratis by the Tiflis police. They booked and locked up the future "great man of Russia" on a vagrancy charge.8 The following morning Peshkov would have been deported from Tiflis had he not suddenly remembered that the journalist M. Ia. Nachalov, an old Kazan acquaintance, the very man who had recommended him for a night watchman's job at Dobrinka three years earlier, was now residing in Tiflis. Although Nachalov was a "political," with a background of Siberian exile, he was influential enough to obtain the release of the ragged vagrant. For a short time after his arrival in Tiflis, Peshkov stayed with Nachalov and his wife in their one-room apartment. As soon as Nachalov, who held an administrative post with the Transcaucasian Railroad, placed him in a job with the railroad, Alexei moved to the home of Nachalov's friend Ia. A. Danko. Evidence that Alexei Peshkov stayed with the Dankos during part of his residence in Tiflis has only recently come to light. Madame Danko tells us: At the end of 1891, or in the beginning of 1892, my husband's friend M. Ia. Nachalov brought a very tall young man to our lodgings. I remember only too well the embroidered collar of his Russian blouse, the wide-brimmed black hat which he wore cockily tilted on his head and the superabundant vitality and strength which emanated from the stalwartfigureof our guest. Alexei Maximych moved in the same day with all his belongings —two bundles of books and notebooks.®

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A Writer's Beginning

In the railroad workshop 7 where Peshkov worked as a mechanic, and later as a bookkeeper, he soon became intimate with another worker, Fedor Afanasiev. The young men, of Similar age and interests, took short trips through Georgia, visited the "eternal hell-fire" of the Baku oil lands, and even decided to share quarters together, which in February became a real communal apartment by the addition of V. Rochlin, a senior at the Surveyors Institute, Belkurev, a divinity student, and Vartanov, a student of the Pedagogical Institute. Life in this five-room basement home on the Novo-Arsenalnaia Street 8 was gay and noisy. The door slammed frequently as hordes of laughing young people streamed in. They were mostly students of divinity, budding surveyors, pedagogues, and midwives, with a sprinkling of workers from the railroad yard. They came to listen to readings, literary discussions, debates on social and political subjects, and they stayed for parties, singing, and endless tea drinking. Sometimes as many as fifty people attended in one evening.9 Among them, Alexei Peshkov, known now as "Maximych," for short, was a leading figure. He read; he recited; he narrated; he discussed. Although in police records he looms prominently as an "agitator," and six years later he was arrested for his activities in this very communal apartment and for his association with Fedor Afanasiev, it would be more accurate to characterize the Maximych of those days as he himself did: "a poor agitator . . . perhaps more of a dreamer and a poet." 10 Though we find such letters as the following to his Kazan friend, Gurii Pletnev, his activities were those of cultural enlightenment rather than of organized political work.

A Writer's Beginning

7

I conduct readings with the students from the Institute and the Seminary. I don't preach anything but counsel understanding of one another. I also read and talk with the workers of the railroad yard. There is one worker here—Bogatyrovich—an excellent fellow, with whom I am great friends. He says that there is nothing in life that is good, and I tell him that there is, but that it is well disguised lest every scoundrel reach for it. 11 As for his being a "dreamer and a poet," there is still further and more concrete evidence. Writing to a childhood friend, I. A. Kartikovskii, later a professor at Kazan University, he said: Briefly, this is my external life: from 9-4 work; from 4-5 rest; 5-9 reading (of this only Wednesdays and Sundays are free); from 9 to 1 1 - 1 2 debates, discussions, etc.; from 12 to 3 or 4 in the morning I read and write for myself. 1 ' According to the testimony of persons who knew Maximych in those days, he had already filled several notebooks with poems. 18 This was also the period in which he was almost abnormally absorbed in Lord Byron. He frequently read aloud from the English poet to his friend S. Vartiniants, especially passages from Manfred and Cain.1* Vartiniants tells us: As if now my memory retraces . . . the basement apartment, where in a large but poorly furnished room I see before me the Herculean form of Maximych telling of his trials and wanderings over the length and breadth of Russia. It was in the light of these pilgrimages . . . that I could better understand his ecstatic attraction to Byron, who bolstered up his own dissatisfaction with the present and fostered his spirit of protest." The time for the metamorphosis from tramp to writer was rapidly approaching. The material which he had collected

8

A Writer's Beginning

during the five-year cycle of intermittent pilgrimage over thousands of miles of Holy Mother Russia's dirty and muddy roads sought an outlet. As Gorky tells us: I was exhausted by the glitter of color and the burden of impressions and felt like a rich man who does not know what to do with all the treasures in his possession and recklessly squanders his wealth, handing out all that he has for anyone to stoop down and pick it up.1® Thus, whoever wished to lend an ear to this lanky fellow was treated to a thrilling tale, though many of the more skeptically minded shook their heads, doubting the veracity of this youth with such a "strange biography." His old love for the stage and the open road reappeared with the spring. By April, Maximych began to organize a group for staging open-air theatricals in villages and small towns. For one reason or another this plan, it seems, failed. With the coming of summer the communal life also died a natural death. In May, when the schools closed and many of the students departed for various destinations, Alexei Peshkov moved into the apartment of A. M. Kaliuzhnyi, exmember of the " W i l l of the People" 1 7 party having years of hard labor in the Siberian Kara mines behind him. Kaliuzhnyi was attracted to Peshkov and invited the young man to stay with him while his family was away in the country. A man of erudition and culture, he was destined to play a role of singular importance in Alexei's life. In his first autobiographical sketch of 1899, Maxim Gorky instructed the literary historian Vengerov: "Say that the first teacher of Gorky was a soldier-cook Smuryi; the second, a lawyer Lanin; the third, Kaliuzhnyi . . . the fourth, Korolenko." 1 8 Somewhere between the end of the communal apartment life and his removal to Kaliuzhnyi's, Peshkov obtained a leave

A Writer's Beginning

9

from the railroad and, obeying a wanderlust call, again took to the open road, supporting himself by working on the construction of the military road from Sukhum to Novorossiisk. 19 Concerning this road-building interlude Maxim Gorky later wrote a short story, which he always considered his best. 20 Purely autobiographical in character, " T h e Birth of M a n " 2 1 relates the author's experience in assisting at the birth of a child. One of the peasant itinerant women workers on the Sukhum-Novorossiisk military road, feeling the pangs of labor, dropped behind her team and began to give birth. As there was no one but Peshkov there, he had to help her in the delivery. Frightened and thrilled by the responsibility thus thrown upon him, he ran down to the sea, washed his hands, and without further thought proceeded to perform the urgent obstetrical task. Shortly afterward, having partaken of some hot tea prepared by the young man's shaking hands, the mother got up and, child in arms, hurried on to catch up with the rest of her team, which had gone on ahead. Though dealing with a realistic subject, " T h e Birth of M a n " is highly romantic in tone. Amidst the vastness of space, to the sound of the sea pounding the sandy shore, a new being is born. This being is tiny and red, but is already endowed with a healthy, lusty cry—a vigorous voice of freedom and protest. Realistic in detail, romantic in atmosphere, and perhaps even symbolic, the story ends with the mother proudly holding her son and walking off towards sunshine and towards life. 22 Back in Tiflis after the refreshing interim of work under the open skies, Peshkov was already fully conscious of the urge to put down on paper all that was seething within him.

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Yet he tells us: "To be a writer—this I still did not dare to hope. For in my opinion a writer was a magician, to whom were open all life's secrets, all man's spirit." 23 The intimacy between Kaliuzhnyi and Peshkov strengthened and grew firmer. During the soft Georgian nights, under starry southern skies, the younger man talked and the older man listened. This was, indeed, altogether different from the noisy excitement of life in the communal apartment. Here was calm and quiet and sympathetic understanding. Kaliuzhnyi, though many years older than Gorky, was the first person to whom Alexei could without reserve or embarrassment read from the numerous notebooks in which, as he told Kartikovskii, he wrote for himself. And Kaliuzhnyi was the first to discern the potential possibilities in the youth's skillful narrative. But when he showed one of Peshkov's poems to an editor friend in Tiflis, the latter merely smiled, commenting that the poem was doubtless "borrowed" from the Italian poet Leopardi.24 However, Kaliuzhnyi's esteem for Peshkov's talent was not to be destroyed easily, and when Alexei one evening recited the story of Loiko and Radda, the older man earnestly insisted that Alexei go at once to his room and write the story down. Alexei was not yet accustomed to write prose, but under Kaliuzhnyi's persuasive urging he finally wrote his first story, "Makar Chudra." 25 Some authorities have asserted that Kaliuzhnyi actually locked the young man in his room until the story was finished. According to Alexander Kaun, even Maxim Gorky himself in later years confirmed this,26 but the entire make-up of Kaliuzhnyi speaks against it. Also, Gruzdev, one of Gorky's chief Russian biographers, reversed himself on this fact, which he had earlier accepted.27 Whether or not Kaliuzhnyi actually forced the young

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11

Peshkov to write down "Makar Chudra" is immaterial. The fact remains that it was at Kaliuzhnyi's suggestion that the story was put on paper and, furthermore, that it was through Kaliuzhnyi's connections with the staff of the newspaper The Caucasus that its editor took the trouble to read this story by an unknown young author. There is no doubt that, once read, "Makar Chudra" was published on its own merits. Yet without Kaliuzhnyi, the story might not have been written or published when it was. It is, therefore, little wonder that in 1901, after his rise to fame, Maxim Gorky wrote to Kaliuzhnyi: " W e have not seen each other for almost nine years . . . I have not forgotten that you were the first to set me on the road along which I now walk." 28 Even as late as 192 5,29 Maxim Gorky, now an author of world-wide fame, wrote from Sorrento, Italy, to his "dear friend and teacher" in a tone almost humble with appreciation and gratitude: My dear friend and teacher, Alexander Mifodievich! Thirty-four years have passed since the time I was first fortunate enough to meet you. Since our second and last meeting, twenty-two years have gone by. During that time I have met hundreds of people. Among them were many brilliant and important men. But, believe me, no one has overshadowed your image in my heart's memory. This is because you, dear friend, were the first man who really treated me with humaneness. You were the first who did not regard me as merely a youth with a strange biography, a worthless tramp, an amusing if somewhat dubious character. I still remember your eyes when you listened to my stories about myself and what I had seen. Then and there I understood that before you I could not brag. It even seems to me that it was thanks to you that I have never since boasted of myself, never exaggerated my estimation of myself, nor even the sorrows which life has so generously meted out to me.

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I must say that you were the first who forced me to regard myself seriously. It is to your inspiration that I am indebted for the fact that for over thirty years now I have been honorably serving Russian art. I am glad of the opportunity to tell you this. Let the world hear how kindly and with what genuine humanity one man treated another. My old friend and dear teacher, I firmly grasp your hand. A. Peshkov80 Towards the end of that summer, probably in late August, Alexei moved back to the Danko's apartment. Here again, on their terrace, intellectual debating went on. N o w the men with whom Alexei argued were older and more experienced. Populists 31 in philosophic outlook and politics, who had experienced exile in Siberia, they were all men of knowledge and culture. This time the young man was truly among the elite of the intelligentsia. Some of his wildest dreams were coming true. Yesterday a tramp, he was now talking on an equal footing with men who were authors of famous works and exponents of radical thinking. 32 In the course of these evening discussions, in which Kaliuzhnyi, Nachalov, Danko, and others participated, new books, magazines, and newspaper articles were discussed and argued over endlessly. Nor was Maximych shy or backward in the presence of these older and better educated men. According to Madame Danko: He vehemently attacked the culture of the day. He decried its fraud and hypocrisy and its pernicious influence which crippled the human personality. As against this "culture" he offered truth, simplicity, and the virile strength of the social ladder's lowest classes. Alexei Maximych spoke earnestly and convincingly. In argument, although he did not seek outer effects, he nevertheless

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fortified his ideas with various examples of what he had seen and experienced during his nomadic existence." But to an ever-indignant, ever-insurgent, ever-searching youth like Peshkov talking, arguing, and even the Sunday tramps through Georgia's beautiful countryside were not too satisfying. The urge to write grew more and more pressing, and now he wrote nightly in his colorfully bound notebooks. At last the impossible and the unbelievable came to pass. His story "Makar Chudra," which Kaliuzhnyi had turned over to his friend Izvetnitskii, a columnist on the newspaper The Caucasus, was actually printed on September 12, 1892, in the No. 242 34 issue. The story appeared under the pen name Maxim Gorky, meaning in Russian, Maxim the Bitter. Yesterday's tramp was today's writer. The young author feared to rejoice prematurely. Suppose it were merely a trick of fate. His very next work, a narrative poem, "Death and the Girl," 85 was rejected by the same editor of the Caucastis. Alexei worried over what the future held in store for him. Having tasted the bitter sweet of a first published story, he now more than ever before wanted to be a recognized writer. There was so much he just had to say. If only nothing would interfere from now on. Almost two years earlier, in April, 1891, half mad and half sick, he had left Nizhnii Novgorod and taken to the open road again, primarily on account of the glamorous, rosy-faced, curly-haired Olga Kaminskaia, mistress of the political émigré Boleslav Korsak. For the first time in his life Alexei Peshkov fell desperately in love. The object of his love was of the gentry, graduate of the Institute for the Daughters of the Nobility. She had studied midwifery and painting. She had lived in such fascinating places as Paris, Vienna, and Berlin and had mingled with celebrated revolutionary exiles

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such as he had only heard mentioned in whispers. It is true that she was ten years his senior and had a daughter, born in the interim between two love affairs. Young Peshkov found it extremely difficult to understand why such a beautiful and intelligent creature preferred to share her life with a man like Korsak, who was too lazy even to shake food particles out of his luxuriant beard. How could she continue to live in a damp basement and support herself, her little daughter, and even her lover by such varied jobs as sewing, portrait copying, and even statistical computations, while Boleslav Korsak did nothing but argue and discuss? Alexei's love was becoming a torment. Aimlessly he wandered about, spending his nights in the park. Time and again the park attendant would pick him up from the ground and bring him home half conscious.36 But at home he fared no better, for he had begun to suffer from hallucinations. The two tame mice he owned turned nightly into two small gray devils. They were joined by Somebody, who was round as a soap bubble, with no arms, carrots for hands, and a clock dial for a face. In his more lucid moments Peshkov realized that Somebody was not just another devil, but really Boleslav Korsak. He was thinking seriously of suicide. And had it not been that he had once unsuccessfully attempted suicide (on December 12,1887) 37 when he had suffered untold humiliation on account of his act, he would have tried it again. As it was, he visited a doctor, who laconically advised: "You need physical labor . . . and a woman." 88 This advice did not, however, cure Alexei's obsessive desire to take Olga Kaminskaia away from the crowded, musty basement and from her slovenly, loquacious lover. If only Olga were willing, he felt she could be an inexhaustible source

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of courage and inspiration to him. She could straighten out his confused thinking perhaps. The romanticism of his youth was not dead even in 1923, when Maxim Gorky, describing his love for Olga Kaminskaia in a memoir entitled "On First Love," 39 wrote: "The wisest thing achieved by man is his ability to love a woman, to worship her beauty. Out of love for a woman was born all that is beautiful on this earth." 40 Soon an opportunity to talk to her alone presented itself. When he had injured himself in a slight accident and was confined to bed, Olga came to visit him. In a fit of uncontrollable passion Alexei declared his love. To his astonishment, he found his love was requited. But in contrast to Alexei's impetuous manner, she spoke cooly, rationally, even somewhat maternally. She explained the unwisdom of their passion, the difference in their ages, and the encumbrance of a wife and a child for a young man of his ideas and ambitions. The coolness of her reasoning merely intensified the young man's ardor. But Olga who hated "dramatic situations," decided to remain with Boleslav, asserting that he was the weaker and needed her most. For two years after he left Nizhnii, during all his wanderings in various parts of Russia, Alexei Peshkov carried with him the image of Olga Kaminskaia. Time did not cool his passion. In retrospect she became all the more desirable. It is not surprising, after such a long period of vain longing, that when the object of his nightly dreams suddenly, in the early autumn of 1892, appeared in person before him in Tiflis, he fell into a dead faint. After Peshkov learned that she had left Boleslav Korsak and was free to make another choice, he again urged her to live with him. But with feminine coyness Olga refused to make definite promises. If he were to come back to Nizhnii,

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whither she was returning, she would then see. Perhaps she would say "Yes." When young Peshkov received a telegram from his former patron, the lawyer Lanin, assuring him that the old clerking job at his office was still vacant, Alexei jumped at the opportunity to be again in the same town with Olga. Even the glamor of being a writer lost its significance temporarily. On a stormy October day in 1892 Maxim Gorky was aboard a fisherman's schooner on his way north. He was leaving behind him the sunny Caucasus, the land which had kindled the imagination of Pushkin, Lermontov, and Tolstoy; ahead of him lay the thorny but romantic future of a writer. It was exhilarating to be twenty-three years old and on the way to his beloved. Two months later, when Peshkov rented an old garden bathhouse from an eccentric priest, Olga Kaminskaia and her doll-like little daughter came to live with him there. The mother and daughter occupied the bathhouse proper, and Alexei made himself comfortable in the anteroom. It was cold and draughty, and when he was writing at night the young author had to wrap himself in everything available, including the carpet. Medical opinion traced his later rheumatism and tuberculosis to these nights in the anteroom of the bathhouse. It was slightly warmer where the women lived. But even there, whenever Peshkov started a fire in the stove the room would be filled with the musty odor of rotted wood, soap, and bath-brooms. Olga's little girl grew restless and irritable and complained of headaches. Nor did the quarters improve much after the passing of winter, for in the spring the place became infested with armies of spiders and termites, which kept mother and

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daughter in mortal fear. It became Alexei's never-ending job to exterminate the unconquerable hordes with an old rubber boot. His humiliation was intense. Olga, the idol of his dreams, had come to live with him, and he could not provide even a halfway decent home ior her. How could the twenty-five rubles a month earned in Lanin's office, supplemented by the pittance provincial newspapers paid him for stories, provide adequately for a graduate of the elegant Institute for the Daughters of the Nobility? To think that he couldn't even afford a meat dish for his adored one or a toy for her child. At night, bent over his writing, overcome by the gnawing sense of guilt, he would mutter, "Oh, people, fate, love." 4 1 What made it even worse was that Olga never complained. The more hopeless the situation, the gayer seemed her spirits, the more spontaneous her laughter. She was no parasite to depend on her man for sole support. She worked long hours every day at a variety of jobs: portrait painting, map drawing, millinery (in the latest Parisian fashion). Very clever with her hands, she made beautiful clothes for herself and for others. The cotton print gowns she wore compared favorably with the best silks in town. Women in Nizhnii Novgorod looked at her with envy, and their men, with appreciative eyes. Excelling in cookery, as in everything else, she gave extravagant dinner parties whenever there was enough money. Something of a gourmet herself, she would introduce to the dull Russian table foreign dishes which tickled the palates of her guests and caused much talk and gossip. She was a wonderful companion—so undemanding, uncomplaining, skillful, and, above all, so attractive. But for all that, the lovers were beginning to have difficulties. Olga

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Kaminskaia possessed no great insight or sympathetic understanding. She lived in the moment and for her there was no need to probe or to analyze philosophically. She came to realize that Alexei's idealistic, and at the same time bookish, attitude toward love was too burdensome for their relationship and that it might perhaps have been better had he started with a younger, more romantic, and less sexually experienced girl. The fundamental differences between them, however, went much deeper. Olga of Montmartre and the Latin Quarter, was sophisticated and superficial. Despite her contact with the serious life of the political underground, here was predominantly the background of a Bohemian without emotional depth or intellectual integrity. Her taste in reading was mediocre and inclined toward the light boulevard literature of Octave Feuillet and Paul de Kock, whereas Alexei's tastes in literature were by now definitely established and included the best that had been created by man. Besides, utterly lacking literary feeling, Olga neither respected nor encouraged her lover's literary endeavors, and this hurt. While still in Tiflis, when Alexei, gasping with excitement, read to her his first published story, "Makar Chudra," all she could find to say by way of comment was: " I see you now write prose." 4 2 However Olga might discourage him, Alexei's literary urge persisted. Night after night, in the antechamber of the bathhouse, he worked himself into a white heat of creation. Probably one of the best things he wrote during his life with Olga Kaminskaia was "The Old Woman Izergil." 4 8 After a night of creative excitement, he rushed in to read the story to his beloved Olga. Thirty years later Maxim Gorky could still remember the pain he felt when, looking up from

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his manuscript, he saw his "dearest and nearest" in the shabby armchair, sound asleep. It seemed to me that the story of Izergil's life should be interesting to women, should be capable of awakening their thirst for freedom, and here my dearest one was not a bit excited by the story and preferred sleep.44 His "dearest one" had little sympathy with human suffering and degradation, and to a man of Peshkov's humanitarian outlook this discovery was like a violent blow. He tells us this incident. One day, in the market place, accusing him of having stolen a bundle of radishes from a peddler's pushcart, a policeman beat up a beautiful old man—a one-eyed Jew. I came upon the old man after he had already been dragged in the dust by the policeman, and was walking away from the scene, slowly, with a certain awe-inspiring dignity. His large black eye was sternly fixed on the hot clear sky and from his battered mouth thin rivulets of blood trickled down his long beard, staining the silver of the hair a bright red. . . . Thirty years have elapsed, yet even now I still see the man's skyward gaze directed in speechless reproach.4® Angry, miserable, and excited almost to the point of violence, Alexei went home and told the story to Olga. Instead of the sympathetic reaction he expected, his beloved's remark was: "And this is why you are so upset! What fragile nerves you havel . . . Did you say he was a beautiful old man? But how could he be beautiful if he had only one eye?" 49 It was while the gap was thus widening between them that a jealousy developed in Peshkov which he would not admit even thirty years later. Olga, a born flirt, always aware of the opposite sex and needing constant attention, loved to give big parties. Elegant, attractive, and irresponsible, she never lacked zealous suitors. As the Peshkovs were beginning to

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earn more, these dinner parties became more frequent and more elaborate, and the house swarmed with Olga's admirers. Instead of the seclusion he needed for his writing or the serious conversation he craved for mental stimulation, Alexei would at his homecoming find hordes of dandies, obviously gazing at his beloved with none-too-honorable intentions. When in a fit of savage anger he twisted the ear of one of Olga's most dignified admirers,47 he did not consider it an act of jealousy. It was fortunate that at this time he re-established his acquaintance with the Russian writer Vladimir Korolenko, his "fourth teacher." The older man began to take a genuine interest in the young author. He read his stories carefully and reproved, corrected, and criticized. From his letters to N. M. Mikhailovskii, editor of the Moscow publication The Russian Wealth and literary arbiter of that day, we see Korolenko's eagerness to bring Peshkov into national prominence. I am also sending you three poems by a fellow named Peshkov. . . . He is self-tutored and possesses an unmistakable literary gift, which has as yet not found its direction. Of the poems sent, the first is the weakest in style, but its imagery is clear and there is a definite poetic feeling. The others are less significant, but their style is impeccable. The author is very anxious to learn your opinion about these samples. He dreams of appearing in the Russian Wealth At this time Korolenko approved wholeheartedly only of "Chelkash," 49 which he thought was "all of one piece." "Your story was not bad, in fact it was very good," 50 he told Peshkov one morning while visiting Lanin's office. But it was only after he had carefully corrected its grammatical errors that he sent the story off to the Russian Wealth.

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On December 1 3 , 1 8 9 4 , Korolenko sent the following note to Mikhailovskii: " I am sending you the story "Chelkash" in its corrected form. It would be nice if the story were published in the coming issue of your Journal. T h e story is excellent and its author is poverty-stricken." 5 1 "Chelkash" appeared in the Russian Wealth, only six months later, in May, 1895." Perhaps what delayed the publication of this story can be found in the following letter from Nikolai Mikhailovskii to Alexei Maximych. 53 The editor of the Russian Wealth, who was one of the outstanding Populists of his day, could not, apparently, forgive Gorky his derogatory portrayal of the peasant. He wrote: Dear Sir: You sent me your "Chelkash" for publication, and perhaps you do not care to know my opinions. But in view of the special peculiarities of your story, I am unable to reply by a mere "yes" or "no," and must indulge in a bit of advice. Your story is too stretched out in parts, which is purely a technical weakness, since there are quite a number of repetitions. The greatest difficulty, however, is that the story suffers from too much abstractness. The abstractness of "Chelkash" is understandable, for, as a tramp and one who knocked about in a metropolitan city, he must be so. But Gavrila I cannot understand. Not his psychology, for that is clear, but as a living figure. You say Russians went to harvest in Kuban. From where? Chelkash does not ask this very natural question, nor does he, with all his loquaciousness, tell us himself. As far as I can see, this is just as much a failure in reaction, as it is an awkward contradiction of the general theme. Where did Gavrila leam to use his oars and pilot a boat so well at sea? A peasant from Kursk or Orel does not know how to do this. Nor does Gavrila's language sound true to life. Chelkash may be able to talk about "freedom" and such

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things with the same language as you and I employ, but for Gavrila this manner of speaking is out of place. It seems to me that if you look at your story from this point of view you will then realize that it needs serious corrections. If I were you, I would turn to V. G. Korolenko, who expects to arrive in St. Petersburg shortly, and ask him to use his pencil on your manuscript. (For this type of work you will need an artist of Korolenko's caliber.) If he should take this task upon himself, I congratulate the Russian Wealth in advance with an excellent story. Please do not be angered by my uncalled-for advice and suggestions. These were merely prompted by the special interest your story aroused in me. Nikolai Mikhailovskii84 In the Nizhnii Novgorod of those days Korolenko and Lanin were probably the only intellectuals Peshkov respected. T h e others, whom he so scathingly described in "An Evening at Shamov's" 85 failed to live up to his expectations. In the comfortable drawing rooms of the town he met the local intelligentsia,—doctors, lawyers, engineers. Beneath the portraits of Herzen and Belinskii they sat on furniture upholstered in plush and talked glibly and confidently. Once again, as in the past, Maxim Gorky felt out of place among the formally educated. His body seemed clumsy, his hands too big—in his own and everybody's way. His face too candidly mirrored his emotions. Could he ever attain the urbanity and poise of these other people? For whenever he did muster his thoughts to speak, what he said sounded curt and amateurish, whereas they "like leather pouches, stuffed with the gold of words and ideas, apparently considered themselves creators and masters of all thinking." 66 Yet what more did they do than talk? Among these "well-bred folk," he,

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already a writer for the provincial press, still felt very much the outsider.57 Rumors circulated in Nizhnii about the wild parties in the bathhouse apartment. Smartly dressed coquettish Olga did not have to do much to start tongues wagging and arouse both the ire and the jealousy of her less attractive, if more respectable, neighbors. Even Vladimir Korolenko began to hear and to believe this gossip. He urged Alexei to sever his relations with Olga and leave Nizhnii. Korolenko did not usually mix in the affairs of others, but in his opinion the future of this young man was too important to be wasted on the kind of life that went on at the bathhouse. Although Alexei resented the older man's intrusion into his private life, he came to realize that his affair with Olga was heading for the rocks. Upon Korolenko's recommendation, he obtained a columnist's job on the Samara Gazette, and he left for Samara in March,1895. Olga and he parted without tears or heartache—rather, with a certain mellow sadness. Yet in his poem "Farewell," 58 published in the Samara Gazette on March 5,1895, a n d commemorating his love for Olga, we find a remnant of feeling, perhaps closer to bitterness and disillusionment than anguish. If the Olga interlude, from December, 1892, to March, 1895, was an emotionalfiasco,it nevertheless marked Alexei's start as a professional writer. The young Gorky now wrote because there was something he very urgently wanted to say. He wrote feuilletons, sketches, short stories, and poetry. Some of these were published during the years 1893-94 in the Volga Messenger89 (Kazan) and the Volga Paper60 (Nizhnii Novgorod), but a great many others appeared only a year or two later. Although his writings during this period

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were experimental and were published mainly in provincial periodicals,61 they possessed almost all the elements of his later style and are highly representative of the best Maxim Gorky has ever written. For among these works were such outstanding stories as: "Emilian Piliai" (1893); "Grandfather Arkhip and Lenka" (1894); " T h e Old Woman Izergil" (1895); "My Fellow Traveller" (1894); "On the Raft" (1895); "Chelkash" (1895); "An Adulterous Wife" (1895); "At the Salt Mines" (1895); "One Autumn Night" (1895); also his allegory "The Siskin That Lied and the Woodpecker That Told the Truth" (1893). " T o t h e B l a c k Sea" (1895) was reprinted in 1898, as a poem of great revolutionary significance, under the title "The Song of the Falcon," and his first novel, entitled Luckless Pavel,92 was serialized from April to July, 1894, in the Volga Paper.63 Oddly enough, Luckless Pavel was neglected for years by both the author and his critics. Shortly before his death Gorky took up the story again and began to make corrections in it, apparently with the idea of including it in the definitive collection of his works. This novel was recently translated into English as Orphan Paul.0* A psychoanalyst today would probably add here that Olga Kaminskaia had above all fulfilled Alexei Peshkov's craving for maternal love, of which he had been deprived early in his harsh and brutal childhood. In doing so, she gave Maxim Gorky a new sense of security and strength with which to pursue his career as a writer.

2 Young Journalist and Critic T h e ideal of social service is a characteristic almost indigenous to Russian literature, and Maxim Gorky was reiterating an old and well-established opinion when he wrote: A writer is a person who thinks publicly. No one can deny that in Russia the thinking of a writer enjoys a unique place, plays a significant educational role. For Russian literature is the basis of Russian culture. In Russian literature there is reflected all that is good and evil in Russia—its own specialized brand of good and evil.1

With Maxim Gorky, however, the ideal of social service took on a militant character and became so much an integral part of his literary credo that it is frequently difficult to separate the artist from the journalist. Standing on the threshold of a new century and a new era, he was the first writer of his period to sense the magnitude of coming events. The exciting nature of his vision made it imperative for him to talk at once of whatever would make an immediate appeal. Young Gorky was a very prolific journalist. But his journalism, as well as his folklore and poetical works, was practically ignored by early critics. Probably this was due to the fact that he wrote primarily for the provincial press, where his journalistic work has remained buried until this very day. But even on the basis of what has been extracted, collected, and published, it is not an overstatement to say that against the back-

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ground of his times he stands out as one of the foremost publicists of his country. "How talented you are! I cannot write anything except belles-lettres, whereas you are even able to wield the pen of a journalist," exclaimed Anton Chekhov in astonishment, when he read Gorky's review of his own story "In the Ravine." 2 Alexei Maximych's professional journalistic activity began with his arrival in Samara (now Kuibyshev) on March 23, 1895.3 He came with a pillow and a small shabby grip, held together Russian peasant-fashion by a rope, and the inhabitants of this Volga town soon began to inquire about the identity of this oddly attired youth. His frequent appearance on the town's sidewalks aroused a sensation. He wore . . . an old, dark dolman which swung back as he walked. From beneath it there peeped out a Russian blouse tied at the waist by a narrow belt. He also wore blue cotton Ukrainian trousers and soft Tartar boots decorated with inlays of green, red and yellow leather strips. He carried in his hand a thick, knobby walking stick. . . . His head was covered by a soft hat with a large, rain-stained, drooping brim. . . . From beneath the hat hung down, in long streamers, light straw-color hair.4 This curious-looking young man was the new columnist for the Samara Gazette, for which he wrote two daily columns, entitled "Among Other Things" 5 and "Outlines and Sketches." 8 The first he signed with the pen name "Jegudiil Khlamyda," 7 a pseudonym as eccentric as his costume, or with its contraction, "J. Kh." The second he signed with the initials "A. P.," for Alexei Peshkov.8 He rented a basement at twenty-five rubles a month. The windows of this apartment were half below the ground. If anyone wanted to find out whether Peshkov was at home,

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all he had to do was to kneel and look through the upper half of the window. The room itself was a cross between a monk's cell and a prisoner's cell. The sole decorations were a few photographs and a single bookshelf. Papers and books lay strewn everywhere: on the table, on the chairs, even on the floor. According to a contemporary observer: It was gay and lively in the basement of the little house. The shabbily attired youth turned out to be a fascinating conversationalist. Many were the days and nights spent listening to the tales of Alexei Maximych about his wanderings over Russia. He narrated interestingly, artistically, giving poignant characterization, brilliant picturization and a mass of sculpture-like details. It was as if life itself unfolded before his listeners. They saw it; they touched it; they smelled it. Slowly, almost epically, he told of the significant and the humorous, the horrible and the beautiful. As if spreading out a carpet of rare and intricate design, woven with bright silks, he opened up and revealed to his listeners countries, rivers, steppes, seas, cities, people, and animals. While talking, he walked from one corner to another, stooping slightly, coughing and touching his chest. He took us with him to the Caucasus, the Caspian Sea with its fishing settlements, along the steppes of the Don and Bessarabia, the Crimea, and to the port of Odessa. Frequently and caressingly he spoke of his beloved Volga, of Nizhnii and its inhabitants, and once he took us on a daybreak tour through the city of Poltava, which, with its rosy-tinted streets and dew-moist gardens, was to him the most beautiful of cities." Paradoxically, Alexei Peshkov, the self-tutored hobo with "the face of a baker or stevedore, unattractive and insignificant," 1 0 who so eagerly sought and envied formal education, came to be, even at the age of twenty-eight, one of the bestread men in Russia.

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His range was extraordinary. Connoisseur of Shakespeare, Byron, Goethe, Schiller, Hugo, Maupassant, Dickens, Thackeray, and the Russians, Gorky was also the first to introduce to his Samara friends most of them better educated than himself, to Stendahl, Mérimée, Gautier, Flaubert, Balzac, Baudelaire, Poe, Verlaine, as well as to the members of the new school of Russian symbolists: Balmont, Briusov, Fofanov, Merezhkovskii, and others. Nor is it less significant that the Bible was a book from which he quoted frequently and gave as a gift to his friends or that he owned copies of the Koran and the Talmud. 1 1 There was much in this "Russian Chicago," 1 2 a name by which he himself referred to Samara, where the factory system had so quickly arisen, to inspire the vitriolic pen of Jegudiil Khlamyda. In his column "Among Other Things" he vehemently decried the exploitation of child labor, the mistreatment of domestic help, the open practice of white slavery, unemployment and poverty. He thundered about the continual misdoings of the town Duma and the apathy of the officials. He crusaded for the extension of public school education, eulogized the selfless devotion of the underpaid teachers, demanded a people's theater, and clamored for the cultural improvement of the common man. Sometimes his columns, especially those dealing with overcrowding in the public schools, with the resulting juvenile delinquency and waywardness, read very much like some accounts in our contemporary American press. The following is one of Jegudiil Khlamyda's columns from "Among Other Things." There occurred recently in Samara the following episode: In a government bureau it was noticed that one of its employees persistently stayed away from work.

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Having made proper note of it, his superiors decided to fine him. A fine was imposed. But this, too, failed to have any effect upon the disobedient employee, for he still failed to make his appearance at work. "Hmmm! That's strangel" reflected his superiors. Then suddenly it was learned that the aforementioned employee failed to report to work because he was dead. The Bureau's chiefs thought about it again and came to the conclusion that death was quite a valid reason, indeed, for not appearing at work. Was the fine removed from the deceased? I do not know. I think it probably was, because it is very difficult to collect anything from the dead, in view of the impossibility of establishing their exact whereabouts. •

•

•

This story is not complete, however; it lacks a middle. The fact is, you see, that before he died, the aforementioned employee became ill, as people often do. In becoming ill, he, of course, immediately lost his means of subsistence. The moral of which is: Paupers! Don't get sick, for this is a luxury for you, and luxury is immoral. Don't get sick, oh ye paupers, for this deprives you of your bread and butter and is therefore unprofitable. Paupers, employees, anywhere! You must absolutely refrain from ailing, because, in addition to the reasons already mentioned, there is still another—it upsets your superiors. For whenever you get sick, you very ill-mannerly apply to them for monetary assistance. It was the same in our case. The hero of my true story, after he fell sick, applied to his superiors for relief.

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"Hmmm!" the superiors muttered to themselves. "Relief?" The man is sick and asks for relief. Should relief be granted to a man who is engaged in the occupation of being sick? Is sickness a moral occupation, and is it worthy of encouragement? What benefit can society derive from a man who lies on his meager bed, afflicted with pain, moaning and groaning? In short, should he be helped along in the pursuit of his illness, which, in itself, is an utterly fruitless occupation? It is quite clear. Of course, he should not. And this is why relief was refused to our aforementioned employee when he was taken sick. So he died. In fact, he probably would have died in any case, even if relief had been granted to him. . . . After he died they, his superiors resolved: "Grant him a reward of 50 rubles!" I repeat for optimum effect: "Reward him with 50 rubles!" Well, is this not a great humane act? Is this not real altruism? Does not this magnanimity bring tears to your eyes? No? Well, Sir, then it must be only because you have a calloused heart and do not know how to appreciate the benevolence of your superiors. Just one more question, if I may. Why was the reward finally granted to this pauper? For his timely removal to his forefathers? In mere gratitude that he had taken himself on his final "journey"? Oh, ye wise oracles of Samara, answer this question for yourselves! " T h e columnist Jegudiil Khlamyda, with his rough, uncouth humor, was even responsible for some local reforms. For example, the Samara D u m a was anxious to dispossess an

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entire workers' settlement, asserting that it was built illegally on land belonging to the city. With his articles the author of "Among Other Things" won a decision for the workers, and he received hundreds of letters of thanks from the inhabitants of the settlement.14 In March, 1895, at the time of Gorky's arrival in Samara, the Samara Gazette was considered among the best provincial newspapers in Russia. It had a very fine literary department and numbered among its contributors such distinguished authors as Evgenii Chirikov, Vladimir Korolenko, Mamin-Sibiriak, Potapenko, Garin-Mikhailovskii, and others.15 But that year (March, 1895, to May, 1896) it was Jegudiil Khlamyda who set the tone of the newspaper. There appeared on its pages during that period, besides thirty of his short stories, over three hundred articles, feuilletons, and sketches. Yet the daily was not really radical. It was owned and operated by the wealthy Samara merchant S. E. Kosterin and his partner, N. A. Zhdanov. Although its editor, N. P. Asheshov was a "politically unsafe" person, the Samara Gazette at best aimed to express the liberal tendencies of the petty bourgeoisie and intelligentsia. Naturally, Samara's censorship authorities grew anxious over Khlamyda's writings and time and again attempted to blue-pencil the original text. Frequently the newspaper's publishers were called on the carpet by the governor of the province, but Khlamyda could not be stopped. He was forced, however, like other journalists, to use literary allusions and evasions, the so-called "Aesopean language," which gave the reader a signal to "read between the lines." In view of the above, it is all the more difficult to under-

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stand why such a socially disposed person as Khlamyda was subjected to so much lampooning from the correspondents of the Marxist newspaper the Samara Messenger.19 Was it that he really stole their thunder? For they even stooped to personal epithets and referred to him as a descendant of a "mendicant" grandmother and a "demented" grandfather and a symbol of the "degeneracy" of the Russian press.17 Alexander Kaun, in his Maxim Gorky and His Russia,19 and Ilia Gruzdev in an article in the New World for April, 1928, entitled "The Literary Market of M. Gorky," 19 both maintained that only a few individuals liked and appreciated Gorky in Samara. It is doubtless true that his writings irritated many. One factory owner, Lebedev, against whom several of Khlamyda's articles had been directed, became so enraged that he hired a pair of thugs to beat up the writer. Instead of the sympathy Gorky expected, a remonstrance came from Vladimir Korolenko, who wrote: "Even if you denounce people with justification, you must not forget moderation." 20 More recent evidence points out that both Kaun and Gruzdev were incorrect in their estimate of Gorky's lack of popularity. For not only was the circulation of the Samara Gazette increased greatly after he began to write for it but also he had acquired many admirers and friends in Samara, particularly among students, the working intelligentsia, railroad workers, metallurgical workers, stevedores, bakers, and such men. 21 S. Skitalets, later an eminent Russian writer, found Samara when he arrived there in the fall of 1896, still full of talk about Khlamyda. Several admirers went so far as to compare the young journalist to Shakespeare.22 It was the workers of Samara who first singled out young Gorky as

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their spokesman, and they referred to him as "our Maximych." Almost intuitively they discerned in him the voice of their epoch, the champion of a new way of life. His colleagues and friends on the Samara Gazette, according to the testimony of some of them, also found it hard to resist him. He was generous to the point of foolishness. In Samara, Alexei Maximych was earning more than one hundred rubles per month (a goodly sum for those days), yet he lived in poverty, having no clothes or underwear or bedding of his own. The chief cause of his penury now was his passion for giving presents. He loved to give books, watches, and picture frames. It became a tradition that on pay day Alexei Maximych would disappear from the editorial offices and return with bags full of apples, pears, and grapes—the latter a rare delicacy during the severe Russian winter. For children he always had his pockets full of candy. Sometimes he gave his entire earnings to the needy workers in the printing shop. "Do you need money? Please, I have heaps of it. This is a fact." Thus would he accost a perfect stranger on pay day. Money and possessions had no value for him. All a friend had to do was to glance at something Alexei Maximych owned, and he would insist immediately on giving it to him.23 It was with great difficulty that his friends finally persuaded him to buy himself a winter coat and to stop wearing the sensational dolman.24 When N. P. Asheshov, editor of the Samara Gazette, left to take a new post, Maxim Gorky was made acting editor. Despite current assertions to the contrary,26 it can be stated with comparative certainty that in 1895 Maxim Gorky was not yet a Marxist, nor was he a Populist. Yet, almost instinctively he felt the imminence of new economic and political

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changes, and, driven by a sort of messianic passion, he was impelled not only to create but also to disseminate; not only to awaken his public but also to reform life. This did not suit his publisher, Kosterin or even his literary friend and mentor Vladimir Korolenko. The latter had warned Gorky against embracing any "political faith," 26 especially Marxism. For to this great liberal, Marxism seemed a philosophy which could be attractive only "to people who are too lazy to think for themselves." 27 As a matter of fact, Gorky himself felt that he was not sufficiently experienced for the editorial position,28 but when the new Populist editor, A. A. Drobysh-Drobyshevskii arrived to replace Asheshov, misunderstandings occurred and Maxim Gorky left the Samara Gazette. On May 14, 1896, he departed for his native Nizhnii Novgorod. The following letter, written on July 2,1896, 29 to the new editor of the Samara Gazette by the same Korolenko who so eagerly sponsored Maxim Gorky's literary efforts and was so genuinely interested in the latter's success throughout his life, points out that the older man entertained fears of Gorky's possible political leanings rather than doubts concerning Gorky's editorial competence. I am very happy for you and your newspaper, and that in the struggle for it you have won out. Of course, it would have been better if there had been no struggle at all, and if he were to write under the firm reign of an editor. But since this did not happen, what can you do? None the less, he is a talented person, even if in dire need of editorial instruction.30 During the summer of 1896 Maxim Gorky married Ekaterina Pavlovna Volzhina, the daughter of an impoverished nobleman. Very little is known of his wife, except that she was a gymnasium graduate and worked as a proofreader on

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the Samara Gazette. There were two children born of this union, a son, Maxim, and a daughter, Katia.31 During the years 1896 to 1902 Gorky contributed hundreds of articles, feuilletons, and sketches to the Nizhnii Novgorod Page32 and the Odessa News.33 For the Nizhnii paper he wrote an almost daily column, "Notes in Brief," 34 and for the Odessa paper he reported "The All-Russian Exposition." 88 It was during this period that he emerged as a consummate journalist and literary critic. The Nizhnii Novgorod Page was a progressive liberal daily, rather more to the left than the Samara Gazette. Gorky's articles were signed variously as "M. G—ii," "M. Gorkii," "I. M. Pocatus," "NektoKh." ("ACertainKhlamyda"),and "N. Kh." (the initials for "A Certain Khlamyda").38 His subjects here also varied. He wrote articles on homeless waifs, underprivileged children, the hypocrisy of private charity, the conditions of the bosiaks (tramps) in Nizhnii, the ineffectualness of the intelligentsia, the evil of philistinism, and the lack of civilized culture in Holy Mother Russia. Perhaps the most outstanding of these articles were two allegorical essays in the Nizhnii Novgorod Page: "The Porcelain Pig," which appeared in 1898, and "The Songs of the Dead," in 1900. In "The Porcelain Pig" young Gorky excoriates the acceptance by the middle class of compromise and the old forms of life. In this allegory several objects decorating a library desk, such as the Figure of Mercury, the Porcelain Pig, and the Bust of Heine, engage in a philosophic discussion. The Porcelain Pig, representing the Philistines, our modern Babbitts, is content with saying: "We Yorkshire pigs have worked out a philosophy of life—to eat well." 37 Arguing against this petty-bourgeois complacency is the

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Bust of Heine, which voices Gorky's own romantic thesis of the active life," when it says: Life follows its own patterns and requires action. Unfortunately, people by their indifference and inertia obstruct it. Necessary deeds are already ripe for doing, but there seem to be no men for this great and holy work—the work of enlarging life's portals.®8 In rhythmic prose "The Songs of the Dead," very much as does "The Song of the Falcon," extols the "madness of the brave." Symbolic in its ideology, this allegory yet contains a great deal of realistic local color and is timely in theme. It deals with conditions in a Nizhnii Novgorod cemetery. The graveyard is crowded to capacity, and in denouncing existing conditions Gorky the journalist infuses his text with a suitable moral, namely, that the dead be left strictly to themselves and the living engage actively in the great adventure of living. Flying about the earth in a heavy snowstorm, the dead, together with the author, advise the living to take advantage of the fleeting moment or run the danger of being poisoned by the lethal toxins of decomposition. Listen to us, you who are living, and stay away from the cemetery. Life is the realm of noble madness. Perhaps it is but an evil habit, a dreaded ailment and then again perhaps a heroic adventure. Yet, life is movement; a rainbow of thoughts, hopes, sensations, desires, anticipations, victories and defeats. The illusions of happiness beautify life and in its quest, life passes by.89 The All-Russian Exposition took place in Nizhnii Novgorod during the summer of 1896. Young Gorky did some brilliant and distinguished reporting on it for the Odessa News. A harsh indictment was sounded in his article on Nobel's Oil Pavilion, which impressed everyone by its highly advanced mechanical equipment and spectacular wealth.

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What was missing very conspicuously from the exposition, according to the reporter, were charts, pictures, and general statistics describing the low economic standard of life of the Baku Oil workers who were making all this wealth possible.40 Again and again, especially in dealing with Russia's nascent industrialism, Maxim Gorky pointed out and bemoaned his country's inferior role among the great nations of the world. This factor he attributed to Russia's persistent resistance to culture. The young reporter was asking for, nay demanding, better education, culture, and higher civilization for the numberless illiterates and semi-literates in his country.41 In "The Reader," which sums up the young writer's early literary credo, the reader implores the writer, whom he accosts in the darkness of the night: "Show me the way. I am but human. Hate me, flog me, but drag me out of the allengulfing indifference to life. I want to better myself. But how? Teach mel" 42 And so Maxim Gorky taught. Every column became a sermon; every literary review, a tract. His social slant was hardly ever absent from the many literary reviews and comments which he wrote for the Samara, the Nizhnii, and the Odessa papers during the period from 1895 to 1902. Besides carrying on such proselytizing activities, young Gorky proved himself a penetrating critic and reviewer. He praised the realist Chekhov and discerned ability in the symbolists Balmont and Briusov. One of young Gorky's best-known reviews concerned Anton Chekhov's story "In the Ravine." He saw Chekhov's "terrific power" in depicting the real, and only the real, world. He felt that the man was a great stylist and that future generations, in appraising the development of the Russian language, would say that it was created by "Pushkin, Turgenev,

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and Chekhov." 48 Chekhov's tender and touching sympathy could humanize "even an informer," reconcile one to and make one comprehend "even the robber-merchant." For Gorky, as for many other artists, to understand meant to forgive. Curiously enough, he read into Chekhov a nonexistent mood. With every new story, Gorky asserted, Chekhov "strengthened the much-needed and highly valuable note of courage and love of life." 44 As a literary critic, young Gorky took a position against the decadent finde-stecle tendencies of the day—Western as well as Russian. In one of his earliest literary statements in the Samara Gazette he branded the decadents and decadence as "a harmful, anti-social phenomenon, against which it is necessary to fight." In another review, for the same paper, "Paul Verlaine and the Decadents,"46 the young critic asserted that "decadence" was a symbol of a nervous, degenerating Paris and that the decadents, in particular Paul Verlaine and his disciples, were men "weak both in spirit and flesh" and "already tired at birth." 46 To Maxim Gorky, creator of a dynamic new hero, advocate of a new and "active life," the pale and tepid attitudes of these Latin Quarter poets were anathema. Yet the literary critic in him was able to discern and even to point out to a disapproving public the talents of such men as Balmont and Briusov, themselves another sprouting of the same decadence. In his review of the "Poetry of K. Balmont and V. Briusov," Gorky denounced the symbolism of Balmont, but admitted the force and beauty of the poet's lines. He could neither understand nor condone the mysticism and the religion which pervaded the thinking of Briusov, but was able, nevertheless, to note the superior quality of his poetry. His

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pen spurted venom at his audience when he wrote in defense of Balmont: One must respect man. Even as a criminal, a thief, or a murderer, he must first stand trial and be judged with the good and evfl in his character taken into consideration. Whereas in the given case you are dealing with a poet, a super ego, who spider-like spins of his spirit an endless thread of thought, entangling himself in his own web of inconsistencies, flagellating and torturing his soul publicly; in the passionate search of that elusive basis from which he could justify the entire universe as one harmonious whole.4* As already pointed out, Gorky was a connoisseur and critic of international literature. Time and again, his early literary comments dealt with foreign writers, especially the French. We find reviews on Edmond Rostand, Alfred de Musset, Mérimée, Verlaine, and even Gerhardt Hauptmann. But here, as elsewhere, young Gorky's selections were carefully made with a view to their social significance. Edmond Rostand's Cyrano de Bergerac, for example, was chosen for review not so much because it "excited one's blood like champagne,"48 but because it depicted an "active character." The French play, according to Gorky, taught men to stand up and defend their rights in "these days of serfdom and spiritual decay, as in the days of Bergerac."49 Again, Gerhardt Hauptmann's Before the Dawn was reviewed because its hero, Loth, was a social democrat and a fighter for "universal happiness." To Gorky, Loth is a virile and stern member of the working class, and as such is, among other things, a belligerent opponent of alcoholism. So when he learns that his fiancée, Helen, comes of a family of incurable alcoholics, he leaves her without too many qualms of conscience, with the tragic result that Helen ends her life. But this time the humanitarian Gorky is not on the side

40

Young Journalist and Critic

of Helen, another of life's "injured and insulted." His stand is with the strong and the vital, and so he defends Loth and says of Helen: "You don't feel sorry for her, for those who must perish, should perish." 50 It is only natural that such prolific journalistic writing and such positive didacticism should have a profound impression on Gorky's artistic work. Even such a gem of Russian literature as the highly polished short story "Chelkash" starts off with descriptive passages that are full of economic and social implications. It is the tragedy of men and machines. The dirty, dusty, hustling men who load the boats at the pier of a large industrial city are insignificant and puny contrasted with the quiet majesty of the iron vessels which they have built with the sweat and blood of their bodies. They carry on their backs thousands of pounds of bread for the sake of "earning just a few pounds of the same bread." 5 1 "That which they had created had enslaved them," 5 2 young Maxim Gorky tells us. In 1929, in his essay "On Reality," a much older Gorky wrote: " A writer is a man of a given class and a given epoch, and whether he likes it or not he must serve and serve . . . the interest of his class and his epoch." 5 3 So young Gorky, as writer and as man, served and served his country, his epoch, and his class—the common man. He was himself, indeed, what he expected every writer to be:"The eyes, the ears, and the voice of his epoch." 34

3 Folklorist M axim Gorky was born on the Volga, a region famous for its native lore. More than tomes of historical data, Russian folk poetry and song reflect the life and the wisdom of its people. Lacking other modes of expression, Russia's vast illiterate multitudes described their emotions and thoughts by word of mouth. Almost from the very beginning of Russia's history, its popular bards and minstrels sang songs and recited narratives of unknown authorship, with or without the accompaniment of a musical instrument. Generation after generation carried on this half-pagan, halfChristian legacy into modern times. In markets and in drinking places, at weddings and at funerals, at Easter and at Christmas, on the village green or in the town's square, Russia sang and spoke of its joys and its sorrows, its frustrations and its hopes. Gorky found preservers and conveyors of the traditional folklore in his own family. From his grandfather, Vasilii Vasilievich Kashirin, an ex-Volga boatman, he learned many of the boatmen's songs, among them the now almost internationally famous, " T h e Song of the Volga Boatmen" 1 His uncle, Iakov Kashirin, and his uncle's son, Alexander, were very 6ne singers and musicians. As an adult the latter became a member of the noted Rukavishnikov Church Choir. 2 But when Gorky was young the important sources of Russian lore for him were two women. It is a rather interesting coincidence that both the aristo-

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Folklorist

crat Alexander Pushkin and the proletarian Maxim Gorky learned a great deal of their country's folklore from illiterate women. In Pushkin's case it came from his nurse, Anna Radionovna, and in Gorky's, from his nurse, Evgeniia, and his grandmother Akulina Ivanovna. In the narratives of the small, rotund nurse, whose existence in the Kashirin family has only recently come to light, 3 everything on earth was confusing and dishonest, ridiculous and stupid. Judges traded with truth as if it were meat; landowners were not only pitilessly cruel but also stupid; merchants were so avaricious that they were ready to sell even their wives and children for half a ruble. But strangest of all was the overwhelmingly irreligious character of Evgeniia's tales. For example: The Lord decided to create a lion. So he fashioned the torso and the hind legs, fixed on his head, pasted to it a mane, placed teeth in his mouth, and was ready. Then He saw that He had no material left for the animal's forelegs. So He called over the devil and said to him: "I wanted to create a lion, but it has not been successful. I will try again next time. But you, fool, may have this wretch for yourself." The devil seemed highly pleased. "Give him to me; do give him to me. I'll make a priest out of this abject creaturel" So the devil pasted on the wretch a very long pair of arms and that's how a priest came into being.4 Another characteristic tale about her anthropomorphic God ran like this. Once, while on the road, the Lord sat down toward evening to rest under a birch tree. A peasant was passing by on horseback. The Lord felt lonely and bored, so He stopped the peasant and asked him who he was, where he came from, whither he was going, and so forth. In the meantime night overcame them, and the Lord and the peasant decided to spend the night together beneath

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the birch tree. In the morning, when they awakened, they saw that the peasant's mare had foaled. The peasant grew very happy, but at this the Lord remarked: "You wait. It wasn't your mare but my birch that gave birth to the coltl" The two argued, neither yielding to the other. "Then let us go before judges," said the peasant. They came before the judges and the peasant requested: "Decide this for us. Tell us the truth!" But the judges replied: "To get the truth costs money! Pay us and we will produce the truth!" The peasant was poor and did not have the money, and the Lord, Who was stingy and did not care to part with money, said to the peasant: "Let us now go to the archangel Gabriel; he will decide for nothing!" So before long they came before the archangel. Gabriel listened to their story, scratched himself behind his ear, and said to the Lord: "This, Lord, is a simple matter, easy to decide, but here is a problem I have, a really difficult problem: I sowed some wheat in the ocean, and it did not grow!" "You fool," exclaimed the Lord. "Since when does wheat grow in water?" It was then that Gabriel pressed the Lord against the wall: "And since when does a birch tree give birth to a colt?" 5 Gorky tells us further in his essay on "Fairy Tales": At eight, I had already made the acquaintance of three gods: grandfather's, who was strict and requested obedience to elders, servility and humility . . . grandmother's, who was goodnatured, but somehow fatuous and superfluous; and the god of my nurse's tales, a stupid, capricious mischief-maker, who also did not arouse my sympathies, but who, of all the gods, was to me the most interesting. Some fifteen or twenty years later I experienced great joy in reading some of my nurse's tales about God in Romanov's collection of White Russian Fairy Tales * Of course, the greatest influence was exerted by his grandmother Akulina Ivanovna Kashirina, a talented singer and poetess of traditional folklore in her own right. As a young

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Folklorist

girl, she had worked among the Balakhna lacemakers, who were known in all parts of Russia as much for their singing as their lacemaking. The famous Russian composer and collector of folklore Turchaninov, after listening to the singing lacemakers, singled out Gorky's grandmother for her highly accomplished performance of Russian folk songs.7 Furthermore, Akulina Ivanovna was a remarkable storyteller, and it is possible that her grandson inherited his gift directly from her. After refreshing herself with tobacco-snuff, she would tell her stories softly, mysteriously, frequently acting them out as she talked. Her narrative had a splendor and a magic that was spellbinding. Adults and children alike begged for her stories. Almost illiterate, this woman "spoke as if she sang," 8 employing words that had "the bright, tender texture of flowers." 9 Grandmother Kashirina was sixty years old when she came to Astrakhan, in 1872, to help move the bereaved Peshkovs to her home in Nizhnii Novgorod. Alcxei's father had just died of the dreaded cholera, and a new-born brother promptly followed the father to his grave. It was at this point that the four-year-old Alexei first became aware of his grandmother and at once discerned in her a wonderfully interesting personality. She had a big, round head, large eyes, and a funny sponge-like nose, was almost hunch-backed and very stout and smelled of tobacco and spirits, but to little Alexei she was strangely fascinating. Maxim Gorky sums up her early importance to him in his remarkable autobiography, Child-

hood.10

Until she came into my life I seemed to have been asleep, hidden in the dark. But when she appeared, she woke me up, led me into the light of day, tied everything about me into one continuous thread, wove it into multi-colored lacework, and at once made

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herself my friend for life, the nearest, most understanding, and dearest being. Her disinterested love for all creation enriched and infused me with an unflinching fortitude for a hard life.11 It is true that as a result of this kinship to his grandmother, little Alexei, fatherless and motherless, thrown "into the world on his own" at the age of ten, was not only able to survive some of the most formidable- frustrations and hardships on literary record, but even managed to emerge with an optimistic attitude and a bracing love for his fellow beings. Yet more significant than her influence on his life was Grandmother Kashirina's role in Gorky's development as an artist. Her fairy tales and songs had imprinted themselves so indelibly on young Alexei's mind that for years they sang in his ears, and, as he tells us, "I even thought in the style of her 1 o

poems. It was this early training in folklore which led the young writer to anthropomorphism in his treatment of nature and to the use in his early works of a rhythmic prose style. As in some old epics and ancient lore, as in almost the greatest literary relic of Russia's ancient past, The Word of the Campaign of Igor, nature in Gorky's early works is always closely related to man. 13 Also, the rhythmic prose, to which young Gorky was so greatly addicted that, as he himself tells, "I always began my stories with some kind of singing phrases," 14 can be traced directly to the musical background of Russian lore. These tales and songs helped also to evoke the boy's creative urge and to develop his imagination. That Alexei himself grew aware of the significance of his grandmother's talent is as much a tribute to the boy's literary discernment as it is to his grandmother's literary gift. For, as Maxim Gorky states in his "On Fairy Tales," "At the age of

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Folklorist

fifteen I began to write down those of grandmother's tales which I liked best." 1 5 Apparently, Akulina Ivanovna's knowledge of Russian lore was so broad that when young Peshkov read Alexander Pushkin for the first time the great poet's fairy tales sounded "most familiar and understandable," especially the prologue to "Ruslan" (Ruslan i Liudmila) which seemed to him highly reminiscent of "the best of grandmother's fairy tales." 16 "What did they give me, these songs and fairy tales?" 17 asks Maxim Gorky, and in his answer we find the key to his entire art. The older I grew, the more sharply and vividly I saw the contrast between fairy life and the nauseating, pitiful, everyday existence of greed-ridden, envy-ridden people. In fairy tales people flew through the air on "magic carpets," walked on earth in "eightyleague boots," resurrected the dead by sprinkling dead or living water upon them, built palaces in one night. In general, fairy tales opened before me as through a prism another world, where there existed the dream of a better life, and where there roamed at large a free and fearless spirit.18 Young Maxim Gorky did not draw only upon members of his own family for folklore. He listened to hundreds of singers, musicians, and tellers-of-tales, both amateur and professional. In the streets and the saloons of Russian towns; in icon painters' workshops and in brothels; in bosiak flophouses and in monasteries; in the wheat fields of the Ukraine and in the Cossack settlements; on the banks of the River Volga and the shores of the Caspian and the Black seas, he heard his Russia sing. During his prolonged tramping the young man's prodigious memory carefully recorded and retained the folklore of the vast Eurasian plains. Gorky has left us an extraordinary record of Orina Fedo-

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seva, one of the folk bards, a scxalled professional "weeper" (voplenitsa). Fedoseva was customarily called in to "weep" (vopit) at funerals, weddings, or parties. When Gorky saw her in a professional performance in a Nizhnii Novgorod theater, in 1896, she was already ninety-eight years old. This remarkable Russian folk singer was reputed to have a repertoire of some thirty thousand lines of poetry and song. Three Russian folklore collectors19 have published eight volumes of her recitations; the poet Nekrasov used her text for his chapter "Demushka" in Who Is Happy in Russia;20 phonograph records of some of her most characteristic "weepings" were made by the Imperial Geographical Society; and young Gorky retained in his memory whatever he learned of her repertoire. The impression of Fedoseva's improvisations stayed with him during his lifetime. He first reported her performance on June 14,1896, in the Odessa News,21 and on July 11,1896, in the Nizhnii Novgorod Page;22 thirty years later he included a description of her performance in his novel The Life of Klim Samgin23 According to Gorky, this ancient woman from the Province of Olonets expressed the very essence of Russian life and Russian history. Another interesting example of Russian folklore in the making is described by Maxim Gorky in his highly lyrical short story "How a Song Was Made." 24 In 1902 Gorky was exiled by the tsarist government to a little provincial town, Arzamas. On a hot, stuffy, June day at twilight, as the author watched his cook Ustinia and a neighbor's servant from an open window, he overheard them discuss their loneliness and homesickness. Suddenly the cook, Ustinia, suggested to her friend, "Come Mashutka, help me out!" "Help you out with what?" "Let us make a song." 28

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And the two proceeded to compose. The theme of their song was a plaintive longing for the fields, the forest, and their village home. Gorky's emphasis in this story, however, is upon the collective effort of the two women in the creation of the song. Such emphasis on "collective creative genius" as being more significant than "the individual thinking of one man" is reiterated by Gorky time and time again. This theory he best summarizes in the essay "On the Destruction of Personality" 2a ( 1 9 1 5 ) : Only by embracing the total thinking of a whole people is it possible to create such broad generalizations, such powerful symbols as Prometheus, Satan, Hercules, Sviatogor, Ilia, Mikula, and numberless other titanic generalizations of the vital experience of a people. The might of collective art is most clearly demonstrated by the fact that over a stretch of hundreds of centuries, individual creative effort has produced nothing equal to the Iliad or the Kdevda, and that individual genius has failed to create a single generalization which has not had as its basis the creativeness of the people, or a single universal type that has not existed earlier in popular epic or legend.27 Gorky himself was a minstrel at an early age. W e have evidence that at eleven he recited his grandmother's ballad "Lazarus and the Rich M a n " 28 on the streets of Nizhnii Novgorod. Whether at the icon painters' workshop or in the baker's basement, in a park ditch or at the station master's wild party, young Peshkov sang and narrated. In almost every phase of his colorful and adventurous youth, he gathered approving audiences by his talented folk singing and storytelling. It was this very unusual gift of narration which spurred A. M. Kaliuzhnyi to insist that Peshkov write up the legend of Loiko and Radda as a story. For important evidence of folklore influence we must

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turn to Maxim Gorky's own works. It is, indeed, difficult to understand why this factor so completely escaped his early critics and biographers. For even in his early works the use of folklore is extensive. Again like Pushkin, he frequently utilized not only Russian but also Rumanian, Turko-Tatar, and oriental folklore. The noted Soviet literary critic N. Piksanov asserts that it has not been ten years since Gorky was recognized as a folklorist,29 and that research on this subject, despite the growing interest of specialists in the field, is still in the initial stages even in the Soviet Union. Nevertheless, it is possible to learn, either from Gorky himself or from students of his writings, the folklore sources of many of his tales. The dramatic story of Loiko Zobar and his unconquerable sweetheart, Radda, as told by Makar Chudra, at a campfire on the Black Sea shore, is the theme of a Bukovina gypsy tale and may even have been an ancient gypsy song. 30 The legends of the lovely proud Larra doomed to immortality, and the heroic Danko, the great emancipator of his oppressed people, both incorporated into the story " T h e Old Woman Izergil," have circulated orally, in slightly different versions, in Bessarabia from almost ancient times. 31 The narrative poem "Death and the Girl" was subtitled in its 1918 "Eralash" edition, as a "Rumanian Fairy Tale." 32 T h e poem about the young shepherd and the forest fay was included in a large fairy romance, entitled: " A Valakhian [ Wallachian] Fairy Tale." 3 3 The romantic love story of "The Khan and His Son" was written up from a folk song that was performed by Turkish popular bards at a market place in Georgia. 34 Although this song was translated for Gorky, according to S. Skitalets, he also remembered the original and was able to recite it in the Turko-Tatar years later. 35 In some of the poems, as in "The Song of the Falcon," we learn the

5 24> »53 Nachalov, M. Ia., 5 , 1 2 Nadyr-Ragim-Ogly, Crimean shepherd, 50 Nakhodka, A., hero of Mother, 147 Nature, anthropomorphism in G's treatment of, 45; man and situation pitted against background of, 132; as framework for man, 154 ff. Nekrasov, poet, 47, 60, 1 1 5 Nekto Kh (A Certain Khlamyda), pseud., 35 New Life, The, 121 New Word, The, 105 New World, The, 32 Nicholas II, Tsar, 1 0 9 , 1 xo Nietzschean "superman" ideal, story thought to extol, 80 Nilovna, Pelagia, heroine of Mother, 1 47"49 r Nizhnii Novgorod Page, contributions to, 35, 37, 50, 52; signatures used, 35 Nobel's Oil Pavilion, 36 Northern Commune, the, 110 Northern Flowers, 106 "Notes on Philistinism" (Gorky), excerpts, 62 Novels, theme of first "social novel," 139; the one best loved among workers, least praised by critics: propaganda value: confiscation by censors, 149; realistic: emphasis upon characterization, 160 fr. Nusinov, I., i i 2

Index Odessa News, 35, 36, 37 Okurov Town (Gorkyj, 8i, 108 Oldenburgskii, P. A., Prince, 193 "Old Woman Izergfl, The" (Gorky), 18, 24, 49, 84, 153, 159; heroine of protest in, 137; legend from, On^onstitutions (Lokhvitskii), 103 "One Autumn Night" (Gorky), 24, 84. »53 "On Fairy Tales" (Gorky), excerpts, 43. 45 "On First Love" (Gorky), 15 "On How I Learned to Write" (Gorky), 114, 1 3 1 ; excerpts, 81, 136,166 "On Reality" (Gorky), 40 "On the Destruction of Personality" (Gorky), 48, 196 "On the Raft" (Gorky), 24, 84, 183; theme, 138 Orphan Paul, tr. of Luckless Pavel (Gorky), 24, 158, 162; a first novel, with excerpts, 73-75; a realistic novel: plot, 160 (.; evaluation, 161 Ostrovskii, Nikolai, 81, 1 5 1 "Outlines and Sketches," Gorky's newspaper column, 26 Panferov, F., 59 "Passer-By, The" (Gorky), 153; theme, 138 Passive romanticism, 166 "Paul Verlaine and the Decadents" (Gorky), 38 Peasant, The (Gorky), excerpt, 81 Peasants, portrayal of, in "Chelkash," 21; associations, 90; need to understand, 91; attempt to carry on revolutionary activity among, 97 ff.; why hated by G., 99, 135; aifference in attitudes of G. and Tolstoy toward, 194 People's Rebellion in the State of Muscovy, A (Gorky), 55

Pereverzev, V. E., 1 1 1 , 1 1 2 Persian lore, 52 Peshkov, Alexei, pseudonyms and initials used by, 3, 13, 26, 35; see Gorky, Maxim, pseud. Peshkova, Ekaterina Pavlovna (Mrs. Alexei), 34 Peshkova, Katia, Gorky's daughter, 35 Peshkov, Maxim, Gorky's son, 35 Peshkov, Maxim Sawatievich, Gorky's father, 63 Peshkova, Varvara Vasilievna, Gorky's mother, 63, 66, 1 1 7 f. Piksanov, N., 49 Piliai, Emilian (Gorky), 1 5 ; Plays, unfinished attempts, 55; one of the most popular in the Russian language, 143; influence of Chekhov, 164, 165, 183 f. (see also Lower Depths, The: Smug Citizens, The) Pletnev, Gurii, 6, 91 Pocatus, I. M., pseud., 35 Poetry, development and experiences of G's, 6, 7, ro, 13, 85, 11432, 187 (see entries under Gorky, poet) "Poetry of K. Balmont and V . Briusov" (Gorky), 38 Pokrovskii, M. N., on morality of G's early characters, 142 Police, G's experiences with prisons and, 5, 100-102, 104, 107, 193 {.; intelligentsia under surveillance of, 100, 104, 106; data on G. in files, 104, 106, 110; alarmed by his fame and popularity: resulting caution, 105 f., 108 f.; Korolenko dedicated to exposing injustices of courts and, 176 Political economy, G's disagreement with established, 92 Political ideologies, G's first baptism in, 91-97 Populists, 21, 91, 94, 103, 1 1 3

Index "Porcelain Pig, The" (Gorky), 35 f. Posse, V., 105, 156 Potapenko, I. N., 31 Power of Darkness, The (Tolstoy), 81, 99 Poznanskii, General, advice to Gorky, 102, 1 1 9 Prince, The (Michiavelli), 98 Proletarian humanism, 86 f. Proletarians, contrast in thinking between intelligentsia and, 77; made heroes of G's novels, 145 ff., 164; became standardized hero of Soviet fiction, 1 5 1 ; see also Workers Proletarian writer, debated question as to whether G. was, 1 1 1 - 1 3 ; confusion in terms, 1 1 3 Proletariat, when originated, 88, 134 Prologue to "Ruslan," The (Pushkin), 46 Property structure of society, 83 Prose, the poetry in G's, 58, 130 ff.; called "the musician of prose," 1 1 3 Protest and unrest, heroes of, 13652 passim Pseudonyms and initials, 3, 13, 26, PtacLe, Sharko (alias Tsulukidze), Gorky's association with, 4 Pushkin, Alexander, 16, 37, 109, 1 1 ; , 169, 196; knowledge of folklore, 42, 46, 49, 58, 60; restless types, 137 "Race Riot, The" (Gorky), test, 69-72 Racial intolerance, 69 Radionovna, Anna, 42 Razin, Stepan, 55 "Reader, The" (Gorky), 37; excerpt, 135 Realism, never abandoned by G.: fused with romanticism, 157 f.; early novels essentially realistic,

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53

160 ff.; two distinguishable trends, "RedVaska, The" (Gorky), 81 "Refutation of the Official Account of the Kazan Demonstration" (Gorky), excerpt, 107 "Reminiscences of Leo Tolstoy" (Gorky), 189 Resurrection (Tolstoy), 195 "Return of the Normans to England, The" (Gorky), c6 Reviews, literary, 38 f. "Rizpah" (Tennyson), 150 Road to the Ocean (Leonov), 1 5 1 Rochlin, V., 6 Romanticism, Gorky's treatment of nature, 154 ff.; fused with realism, 157 f.; two types, 166 f. Romas, Mikhail A., character: revolutionary activities: G. befriended and instructed by, 97-100 Rostand, Edmond, 39 Rukavishnikov Church Choir, 41 "Rumanian Fairy Tale," subtiUe of "Death and the Girl" q.v., 49 Ruskin, John, 169 Russia, resistance to culture: G's crusades for education and higher civilization, 37; glaring inequalities, indignities, and brutalities, 80; more ruthlessly, yet more optimistically, depict«! by G. than by others, 83 "Russian Chicago," Gorky's name for Samara, 28 Russian Revolution, agitation and unrest among students, 91 ff., 96; underground personalities and activities, 92 ff., 97 ff.; mimeograph smuggled to underground, 107; Gorky's sympathies undeniably with, 110; poems with which Gorky entered revolutionary art, 125 ff.; enormous underground circulation: phrases furnishing fighting slogans, 126; his role as

2

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Index

Russian Revolution (Continued) revolutionary tribune: called its "Bard": other titles, 132 Russian Wealth, the, editor, 20; publication in, 21, 174 Saltykov, Mikhail E., 1^3 Samara ("Russian Chicago ), life and newspaper work in, 26 ft. Samara Gazette, the, columnist's job on, 23, 26, 28, 175; articles published in, 23, 31, 56, 79 (excerpts, 28-30); tone of paper set by G.; its owners, editor, reputation, 31; Gorky made acting editor, 33; left the paper, 34 Samara Messenger, 32 Sea laughed, the: much-quoted and criticized phrase, 155 Seascapes, 154 Seifullina, Lidia, 59 Semenov, Vasflii, Gorky's experience in bakery of, 76 f., 95 Serebrianskii, M., held Gorky a proletarian writer, 1 1 1 , 112; quoted, Seretwov, Alexander, on Gorky's account of his conception of the poem "Man," 85 f., 127-30 Sergeev, Vasflii, 66, 1 1 6 Sergeevich, V. I., 103 Shakespeare, 187 Shcheglov, D. F., 103 Shiites, Persian, 52 Sholokhov, Mikhail, 1 5 1 Short story, Gorky one of greatest craftsmen: examples of his early style, 153 f-; his favorite genre: the pattern, 150 Singing, of Gorky's grandmother and other Balakhna lacemakers, 44-, professional weepers, 47; the youthful Gorky, 48; constant examples of, in his works, 56; description of the effect of song, 56 f.

Sirotkin, capitalist, 108 "Siskin That Lied and the Woodpecker That Told the Truth, The" (Gorky), 24, 121; theme, 124 Skitalets, S., 32, 49,127 Skvortsov, P. N., 103 Smith, Adam, 91 "Smug Citizens, The" (Gorky) proletarian hero in, 145; theme: evaluation, 164 f.; played by wife of Chekhov, 183; his influence seen in, 184 Smuryi, G's first teacher, 8 Social Democratic Party, Gorky's association with, 76, 110, 1 1 1 ; contributions of capitalists to, 108, 110; of G., 110, 1 1 1 Socialism, influence upon G., 83 Socialist humanism, 168 Socialist realism, Gorky the founder and promoter of: its guiding principles, 164-71; enjoyned upon Soviet writers, 164, 165 Socialist romanticism, 167 Social service, ideal of, 25, 34; Gorky's journalistic thunderings against current evils, 28 Somerville, John, quoted, 168 Somov, S. G., 100, 101 "Song of the Falcon, The" (Gorky), 36, 121, 124; reprint title "To the Black Sea," 24; folklore imagery in, 49, 50; theme: excerpt, 125; fighting slogans taken from: underground circulation of millions, 126 "Song of the Old Oak, The" (Gorky), 120, 172 "Song of the Stormy Petrel, The" (Gorky), 107; 121; appraised: influence, 125 f.; fighting slogans taken from: underground circulation of millions, 126 "Song of the Volga Boatman, The," 41

Index "Songs of the Dead, The" (Gorky), 35. 3 6

Soviet critics, evaluations of G., 87 Soviet Government, Gorky made peace with: his attitude toward its policies and toward Bolshevik disregard of human life, 1 1 1 Soviet literature, standardized hero of today's fiction, 146, 1 5 1 ; socialist realism enjoynea upon writers, 164, 165 f.; their fighting weapon, 168; G. became first classic of, 197; see also Literature, Russian Soviet Literature, 85 Soviet philosophy, socialist humanism in cthical teachings, 168 Soviet Philosophy (Somerville), 168 Spark, the, 1 1 1 Spendiarov, A., Gorky's lyric set to music by, 122 Stalin, Joseph, praise of "Death and the Girl" (Gorky), 1 2 1 Stendhal (M. H. Beyle), 157 Stepan Razin scenario (Gorky), 55 "Stormy Petrels, The" (Gorky), 84 "Strasti-Mordasti (Gorky), 83, 158 Strikes, student, 96 Students, see Intelligentsia Suicide, thoughts of, 14, 187; unsuccessful attempt: resulting humiliation, 14, 63, 96, 97 "Sun Rises and Sets, The" (Gorky), 121 "Superman" ideal, Nietzschean; story thought to extol, 80 Sviatopolk-Mirskii, F. D., Prince, m Symbolists, 134, 158; literary work of Gorky and, compared, 130; impressionists, 157 Tales and Sketches (Gorky), 177; publication and success, 105

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55

"Talks on Craftsmanship" (Gorky), 134; excerpt, 90 "Team spirit," 90 Tennyson's "Rizpah," 150 Three, The (Gorky), 1 4 2 , 1 5 8 , 1 6 0 ; cruel treatment of children depicted, 75, 81; theme: evaluation, 140, 1 6 1 f. Three Sisters, The (Chekhov), 180, 183 Tiflis, experiences and companions in, 3 ff. Times, New York, reviews of Mother, 150 Tolstoi, Alexei, quoted, 143 Tolstoy, Count Leo, 16, 60, 61,-81, 93, 1 0 9 , 1 1 5 , 1 9 6 ; Gorky's ambivalent attitude toward, 62, 189 ff.; forgiveness of peasants, 99; theme at time of Gorky's entry into literature, 1 3 3 ; "natural man" type, 137; literary relations with, and critical evaluations of, G., 156, 1^9, 186-94; Gorky's letter and visits to, 187 ff.; his "Reminiscences of . . ." one of the most vivid he ever wrote, 190; mixed feelings about Gorky: efforts to understand him, 191 ff.; Gorky released from prison through intervention of, 193 f.; fundamental difference between them, 194; theme of Resurrection, 1 9 ; Tolstoy, Sofia Andreevna, 189 " T o the Black Sea" (Gorky), reprinted under title "The Song of the Falcon" (q.v.), 24 " T o the Mechanical Citizens of the U.S.S.R.," (Gorky), exceipt, 86 " T o Trifle Away Time" (Gorky), 81,158 Tramp, see Hobo Transcaucasian Railroad, 5 Truth, The, n o Tsulukidze, alias of Ptadze, Sharko,

4

256

Index

Tsyganok, dye worker, 64 Turchaninov, composer, 44 Tuigenev, Ivan S., 37, 1 3 3 , 1 3 5 , 1 5 4 , 176, 185, 19a Turner, J. M. W., 169 'Twenty-si* Men and One Girl" (Gorry), 76, 158, 191; excerpts, 56, 77; heroine of protest in, 140 Underground, the, see Intelligentsia: Russian Revolution United States, publication and reception of Mother in, 150 Unrest, heroes of protest and, 13652 passim Upturned Soil (Sholokhov), 151 Uspenskii, Gleb, 133 "Valachian Fairy Tale, The" (Gorky), 49,121; lyric set to music under two titles, 122; theme, 122-24; appraised: why significant, 124 "Varenka Olesova" (Gorky), 84, 135; theme, 139 Vartiniants, S., quoted, 7 Vasiliev, N. Z., 103 Vaska Buslaev (Gorky), 5 ; Vengerov, literary historian, 8 Verlaine, Paul, 58, 39 Veselovskii, A., letter to Gorky, 109 Vlasov, Pavel, hero of Mother, 146 ff.; other Bolshevik characters kinsmen to, 151 "Voice from the Mountain to an Ascending Climber, The" (Gorky), 120 Volga Messenger, The, 23

Volga Paper, The, 23, 24 Volzhina, Ekaterina Pavlovna, wife of Gorky, 34; children, 35 Volzhinin, Cisip, portrait of Gorky, text, 100 "Weeper," professional, 47 What Is My Faith (Tolstoy), 188 Whistler, James A. M., 169 Who Is Happy in Russia (Nekrasov), 47 Wfll of the People party, 8 "Woman with the Blue Eyes, The" (Gorky), 84 Women, maltreatment of, 67; given equality by Communists, 68; stories of, and sympathy for, women of the streets, 79 Word of the Campaign of Igor, The, 45 Workers, Gorky hailed by, 32; his interest in, and efforts to arouse sympathy for, 76 ff.; indictment of brutality of, 79; emergence into class consciousness, 88; hours of labor, 95; Mother one of bestloved books the world over, 149; see also Proletarian Writers Congress, see First Congress of Soviet Writers "Young Gorky, The" (Serebrianskii), 1 1 2 Zalomov, Peter, 147 "Zazubrina" (Gorky), 8i, 157, 158 Zhdanov, N. A., 31