Hans Ostwald

“ Gorki flagellates the unscrupulous Russian wholesale dealer, who knows of nought beyond profit and the grossest sensual indulgence, and lets his own flesh and blood perish if they require of him to budge a hand-breadth from his egoistic standpoint. Foma, who is not built for a merchant, and who, while ambitious of command, is too magnanimous for the sordid business of a tradesman, has to give in. And the children of his triumphant guardian can only escape poverty by accepting their surroundings. ”

“ Anton Chekhov, too, survived the gloomy years, and grew beyond them.
He did not, it is true, entirely escape the influences of the time. He was the delineator of the deplorable social conditions under which he lived. But he deserves to be better known than he is to the outside public. His works everywhere express a craving for better things—for the reforms that never come. His men are helpless. They say indeed:
"No, one cannot live like this. Life under these conditions is impossible." But they never rouse themselves to any act of emancipation. ”

“ This book is one of the most impressive works of our Russian author. Its large touches portray human life as it is, not only in Russia, but everywhere. The moujik who drifts into the City proletariat suffers from the life that whispers its secrets within and around him. "Why are men doomed to torment each other thus?" It frets and consumes him, weighs him down, and flogs him on again. And from this problem, which in the hands of many would only have resulted in a satire, Gorki creates a powerful tragedy. ”

“ For Gorki, magnanimity and honour are found almost exclusively among the degenerates and outlaws. This clear vision and imaginative insight that forces Gorki into the arms of the men who are outcasts from the life of the community must not be misinterpreted. All great writers put their trust in kings, or rogues, or revolutionaries. Vigour and energetic enterprise flourish only where daily anxieties have had to be outworn. The poet needs men who stand erect, and live apart from the opinions of universal orthodoxy. ”

“ Allow me to offer my most cordial thanks to you and to your collaborators for your energetic acceptance of my work. Nothing binds men together so truly as Art—let us join in a toast to Art, and to all who serve her truly, and have courage to portray the crude reality of Life as it is. ”

“ The daughter tries to poison herself because her foster brother, the engine-driver Nil, has jilted her. But when the poison begins to work she cries out pitifully for help. The son is a student, and has been expelled from the university. He hangs about at home, and cannot find energy to plot out a new career for himself. The weariness of a whole generation is expressed in his faint-hearted, listless words, as also in the blustering but ineffective rhodomontades of the tipsy choir-singer Teterev. All cordial relations between parents and children are lacking in this house. ”

“ On one point Gorki is absolutely right: "The Doss-house" is not a tragedy, but a succession of detached scenes, as he himself calls it. It has no serious pretensions to be a drama. It is almost entirely lacking in construction and in development, in crises or catastrophes resulting from character. It has been quite unjustly preferred to the German play, "The Weavers." Yet that is in another category. That is the classic tragedy of the masses. It contains all that can be demanded of a drama: climax, necessary impulsion, catastrophe. ”

“ Yet we must remember that Gorki attacks life with a certain primitive force and urgency, and that he has a passion for courageous and capable individuals. It is here that his experiences are to his advantage. They have steeled him. Each of his works presents at least one energetic, defiant man—as a rule, one who is outside the pale of society. In one of his sketches, Chelkash is a smuggler, a reckless fellow, who induces a poor peasant to serve as his accomplice in a nocturnal burglary. ”

“ A prostitute always lies to the end. Particularly for the benefit of her lover. Her life is essentially not calculated to make her a fanatic for truth. If she learns anything, indeed, in her persecuted and despised profession, it is the art of lying. Never during a prolonged acquaintance with brothels and houses of bad repute have we encountered a truth-loving prostitute. Gorki, however, needed her for his work. Her confession removes the last obstacle to the confession of the murderer. ”

“ In writing an entire History of Literature, one is unable to take equal interest in all its details. Much is included because it belongs there, but has to be described and criticised of necessity, not desire. While the Author concentrates himself con amore upon the parts which, in accordance with his temperament, attract his sympathies, or rivet his attention by their characteristic types, he accepts the rest as unavoidable stuffing, in order to escape the reproach of ignorance or defect. In the Essay there is no padding. Nothing is put in from external considerations. ”

“ In the novel, "Three Men," Gorki leaves the world of vagrants. He describes people who are intermediate between the vagabonds and the settled classes, who find their peace and happiness neither with the tramps nor with the well-to-do. Many more than three men live in this romance through times and destinies of the utmost significance. The novel might more exactly be termed "Many Men," or even "No Men." It all depends on how you read your author. In last resort the characters of the book have all something of the humanly-inhuman about them. ”

“ They fail to perceive that the influence of these men would have a refreshing and invigorating effect upon the whole life of the people. They miss the need of some such transfusion of "vulgar blood" into the higher forms of the body politic. They cannot admit that it is these very parvenus who are the founders of new families and a new civilisation. Nor that many chasms must for ever be left yawning. They do not appreciate the peculiar pride which Gorki expresses in this romance, in such a classic and touching manner, in the character of the girl student. ”

“ And yet it is just this sombre pathos and experience that compel us so often to recognise in Gorki's types a new category of hero. They are characterised by their sense of boundless freedom. They have both inclination and capacity to abandon and fling aside all familiar customs, duties, and relations. ”

“ Philosophising and quibbling over personality is a poor expedient, and one rejected by first-class writers.
It may be alleged that a work of imagination need not be true to nature. But Gorki undoubtedly aims at producing an effect of fidelity to nature, to serve his emotional objects. To our mind, however, he would have produced a far more direct and vigorous impression if he had painted the depravity of the baron and his associates with stronger and more artistic touches, that is, if he had been hard and ruthless, like Maupassant in so many of his sketches. ”

“ The air is chill, and saturated with moisture. Everything is oppressed, and exertion is a burden....
Suddenly a wind springs up, and tears the monotonously tinted curtains of the sky asunder, tossing the clouds about in its powerful arms like a child at play, and unveiling a glimpse of the purest Heaven... ”

“ Some point that has no marked attraction in itself may be inexpressibly precious to the Author as Material, presenting itself to him with some rare stamps or unexpected feature, that affords a special vehicle for the expression of his temperament. Every man favours what he can describe or set forth better than his neighbours; each seeks the Stuff that calls out his capacities, and gives him opportunity to show what he is capable of. Whether the Personality portrayed be at his Antipodes, whether or no he have one single Idea in common with him, matters nothing. ”

“ It would not be easy to surpass this truly modern tragedy, even if it is less adroitly philosophical than "The Doss-house." Moreover "The Weavers" indicates a revolution in dramatic literature. "The Doss-house" is at most the corollary of this revolution. It presents no new developments in literary style: this is wanting, as in all Gorki's productions. And yet the work of the Russian has its points: the actors have most congenial parts, and talented players are willing to put their best and most telling work into it. ”

“ Gorki is always partial to despotic characters. And here and there he has succeeded in creating men, who take life into their own hands, instead of letting it take them in hand.
It was inevitable that a writer who makes positive affirmations about life should receive a peculiar welcome in Russia, where a gloomy pessimism has obtained the preponderance in literature. Gorki's conception of life is expressed in the words of the engine-driver Nil, in "The Bezemenovs" ... a sympathetic figure, even if he be something of a braggart. ”

“ Senseless, pitiful, and repulsive is this our existence, in which the immoderate, slavish toil of the one-half incessantly enables the other to satiate itself with bread and with intellectual enjoyments. ”

“ The unemancipated workers construct steep, rocky dams that jut out into the free, unbridled sea. The waves that so long rolled on merrily, without fell intent, are now confined, and beat against the hard, cold, sullen rocks. ”

“ As an environment, the doss-house is interesting enough, but it is imperfect and inadequate. In his effort to bring these men into touch with his audience, Gorki credits them with over-much virtue. On one occasion the thief requires the outcast baron to bark like a dog. ”

“ Gorki's countless wanderings through the Russian Steppes, his sojourns by the southern shores of the Russian Seas, are intimately interwoven with the course of Nature, and have given him poetic insight and motives which are ignored by other authors, who have grown up in the University, the Bureau, or the Coffee-houses of large towns. His life of poverty has made him rich. ”

“ We cry out for men who are able to transcend the pettiness of every day, who despise it, and calmly live beyond it.
And Gorki steps forward with the revelation of the often misrepresented Destitutes—or the homeless and hearthless—who are despised, rejected, and abused. And he makes us know them for heroes, conquerors, adventurers. Not all, indeed, but many of them.
The sketch entitled "Creatures that once were Men," which is in a measure introductory to the famous "Doss-house" ("Scenes from the Abysses") is especially illuminating.
Here we have the New Romance. ”

“ Gorki knows that aspiration is not fulfilled without inward struggle and travail. And it is with a subtle psychological instinct that he endows the men who are struggling upward out of adversity with a deep craving for purity. Noble souls are invariably characterised by greater sensitiveness to delicacy, and this is equally the characteristic of those who are yearning to rise above their low environment. It is not from external filth alone that a man seeks to cleanse himself, but from inward corruption also. ”

“ Nil, who is almost the only cheerful and courageous man amid a handful of weaklings and degenerates, says:
"I know that Life is hard, that at times it seems impossibly harsh and cruel, and I loathe this order of things. I know that Life is a serious business, even if we have not got it fully organised, and that I must put forth all my power and capacity in order to bring about this organisation. ”

“ Chekhov is none the less the gifted artist of many parts, and imbued with deep earnestness, who gave mature and valuable work to the men of his time, which, from its significance, will have an enduring after-effect, and will be prized for its genuine ability long after weaker, but more noisy and aggressive, talents have evaporated. ”

“ And here Gorki is a true creator, even if as artist he ranks below Dostoevsky.
The actor (From "The Doss-house")
The characterisation of the men is beyond reproach. Each has his purpose, and bears upon the murderer: the women, however, are not wholly satisfactory.
Gorki is crushingly ruthless to the wives of the householders and officials. He heaps them with vices. They are not merely vulgar in money matters. They are pitiful in their sexual affairs, and, in fact, in all relations. Gorki's harlots on the contrary always have some compelling, touching, noble trait. ”