initial commit of ebook 22046HEADmain

25 files changed, 5927 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6833f05
--- /dev/null
+++ b/.gitattributes
@@ -0,0 +1,3 @@
+* text=auto
+*.txt text
+*.md text
diff --git a/22046-8.txt b/22046-8.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1ccc7be
--- /dev/null
+++ b/22046-8.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,1710 @@
+The Project Gutenberg eBook, Maxim Gorki, by Hans Ostwald, Translated by
+Frances A. Welby
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: Maxim Gorki
+
+
+Author: Hans Ostwald
+
+
+
+Release Date: July 10, 2007  [eBook #22046]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MAXIM GORKI***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Al Haines
+
+
+
+Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this
+      file which includes the original illustrations.
+      See 22046-h.htm or 22046-h.zip:
+      (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/2/0/4/22046/22046-h/22046-h.htm)
+      or
+      (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/2/0/4/22046/22046-h.zip)
+
+
+Transcriber's note:
+
+      The original book did not have a table of contents.
+      One has been created for the reader's convenience.
+
+      In the original book, each page's header changed to reflect
+      the content of its host page.  In this e-book, those headers
+      have been collected into an introductory paragraph at the
+      start of each chapter.
+
+
+
+
+
+Illustrated Cameos of Literature.
+
+Edited by George Brandes
+
+MAXIM GORKI
+
+by
+
+HANS OSTWALD
+
+Translated by Frances A. Welby
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Frontispiece: MAXIM GORKI]
+
+
+
+William Heinemann
+1905
+
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTION
+
+It cannot be denied that the academic expression "Literature" is an
+ill-favoured word.  It involuntarily calls up the Antithesis of Life,
+of Personal Experience, of the Simple Expression of Thought and
+Feeling.  With what scorn does Verlaine exclaim in his Poems:
+
+  "And the Rest is only Literature."
+
+
+The word is not employed here in Verlaine's sense.  The Impersonal is
+to be excluded from this Collection.  Notwithstanding its solid basis,
+the modern mode of the Essay gives full play of personal freedom in the
+handling of its matter.
+
+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.  The Author here admits no temporising with
+his subject.
+
+However foreign the theme may be to him, there is always some point of
+contact between himself and the strange Personality.  There is certain
+to be some crevice through which he can insinuate himself into this
+alien nature, after the fashion of the cunning actor with his part.  He
+tries to feel its feelings, to think its thoughts, to divine its
+instincts, to discover its impulses and its will--then retreats from it
+once more, and sets down what he has gathered.
+
+Or he steeps himself intimately in the subject, till he feels that the
+Alien Personality is beginning to live in him.  It may be months before
+this happens; but it comes at last.  Another Being fills him; for the
+time his soul is captive to it, and when he begins to express himself
+in words, he is freed, as it were, from an evil dream, the while he is
+fulfilling a cherished duty.
+
+It is a welcome task to one who feels himself congenial to some Great
+or Significant Man, to give expression to his cordial feelings and his
+inspiration.  It becomes an obsession with him to communicate to others
+what he sees in his Idol, his Divinity.  Yet it is not Inspiration for
+his Subject alone that makes the Essayist.  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.  The
+picture may in sooth be most successful when the Original is entirely
+remote from the delineator, in virtue of contrary temperament, or
+totally different mentality,--just because the traits of such a nature
+stand out the more sharply to the eye of the tranquil observer.
+
+Since Montaigne wrote the first Essays, this Form has permeated every
+country.  In France, Sainte-Beuve, in North America, Emerson, has
+founded his School.  In Germany, Hillebranat follows the lead of
+Sainte-Beuve, while Hermann Grimm is a disciple of Emerson.  The
+Essayists of To-day are Legion.
+
+It is hard to say whether what is set out in this brief and agreeable
+mode will offer much resistance to the ravages of Time.  In any case
+its permanence is not excluded.  It is conceivable that men, when
+condemned to many months' imprisonment, might arm themselves with the
+Works of Sainte-Beuve for their profitable entertainment, rather than
+with the Writings of any other Frenchman, since they give the
+Quintessence of many Books and many Temperaments.  As to the permanent
+value of the Literature of To-day, we can but express conjectures, or
+at most opinions, that are binding upon none.  We may hope that
+After-Generations will interest themselves not merely in the Classic
+Forms of Poetry and History, but also in this less monumental Mode of
+the Criticism of our Era.  And if this be not the case, we may console
+ourselves in advance with the reflection that the After-World is not of
+necessity going to be cleverer than the Present--that we have indeed no
+guarantee that it will be able to appreciate the Qualities of our
+Contemporaries quite according to their merits.
+
+So much that is New, and to us Unknown, will occupy it in the Future!
+
+GEORGE BRANDES.
+
+Paris, May 1904.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+   Introduction
+
+   Characterization
+
+   A New Romance
+
+   Scenes from the Abysses
+
+   English Translations of Gorki's Works
+
+
+
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+  1.  Maxim Gorki  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . _Frontispiece_
+
+  2.  Maxim Gorki (in 1900)
+
+  3.  Beggar Collecting for a Church Fund
+
+  4.  Tartar Day-Labourer
+
+  5.  Tramps--the Seated Figure is the Original of Luka
+
+  6.  A Page from Gorki's Last Work
+
+  7.  The Bare-footed Brigade on the Volga-Quay,
+      at Nijni Novgorod
+
+  8.  Love-Scene between Polja and Nil,
+      Act 3 of "The Bezemenovs"
+
+  9.  Gambling-Scene, Act 2 of "The Doss-house"
+
+ 10.  A Confabulation, Act 2 of "The Doss-house"
+
+ 11.  Concluding Scene, Act 3 of "The Doss-house"
+
+ 12.  The Actor, in "The Doss-house"
+
+ 13.  Vasilissa, the Keeper of "The Doss-house"
+
+ 14.  Nastja, servant in "The Doss-house"
+
+ 15.  The Baron, in "The Doss-house"
+
+ 16.  Letter to Herr Max Reinhardt
+
+
+
+
+Characterisation; Environment; Gorki's predecessors; Reaction and
+pessimism; Literature and society; Gorki's youth; Hard times; A vagrant
+life; Journalist days; Rapid success; The new heroes; Creatures once
+men; Vagabond philosophy; Accusing symbolism.
+
+
+Within the last few years a new and memorable note has been sounded
+among the familiar strains of Russian literature.  It has produced a
+regeneration, penetrating and quickening the whole.  The author who
+proclaimed the new voice from his very soul has not been rejected.  He
+was welcomed on all sides with glad and ready attention.  Nor was it
+his compatriots alone who gave ear to him.  Other countries, Germany in
+particular, have not begrudged him a hearing; as has too often been the
+case for native genius.  The young Russian was speedily accounted one
+of the most widely read in his own land and in adjacent countries.
+
+Success has rarely been achieved so promptly as by Maxim Gorki.  The
+path has seldom been so smooth and free from obstacles.
+
+Not but that Gorki has had his struggles.  But what are those few
+years, in comparison with the decades through which others have had,
+and still have, to strive and wrestle?  His fight has rather been for
+the attainment of a social status, of intellectual self-mastery and
+freedom, than for artistic recognition.  He was recognised, indeed,
+almost from the first moment when he came forward with his
+characteristic productions.  Nay, he was more than recognised.  He was
+extolled, and loved, and honoured.  His works were devoured.
+
+[Illustration: Maxim Gorki (in 1900)]
+
+This startling success makes a closer consideration and appreciation of
+the author's works and personality incumbent on us.
+
+
+A black, sullen day in March.  Rain and vapour.  No movement in the
+air.  The horizon is veiled in the grey mists that rise from the earth,
+and blend in the near distance with the dropping pall of the Heavens.
+
+And yet there is a general sense of coming Spring.  The elder-bushes
+are bursting, the buds swelling.  A topaz shimmer plays amid the
+shadowy fringes of the light birch stems, and on the budding tops of
+the lime-trees.  The bushes are decked with catkins.  The boughs of the
+chestnut glisten with pointed reddish buds.  Fresh green patches are
+springing up amid the yellow matted grass of the road-side.
+
+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 . . .
+only to roll up a thick dark ball of cloud again next moment.
+Everything is in motion.
+
+The mist clears off, the trees are shaken by the wind till the drops
+fall off in spray.
+
+The sky gets light, and then clouds over again.
+
+But the weary, demoralising, despairing monotony has vanished.
+
+Life is here.
+
+Spring has come.
+
+With all its atmosphere, with all its force and vigour, with its
+battles, and its faith in victory.
+
+
+It is somewhat after this fashion that the personality of the young
+Russian author, and his influence on Russia, and on Russian Literature,
+may be characterised.
+
+In order rightly to grasp the man and his individual methods, together
+with his significance for his mother-country, we must know the
+environment and the relations on which Gorki entered.  Thus only shall
+we understand him, and find the key to his great success in Russia, and
+the after-math of this success in foreign countries.
+
+Maxim Gorki is now just thirty-seven years old.  Ten years ago he was
+employed in the repairing works of the railway in Tiflis as a simple
+artisan.  To-day he ranks among the leading intellects of Russia.
+
+This is an abrupt leap, the crossing of a deep cleft which separates
+two worlds that tower remote on either side.  The audacity of the
+spring can only be realised when we reflect that Maxim Gorki worked his
+way up from the lowest stratum, and never had any regular schooling.
+
+The most subtle analysis of Gorki's talent would, however, be
+inadequate to cover his full significance as a writer.  It is only in
+connection with the evolution of Russian society and Russian literature
+that Gorki, as a phenomenon, becomes intelligible.
+
+
+The educated Russian does not regard his national literature merely as
+the intellectual flower of his nation; it must essentially be a mirror
+of actual social occurrences, of the cultural phase in which any
+particular work originated.
+
+The Russian author does not conceive his task to lie exclusively in
+pandering to the aesthetic enjoyment of his readers, in exciting and
+diverting them, and in providing them with sensational episodes.
+Literature of this type finds no home in the Russia of to-day.  Since
+she first possessed a literature of her own, Russia has demanded
+something more from her writers.  An author must be able to express the
+shades of public opinion.  It is his task to give voice and form to
+what is circulating through the various social classes, and setting
+them in motion.  What they cannot voice in words, what is only
+palpitating and thrilling through them, is what he must express in
+language; and his business is to create men from the universal
+tendencies.  Nay, more, it is his task to reorganise these tendencies.
+
+This explains the general and lively interest felt in Russia for the
+productions of _belles lettres_.  This form of literature is regarded
+as the mirror of the various phases of that astounding development
+which Russia has accomplished during the last sixty years.
+
+First came the reforms of the Fifties and Sixties.  Serfdom was
+abolished, class distinctions were largely broken up, local
+self-government was initiated.  So many reforms were introduced in the
+departments of Justice, of Instruction, of Credit and Commerce, that
+the ground was prepared for a totally new Russia.  A vigorous
+blossoming of Russian literature coincided with this period of
+fermentation.  Turgeniev, Gontscharov, Leo Tolstoi, and Dostoevsky
+found rich nutriment for their imaginative talent in the fresh-turned
+prolific soil of Russian Society.  With, and alongside of, them a
+number of no less gifted authors throve uninterruptedly, till the
+reaction in the second half of the Sixties and in the Seventies fell
+like a frosty rime upon the luxurious blooms, and shrivelled them.  The
+giants were silenced one by one.  Leo Tolstoi remained the sole
+survivor.
+
+With him none but the epigones, the friends of the people, worked on.
+Few writers attained to any eminence.  Among such as also won a hearing
+in Germany must be mentioned Vladimir Korolenko and Chekhov.  These two
+belong to the group known as "the Men of the Eighties."
+
+[Illustration: Beggar collecting for a church fund (_After a sketch by
+Gorki_)]
+
+These years, which immediately preceded the appearance of Gorki, form
+part of the most gloomy period of modern Russian history.  Blackest
+reaction followed the desperate struggles of the Nihilists in the
+Seventies in all departments.  At the threshold of the Century stalked
+the spectre of regicide, to which Alexander II. was the doomed
+victim . . . and over the future hovered the grim figure which banished
+its thousands and ten thousands of gifted young intellectuals to
+Siberia.
+
+This period accordingly corresponded with a definite moral
+retrogression in the ethical condition of the Russian people.
+
+There was a necessary reflection of it in the literature.  This era
+produced nothing of inspired or reformatory force.  A profound
+pessimism stifled all originality.  Korolenko alone, who was living
+during the greater part of this time as a political prisoner in distant
+Yakutsk, where he did not imbibe the untoward influences of the
+reaction, remained unmoved and strong.  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.  They founder on existence and its crushing tyranny.
+
+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.  He
+was, however, so finely organised that his brain responded to all the
+notes of his epoch, and he only emancipated himself by giving them out
+again in his works of art.  And so his "Sea-Gull," "Uncle Vanja," and
+other dramas, novels, and stories portray the blighted, hopeless,
+degenerate men of his day, his country, and its woes . . . like the
+productions of many others who worked alongside of him, but did not
+attain the same heights of imagination.
+
+
+Such was the state of Russian Literature and Russian Society at the
+time of Maxim Gorki's appearance.  He stands for the new and virile
+element, for which the reforms of the Sixties had been the preparation.
+These reforms, one-sided and imperfect as they may have been, had none
+the less sufficed to create new economic conditions.  On the one hand,
+a well-to-do middle-class, recruited almost entirely from
+non-aristocratic strata, sprang up; on the other, an industrial
+proletariat.  Maxim Gorki emerged from this environment: and as a
+phenomenon he is explained by this essentially modern antithesis.  He
+flung himself into the literary movement in full consciousness of his
+social standing.  And it was just this self-consciousness, which
+stamped him as a personality, that accounted for his extraordinary
+success.  It was obvious that, as one of a new and aspiring class, a
+class that once more cherished ideal aims and was not content with
+actual forms of existence, Gorki, the proletaire and railway-hand,
+would not disavow Life, but would affirm it, affirm it with all the
+force of his heart and lungs.
+
+[Illustration: Tartar day-labourer (_After a sketch by Gorki_)]
+
+And it is to this new note that he is indebted for his influence.
+
+
+Gorki, or to give him his real name, Alexei Maximovich Pjeschkov, was
+born on March 14, 1868, in Nijni Novgorod.  His mother Varvara was the
+daughter of a rich dyer.  His father, however, was only a poor
+upholsterer, and on this account Varvara was disinherited by her
+father; but she held steadfast to her love.  Little Maxim was bereft of
+his parents at an early age.  When he was three he was attacked by the
+cholera, which at the same time carried off his father.  His mother
+died in his ninth year, after a second marriage, a victim to phthisis.
+Thus Gorki was left an orphan.  His stern grandfather now took charge
+of him.  According to the Russian custom he was early apprenticed to a
+cobbler.  But here misfortune befell him.  He scalded himself with
+boiling water, and the foreman sent him home to his grandfather.
+Before this he had been to school for a short time; but as he
+contracted small-pox he had to give up his schooling.  And that, to his
+own satisfaction, was the end of his education.  He was no hand at
+learning.  Nor did he find much pleasure in the Psalms in which his
+grandfather instructed him.
+
+As soon as he had recovered from the accident at the shoemaker's, he
+was placed with a designer and painter of ikons.  But "here he could
+not get on"; his master treated him too harshly, and his pluck failed
+him.  This time he found himself a place, and succeeded in getting on
+board one of the Volga steamboats as a scullion.
+
+And now for the first time he met kindly, good-natured people.  The
+cook Smuriy was delighted with the intelligent lad and tried to impart
+to him all that he knew himself.  He was a great lover of books.  And
+the boy was charmed to find that any one who was good-tempered could
+have relations with letters.  He began to consider a book in a new
+light, and took pleasure in reading, which he had formerly loathed.
+The two friends read Gogol and the Legends of the Saints in their
+leisure hours in a corner of the deck, with the boundless steppes of
+the Volga before them, lapped by the music of the waves that plashed
+against the sides of the vessel.  In addition, the boy read all that
+fell into his hands.  Along with the true classics he fed his mind upon
+the works of unknown authors and the play-books hawked about by
+travelling pedlars.
+
+All this aroused a passionate, overpowering thirst for art and
+knowledge in Gorki when he was about fifteen.  Without a notion of how
+he was to be clothed and fed during his student life he betook himself
+to Kasan to study.  His rash hopes soon foundered.  He had, as he
+expressed it, no money to buy knowledge.  And instead of attending the
+Schools he went into a biscuit-factory.  The three roubles (then
+5_s._), which was his monthly salary, earned him a scanty living by an
+eighteen-hour day.  Gorki soon gave up this task, which was too
+exhausting for him.  He lived about on the river and in the harbour,
+working at casual jobs as a sawyer or porter.  At this time he had no
+roof, and was forced to live in the society of the derelicts.  What
+Gorki must have suffered in this company, during his struggle for the
+bare means of subsistence, may be imagined--he sounded the lowest
+depths of human life, and fell into the blackest abysses.
+
+With the best will, and with all his energies, he was unable to attain
+any prospect of brighter days, and sank deeper and deeper into the
+existence of the castaway.
+
+In his twentieth year he gave up the struggle.  Life seemed to him
+devoid of value, and he attempted suicide.  The ball from the revolver
+entered his lung without killing him, and the surgeon managed to
+extract it.  Gorki was ill for some time after this event, and when he
+recovered set about finding new work.
+
+He became a fruit-vendor, as before reading all kinds of scientific and
+literary works with avidity.  But this profession brought him no
+farther than the rest.  He then went to Karazin as signalman and
+operative in the railway works.
+
+However, he made no long stay on the railway.  In 1890 he was obliged
+to present himself at Nijni Novgorod, his native place, for the
+military conscription.  He was not, however, enrolled on account of the
+wound that remained from his attempt at suicide.
+
+In Nijni Novgorod he became acquainted with certain members of the
+educated classes.  At first he wandered up and down selling beer and
+kvass--filling the cups of all who wished to drink. . . .  But he was
+driven to fare forth again, and again took up the life of a vagrant and
+a toper.  In Odessa he found occupation in the harbour and the
+salt-works.  Then he wandered through Besserabia, the Crimea, the
+Kuban, and eventually reached the Caucasus.  At Tiflis he worked in the
+railway sheds.  Here he once more foregathered with educated people,
+particularly with some young Armenians.  His personality and already
+remarkable mental equipment secured him their friendship.  A derelict
+student, whom he afterwards described under the name of Alexander
+Kaluschny, taught him to write and cypher.  He gave keen attention to
+the physical states of an insane friend, who was full of the
+Regeneration of Mankind, and entered his observations in his note-book.
+Gorki possesses a vast number of these note-books, in which he has
+written down his impressions.  At this period he was also studying the
+great poets, Shakespeare, Goethe, Byron.  Most of all he admired
+Manfred, who dominated the Elements and Ahriman.  Everything out of the
+common inspired him.
+
+[Illustration: Tramps--the seated figure is the original of Luka
+(_After a sketch by Gorki_)]
+
+It was at this time that he began to do literary work, in the
+utmost secrecy.  His story, "Makar Chudra," appeared in 1893 in
+the Caucasian journal _Kavkas_, but he was as yet unable to make
+his living by intellectual pursuits, and was still compelled to be
+Jack-of-all-trades.  It occurred to him to muster a travelling company.
+He strapped up a small bundle and sallied forth.  By April he had
+enlisted others of like mind.  A woman and five men presented
+themselves.  The troup increased on the way . . . but Gorki had to dree
+his weird alone, and returned to Nijni Novgorod.
+
+A fortunate accident brought him into relation with the lawyer Lanin, a
+true friend to modern literature, who was not slow to appreciate the
+talent that had found its way to his bureau, and occupied himself most
+generously with the education of the young writer.
+
+Gorki now wrote his first long story.  Various friends of literature
+soon began to take notice of him.  They sent him to the famous Vladimir
+Korolenko, who was then living in Nijni Novgorod, and editing the
+paper, _Russkoe Bogatstvo_.  Korolenko was much interested in Gorki,
+but was unable at that time to offer the young writer any remunerative
+work.  Gorki was obliged to eke out his living by contributing to small
+provincial papers.  He shared the same fate as so many of his fellow
+journalists.  None of the editors offered any sort of honorarium, but
+simply returned his contributions, when, as happened with one of the
+Odessa journals, he asked three kopecks a line from it.  This same
+paper, however, commissioned him to write a report of the World's Fair
+at Nijni Novgorod in the year 1896.
+
+Gorki gladly agreed, and his reports excited general attention.  But
+they were shockingly remunerated, and he was forced to live under such
+wretched conditions that his lungs became affected.
+
+Korolenko now exerted himself seriously on Gorki's behalf.  And the
+advocacy of a power in the literary world effected what all his highly
+characteristic achievements had not accomplished for him.  It made him
+known and desirable.  New journals enlisted him as a permanent
+colleague on their staff.  Henceforward existence was no concern to the
+literary vagabond, who on his own showing had had four teachers: the
+cook on the Volga steamer, the advocate Lanin, the idler whom he
+describes in Kaluschny, and Korolenko.
+
+
+Seldom is it the case that an author comes to his own as early as
+Gorki.  This was undoubtedly due to the courageous manner in which he
+struck out into the social currents that were agitating his country.
+And the rapid impression he made was due as much to the peculiar
+conditions of the Russian Empire as to his own talent.  There, where
+there can be no public expression of schemes for the future, no open
+desire for self-development, Art is always the realisation of greater
+hopes than it can be where a free path has already been laid down.  And
+it is thus that men like Gorki can exert an overwhelming influence
+which is absolutely inconceivable to other nationalities.  It is not
+merely the result of their artistic temperament.  It derives at least
+as strongly from their significance to Humanity, their effect upon
+culture, their aggressive energy.
+
+On the other hand, it would be a perversion to ascribe the success of
+such individuals to circumstances alone, and to what they say, and the
+inflexible virile courage with which they say it.  Talent, genius, the
+why and wherefore, are all factors.  In Russia there are not a few who
+share the experiences and insight of Gorki.  But they lack means of
+expression; they are wanting in executive ability.
+
+Not that many capable men are not also on the scene at present.  But
+maybe they are not the "whole man," who puts the matter together,
+without fear or ruth, as Gorki has done so often.
+
+      *      *      *      *      *      *
+
+[Illustration: A page from Gorki's last work (_Transcribed and
+forwarded by the author to Hans Ostwald_)]
+
+_"As an implacable foe to all that is mean and paltry in the
+aspirations of Humanity, I demand that every individual who bears a
+human countenance shall really be--a MAN!"_
+
+_"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."_
+
+_From "Man."  By Maxim Gorki._
+
+      *      *      *      *      *      *
+
+
+It is vain for Maximovich Pjeschkov not to term himself _Gorki_, the
+"Bitter One."  He opposes a new Kingdom of Heroes in contrast to the
+old hero-world, to the great strategists and wholesale butchers.
+Bluebeard and Toggenburg, Richard Coeur-de-Lion--what are these bloody
+tyrants for us of to-day?  It is impossible to resuscitate them as they
+were of old.  They were,--and have become a form, in which the
+exuberant and universal Essence of Life no longer embodies itself.
+
+But . . . we must have our Heroes still; heroes who master their lives
+after their own fashion, and who are the conquerors of fate.  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.  Here is no bygone ideal newly decked and
+dressed out, trimmed up with fresh finery.  It is the men of our own
+time who are described.
+
+Whether other nations will accept such heroes in fulfilment of their
+romantic aspirations may be questioned.  It seems very doubtful.  The
+"Doss-house" is for the most part too strong for a provincial public,
+too agitating, too revolutionary.  The Germans, for example, have not
+the deep religious feeling of the Russian, for whom each individual is
+a fellow sinner, a brother to be saved.  Nor have they as yet attained
+to that further religious sense which sees in every man a sinless soul,
+requiring no redemption.
+
+To us, therefore, Gorki's "creatures that once were men" appear strange
+and abnormal types.  The principal figure is the ex-captain and present
+keeper of the shelter, the former owner of a servant's registry and
+printing works--Aristides Kuvalda.  He has failed to regulate his life,
+and is the leader and boon companion of a strange band.  His best
+friend is a derelict schoolmaster, who earns a very fair income as a
+newspaper reporter.  But what is money to a man of this type?  He
+sallies forth, buys fruit and sweetmeats and good food with half his
+earnings, collects all the children of the alley in which Kuvalda's
+refuge is situated, and treats them down by the river with these
+delicacies.  He lends the best part of his remaining funds to his
+friends, and the rest goes in vodka and his keep at the doss-house.
+
+Other wastrels of the same type lodge with Kuvalda.  They are all men
+who have been something.  And so Gorki calls them _Bivshiye lyudi_,
+which may be literally translated "the Men Who Have Been" ("Creatures
+that once were Men ").
+
+To our taste the story is too discursive and long-winded.  The
+prolonged introductory descriptions, the too exact and minute
+particularities of external detail, especially in regard to persons,
+destroy the sharp edge of the impression, and obliterate its
+characteristics.  It would have been clearer with fewer words.  Honesty
+bids us recognise a certain incapacity for self-restraint in Gorki.
+
+This, however, is a trifle compared with the vivid, impersonal
+descriptions of the conduct of the derelicts--illuminated by the heroic
+deed of Kuvalda, as by an unquenchable star.  Kuvalda loses his
+mainstay when his comrade, the schoolmaster, dies.  He is enraged at
+the brutal treatment meted out to him and to the other inhabitants of
+the slum by the Officials of the City and the Government.  He embroils
+himself with ill-concealed purpose with his deadly enemy the merchant
+Petunikov and insults the police.  His object is gained.  He is beaten,
+and led away to prison.
+
+Unfortunately Gorki endows his characters with too elevated a
+philosophy.  He pours his own wine into their bottles.  Vagabonds and
+tramps do often indeed possess a profound knowledge of life peculiar to
+themselves, and a store of worldly wisdom.  But they express it more
+unconsciously, more instinctively, less sentimentally, than Gorki.
+
+From the artistic point of view this ground-note of pathos is an
+abiding defect in Gorki.  He is lacking in the limpid clarity of sheer
+light-heartedness.  Humour he has indeed.  But his humour is bitter as
+gall, and corrosive as sulphuric acid.  "Kain and Artem" may be cited
+as an instance.
+
+Kain is a poor little Jewish pedlar.  Artem, the handsome, strong, but
+corrupt lover of the huckstress, is tended by him when he has been
+half-killed by envious and revengeful rivals.  In return for this
+nursing, and for his rescue from need and misery, Artem protects the
+despised and persecuted Kain.  But he has grown weary of
+gratitude--gratitude to the weak being ever a burden to strong men.
+And the lion drives away the imploring mouse, that saved him once from
+the nets that held him captive--and falls asleep smiling.
+
+[Illustration: The bare-footed brigade on the Volga-quay, and Nijni
+Novgorod (_After a sketch by Gorki_)]
+
+This sombre temperament determines the catastrophe of the other
+stories.  They almost invariably close in the sullen gloom of a wet
+March evening, when we wonder afresh if the Spring is really coming.
+
+In "Creatures that once were Men," Gorki's sinister experience and
+pathos are essential factors in the accusing symbolism.  He relates in
+the unpretending style of a chronicler how the corpulent citizens
+reside on the hill-tops, amid well-tended gardens.  When it rains the
+whole refuse of the upper town streams into the slums.
+
+
+
+
+The new romance; Sentiment and humour; Russian middle class; The man of
+the future; Descriptions of nature; Superfluity of detail; The Russian
+proletaire; Psychology of murder; Artistic inaccuracy; Moujik and
+outcast; A poet's idealism.
+
+
+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.
+
+It is a world of heroes, of most romantic heroes, that Gorki delineates
+for us.  But the romance is not after the recipes of the old novelists:
+ancient, mystic, seeking its ideals in the remote past.  This is
+living, actual romance.  Even though some of Gorki's heroes founder
+like the heroes of bygone epochs of literature upon their weakness,
+more of the "Bitter One's" characters are shipwrecked on a deed.
+
+And it is this reckless parade and apotheosis of such men of action
+that accounts for Gorki's huge success in comparison with many another,
+and with the writers of the preceding generation.  It is for this that
+the young minds of his native country rally round him--the country that
+is loaded with clanking fetters.
+
+
+Gorki is dominated by a characteristic passion for strong, abnormal
+men.  This type reappears in almost all his narratives.  Here it is old
+Isergil, whose Odyssey of Love swells to saga-like magnitude.  There we
+find the bold and fearless smuggler Chelkash, in the story of that
+name.  Now it is the brazen, wanton, devoted Malva, who prefers the
+grown man to the inexperienced youth.  Anon, the red Vaska, boots and
+janitor of the brothel.  And there are numbers of other such titans.
+
+Unfortunately Gorki endows many of them with a vein of sentimentality,
+on which account his works are compared with those of Auerbach, in
+certain, more particularly in the aesthetic, Russian circles . . . a
+reproach that is only partially justified.  Emelyan, _e.g._, is a
+notorious and professional robber.  He sallies forth to attack and
+plunder a merchant in the night.  But he encounters a young girl of
+good social position on the bridge which he has chosen for the scene of
+his attack.  She intends to make away with herself.  And in talking to
+her he forgets everything else; she moves him so profoundly that he
+dissuades her from suicide and takes her back to her parents.
+
+Despite its rank improbability and sentimental character this tale has
+a fine humour of its own.  And there is, in particular, one sketch that
+is steeped in humour.  This is the "Story of the Silver Clasp."  Three
+casual labourers break into an old factory and steal a silver clasp.
+One of them relinquishes his share and takes back the clasp.  And all
+the thanks he gets is a rating from the old housekeeper.
+
+These, of course, are only accessory productions, artistic enough, but
+of a lighter character.  Many of the tales unfortunately suffer from a
+hackneyed use of situations, materials, and ideas, suggestive of the
+hack writer.  Gorki's cheap sentiment, and maudlin pity, often result
+in clap-trap and padding which are foreign to the artist proper.  But
+this is the effect of his predilection for individuals of forcible
+character.
+
+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.  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.  And I shall endeavour with all the forces of my soul to
+be steadfast to my inward promptings: to push my way into the densest
+parts of life, to knead it hither and thither, to hinder some, to help
+on others.  It is _this_ that is the joy of life!" . . .
+
+[Illustration: Love-scene between Polja and Nil (_Act III. of "The
+Bezemenovs"_)]
+
+Words like these were bound to have a stimulating and invigorating
+effect after the despondency of the preceding epoch.  This new spirit,
+this new man, gripped his contemporaries in full force.
+
+The result would undoubtedly have been even more striking if Gorki's
+heroes were not invariably tainted with vestiges of the old order.
+They are, indeed, men of action.  A totally different life pulsates in
+Gorki's works; we are confronted with far more virile characters than
+in the works of other Russian authors.  Even the engine driver Nil,
+however, fails to relieve any one of the sufferers from his troubles.
+He removes Polja confidently enough from her surroundings--but only
+leaves the greater darkness behind him.  Even he is as yet unable to
+transform the conditions of life--and he is therefore stigmatised by a
+little of the Russian bluster.
+
+
+"The House of the Bezemenovs" ("The Tradespeople"), Gorki's first
+dramatic work, describes the eternal conflict between sons and fathers.
+The narrow limitations of Russian commercial life, its _borné_
+arrogance, its weakness and pettiness, are painted in grim, grey
+touches.  The children of the tradesman Bezemenov may pine for other
+shores, where more kindly flowers bloom and scent the air.  But they
+are not strong enough to emancipate themselves.  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.
+
+It is refreshing to come upon the other characters, who are of a
+different breed to these shop-keepers.  The vodka-loving, jolly father
+of Polja (Bezemenov's niece, who is exploited and maltreated in this
+house), is, in his contented yet sentimental egoism, a true
+representative of the ordinary Russian, the common man.  And Polja!
+And Nil! . . .  Here is the fresh blood of the future.  How sure they
+both are in their love.  "Ah! what a beautiful world it is, isn't it?
+Wondrously beautiful . . . dear friend. . . .  What a glorious man you
+are. . . ."
+
+Albeit this work is far from being a finished drama, it none the less
+has its special qualities.  These men often talk as glibly as if they
+were essayists, they often seem to be mere vehicles for programmatic
+manifestoes.  But as a whole they are the typical quintessence of the
+Russian people.
+
+
+Other wild and intrepid figures are to be found in the larger works
+that precede "The Tradespeople"--the novels "Foma Gordeyev" and "Three
+Men."  But Gorki's new conception of life is less clearly and broadly
+formulated in these than in Nil, and other subsequent characters.
+These people rather collapse from the superabundance of their vigour
+and the meanness of their surroundings.
+
+
+In "Foma Gordeyev" 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.
+
+[Illustration: Gambling scene (_Act II. of "The Doss-house"_)]
+
+Despite its agonies and martyrdoms, however, there is one marvellously
+inspiring feature about this novel,--its gorgeous descriptions of
+Nature, rich in life and colour.  "Foma Gordeyev" is the romance of
+life on the Volga.
+
+With what intimacy, familiarity, and heart-felt emotion Gorki here
+describes and sees!  The great River, with its diversified
+characteristics, its ominous events, mingles with the life of Man, and
+flows on past us. . . .
+
+It is this characteristic union of the Human-All-Too-Human with his
+impressions of Nature in so many of Gorki's works, that makes them at
+the outset desirable and readable to a large proportion of his public.
+Much of his description of life beyond the social pale would be
+repulsive if it were not for this interpretative nature-painting.
+Especially would this be the case in "Malva."  This robust,
+free-loving, and free-living maiden attracts us by her vigorous
+participation in Nature, when, for instance, she leaps into the water,
+and sports in the element like a fish.
+
+
+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.  He has evolved some significant
+prose-poems from the life of Nature, and the contest of her forces.
+While the sketch, "Spring Voices," is a satire, bristling with tangible
+darts and stings, "The Bursting of the Dam" expresses the full force
+that rages and battles in a stormy sea.  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.  The winds and
+tempests join in a colossal attack upon the unyielding barriers, and
+the rocks are shivered in fragments.
+
+[Illustration: A confabulation (_Act II. of "The Doss-house"_)]
+
+
+Quite different again is the romance entitled "Three Men" (or "Three of
+Them").  The tales and sketches published prior to this work were
+merely founded on episodes, catastrophes, or descriptive passages from
+the author's rich store of material.  They certainly conveyed the
+essence of the life of his characters.  They disclosed the axis of
+these people's existence.  But they are seldom free from a certain
+tiresome impressionism--and often make quite undue pretensions.  The
+didactic is too obvious.  Gorki is not always satisfied with saying,
+here is a bit of life.  He tries to put in a little wisdom.  His form
+is seldom clear and conclusive.  His tales are overladen with detail
+and superfluity of minute description.  In Germany, Gorki owes much to
+his translators.  This is more especially obvious in the scholarly
+translation by August Scholz of "Makar Chudra," Gorki's first published
+work.  At first Scholz only produced a portion of this story.  Later
+on, when all that Gorki had written had its importance, and his
+commercial success was established, the whole of "Makar," which is by
+no means free from obscurities, was translated.
+
+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.
+
+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.  The aspiring proletaire, be he peasant or
+child of the artisan, is for the most part done to death with light
+laughter.  In this the unjustified arrogance of the academic classes
+expresses itself too frequently.  Too often they discover only the
+comic element in the men who have emerged from the ranks, and who,
+while gifted with uncommon energy and intelligence, can neither choose
+nor be chosen for any of the cultured professions.  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.  Nor do they perceive that these aspirants possess much that
+is lacking in themselves--and that not particularly to their credit.
+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.  And so he strives,
+and strives again, for purity--and falls the deeper in the mire.
+
+[Illustration: Concluding scene (_Act III. of "The Doss-house"_)]
+
+Few writers share the happy recklessness peculiar to Gorki.  He is free
+from false modesty, like his young moujik, who is compelled by his
+desire for purity--not by any conventional remorse--to proclaim his
+relations with his landlady and commercial partner, the shopkeeper's
+wife, before all their acquaintances, at one of her entertainments--and
+also to announce himself as the murderer of the old money-lender.  Nor
+is it the guilty sense of Raskolnikov that impels this moujik to
+confession and reparation.  It is his repugnance for the men in
+contrast with whom he stands out as an ideal and promising figure.
+
+And it is here that Gorki seems to us almost to surpass Dostoevsky.
+Raskolnikov is a murderer on theory, a penitent out of weakness.
+Gorki's murderer, however, kills from inward compulsion.  His act, his
+acknowledgment of it, all is sheer naïve necessity.  Here is a man who
+feels no compunction for having crushed a worm.
+
+Who, in last resort, is the man that repents his deeds?  Of all the
+criminals we have encountered in doss-houses, shelters, and
+labour-colonies, scarce a single one.  And the deed came nearly always
+like a flash from the blue.  Implacable, dire, and for the most part
+unconscious compulsion, but no premeditated volition, drove them to it.
+And here Gorki is a true creator, even if as artist he ranks below
+Dostoevsky.
+
+[Illustration: 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.  One of the prostitutes bewails her
+wasted life.  Another craves to share all the sufferings of the man who
+has committed murder for her sake.  A third is possessed with a sudden
+passion for truth.  And that in the Justice Room, though she knows that
+her lover, sitting opposite her, is doomed if she deserts him.
+
+At this point Gorki seems, indeed, to have deliberately abjured his
+intimate knowledge of certain classes of the community.  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.  It cuts away the last prop beneath the undermined dam.
+
+And yet it first arouses our suspicion of the probity and reality of
+Gorki's types.  Why should he be so emotional in some places while in
+others he can be so hard and harsh?  He has not yet arrived at
+representation without prejudice.
+
+And then we ask: "How far can his characterisations in general be
+accepted?"
+
+Gorki often sacrifices probability to polemics.  Too often he is merely
+the emotional controversialist.  Bias and Life are with him not always
+welded into the harmonious whole, which one is entitled to claim from
+the genuine artist.
+
+
+To the Teutonic mind the individual works of Gorki, _e.g._, the novel,
+"Three Men," still appear gloomy and sombre.  As a whole, too, they
+affect us sadly; they are oppressive.
+
+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.  This rustic is a contemptible creature.  His
+avarice prompts him to fall on the smuggler and murder him for the sake
+of his gold pieces.  The wounded Chelkash flings the money at him
+contemptuously.  Gorki portrays the much-belauded moujik as a pitiable
+money-grubber, a detestable associate, who loses all higher motives in
+his struggle for the means of existence.
+
+[Illustration: Vasilissa (_Keeper of the "Doss-house"_)]
+
+This, at any rate, is Gorki's belief: it is neither the householders
+nor the peasants who are the custodians and promoters of what is human
+and noble.  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.
+
+
+
+
+Scenes from the Abysses; The new gospel; Gorki's defects; Truth or
+sentimentality; The new Russia; Future development.
+
+
+The men of the "Doss-house" are again of this type.  They live in the
+recesses of a horrible cellar, a derelict Baron, a former convict, a
+public prostitute, and more of the same "cattle."  One man who lodges
+there with his wife is pilloried, because as a worker he stands apart
+from them:
+
+"'I am a man who works!'--as if the rest of us were less than he!  Work
+away if it makes you happier!--why be so cock-a-hoop about it?  If men
+are to be valued for their work, a horse would count for more than a
+man--at least it draws the cart . . . and holds its tongue about it."
+
+And as they speak, so they live.  They are all destitute; but they
+content themselves with carrying on a sort of guerilla warfare against
+the householders.
+
+And yet for some of them this life of brawls and vodka, of theft and
+mendicancy, is a very hell.  Especially for the thief Pepel.  He would
+gladly rise to a purer life.  Alone, he is not strong enough.
+But--with Natasha.
+
+This Natasha is the sister of the woman who keeps the shelter, and who
+herself has relations with Pepel, and does not intend to let him slip
+through her fingers.  She even wishes him to make away with her husband
+in order that she may live undisturbed with the thief.
+
+This is repulsive to Pepel.
+
+At this crisis the wanderer Luka makes his appearance.  He wants to
+help every one.  He is the apostle of goodness and humanity.  He finds
+a tender word for the dying wife of the locksmith.  He talks to the
+drunken actor about a Reformatory, where he can be cured of his
+propensity for drinking.  And he counsels Natasha to fly with Pepel
+from these depths of iniquity.  The keeper of the refuge hears this.
+She torments her sister, and almost does her to death, with her
+husband's assistance.  Pepel is off his head with rage, and actually
+fulfils the woman's wishes, by murdering her husband.
+
+She is triumphant.  And the wayfarer vanishes.  In the last Act the
+other wastrels are collected together.  They are trying to clear up
+their ideas of themselves, and of the world.  One tells how the
+wanderer thought the world existed only for the fittest--as in the
+carpentering trade.  All live--and work--and of a sudden comes one who
+pushes the whole business forward by ten years.
+
+[Illustration: Nastja (_Servant in "The Doss-house"_)]
+
+"Man is the reality . . .  Man who alone is really great . . .  All is
+in Man, all is for Man. . . .  To the health of Man!" is the toast of
+the former convict Satin.
+
+"Be Men!" is the new watchword for Russia.  And thus for Russians the
+"Doss-house" came as a gospel, although Gorki has not yet wrought his
+materials into the supreme conflict that must result in a really great
+tragedy.  "The Doss-house" is not that tragedy.  It presents no titanic
+action, no mighty fate, no clashing shock to reveal the battle of the
+great natural tendencies in Man, and give an immeasurable lift to our
+conceptions of existence.  There is still something that oppresses
+us--there is too much puling and complaint.  Criticism as a whole has
+been deceived by the resounding and pathetic words which it has
+accepted as a profound philosophy.  Philosophy, however, is for the
+study, not the stage.  Our great philosophers have said all that Gorki
+has put into the mouth of his outcasts, and said it far more forcibly.
+His observations on the dignity of Man are his only original and
+impressive contributions.
+
+The critics have gone astray in another direction also.  They have
+insisted on the great compassion that radiates from the piece, as
+embodied in Luka, the wanderer, and have commended this pillar of light
+and salvation.  And they have completely overlooked the fact that it is
+he who is responsible for most of the misfortunes.  In last resort Luka
+brings help to no one, but only succeeds in embroiling the situation,
+and accelerating the catastrophe.
+
+Gorki undoubtedly intended to describe a luminary.  But he failed to
+carry out his purpose consistently.  In spite of himself this apostle
+is unable to effect any good, too often does just the contrary.  The
+action of this character reminds us of Gregor Werle in Ibsen's "Wild
+Duck."
+
+From the purely technical standpoint, moreover, "The Doss-house" is
+full of defects.  The great catastrophe is brought about by
+eavesdropping.  As in the worst melodrama, the _intrigante_ of the
+piece, the lodging-house keeper and mistress of the thief, appears in
+the background just at the most critical point of the confabulation
+between Pepel and his allies, and the vagrant Luka.
+
+A great work of art should scorn such cheap expedients.  Nor are the
+whining descriptions given by several of the castaways of their mode of
+existence, properly speaking, dramatic; they only induce false sympathy.
+
+The same capital fault is evident in Gorki's other productions.  We
+have already touched on the defects of "Three Men."  In "The
+Doss-house" again, our author has struck several wrong chords in his
+characterisation.  He has failed to present the tragedy of the
+derelicts; nor has he in one single instance given a correct artistic
+picture of the occupants of the shelter.  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.  The baron replies: "I am aware
+that I have already sunk deeper than you whereever this is possible."
+And it is only after a pause that the thief is able to reply: "You have
+confounded me, Baron."
+
+[Illustration: The baron (_From "The Doss-house"_)]
+
+This is no speech for men of this type.  Gorki turns himself here into
+a sentimentalist.  The baron should have answered this proposal that he
+should "bark" somewhat as follows: "What will you pay me?  Hum!  What
+can you offer me--a good place?"  Or suggested him knocking him over
+the head.  Then we should have had a drastic representation of the
+depraved derelicts.  Description is wanted, not sophistry.
+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.  We want instances of
+corruption, not nice talk about it.
+
+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.  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.  "The Doss-house" had
+an unparalleled success when it was performed at the Klein Theater in
+Berlin.  The splendid staging made a magnificent achievement of the
+"Scenes from the Abysses," which thrilled and held the audience like
+some colossal work of music.  And the human value of the work entitles
+it to rank with the best that has been produced in recent years on the
+farther side of the Vistula.
+
+Gorki has done well to describe the world and the stratum whence he
+emerged, and which he traversed, in his powerful works.  His writings
+expound the New Russia.  He himself is New Russia.  He is the man who
+has overcome all life's obstacles.
+
+And it is he who holds up new, courageous, virile men to his nation,
+men who have faith and will to live.
+
+He is himself profoundly sympathetic.  His works bring him in a large
+annual income.  But he does not hoard it up.  He does not clutch his
+money.  He knows the value of a helping hand.  In his heart, moreover,
+he is averse to open admiration.  This was apparent in his refusal to
+accept the public homage offered him some two years ago in the Art
+Theatre of Moscow.  Gorki was drinking tea at a buffet with Chekhov, at
+a first performance of "Uncle Wanja," when suddenly the two were
+surrounded by a crowd of curious people.  Gorki exclaimed with
+annoyance: "What are you all gaping at?  I am not a _prima ballerina_,
+nor a Venus of Medici, nor a dead man.  What can there be to interest
+you in the outside of a fellow who writes occasional stories."  The
+Society Journals of Moscow wished to teach Gorki a lesson in manners,
+for having dealt so harshly with the appreciative patrons of the
+theatre.  He replied with the delightful satire: "Of the Author, who
+aimed too high."
+
+While many critics fall into ecstasies over anything that Gorki writes,
+he himself preserves the just perspective, as in the case of this
+public homage.  No one has spoken as uncompromisingly of his theatrical
+pieces as himself.  That alone proves him to be a clever, critical man.
+But it also shows him to be honourable, talented, and clear-headed.
+How few authors would, if they thought some of their own works of minor
+importance, straightway communicate the fact to their public?
+
+      *      *      *      *      *      *
+
+[Illustration: Letter to Max Reinhardt]
+
+
+_Letter to Herr Max Reinhardt_
+
+_"To you, dear Sir, and to your Company, I send my portrait.  I must
+apologise for not doing it before, but had no time.  With it I send an
+album of sketches of 'The Doss-house' as performed at the Art Theatre
+in Moscow.  I do this in the hope of simultaneously expressing my
+gratitude to you for your performance of my piece, and of showing how
+closely you and your ensemble succeeded in reproducing Russia proper,
+in your presentation of the types and scenes in my play.  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._
+
+_"Heartiest greetings to yourself and to your artists.  I greatly
+regret my ignorance of the German language, and am ashamed of it.  If I
+knew German, I could express my sincere thanks to you more plainly.
+With all my heart I wish you luck and success._
+
+_"M. GORKI._
+
+_"NIJNI NOVGOROD,
+  "August 1, 1903."_
+
+      *      *      *      *      *      *
+
+Hence we look forward with interest to Gorki's future contributions,
+whether in poetry or drama.  It is significant of the man and his
+intellect that he has not allowed himself to be saddled by the Theatre
+Devil, but presses forward to fresh tasks and aims.
+
+
+
+
+ENGLISH TRANSLATIONS OF GORKI'S WORKS
+
+
+1.  "The Orloff Couple," "Malva."  Translated by E. Jakowleff and D. B.
+Montefiore (Heinemann), 1901.
+
+2.  "Foma Gordyeeff" ("Thomas the Proud.").  Translated by I. F.
+Hapgood (Fisher Unwin), 1901.
+
+3.  "Makar Chudra."  _Monthly Review_, 1901.
+
+4.  "The Outcasts," "Waiting for the Ferry," "The Affair of the
+Clasps."  Translated by D. B. Montefiore, E. Jakowleff, and V.
+Volkhovsky (Fisher Unwin), 1902; reprinted 1905.
+
+5.  "Three of Them."  Translated by A. Sinden (Fisher Unwin), 1902;
+reprinted 1905.
+
+6.  "Three Men." Translated by C. Home, 1902.
+
+7.  "Tales from Gorki."
+        In the Steppe.
+        Twenty-six of Us and One Other.
+        One Autumn Night.
+        A Rolling Stone.
+        The Green Kitten.
+        Comrades.
+        Her Lover.
+        Chums.
+Translated by R. Nisbet Bain (Jarrold & Sons), 1902.
+
+8.  "Twenty-Six Men and a Girl."
+        My Fellow Traveller.
+        On a Raft.
+        Tschelkasch.
+Translated by E. Jakowleff, D. B. Montefiore, S. K. Michel.  "Greenback
+Library," vol. i. (Duckworth & Co.), 1902.
+
+9.  "Song of the Falcon."  Translated by E. J. Dillon, _Contemporary
+Review_, 1902, and "Maxim Gorky" (Isbister & Co.), 1902.
+
+10.  "Creatures that Once were Men" ("The Outcasts").  Translated by J.
+K. M. Shirazi.  Introduction by G. K. Chesterton.  (Alston Rivers),
+1905.
+
+
+
+***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MAXIM GORKI***
+
+
+******* This file should be named 22046-8.txt or 22046-8.zip *******
+
+
+This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
+https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/2/0/4/22046
+
+
+
+Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
+will be renamed.
+
+Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
+one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
+(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
+permission and without paying copyright royalties.  Special rules,
+set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
+copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
+protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark.  Project
+Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
+charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission.  If you
+do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
+rules is very easy.  You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
+such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
+research.  They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
+practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks.  Redistribution is
+subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
+redistribution.
+
+
+
+*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
+
+THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
+PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
+
+To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
+distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
+(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at
+https://www.gutenberg.org/license).
+
+
+Section 1.  General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic works
+
+1.A.  By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
+and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
+(trademark/copyright) agreement.  If you do not agree to abide by all
+the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
+all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
+If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
+terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
+entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
+
+1.B.  "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark.  It may only be
+used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
+agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement.  There are a few
+things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+even without complying with the full terms of this agreement.  See
+paragraph 1.C below.  There are a lot of things you can do with Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
+and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.  See paragraph 1.E below.
+
+1.C.  The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"
+or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works.  Nearly all the individual works in the
+collection are in the public domain in the United States.  If an
+individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
+located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
+copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
+works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
+are removed.  Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
+Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
+freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
+this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
+the work.  You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
+keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
+
+1.D.  The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
+what you can do with this work.  Copyright laws in most countries are in
+a constant state of change.  If you are outside the United States, check
+the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
+before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
+creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
+Gutenberg-tm work.  The Foundation makes no representations concerning
+the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
+States.
+
+1.E.  Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
+
+1.E.1.  The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
+access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
+whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
+phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
+copied or distributed:
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+1.E.2.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
+from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
+posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
+and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
+or charges.  If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
+with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the
+work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
+through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
+Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
+1.E.9.
+
+1.E.3.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
+with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
+must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
+terms imposed by the copyright holder.  Additional terms will be linked
+to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
+permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
+
+1.E.4.  Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
+work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
+
+1.E.5.  Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
+electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
+prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
+active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm License.
+
+1.E.6.  You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
+compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
+word processing or hypertext form.  However, if you provide access to or
+distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
+"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version
+posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),
+you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
+copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
+request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other
+form.  Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
+
+1.E.7.  Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
+performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
+unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+
+1.E.8.  You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
+access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
+that
+
+- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
+     the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
+     you already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  The fee is
+     owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
+     has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
+     Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.  Royalty payments
+     must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
+     prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
+     returns.  Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
+     sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
+     address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to
+     the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
+
+- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
+     you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
+     does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+     License.  You must require such a user to return or
+     destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
+     and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
+     Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
+     money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
+     electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
+     of receipt of the work.
+
+- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
+     distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+1.E.9.  If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
+forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
+both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
+Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark.  Contact the
+Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
+
+1.F.
+
+1.F.1.  Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
+effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
+public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
+collection.  Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
+"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
+property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
+computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
+your equipment.
+
+1.F.2.  LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
+of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
+fees.  YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
+LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
+PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3.  YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
+TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
+LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
+INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
+DAMAGE.
+
+1.F.3.  LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
+defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
+receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
+written explanation to the person you received the work from.  If you
+received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
+your written explanation.  The person or entity that provided you with
+the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
+refund.  If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
+providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
+receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund.  If the second copy
+is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
+opportunities to fix the problem.
+
+1.F.4.  Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
+in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS', WITH NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
+WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
+
+1.F.5.  Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
+warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
+If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
+law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
+interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
+the applicable state law.  The invalidity or unenforceability of any
+provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
+
+1.F.6.  INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
+trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
+providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
+with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
+promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
+harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
+that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
+or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
+work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
+Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
+
+
+Section  2.  Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
+electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
+including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers.  It exists
+because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
+people in all walks of life.
+
+Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
+assistance they need, is critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
+goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
+remain freely available for generations to come.  In 2001, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
+and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
+To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
+and the Foundation web page at https://www.gutenberg.org/fundraising/pglaf.
+
+
+Section 3.  Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
+Foundation
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
+501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
+state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
+Revenue Service.  The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
+number is 64-6221541.  Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
+permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
+
+The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
+Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
+throughout numerous locations.  Its business office is located at
+809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email
+business@pglaf.org.  Email contact links and up to date contact
+information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official
+page at https://www.gutenberg.org/about/contact
+
+For additional contact information:
+     Dr. Gregory B. Newby
+     Chief Executive and Director
+     gbnewby@pglaf.org
+
+Section 4.  Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
+spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
+increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
+freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
+array of equipment including outdated equipment.  Many small donations
+($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
+status with the IRS.
+
+The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
+charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
+States.  Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
+considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
+with these requirements.  We do not solicit donations in locations
+where we have not received written confirmation of compliance.  To
+SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
+particular state visit https://www.gutenberg.org/fundraising/donate
+
+While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
+have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
+against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
+approach us with offers to donate.
+
+International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
+any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
+outside the United States.  U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
+
+Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
+methods and addresses.  Donations are accepted in a number of other
+ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations.
+To donate, please visit:
+https://www.gutenberg.org/fundraising/donate
+
+
+Section 5.  General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.
+
+Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
+concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
+with anyone.  For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project
+Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
+unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we do not necessarily
+keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
+
+     https://www.gutenberg.org
+
+This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
+including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
+subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
+
diff --git a/22046-8.zip b/22046-8.zip
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..da5a3e0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/22046-8.zip
diff --git a/22046-h.zip b/22046-h.zip
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e0cfac9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/22046-h.zip
diff --git a/22046-h/22046-h.htm b/22046-h/22046-h.htm
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5010e8e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/22046-h/22046-h.htm
@@ -0,0 +1,2491 @@
+<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN">
+<html>
+<head>
+<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1">
+<title>The Project Gutenberg eBook of Maxim Gorki, by Hans Ostwald</title>
+<style type="text/css">
+BODY { color: Black;
+       background: White;
+       margin-right: 5%;
+       margin-left: 10%;
+       font-size: medium;
+       font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;
+       text-align: justify }
+
+P {text-indent: 4% }
+
+P.noindent {text-indent: 0% }
+
+P.poem {text-indent: 0%;
+        margin-left: 10%;
+        font-size: small }
+
+P.letter {font-size: small ;
+          margin-left: 10% ;
+          margin-right: 10% }
+
+P.salutation {font-size: small ;
+              text-indent: 0%;
+              margin-left: 10% ;
+              margin-right: 10% }
+
+P.closing {font-size: small ;
+           text-indent: 0%;
+           margin-left: 10% ;
+           margin-right: 10% }
+
+P.footnote {font-size: small ;
+            text-indent: 0% ;
+            margin-left: 0% ;
+            margin-right: 0% }
+
+P.transnote {font-size: small ;
+             text-indent: 0% ;
+             margin-left: 0% ;
+             margin-right: 0% }
+
+P.index {font-size: small ;
+         text-indent: -5% ;
+         margin-left: 5% ;
+         margin-right: 0% }
+
+P.intro {font-size: small ;
+         text-indent: 0% ;
+         margin-left: 0% ;
+         margin-right: 0% }
+
+P.dedication {text-indent: 0%;
+              margin-left: 15%;
+              text-align: justify }
+
+P.published {font-size: small ;
+             text-indent: 0% ;
+             margin-left: 15% }
+
+P.quote {font-size: small ;
+         text-indent: 4% ;
+         margin-left: 0% ;
+         margin-right: 0% }
+
+P.report {font-size: small ;
+         text-indent: 4% ;
+         margin-left: 0% ;
+         margin-right: 0% }
+
+P.report2 {font-size: small ;
+         text-indent: 4% ;
+         margin-left: 10% ;
+         margin-right: 10% }
+
+P.finis { text-align: center ;
+          text-indent: 0% ;
+          margin-left: 0% ;
+          margin-right: 0% }
+
+H3.h3left { margin-left: 0%;
+            margin-right: 1%;
+            margin-bottom: .5% ;
+            margin-top: 0;
+            float: left ;
+            clear: left ;
+            text-align: center }
+
+H3.h3right { margin-left: 1%;
+             margin-right: 0 ;
+             margin-bottom: .5% ;
+             margin-top: 0;
+             float: right ;
+             clear: right ;
+             text-align: center }
+
+H3.h3center { margin-left: 0;
+              margin-right: 0 ;
+              margin-bottom: .5% ;
+              margin-top: 0;
+              float: none ;
+              clear: both ;
+              text-align: center  }
+
+H4.h4left { margin-left: 0%;
+            margin-right: 1%;
+            margin-bottom: .5% ;
+            margin-top: 0;
+            float: left ;
+            clear: left ;
+            text-align: center }
+
+H4.h4right { margin-left: 1%;
+             margin-right: 0 ;
+             margin-bottom: .5% ;
+             margin-top: 0;
+             float: right ;
+             clear: right ;
+             text-align: center }
+
+H4.h4center { margin-left: 0;
+              margin-right: 0 ;
+              margin-bottom: .5% ;
+              margin-top: 0;
+              float: none ;
+              clear: both ;
+              text-align: center  }
+
+H5.h5left { margin-left: 0%;
+            margin-right: 1%;
+            margin-bottom: .5% ;
+            margin-top: 0;
+            float: left ;
+            clear: left ;
+            text-align: center }
+
+H5.h5right { margin-left: 1%;
+             margin-right: 0 ;
+             margin-bottom: .5% ;
+             margin-top: 0;
+             float: right ;
+             clear: right ;
+             text-align: center }
+
+H5.h5center { margin-left: 0;
+              margin-right: 0 ;
+              margin-bottom: .5% ;
+              margin-top: 0;
+              float: none ;
+              clear: both ;
+              text-align: center  }
+
+IMG.imgleft { float: left;
+              clear: left;
+              margin-left: 0;
+              margin-bottom: 0;
+              margin-top: 1%;
+              margin-right: 1%;
+              padding: 0;
+              text-align: center }
+
+IMG.imgright {float: right;
+              clear: right;
+              margin-left: 1%;
+              margin-bottom: 0;
+              margin-top: 1%;
+              margin-right: 0;
+              padding: 0;
+              text-align: center }
+
+IMG.imgcenter { margin-left: auto;
+                margin-bottom: 0;
+                margin-top: 1%;
+                margin-right: auto; }
+
+.pagenum { position: absolute;
+           left: 1%;
+           font-size: 95%;
+           text-align: left;
+           text-indent: 0;
+           font-style: normal;
+           font-weight: normal;
+           font-variant: normal; }
+
+.sidenote { left: 0%;
+            font-size: 65%;
+            text-align: left;
+            text-indent: 0%;
+            width: 17%;
+            float: left;
+            clear: left;
+            padding-left: 0%;
+            padding-right: 2%;
+            padding-top: 2%;
+            padding-bottom: 2%;
+            font-style: normal;
+            font-weight: normal;
+            font-variant: normal; }
+
+    hr.full { width: 100%;
+             height: 5px; }
+	a:link {color:#0000ff;
+			text-decoration:none; }
+	link {color:#0000ff;
+			text-decoration:none; }
+	a:visited {color:#0000ff;
+			text-decoration:none; }
+	a:hover {color:#ff0000;
+            text-decoration: underline; }
+	pre		{font-size: 75%; }
+
+</style>
+</head>
+<body>
+<h1 align="center">The Project Gutenberg eBook, Maxim Gorki, by Hans Ostwald, Translated by
+Frances A. Welby</h1>
+<pre>
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at <a href = "http://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a></pre>
+<p>Title: Maxim Gorki</p>
+<p>Author: Hans Ostwald</p>
+<p>Release Date: July 10, 2007  [eBook #22046]</p>
+<p>Language: English</p>
+<p>Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1</p>
+<p>***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MAXIM GORKI***</p>
+<br><br><center><h3>E-text prepared by Al Haines</h3></center><br><br>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<table border=0 bgcolor="ddddff" cellpadding=10>
+  <tr>
+    <td align="center">
+      <b>Transcriber's Note:</b>
+    </td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>
+      The original book did not have a table of contents.
+      One has been created for the reader's convenience.<br>
+      <br>
+      In the original book, each page's header changed to reflect
+      the content of its host page.  In this e-book, those headers
+      have been collected into an introductory paragraph at the
+      start of each chapter.
+	</td>
+  </tr>
+</table>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr class="full" noshade>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<A NAME="img-front"></A>
+<CENTER>
+<IMG CLASS="imgcenter" SRC="images/img-front.jpg" ALT="MAXIM GORKI" BORDER="2" WIDTH="368" HEIGHT="483">
+<H3 CLASS="h3center" STYLE="width: 368px">
+MAXIM GORKI
+</H3>
+</CENTER>
+
+<BR><BR>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+Illustrated Cameos of Literature.
+<BR>
+Edited by George Brandes
+</H3>
+
+<BR><BR>
+
+<H1 ALIGN="center">
+Maxim Gorki
+</H1>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+By
+</H3>
+
+<H2 ALIGN="center">
+Hans Ostwald
+</H2>
+
+<BR><BR>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+Translated by
+<BR>
+Frances A. Welby
+</H3>
+
+<BR><BR>
+
+<H4 ALIGN="center">
+William Heinemann
+<BR>
+1905
+</H4>
+
+<BR><BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="introduction"></A>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+INTRODUCTION
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+It cannot be denied that the academic expression "Literature" is an
+ill-favoured word.  It involuntarily calls up the Antithesis of Life,
+of Personal Experience, of the Simple Expression of Thought and
+Feeling.  With what scorn does Verlaine exclaim in his Poems:
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="poem">
+"And the Rest is only Literature."<BR>
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+The word is not employed here in Verlaine's sense.  The Impersonal is
+to be excluded from this Collection.  Notwithstanding its solid basis,
+the modern mode of the Essay gives full play of personal freedom in the
+handling of its matter.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+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 <I>con amore</I> 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.  The Author here admits no temporising with
+his subject.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+However foreign the theme may be to him, there is always some point of
+contact between himself and the strange Personality.  There is certain
+to be some crevice through which he can insinuate himself into this
+alien nature, after the fashion of the cunning actor with his part.  He
+tries to feel its feelings, to think its thoughts, to divine its
+instincts, to discover its impulses and its will&mdash;then retreats from it
+once more, and sets down what he has gathered.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Or he steeps himself intimately in the subject, till he feels that the
+Alien Personality is beginning to live in him.  It may be months before
+this happens; but it comes at last.  Another Being fills him; for the
+time his soul is captive to it, and when he begins to express himself
+in words, he is freed, as it were, from an evil dream, the while he is
+fulfilling a cherished duty.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It is a welcome task to one who feels himself congenial to some Great
+or Significant Man, to give expression to his cordial feelings and his
+inspiration.  It becomes an obsession with him to communicate to others
+what he sees in his Idol, his Divinity.  Yet it is not Inspiration for
+his Subject alone that makes the Essayist.  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.  The
+picture may in sooth be most successful when the Original is entirely
+remote from the delineator, in virtue of contrary temperament, or
+totally different mentality,&mdash;just because the traits of such a nature
+stand out the more sharply to the eye of the tranquil observer.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Since Montaigne wrote the first Essays, this Form has permeated every
+country.  In France, Sainte-Beuve, in North America, Emerson, has
+founded his School.  In Germany, Hillebranat follows the lead of
+Sainte-Beuve, while Hermann Grimm is a disciple of Emerson.  The
+Essayists of To-day are Legion.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It is hard to say whether what is set out in this brief and agreeable
+mode will offer much resistance to the ravages of Time.  In any case
+its permanence is not excluded.  It is conceivable that men, when
+condemned to many months' imprisonment, might arm themselves with the
+Works of Sainte-Beuve for their profitable entertainment, rather than
+with the Writings of any other Frenchman, since they give the
+Quintessence of many Books and many Temperaments.  As to the permanent
+value of the Literature of To-day, we can but express conjectures, or
+at most opinions, that are binding upon none.  We may hope that
+After-Generations will interest themselves not merely in the Classic
+Forms of Poetry and History, but also in this less monumental Mode of
+the Criticism of our Era.  And if this be not the case, we may console
+ourselves in advance with the reflection that the After-World is not of
+necessity going to be cleverer than the Present&mdash;that we have indeed no
+guarantee that it will be able to appreciate the Qualities of our
+Contemporaries quite according to their merits.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+So much that is New, and to us Unknown, will occupy it in the Future!
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="noindent">
+GEORGE BRANDES.
+<BR><BR>
+Paris, May 1904.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<H2 ALIGN="center">
+CONTENTS
+</H2>
+
+<P CLASS="noindent">
+<A HREF="#introduction">Introduction</A>
+<BR>
+<A HREF="#chap01">Characterization</A>
+<BR>
+<A HREF="#chap02">The New Romance</A>
+<BR>
+<A HREF="#chap03">Scenes from the Abysses</A>
+<BR>
+<A HREF="#chap04">English Translations of Gorki's Works</A>
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<H2 ALIGN="center">
+ILLUSTRATIONS
+</H2>
+
+<BR>
+
+<H3>&nbsp;  1.
+<A HREF="#img-front">
+Maxim Gorki&nbsp;&nbsp;.&nbsp;.&nbsp;.&nbsp;.&nbsp;.&nbsp;.&nbsp;.&nbsp;.&nbsp;.&nbsp;.&nbsp;.&nbsp;.&nbsp;.&nbsp;.&nbsp;.&nbsp;.&nbsp;.&nbsp;. <I>Frontispiece</I>
+</A>
+</H3>
+
+<H3>&nbsp;  2.
+<A HREF="#img-014">
+Maxim Gorki (in 1900)
+</A>
+</H3>
+
+<H3>&nbsp;  3.
+<A HREF="#img-020">
+Beggar Collecting for a Church Fund
+</A>
+</H3>
+
+<H3>&nbsp;  4.
+<A HREF="#img-024">
+Tartar Day-Labourer
+</A>
+</H3>
+
+<H3>&nbsp;  5.
+<A HREF="#img-030">
+Tramps&mdash;the Seated Figure is the Original of Luka
+</A>
+</H3>
+
+<H3>&nbsp;  6.
+<A HREF="#img-034">
+A Page from Gorki's Last Work
+</A>
+</H3>
+
+<H3>&nbsp;  7.
+<A HREF="#img-040">
+The Bare-footed Brigade on the Volga-Quay,
+      at Nijni Novgorod
+</A>
+</H3>
+
+<H3>&nbsp;  8.
+<A HREF="#img-046">
+Love-Scene between Polja and Nil,
+      Act 3 of "The Bezemenovs"
+</A>
+</H3>
+
+<H3>&nbsp;  9.
+<A HREF="#img-050">
+Gambling-Scene, Act 2 of "The Doss-house"
+</A>
+</H3>
+
+<H3> 10.
+<A HREF="#img-052">
+A Confabulation, Act 2 of "The Doss-house"
+</A>
+</H3>
+
+<H3> 11.
+<A HREF="#img-056">
+Concluding Scene, Act 3 of "The Doss-house"
+</A>
+</H3>
+
+<H3> 12.
+<A HREF="#img-058">
+The Actor, in "The Doss-house"
+</A>
+</H3>
+
+<H3> 13.
+<A HREF="#img-062">
+Vasilissa, the Keeper of "The Doss-house"
+</A>
+</H3>
+
+<H3> 14.
+<A HREF="#img-066">
+Nastja, servant in "The Doss-house"
+</A>
+</H3>
+
+<H3> 15.
+<A HREF="#img-070">
+The Baron, in "The Doss-house"
+</A>
+</H3>
+
+<H3> 16.
+<A HREF="#img-072">
+Letter to Herr Max Reinhardt
+</A>
+</H3>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap01"></A>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P CLASS="intro">
+Characterisation; Environment; Gorki's predecessors; Reaction and
+pessimism; Literature and society; Gorki's youth; Hard times; A vagrant
+life; Journalist days; Rapid success; The new heroes; Creatures once
+men; Vagabond philosophy; Accusing symbolism.
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+Within the last few years a new and memorable note has been sounded
+among the familiar strains of Russian literature.  It has produced a
+regeneration, penetrating and quickening the whole.  The author who
+proclaimed the new voice from his very soul has not been rejected.  He
+was welcomed on all sides with glad and ready attention.  Nor was it
+his compatriots alone who gave ear to him.  Other countries, Germany in
+particular, have not begrudged him a hearing; as has too often been the
+case for native genius.  The young Russian was speedily accounted one
+of the most widely read in his own land and in adjacent countries.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Success has rarely been achieved so promptly as by Maxim Gorki.  The
+path has seldom been so smooth and free from obstacles.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Not but that Gorki has had his struggles.  But what are those few
+years, in comparison with the decades through which others have had,
+and still have, to strive and wrestle?  His fight has rather been for
+the attainment of a social status, of intellectual self-mastery and
+freedom, than for artistic recognition.  He was recognised, indeed,
+almost from the first moment when he came forward with his
+characteristic productions.  Nay, he was more than recognised.  He was
+extolled, and loved, and honoured.  His works were devoured.
+</P>
+
+<A NAME="img-014"></A>
+<CENTER>
+<IMG CLASS="imgcenter" SRC="images/img-014.jpg" ALT="Maxim Gorki (in 1900)" BORDER="2" WIDTH="374" HEIGHT="543">
+<H3 CLASS="h3center" STYLE="width: 374px">
+Maxim Gorki (in 1900)
+</H3>
+</CENTER>
+
+<P>
+This startling success makes a closer consideration and appreciation of
+the author's works and personality incumbent on us.
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+A black, sullen day in March.  Rain and vapour.  No movement in the
+air.  The horizon is veiled in the grey mists that rise from the earth,
+and blend in the near distance with the dropping pall of the Heavens.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And yet there is a general sense of coming Spring.  The elder-bushes
+are bursting, the buds swelling.  A topaz shimmer plays amid the
+shadowy fringes of the light birch stems, and on the budding tops of
+the lime-trees.  The bushes are decked with catkins.  The boughs of the
+chestnut glisten with pointed reddish buds.  Fresh green patches are
+springing up amid the yellow matted grass of the road-side.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The air is chill, and saturated with moisture.  Everything is
+oppressed, and exertion is a burden.&#8230;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+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&#8230;
+only to roll up a thick dark ball of cloud again next moment.
+Everything is in motion.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The mist clears off, the trees are shaken by the wind till the drops
+fall off in spray.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The sky gets light, and then clouds over again.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But the weary, demoralising, despairing monotony has vanished.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Life is here.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Spring has come.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+With all its atmosphere, with all its force and vigour, with its
+battles, and its faith in victory.
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+It is somewhat after this fashion that the personality of the young
+Russian author, and his influence on Russia, and on Russian Literature,
+may be characterised.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+In order rightly to grasp the man and his individual methods, together
+with his significance for his mother-country, we must know the
+environment and the relations on which Gorki entered.  Thus only shall
+we understand him, and find the key to his great success in Russia, and
+the after-math of this success in foreign countries.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Maxim Gorki is now just thirty-seven years old.  Ten years ago he was
+employed in the repairing works of the railway in Tiflis as a simple
+artisan.  To-day he ranks among the leading intellects of Russia.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+This is an abrupt leap, the crossing of a deep cleft which separates
+two worlds that tower remote on either side.  The audacity of the
+spring can only be realised when we reflect that Maxim Gorki worked his
+way up from the lowest stratum, and never had any regular schooling.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The most subtle analysis of Gorki's talent would, however, be
+inadequate to cover his full significance as a writer.  It is only in
+connection with the evolution of Russian society and Russian literature
+that Gorki, as a phenomenon, becomes intelligible.
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+The educated Russian does not regard his national literature merely as
+the intellectual flower of his nation; it must essentially be a mirror
+of actual social occurrences, of the cultural phase in which any
+particular work originated.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Russian author does not conceive his task to lie exclusively in
+pandering to the aesthetic enjoyment of his readers, in exciting and
+diverting them, and in providing them with sensational episodes.
+Literature of this type finds no home in the Russia of to-day.  Since
+she first possessed a literature of her own, Russia has demanded
+something more from her writers.  An author must be able to express the
+shades of public opinion.  It is his task to give voice and form to
+what is circulating through the various social classes, and setting
+them in motion.  What they cannot voice in words, what is only
+palpitating and thrilling through them, is what he must express in
+language; and his business is to create men from the universal
+tendencies.  Nay, more, it is his task to reorganise these tendencies.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+This explains the general and lively interest felt in Russia for the
+productions of <I>belles lettres</I>.  This form of literature is regarded
+as the mirror of the various phases of that astounding development
+which Russia has accomplished during the last sixty years.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+First came the reforms of the Fifties and Sixties.  Serfdom was
+abolished, class distinctions were largely broken up, local
+self-government was initiated.  So many reforms were introduced in the
+departments of Justice, of Instruction, of Credit and Commerce, that
+the ground was prepared for a totally new Russia.  A vigorous
+blossoming of Russian literature coincided with this period of
+fermentation.  Turgeniev, Gontscharov, Leo Tolstoi, and Dostoevsky
+found rich nutriment for their imaginative talent in the fresh-turned
+prolific soil of Russian Society.  With, and alongside of, them a
+number of no less gifted authors throve uninterruptedly, till the
+reaction in the second half of the Sixties and in the Seventies fell
+like a frosty rime upon the luxurious blooms, and shrivelled them.  The
+giants were silenced one by one.  Leo Tolstoi remained the sole
+survivor.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+With him none but the epigones, the friends of the people, worked on.
+Few writers attained to any eminence.  Among such as also won a hearing
+in Germany must be mentioned Vladimir Korolenko and Chekhov.  These two
+belong to the group known as "the Men of the Eighties."
+</P>
+
+<A NAME="img-020"></A>
+<CENTER>
+<IMG CLASS="imgcenter" SRC="images/img-020.jpg" ALT="Beggar collecting for a church fund (_After a sketch by Gorki_)" BORDER="2" WIDTH="418" HEIGHT="583">
+<H3 CLASS="h3center" STYLE="width: 418px">
+Beggar collecting for a church fund (<I>After a sketch by Gorki</I>)
+</H3>
+</CENTER>
+
+<P>
+These years, which immediately preceded the appearance of Gorki, form
+part of the most gloomy period of modern Russian history.  Blackest
+reaction followed the desperate struggles of the Nihilists in the
+Seventies in all departments.  At the threshold of the Century stalked
+the spectre of regicide, to which Alexander II. was the doomed
+victim&#8230; and over the future hovered the grim figure which banished
+its thousands and ten thousands of gifted young intellectuals to
+Siberia.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+This period accordingly corresponded with a definite moral
+retrogression in the ethical condition of the Russian people.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There was a necessary reflection of it in the literature.  This era
+produced nothing of inspired or reformatory force.  A profound
+pessimism stifled all originality.  Korolenko alone, who was living
+during the greater part of this time as a political prisoner in distant
+Yakutsk, where he did not imbibe the untoward influences of the
+reaction, remained unmoved and strong.  Anton Chekhov, too, survived
+the gloomy years, and grew beyond them.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+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&mdash;for
+the reforms that never come.  His men are helpless.  They say indeed:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No, one cannot live like this.  Life under these conditions is
+impossible."  But they never rouse themselves to any act of
+emancipation.  They founder on existence and its crushing tyranny.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+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.  He
+was, however, so finely organised that his brain responded to all the
+notes of his epoch, and he only emancipated himself by giving them out
+again in his works of art.  And so his "Sea-Gull," "Uncle Vanja," and
+other dramas, novels, and stories portray the blighted, hopeless,
+degenerate men of his day, his country, and its woes&#8230; like the
+productions of many others who worked alongside of him, but did not
+attain the same heights of imagination.
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+Such was the state of Russian Literature and Russian Society at the
+time of Maxim Gorki's appearance.  He stands for the new and virile
+element, for which the reforms of the Sixties had been the preparation.
+These reforms, one-sided and imperfect as they may have been, had none
+the less sufficed to create new economic conditions.  On the one hand,
+a well-to-do middle-class, recruited almost entirely from
+non-aristocratic strata, sprang up; on the other, an industrial
+proletariat.  Maxim Gorki emerged from this environment: and as a
+phenomenon he is explained by this essentially modern antithesis.  He
+flung himself into the literary movement in full consciousness of his
+social standing.  And it was just this self-consciousness, which
+stamped him as a personality, that accounted for his extraordinary
+success.  It was obvious that, as one of a new and aspiring class, a
+class that once more cherished ideal aims and was not content with
+actual forms of existence, Gorki, the proletaire and railway-hand,
+would not disavow Life, but would affirm it, affirm it with all the
+force of his heart and lungs.
+</P>
+
+<A NAME="img-024"></A>
+<CENTER>
+<IMG CLASS="imgcenter" SRC="images/img-024.jpg" ALT="Tartar day-labourer (_After a sketch by Gorki_)" BORDER="2" WIDTH="412" HEIGHT="544">
+<H3 CLASS="h3center" STYLE="width: 412px">
+Tartar day-labourer (<I>After a sketch by Gorki</I>)
+</H3>
+</CENTER>
+
+<P>
+And it is to this new note that he is indebted for his influence.
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+Gorki, or to give him his real name, Alexei Maximovich Pjeschkov, was
+born on March 14, 1868, in Nijni Novgorod.  His mother Varvara was the
+daughter of a rich dyer.  His father, however, was only a poor
+upholsterer, and on this account Varvara was disinherited by her
+father; but she held steadfast to her love.  Little Maxim was bereft of
+his parents at an early age.  When he was three he was attacked by the
+cholera, which at the same time carried off his father.  His mother
+died in his ninth year, after a second marriage, a victim to phthisis.
+Thus Gorki was left an orphan.  His stern grandfather now took charge
+of him.  According to the Russian custom he was early apprenticed to a
+cobbler.  But here misfortune befell him.  He scalded himself with
+boiling water, and the foreman sent him home to his grandfather.
+Before this he had been to school for a short time; but as he
+contracted small-pox he had to give up his schooling.  And that, to his
+own satisfaction, was the end of his education.  He was no hand at
+learning.  Nor did he find much pleasure in the Psalms in which his
+grandfather instructed him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As soon as he had recovered from the accident at the shoemaker's, he
+was placed with a designer and painter of ikons.  But "here he could
+not get on"; his master treated him too harshly, and his pluck failed
+him.  This time he found himself a place, and succeeded in getting on
+board one of the Volga steamboats as a scullion.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And now for the first time he met kindly, good-natured people.  The
+cook Smuriy was delighted with the intelligent lad and tried to impart
+to him all that he knew himself.  He was a great lover of books.  And
+the boy was charmed to find that any one who was good-tempered could
+have relations with letters.  He began to consider a book in a new
+light, and took pleasure in reading, which he had formerly loathed.
+The two friends read Gogol and the Legends of the Saints in their
+leisure hours in a corner of the deck, with the boundless steppes of
+the Volga before them, lapped by the music of the waves that plashed
+against the sides of the vessel.  In addition, the boy read all that
+fell into his hands.  Along with the true classics he fed his mind upon
+the works of unknown authors and the play-books hawked about by
+travelling pedlars.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+All this aroused a passionate, overpowering thirst for art and
+knowledge in Gorki when he was about fifteen.  Without a notion of how
+he was to be clothed and fed during his student life he betook himself
+to Kasan to study.  His rash hopes soon foundered.  He had, as he
+expressed it, no money to buy knowledge.  And instead of attending the
+Schools he went into a biscuit-factory.  The three roubles (then
+5<I>s.</I>), which was his monthly salary, earned him a scanty living by an
+eighteen-hour day.  Gorki soon gave up this task, which was too
+exhausting for him.  He lived about on the river and in the harbour,
+working at casual jobs as a sawyer or porter.  At this time he had no
+roof, and was forced to live in the society of the derelicts.  What
+Gorki must have suffered in this company, during his struggle for the
+bare means of subsistence, may be imagined&mdash;he sounded the lowest
+depths of human life, and fell into the blackest abysses.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+With the best will, and with all his energies, he was unable to attain
+any prospect of brighter days, and sank deeper and deeper into the
+existence of the castaway.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+In his twentieth year he gave up the struggle.  Life seemed to him
+devoid of value, and he attempted suicide.  The ball from the revolver
+entered his lung without killing him, and the surgeon managed to
+extract it.  Gorki was ill for some time after this event, and when he
+recovered set about finding new work.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He became a fruit-vendor, as before reading all kinds of scientific and
+literary works with avidity.  But this profession brought him no
+farther than the rest.  He then went to Karazin as signalman and
+operative in the railway works.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+However, he made no long stay on the railway.  In 1890 he was obliged
+to present himself at Nijni Novgorod, his native place, for the
+military conscription.  He was not, however, enrolled on account of the
+wound that remained from his attempt at suicide.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+In Nijni Novgorod he became acquainted with certain members of the
+educated classes.  At first he wandered up and down selling beer and
+kvass&mdash;filling the cups of all who wished to drink.&#8230;  But he was
+driven to fare forth again, and again took up the life of a vagrant and
+a toper.  In Odessa he found occupation in the harbour and the
+salt-works.  Then he wandered through Besserabia, the Crimea, the
+Kuban, and eventually reached the Caucasus.  At Tiflis he worked in the
+railway sheds.  Here he once more foregathered with educated people,
+particularly with some young Armenians.  His personality and already
+remarkable mental equipment secured him their friendship.  A derelict
+student, whom he afterwards described under the name of Alexander
+Kaluschny, taught him to write and cypher.  He gave keen attention to
+the physical states of an insane friend, who was full of the
+Regeneration of Mankind, and entered his observations in his note-book.
+Gorki possesses a vast number of these note-books, in which he has
+written down his impressions.  At this period he was also studying the
+great poets, Shakespeare, Goethe, Byron.  Most of all he admired
+Manfred, who dominated the Elements and Ahriman.  Everything out of the
+common inspired him.
+</P>
+
+<A NAME="img-030"></A>
+<CENTER>
+<IMG CLASS="imgcenter" SRC="images/img-030.jpg" ALT="Tramps--the seated figure is the original of Luka (_After a sketch by Gorki_)" BORDER="2" WIDTH="416" HEIGHT="597">
+<H3 CLASS="h3center" STYLE="width: 416px">
+Tramps&mdash;the seated figure is the original of Luka (<I>After a sketch by Gorki</I>)
+</H3>
+</CENTER>
+
+<P>
+It was at this time that he began to do literary work, in the utmost
+secrecy.  His story, "Makar Chudra," appeared in 1893 in the Caucasian
+journal <I>Kavkas</I>, but he was as yet unable to make his living by
+intellectual pursuits, and was still compelled to be
+Jack-of-all-trades.  It occurred to him to muster a travelling company.
+He strapped up a small bundle and sallied forth.  By April he had
+enlisted others of like mind.  A woman and five men presented
+themselves.  The troup increased on the way&#8230; but Gorki had to dree
+his weird alone, and returned to Nijni Novgorod.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A fortunate accident brought him into relation with the lawyer Lanin, a
+true friend to modern literature, who was not slow to appreciate the
+talent that had found its way to his bureau, and occupied himself most
+generously with the education of the young writer.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Gorki now wrote his first long story.  Various friends of literature
+soon began to take notice of him.  They sent him to the famous Vladimir
+Korolenko, who was then living in Nijni Novgorod, and editing the
+paper, <I>Russkoe Bogatstvo</I>.  Korolenko was much interested in Gorki,
+but was unable at that time to offer the young writer any remunerative
+work.  Gorki was obliged to eke out his living by contributing to small
+provincial papers.  He shared the same fate as so many of his fellow
+journalists.  None of the editors offered any sort of honorarium, but
+simply returned his contributions, when, as happened with one of the
+Odessa journals, he asked three kopecks a line from it.  This same
+paper, however, commissioned him to write a report of the World's Fair
+at Nijni Novgorod in the year 1896.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Gorki gladly agreed, and his reports excited general attention.  But
+they were shockingly remunerated, and he was forced to live under such
+wretched conditions that his lungs became affected.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Korolenko now exerted himself seriously on Gorki's behalf.  And the
+advocacy of a power in the literary world effected what all his highly
+characteristic achievements had not accomplished for him.  It made him
+known and desirable.  New journals enlisted him as a permanent
+colleague on their staff.  Henceforward existence was no concern to the
+literary vagabond, who on his own showing had had four teachers: the
+cook on the Volga steamer, the advocate Lanin, the idler whom he
+describes in Kaluschny, and Korolenko.
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+Seldom is it the case that an author comes to his own as early as
+Gorki.  This was undoubtedly due to the courageous manner in which he
+struck out into the social currents that were agitating his country.
+And the rapid impression he made was due as much to the peculiar
+conditions of the Russian Empire as to his own talent.  There, where
+there can be no public expression of schemes for the future, no open
+desire for self-development, Art is always the realisation of greater
+hopes than it can be where a free path has already been laid down.  And
+it is thus that men like Gorki can exert an overwhelming influence
+which is absolutely inconceivable to other nationalities.  It is not
+merely the result of their artistic temperament.  It derives at least
+as strongly from their significance to Humanity, their effect upon
+culture, their aggressive energy.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+On the other hand, it would be a perversion to ascribe the success of
+such individuals to circumstances alone, and to what they say, and the
+inflexible virile courage with which they say it.  Talent, genius, the
+why and wherefore, are all factors.  In Russia there are not a few who
+share the experiences and insight of Gorki.  But they lack means of
+expression; they are wanting in executive ability.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Not that many capable men are not also on the scene at present.  But
+maybe they are not the "whole man," who puts the matter together,
+without fear or ruth, as Gorki has done so often.
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+<HR WIDTH="100%" ALIGN="center">
+<BR>
+
+<BR>
+
+<A NAME="img-034"></A>
+<CENTER>
+<IMG CLASS="imgcenter" SRC="images/img-034.jpg" ALT="A page from Gorki's last work (_Transcribed and forwarded by the author to Hans Ostwald_)" BORDER="2" WIDTH="438" HEIGHT="514">
+<H3 CLASS="h3center" STYLE="width: 438px">
+A page from Gorki's last work (<I>Transcribed and forwarded by the author to Hans Ostwald</I>)
+</H3>
+</CENTER>
+
+<BR>
+<HR WIDTH="60%" ALIGN="center">
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+<I>
+"As an implacable foe to all that is mean and paltry in the aspirations
+of Humanity, I demand that every individual who bears a human
+countenance shall really be&mdash;a MAN!"
+</I>
+</P>
+
+<P>
+<I>
+"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."
+</I>
+</P>
+
+<P>
+<I>
+From "Man."  By Maxim Gorki.
+</I>
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+<HR WIDTH="100%" ALIGN="center">
+<BR>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+It is vain for Maximovich Pjeschkov not to term himself <I>Gorki</I>, the
+"Bitter One."  He opposes a new Kingdom of Heroes in contrast to the
+old hero-world, to the great strategists and wholesale butchers.
+Bluebeard and Toggenburg, Richard Coeur-de-Lion&mdash;what are these bloody
+tyrants for us of to-day?  It is impossible to resuscitate them as they
+were of old.  They were,&mdash;and have become a form, in which the
+exuberant and universal Essence of Life no longer embodies itself.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But&#8230; we must have our Heroes still; heroes who master their lives
+after their own fashion, and who are the conquerors of fate.  We cry
+out for men who are able to transcend the pettiness of every day, who
+despise it, and calmly live beyond it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And Gorki steps forward with the revelation of the often misrepresented
+Destitutes&mdash;or the homeless and hearthless&mdash;who are despised, rejected,
+and abused.  And he makes us know them for heroes, conquerors,
+adventurers.  Not all, indeed, but many of them.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+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.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Here we have the New Romance.  Here is no bygone ideal newly decked and
+dressed out, trimmed up with fresh finery.  It is the men of our own
+time who are described.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Whether other nations will accept such heroes in fulfilment of their
+romantic aspirations may be questioned.  It seems very doubtful.  The
+"Doss-house" is for the most part too strong for a provincial public,
+too agitating, too revolutionary.  The Germans, for example, have not
+the deep religious feeling of the Russian, for whom each individual is
+a fellow sinner, a brother to be saved.  Nor have they as yet attained
+to that further religious sense which sees in every man a sinless soul,
+requiring no redemption.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+To us, therefore, Gorki's "creatures that once were men" appear strange
+and abnormal types.  The principal figure is the ex-captain and present
+keeper of the shelter, the former owner of a servant's registry and
+printing works&mdash;Aristides Kuvalda.  He has failed to regulate his life,
+and is the leader and boon companion of a strange band.  His best
+friend is a derelict schoolmaster, who earns a very fair income as a
+newspaper reporter.  But what is money to a man of this type?  He
+sallies forth, buys fruit and sweetmeats and good food with half his
+earnings, collects all the children of the alley in which Kuvalda's
+refuge is situated, and treats them down by the river with these
+delicacies.  He lends the best part of his remaining funds to his
+friends, and the rest goes in vodka and his keep at the doss-house.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Other wastrels of the same type lodge with Kuvalda.  They are all men
+who have been something.  And so Gorki calls them <I>Bivshiye lyudi</I>,
+which may be literally translated "the Men Who Have Been" ("Creatures
+that once were Men ").
+</P>
+
+<P>
+To our taste the story is too discursive and long-winded.  The
+prolonged introductory descriptions, the too exact and minute
+particularities of external detail, especially in regard to persons,
+destroy the sharp edge of the impression, and obliterate its
+characteristics.  It would have been clearer with fewer words.  Honesty
+bids us recognise a certain incapacity for self-restraint in Gorki.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+This, however, is a trifle compared with the vivid, impersonal
+descriptions of the conduct of the derelicts&mdash;illuminated by the heroic
+deed of Kuvalda, as by an unquenchable star.  Kuvalda loses his
+mainstay when his comrade, the schoolmaster, dies.  He is enraged at
+the brutal treatment meted out to him and to the other inhabitants of
+the slum by the Officials of the City and the Government.  He embroils
+himself with ill-concealed purpose with his deadly enemy the merchant
+Petunikov and insults the police.  His object is gained.  He is beaten,
+and led away to prison.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Unfortunately Gorki endows his characters with too elevated a
+philosophy.  He pours his own wine into their bottles.  Vagabonds and
+tramps do often indeed possess a profound knowledge of life peculiar to
+themselves, and a store of worldly wisdom.  But they express it more
+unconsciously, more instinctively, less sentimentally, than Gorki.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+From the artistic point of view this ground-note of pathos is an
+abiding defect in Gorki.  He is lacking in the limpid clarity of sheer
+light-heartedness.  Humour he has indeed.  But his humour is bitter as
+gall, and corrosive as sulphuric acid.  "Kain and Artem" may be cited
+as an instance.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Kain is a poor little Jewish pedlar.  Artem, the handsome, strong, but
+corrupt lover of the huckstress, is tended by him when he has been
+half-killed by envious and revengeful rivals.  In return for this
+nursing, and for his rescue from need and misery, Artem protects the
+despised and persecuted Kain.  But he has grown weary of
+gratitude&mdash;gratitude to the weak being ever a burden to strong men.
+And the lion drives away the imploring mouse, that saved him once from
+the nets that held him captive&mdash;and falls asleep smiling.
+</P>
+
+<A NAME="img-040"></A>
+<CENTER>
+<IMG CLASS="imgcenter" SRC="images/img-040.jpg" ALT="The bare-footed brigade on the Volga-quay, and Nijni Novgorod (_After a sketch by Gorki_)" BORDER="2" WIDTH="411" HEIGHT="568">
+<H3 CLASS="h3center" STYLE="width: 411px">
+The bare-footed brigade on the Volga-quay, and Nijni Novgorod (<I>After a sketch by Gorki</I>)
+</H3>
+</CENTER>
+
+<P>
+This sombre temperament determines the catastrophe of the other
+stories.  They almost invariably close in the sullen gloom of a wet
+March evening, when we wonder afresh if the Spring is really coming.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+In "Creatures that once were Men," Gorki's sinister experience and
+pathos are essential factors in the accusing symbolism.  He relates in
+the unpretending style of a chronicler how the corpulent citizens
+reside on the hill-tops, amid well-tended gardens.  When it rains the
+whole refuse of the upper town streams into the slums.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap02"></A>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P CLASS="intro">
+The new romance; Sentiment and humour; Russian middle class; The man of
+the future; Descriptions of nature; Superfluity of detail; The Russian
+proletaire; Psychology of murder; Artistic inaccuracy; Moujik and
+outcast; A poet's idealism.
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+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.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It is a world of heroes, of most romantic heroes, that Gorki delineates
+for us.  But the romance is not after the recipes of the old novelists:
+ancient, mystic, seeking its ideals in the remote past.  This is
+living, actual romance.  Even though some of Gorki's heroes founder
+like the heroes of bygone epochs of literature upon their weakness,
+more of the "Bitter One's" characters are shipwrecked on a deed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And it is this reckless parade and apotheosis of such men of action
+that accounts for Gorki's huge success in comparison with many another,
+and with the writers of the preceding generation.  It is for this that
+the young minds of his native country rally round him&mdash;the country that
+is loaded with clanking fetters.
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+Gorki is dominated by a characteristic passion for strong, abnormal
+men.  This type reappears in almost all his narratives.  Here it is old
+Isergil, whose Odyssey of Love swells to saga-like magnitude.  There we
+find the bold and fearless smuggler Chelkash, in the story of that
+name.  Now it is the brazen, wanton, devoted Malva, who prefers the
+grown man to the inexperienced youth.  Anon, the red Vaska, boots and
+janitor of the brothel.  And there are numbers of other such titans.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Unfortunately Gorki endows many of them with a vein of sentimentality,
+on which account his works are compared with those of Auerbach, in
+certain, more particularly in the aesthetic, Russian circles&nbsp;&#8230; a
+reproach that is only partially justified.  Emelyan, <I>e.g.</I>, is a
+notorious and professional robber.  He sallies forth to attack and
+plunder a merchant in the night.  But he encounters a young girl of
+good social position on the bridge which he has chosen for the scene of
+his attack.  She intends to make away with herself.  And in talking to
+her he forgets everything else; she moves him so profoundly that he
+dissuades her from suicide and takes her back to her parents.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Despite its rank improbability and sentimental character this tale has
+a fine humour of its own.  And there is, in particular, one sketch that
+is steeped in humour.  This is the "Story of the Silver Clasp."  Three
+casual labourers break into an old factory and steal a silver clasp.
+One of them relinquishes his share and takes back the clasp.  And all
+the thanks he gets is a rating from the old housekeeper.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+These, of course, are only accessory productions, artistic enough, but
+of a lighter character.  Many of the tales unfortunately suffer from a
+hackneyed use of situations, materials, and ideas, suggestive of the
+hack writer.  Gorki's cheap sentiment, and maudlin pity, often result
+in clap-trap and padding which are foreign to the artist proper.  But
+this is the effect of his predilection for individuals of forcible
+character.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+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.
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+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"&nbsp;&#8230; a sympathetic figure, even if he be something
+of a braggart.  Nil, who is almost the only cheerful and courageous man
+amid a handful of weaklings and degenerates, says:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"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.  And I shall endeavour with all the forces of my soul to
+be steadfast to my inward promptings: to push my way into the densest
+parts of life, to knead it hither and thither, to hinder some, to help
+on others.  It is <I>this</I> that is the joy of life!"&nbsp;&#8230;
+</P>
+
+<A NAME="img-046"></A>
+<CENTER>
+<IMG CLASS="imgcenter" SRC="images/img-046.jpg" ALT="Love-scene between Polja and Nil (_Act III. of &quot;The Bezemenovs&quot;_)" BORDER="2" WIDTH="391" HEIGHT="556">
+<H3 CLASS="h3center" STYLE="width: 391px">
+Love-scene between Polja and Nil (<I>Act III. of &quot;The Bezemenovs&quot;</I>)
+</H3>
+</CENTER>
+
+<P>
+Words like these were bound to have a stimulating and invigorating
+effect after the despondency of the preceding epoch.  This new spirit,
+this new man, gripped his contemporaries in full force.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The result would undoubtedly have been even more striking if Gorki's
+heroes were not invariably tainted with vestiges of the old order.
+They are, indeed, men of action.  A totally different life pulsates in
+Gorki's works; we are confronted with far more virile characters than
+in the works of other Russian authors.  Even the engine driver Nil,
+however, fails to relieve any one of the sufferers from his troubles.
+He removes Polja confidently enough from her surroundings&mdash;but only
+leaves the greater darkness behind him.  Even he is as yet unable to
+transform the conditions of life&mdash;and he is therefore stigmatised by a
+little of the Russian bluster.
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+"The House of the Bezemenovs" ("The Tradespeople"), Gorki's first
+dramatic work, describes the eternal conflict between sons and fathers.
+The narrow limitations of Russian commercial life, its <I>borné</I>
+arrogance, its weakness and pettiness, are painted in grim, grey
+touches.  The children of the tradesman Bezemenov may pine for other
+shores, where more kindly flowers bloom and scent the air.  But they
+are not strong enough to emancipate themselves.  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.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It is refreshing to come upon the other characters, who are of a
+different breed to these shop-keepers.  The vodka-loving, jolly father
+of Polja (Bezemenov's niece, who is exploited and maltreated in this
+house), is, in his contented yet sentimental egoism, a true
+representative of the ordinary Russian, the common man.  And Polja!
+And Nil!&#8230;  Here is the fresh blood of the future.  How sure they
+both are in their love.  "Ah! what a beautiful world it is, isn't it?
+Wondrously beautiful&nbsp;&#8230; dear friend.&#8230;  What a glorious man you
+are.&#8230;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Albeit this work is far from being a finished drama, it none the less
+has its special qualities.  These men often talk as glibly as if they
+were essayists, they often seem to be mere vehicles for programmatic
+manifestoes.  But as a whole they are the typical quintessence of the
+Russian people.
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+Other wild and intrepid figures are to be found in the larger works
+that precede "The Tradespeople"&mdash;the novels "Foma Gordeyev" and "Three
+Men."  But Gorki's new conception of life is less clearly and broadly
+formulated in these than in Nil, and other subsequent characters.
+These people rather collapse from the superabundance of their vigour
+and the meanness of their surroundings.
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+In "Foma Gordeyev" 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.
+</P>
+
+<A NAME="img-050"></A>
+<CENTER>
+<IMG CLASS="imgcenter" SRC="images/img-050.jpg" ALT="Gambling scene (_Act II. of &quot;The Doss-house&quot;_)" BORDER="2" WIDTH="530" HEIGHT="346">
+<H3 CLASS="h3center" STYLE="width: 530px">
+Gambling scene (<I>Act II. of &quot;The Doss-house&quot;</I>)
+</H3>
+</CENTER>
+
+<P>
+Despite its agonies and martyrdoms, however, there is one marvellously
+inspiring feature about this novel,&mdash;its gorgeous descriptions of
+Nature, rich in life and colour.  "Foma Gordeyev" is the romance of
+life on the Volga.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+With what intimacy, familiarity, and heart-felt emotion Gorki here
+describes and sees!  The great River, with its diversified
+characteristics, its ominous events, mingles with the life of Man, and
+flows on past us.&#8230;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It is this characteristic union of the Human-All-Too-Human with his
+impressions of Nature in so many of Gorki's works, that makes them at
+the outset desirable and readable to a large proportion of his public.
+Much of his description of life beyond the social pale would be
+repulsive if it were not for this interpretative nature-painting.
+Especially would this be the case in "Malva."  This robust,
+free-loving, and free-living maiden attracts us by her vigorous
+participation in Nature, when, for instance, she leaps into the water,
+and sports in the element like a fish.
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+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.  He has evolved some significant
+prose-poems from the life of Nature, and the contest of her forces.
+While the sketch, "Spring Voices," is a satire, bristling with tangible
+darts and stings, "The Bursting of the Dam" expresses the full force
+that rages and battles in a stormy sea.  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.  The winds and
+tempests join in a colossal attack upon the unyielding barriers, and
+the rocks are shivered in fragments.
+</P>
+
+<A NAME="img-052"></A>
+<CENTER>
+<IMG CLASS="imgcenter" SRC="images/img-052.jpg" ALT="A confabulation (_Act II. of &quot;The Doss-house&quot;_)" BORDER="2" WIDTH="534" HEIGHT="461">
+<H3 CLASS="h3center" STYLE="width: 534px">
+A confabulation (<I>Act II. of &quot;The Doss-house&quot;</I>)
+</H3>
+</CENTER>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+Quite different again is the romance entitled "Three Men" (or "Three of
+Them").  The tales and sketches published prior to this work were
+merely founded on episodes, catastrophes, or descriptive passages from
+the author's rich store of material.  They certainly conveyed the
+essence of the life of his characters.  They disclosed the axis of
+these people's existence.  But they are seldom free from a certain
+tiresome impressionism&mdash;and often make quite undue pretensions.  The
+didactic is too obvious.  Gorki is not always satisfied with saying,
+here is a bit of life.  He tries to put in a little wisdom.  His form
+is seldom clear and conclusive.  His tales are overladen with detail
+and superfluity of minute description.  In Germany, Gorki owes much to
+his translators.  This is more especially obvious in the scholarly
+translation by August Scholz of "Makar Chudra," Gorki's first published
+work.  At first Scholz only produced a portion of this story.  Later
+on, when all that Gorki had written had its importance, and his
+commercial success was established, the whole of "Makar," which is by
+no means free from obscurities, was translated.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+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.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+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.  The aspiring proletaire, be he peasant or
+child of the artisan, is for the most part done to death with light
+laughter.  In this the unjustified arrogance of the academic classes
+expresses itself too frequently.  Too often they discover only the
+comic element in the men who have emerged from the ranks, and who,
+while gifted with uncommon energy and intelligence, can neither choose
+nor be chosen for any of the cultured professions.  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
+<I>parvenus</I> 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.  Nor do they perceive that these aspirants possess much that
+is lacking in themselves&mdash;and that not particularly to their credit.
+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.  And so he strives,
+and strives again, for purity&mdash;and falls the deeper in the mire.
+</P>
+
+<A NAME="img-056"></A>
+<CENTER>
+<IMG CLASS="imgcenter" SRC="images/img-056.jpg" ALT="Concluding scene (_Act III. of &quot;The Doss-house&quot;_)" BORDER="2" WIDTH="530" HEIGHT="365">
+<H3 CLASS="h3center" STYLE="width: 530px">
+Concluding scene (<I>Act III. of &quot;The Doss-house&quot;</I>)
+</H3>
+</CENTER>
+
+<P>
+Few writers share the happy recklessness peculiar to Gorki.  He is free
+from false modesty, like his young moujik, who is compelled by his
+desire for purity&mdash;not by any conventional remorse&mdash;to proclaim his
+relations with his landlady and commercial partner, the shopkeeper's
+wife, before all their acquaintances, at one of her entertainments&mdash;and
+also to announce himself as the murderer of the old money-lender.  Nor
+is it the guilty sense of Raskolnikov that impels this moujik to
+confession and reparation.  It is his repugnance for the men in
+contrast with whom he stands out as an ideal and promising figure.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And it is here that Gorki seems to us almost to surpass Dostoevsky.
+Raskolnikov is a murderer on theory, a penitent out of weakness.
+Gorki's murderer, however, kills from inward compulsion.  His act, his
+acknowledgment of it, all is sheer naïve necessity.  Here is a man who
+feels no compunction for having crushed a worm.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Who, in last resort, is the man that repents his deeds?  Of all the
+criminals we have encountered in doss-houses, shelters, and
+labour-colonies, scarce a single one.  And the deed came nearly always
+like a flash from the blue.  Implacable, dire, and for the most part
+unconscious compulsion, but no premeditated volition, drove them to it.
+And here Gorki is a true creator, even if as artist he ranks below
+Dostoevsky.
+</P>
+
+<A NAME="img-058"></A>
+<CENTER>
+<IMG CLASS="imgcenter" SRC="images/img-058.jpg" ALT="The actor (_From &quot;The Doss-house&quot;_)" BORDER="2" WIDTH="412" HEIGHT="549">
+<H3 CLASS="h3center" STYLE="width: 412px">
+The actor (<I>From &quot;The Doss-house&quot;</I>)
+</H3>
+</CENTER>
+
+<P>
+The characterisation of the men is beyond reproach.  Each has his
+purpose, and bears upon the murderer: the women, however, are not
+wholly satisfactory.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+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.  One of the prostitutes bewails her
+wasted life.  Another craves to share all the sufferings of the man who
+has committed murder for her sake.  A third is possessed with a sudden
+passion for truth.  And that in the Justice Room, though she knows that
+her lover, sitting opposite her, is doomed if she deserts him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+At this point Gorki seems, indeed, to have deliberately abjured his
+intimate knowledge of certain classes of the community.  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.  It cuts away the last prop beneath the undermined dam.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And yet it first arouses our suspicion of the probity and reality of
+Gorki's types.  Why should he be so emotional in some places while in
+others he can be so hard and harsh?  He has not yet arrived at
+representation without prejudice.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And then we ask: "How far can his characterisations in general be
+accepted?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Gorki often sacrifices probability to polemics.  Too often he is merely
+the emotional controversialist.  Bias and Life are with him not always
+welded into the harmonious whole, which one is entitled to claim from
+the genuine artist.
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+To the Teutonic mind the individual works of Gorki, <I>e.g.</I>, the novel,
+"Three Men," still appear gloomy and sombre.  As a whole, too, they
+affect us sadly; they are oppressive.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+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&mdash;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.  This rustic is a contemptible creature.  His
+avarice prompts him to fall on the smuggler and murder him for the sake
+of his gold pieces.  The wounded Chelkash flings the money at him
+contemptuously.  Gorki portrays the much-belauded moujik as a pitiable
+money-grubber, a detestable associate, who loses all higher motives in
+his struggle for the means of existence.
+</P>
+
+<A NAME="img-062"></A>
+<CENTER>
+<IMG CLASS="imgcenter" SRC="images/img-062.jpg" ALT="Vasilissa (_Keeper of the &quot;Doss-house&quot;_)" BORDER="2" WIDTH="415" HEIGHT="554">
+<H3 CLASS="h3center" STYLE="width: 415px">
+Vasilissa (<I>Keeper of the &quot;Doss-house&quot;</I>)
+</H3>
+</CENTER>
+
+<P>
+This, at any rate, is Gorki's belief: it is neither the householders
+nor the peasants who are the custodians and promoters of what is human
+and noble.  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.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap03"></A>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P CLASS="intro">
+Scenes from the Abysses; The new gospel; Gorki's defects; Truth or
+sentimentality; The new Russia; Future development.
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+The men of the "Doss-house" are again of this type.  They live in the
+recesses of a horrible cellar, a derelict Baron, a former convict, a
+public prostitute, and more of the same "cattle."  One man who lodges
+there with his wife is pilloried, because as a worker he stands apart
+from them:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'I am a man who works!'&mdash;as if the rest of us were less than he!  Work
+away if it makes you happier!&mdash;why be so cock-a-hoop about it?  If men
+are to be valued for their work, a horse would count for more than a
+man&mdash;at least it draws the cart&nbsp;&#8230; and holds its tongue about it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And as they speak, so they live.  They are all destitute; but they
+content themselves with carrying on a sort of guerilla warfare against
+the householders.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And yet for some of them this life of brawls and vodka, of theft and
+mendicancy, is a very hell.  Especially for the thief Pepel.  He would
+gladly rise to a purer life.  Alone, he is not strong enough.
+But&mdash;with Natasha.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+This Natasha is the sister of the woman who keeps the shelter, and who
+herself has relations with Pepel, and does not intend to let him slip
+through her fingers.  She even wishes him to make away with her husband
+in order that she may live undisturbed with the thief.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+This is repulsive to Pepel.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+At this crisis the wanderer Luka makes his appearance.  He wants to
+help every one.  He is the apostle of goodness and humanity.  He finds
+a tender word for the dying wife of the locksmith.  He talks to the
+drunken actor about a Reformatory, where he can be cured of his
+propensity for drinking.  And he counsels Natasha to fly with Pepel
+from these depths of iniquity.  The keeper of the refuge hears this.
+She torments her sister, and almost does her to death, with her
+husband's assistance.  Pepel is off his head with rage, and actually
+fulfils the woman's wishes, by murdering her husband.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She is triumphant.  And the wayfarer vanishes.  In the last Act the
+other wastrels are collected together.  They are trying to clear up
+their ideas of themselves, and of the world.  One tells how the
+wanderer thought the world existed only for the fittest&mdash;as in the
+carpentering trade.  All live&mdash;and work&mdash;and of a sudden comes one who
+pushes the whole business forward by ten years.
+</P>
+
+<A NAME="img-066"></A>
+<CENTER>
+<IMG CLASS="imgcenter" SRC="images/img-066.jpg" ALT="Nastja (_Servant in &quot;The Doss-house&quot;_)" BORDER="2" WIDTH="399" HEIGHT="552">
+<H3 CLASS="h3center" STYLE="width: 399px">
+Nastja (<I>Servant in &quot;The Doss-house&quot;</I>)
+</H3>
+</CENTER>
+
+<P>
+"Man is the reality&nbsp;&#8230;  Man who alone is really great&nbsp;&#8230;  All is
+in Man, all is for Man.&#8230;  To the health of Man!" is the toast of
+the former convict Satin.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Be Men!" is the new watchword for Russia.  And thus for Russians the
+"Doss-house" came as a gospel, although Gorki has not yet wrought his
+materials into the supreme conflict that must result in a really great
+tragedy.  "The Doss-house" is not that tragedy.  It presents no titanic
+action, no mighty fate, no clashing shock to reveal the battle of the
+great natural tendencies in Man, and give an immeasurable lift to our
+conceptions of existence.  There is still something that oppresses
+us&mdash;there is too much puling and complaint.  Criticism as a whole has
+been deceived by the resounding and pathetic words which it has
+accepted as a profound philosophy.  Philosophy, however, is for the
+study, not the stage.  Our great philosophers have said all that Gorki
+has put into the mouth of his outcasts, and said it far more forcibly.
+His observations on the dignity of Man are his only original and
+impressive contributions.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The critics have gone astray in another direction also.  They have
+insisted on the great compassion that radiates from the piece, as
+embodied in Luka, the wanderer, and have commended this pillar of light
+and salvation.  And they have completely overlooked the fact that it is
+he who is responsible for most of the misfortunes.  In last resort Luka
+brings help to no one, but only succeeds in embroiling the situation,
+and accelerating the catastrophe.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Gorki undoubtedly intended to describe a luminary.  But he failed to
+carry out his purpose consistently.  In spite of himself this apostle
+is unable to effect any good, too often does just the contrary.  The
+action of this character reminds us of Gregor Werle in Ibsen's "Wild
+Duck."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+From the purely technical standpoint, moreover, "The Doss-house" is
+full of defects.  The great catastrophe is brought about by
+eavesdropping.  As in the worst melodrama, the <I>intrigante</I> of the
+piece, the lodging-house keeper and mistress of the thief, appears in
+the background just at the most critical point of the confabulation
+between Pepel and his allies, and the vagrant Luka.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A great work of art should scorn such cheap expedients.  Nor are the
+whining descriptions given by several of the castaways of their mode of
+existence, properly speaking, dramatic; they only induce false sympathy.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The same capital fault is evident in Gorki's other productions.  We
+have already touched on the defects of "Three Men."  In "The
+Doss-house" again, our author has struck several wrong chords in his
+characterisation.  He has failed to present the tragedy of the
+derelicts; nor has he in one single instance given a correct artistic
+picture of the occupants of the shelter.  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.  The baron replies: "I am aware
+that I have already sunk deeper than you whereever this is possible."
+And it is only after a pause that the thief is able to reply: "You have
+confounded me, Baron."
+</P>
+
+<A NAME="img-070"></A>
+<CENTER>
+<IMG CLASS="imgcenter" SRC="images/img-070.jpg" ALT="The baron (_From &quot;The Doss-house&quot;_)" BORDER="2" WIDTH="392" HEIGHT="559">
+<H3 CLASS="h3center" STYLE="width: 392px">
+The baron (<I>From &quot;The Doss-house&quot;</I>)
+</H3>
+</CENTER>
+
+<P>
+This is no speech for men of this type.  Gorki turns himself here into
+a sentimentalist.  The baron should have answered this proposal that he
+should "bark" somewhat as follows: "What will you pay me?  Hum!  What
+can you offer me&mdash;a good place?"  Or suggested him knocking him over
+the head.  Then we should have had a drastic representation of the
+depraved derelicts.  Description is wanted, not sophistry.
+Philosophising and quibbling over personality is a poor expedient, and
+one rejected by first-class writers.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+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.  We want instances of
+corruption, not nice talk about it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+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.  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.  "The Doss-house" had
+an unparalleled success when it was performed at the Klein Theater in
+Berlin.  The splendid staging made a magnificent achievement of the
+"Scenes from the Abysses," which thrilled and held the audience like
+some colossal work of music.  And the human value of the work entitles
+it to rank with the best that has been produced in recent years on the
+farther side of the Vistula.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Gorki has done well to describe the world and the stratum whence he
+emerged, and which he traversed, in his powerful works.  His writings
+expound the New Russia.  He himself is New Russia.  He is the man who
+has overcome all life's obstacles.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And it is he who holds up new, courageous, virile men to his nation,
+men who have faith and will to live.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He is himself profoundly sympathetic.  His works bring him in a large
+annual income.  But he does not hoard it up.  He does not clutch his
+money.  He knows the value of a helping hand.  In his heart, moreover,
+he is averse to open admiration.  This was apparent in his refusal to
+accept the public homage offered him some two years ago in the Art
+Theatre of Moscow.  Gorki was drinking tea at a buffet with Chekhov, at
+a first performance of "Uncle Wanja," when suddenly the two were
+surrounded by a crowd of curious people.  Gorki exclaimed with
+annoyance: "What are you all gaping at?  I am not a <I>prima ballerina</I>,
+nor a Venus of Medici, nor a dead man.  What can there be to interest
+you in the outside of a fellow who writes occasional stories."  The
+Society Journals of Moscow wished to teach Gorki a lesson in manners,
+for having dealt so harshly with the appreciative patrons of the
+theatre.  He replied with the delightful satire: "Of the Author, who
+aimed too high."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+While many critics fall into ecstasies over anything that Gorki writes,
+he himself preserves the just perspective, as in the case of this
+public homage.  No one has spoken as uncompromisingly of his theatrical
+pieces as himself.  That alone proves him to be a clever, critical man.
+But it also shows him to be honourable, talented, and clear-headed.
+How few authors would, if they thought some of their own works of minor
+importance, straightway communicate the fact to their public?
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+<HR WIDTH="100%" ALIGN="center">
+<BR>
+
+<A NAME="img-072"></A>
+<CENTER>
+<IMG CLASS="imgcenter" SRC="images/img-072.jpg" ALT="Letter to Max Reinhardt" BORDER="2" WIDTH="515" HEIGHT="928">
+<H3 CLASS="h3center" STYLE="width: 515px">
+Letter to Max Reinhardt
+</H3>
+</CENTER>
+
+<BR>
+<HR WIDTH="60%" ALIGN="center">
+<BR>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+<I>
+Letter to Herr Max Reinhardt
+</I>
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+<I>
+"To you, dear Sir, and to your Company, I send my portrait.  I must
+apologise for not doing it before, but had no time.  With it I send an
+album of sketches of 'The Doss-house' as performed at the Art Theatre
+in Moscow.  I do this in the hope of simultaneously expressing my
+gratitude to you for your performance of my piece, and of showing how
+closely you and your ensemble succeeded in reproducing Russia proper,
+in your presentation of the types and scenes in my play.  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&mdash;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.
+</I>
+</P>
+
+<P>
+<I>
+"Heartiest greetings to yourself and to your artists.  I greatly regret
+my ignorance of the German language, and am ashamed of it.  If I knew
+German, I could express my sincere thanks to you more plainly.  With
+all my heart I wish you luck and success.
+</I>
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="noindent">
+<I>
+"M. GORKI.
+<BR><BR>
+"NIJNI NOVGOROD,<BR>
+"August 1, 1903."<BR>
+</I>
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+<HR WIDTH="100%" ALIGN="center">
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+Hence we look forward with interest to Gorki's future contributions,
+whether in poetry or drama.  It is significant of the man and his
+intellect that he has not allowed himself to be saddled by the Theatre
+Devil, but presses forward to fresh tasks and aims.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap04"></A>
+
+<H2 ALIGN="center">
+ENGLISH TRANSLATIONS OF GORKI'S WORKS
+</H2>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P CLASS="noindent">
+1.  "The Orloff Couple," "Malva."  Translated by E. Jakowleff and D. B.
+Montefiore (Heinemann), 1901.
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="noindent">
+2.  "Foma Gordyeeff" ("Thomas the Proud.").  Translated by I. F.
+Hapgood (Fisher Unwin), 1901.
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="noindent">
+3.  "Makar Chudra."  <I>Monthly Review</I>, 1901.
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="noindent">
+4.  "The Outcasts," "Waiting for the Ferry," "The Affair of the
+Clasps."  Translated by D. B. Montefiore, E. Jakowleff, and V.
+Volkhovsky (Fisher Unwin), 1902; reprinted 1905.
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="noindent">
+5.  "Three of Them."  Translated by A. Sinden (Fisher Unwin), 1902;
+reprinted 1905.
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="noindent">
+6.  "Three Men." Translated by C. Home, 1902.
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="noindent">
+7.  "Tales from Gorki."
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 3em">In the Steppe.</SPAN><BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 3em">Twenty-six of Us and One Other.</SPAN><BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 3em">One Autumn Night.</SPAN><BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 3em">A Rolling Stone.</SPAN><BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 3em">The Green Kitten.</SPAN><BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 3em">Comrades.</SPAN><BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 3em">Her Lover.</SPAN><BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 3em">Chums.</SPAN><BR>
+Translated by R. Nisbet Bain (Jarrold &amp; Sons), 1902.
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="noindent">
+8.  "Twenty-Six Men and a Girl."
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 3em">My Fellow Traveller.</SPAN><BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 3em">On a Raft.</SPAN><BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 3em">Tschelkasch.</SPAN><BR>
+Translated by E. Jakowleff, D. B. Montefiore, S. K. Michel.  "Greenback
+Library," vol. i. (Duckworth &amp; Co.), 1902.
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="noindent">
+9.  "Song of the Falcon."  Translated by E. J. Dillon, <I>Contemporary
+Review</I>, 1902, and "Maxim Gorky" (Isbister &amp; Co.), 1902.
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="noindent">
+10.  "Creatures that Once were Men" ("The Outcasts").  Translated by J.
+K. M. Shirazi.  Introduction by G. K. Chesterton.  (Alston Rivers),
+1905.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR><BR>
+<hr class="full" noshade>
+
+<p>***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MAXIM GORKI***</p>
+<p>******* This file should be named 22046-h.txt or 22046-h.zip *******</p>
+<p>This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:<br />
+<a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/2/0/4/22046">http://www.gutenberg.org/2/2/0/4/22046</a></p>
+<p>Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
+will be renamed.</p>
+
+<p>Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
+one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
+(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
+permission and without paying copyright royalties.  Special rules,
+set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
+copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
+protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark.  Project
+Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
+charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission.  If you
+do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
+rules is very easy.  You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
+such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
+research.  They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
+practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks.  Redistribution is
+subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
+redistribution.</p>
+
+
+
+<pre>
+*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
+
+THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
+PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
+
+To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
+distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
+(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at
+<a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/license">http://www.gutenberg.org/license)</a>.
+
+
+Section 1.  General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic works
+
+1.A.  By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
+and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
+(trademark/copyright) agreement.  If you do not agree to abide by all
+the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
+all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
+If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
+terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
+entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
+
+1.B.  "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark.  It may only be
+used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
+agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement.  There are a few
+things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+even without complying with the full terms of this agreement.  See
+paragraph 1.C below.  There are a lot of things you can do with Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
+and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.  See paragraph 1.E below.
+
+1.C.  The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"
+or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works.  Nearly all the individual works in the
+collection are in the public domain in the United States.  If an
+individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
+located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
+copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
+works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
+are removed.  Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
+Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
+freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
+this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
+the work.  You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
+keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
+
+1.D.  The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
+what you can do with this work.  Copyright laws in most countries are in
+a constant state of change.  If you are outside the United States, check
+the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
+before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
+creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
+Gutenberg-tm work.  The Foundation makes no representations concerning
+the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
+States.
+
+1.E.  Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
+
+1.E.1.  The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
+access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
+whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
+phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
+copied or distributed:
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+1.E.2.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
+from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
+posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
+and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
+or charges.  If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
+with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the
+work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
+through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
+Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
+1.E.9.
+
+1.E.3.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
+with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
+must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
+terms imposed by the copyright holder.  Additional terms will be linked
+to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
+permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
+
+1.E.4.  Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
+work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
+
+1.E.5.  Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
+electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
+prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
+active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm License.
+
+1.E.6.  You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
+compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
+word processing or hypertext form.  However, if you provide access to or
+distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
+"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version
+posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),
+you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
+copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
+request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other
+form.  Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
+
+1.E.7.  Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
+performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
+unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+
+1.E.8.  You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
+access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
+that
+
+- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
+     the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
+     you already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  The fee is
+     owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
+     has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
+     Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.  Royalty payments
+     must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
+     prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
+     returns.  Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
+     sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
+     address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to
+     the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
+
+- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
+     you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
+     does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+     License.  You must require such a user to return or
+     destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
+     and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
+     Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
+     money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
+     electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
+     of receipt of the work.
+
+- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
+     distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+1.E.9.  If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
+forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
+both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
+Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark.  Contact the
+Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
+
+1.F.
+
+1.F.1.  Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
+effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
+public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
+collection.  Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
+"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
+property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
+computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
+your equipment.
+
+1.F.2.  LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
+of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
+fees.  YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
+LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
+PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3.  YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
+TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
+LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
+INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
+DAMAGE.
+
+1.F.3.  LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
+defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
+receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
+written explanation to the person you received the work from.  If you
+received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
+your written explanation.  The person or entity that provided you with
+the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
+refund.  If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
+providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
+receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund.  If the second copy
+is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
+opportunities to fix the problem.
+
+1.F.4.  Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
+in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS,' WITH NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
+WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
+
+1.F.5.  Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
+warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
+If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
+law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
+interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
+the applicable state law.  The invalidity or unenforceability of any
+provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
+
+1.F.6.  INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
+trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
+providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
+with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
+promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
+harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
+that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
+or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
+work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
+Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
+
+
+Section  2.  Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
+electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
+including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers.  It exists
+because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
+people in all walks of life.
+
+Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
+assistance they need, is critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
+goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
+remain freely available for generations to come.  In 2001, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
+and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
+To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
+and the Foundation web page at http://www.gutenberg.org/fundraising/pglaf.
+
+
+Section 3.  Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
+Foundation
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
+501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
+state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
+Revenue Service.  The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
+number is 64-6221541.  Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
+permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
+
+The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
+Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
+throughout numerous locations.  Its business office is located at
+809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email
+business@pglaf.org.  Email contact links and up to date contact
+information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official
+page at http://www.gutenberg.org/about/contact
+
+For additional contact information:
+     Dr. Gregory B. Newby
+     Chief Executive and Director
+     gbnewby@pglaf.org
+
+Section 4.  Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
+spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
+increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
+freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
+array of equipment including outdated equipment.  Many small donations
+($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
+status with the IRS.
+
+The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
+charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
+States.  Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
+considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
+with these requirements.  We do not solicit donations in locations
+where we have not received written confirmation of compliance.  To
+SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
+particular state visit http://www.gutenberg.org/fundraising/pglaf
+
+While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
+have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
+against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
+approach us with offers to donate.
+
+International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
+any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
+outside the United States.  U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
+
+Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
+methods and addresses.  Donations are accepted in a number of other
+ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations.
+To donate, please visit: http://www.gutenberg.org/fundraising/donate
+
+
+Section 5.  General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.
+
+Professor Michael S. Hart is the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
+concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
+with anyone.  For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project
+Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
+unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we do not necessarily
+keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+Each eBook is in a subdirectory of the same number as the eBook's
+eBook number, often in several formats including plain vanilla ASCII,
+compressed (zipped), HTML and others.
+
+Corrected EDITIONS of our eBooks replace the old file and take over
+the old filename and etext number.  The replaced older file is renamed.
+VERSIONS based on separate sources are treated as new eBooks receiving
+new filenames and etext numbers.
+
+Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
+
+<a href="http://www.gutenberg.org">http://www.gutenberg.org</a>
+
+This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
+including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
+subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
+
+EBooks posted prior to November 2003, with eBook numbers BELOW #10000,
+are filed in directories based on their release date.  If you want to
+download any of these eBooks directly, rather than using the regular
+search system you may utilize the following addresses and just
+download by the etext year.
+
+<a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext06/">http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext06/</a>
+
+    (Or /etext 05, 04, 03, 02, 01, 00, 99,
+     98, 97, 96, 95, 94, 93, 92, 92, 91 or 90)
+
+EBooks posted since November 2003, with etext numbers OVER #10000, are
+filed in a different way.  The year of a release date is no longer part
+of the directory path.  The path is based on the etext number (which is
+identical to the filename).  The path to the file is made up of single
+digits corresponding to all but the last digit in the filename.  For
+example an eBook of filename 10234 would be found at:
+
+http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/0/2/3/10234
+
+or filename 24689 would be found at:
+http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/4/6/8/24689
+
+An alternative method of locating eBooks:
+<a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/GUTINDEX.ALL">http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/GUTINDEX.ALL</a>
+
+*** END: FULL LICENSE ***
+</pre>
+</body>
+</html>
diff --git a/22046-h/images/img-014.jpg b/22046-h/images/img-014.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d015d85
--- /dev/null
+++ b/22046-h/images/img-014.jpg
diff --git a/22046-h/images/img-020.jpg b/22046-h/images/img-020.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1b345dc
--- /dev/null
+++ b/22046-h/images/img-020.jpg
diff --git a/22046-h/images/img-024.jpg b/22046-h/images/img-024.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..929f258
--- /dev/null
+++ b/22046-h/images/img-024.jpg
diff --git a/22046-h/images/img-030.jpg b/22046-h/images/img-030.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2601d05
--- /dev/null
+++ b/22046-h/images/img-030.jpg
diff --git a/22046-h/images/img-034.jpg b/22046-h/images/img-034.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5e04672
--- /dev/null
+++ b/22046-h/images/img-034.jpg
diff --git a/22046-h/images/img-040.jpg b/22046-h/images/img-040.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..75b83f7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/22046-h/images/img-040.jpg
diff --git a/22046-h/images/img-046.jpg b/22046-h/images/img-046.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0696b01
--- /dev/null
+++ b/22046-h/images/img-046.jpg
diff --git a/22046-h/images/img-050.jpg b/22046-h/images/img-050.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5fa53b0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/22046-h/images/img-050.jpg
diff --git a/22046-h/images/img-052.jpg b/22046-h/images/img-052.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7d88971
--- /dev/null
+++ b/22046-h/images/img-052.jpg
diff --git a/22046-h/images/img-056.jpg b/22046-h/images/img-056.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7eedddd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/22046-h/images/img-056.jpg
diff --git a/22046-h/images/img-058.jpg b/22046-h/images/img-058.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7f3be37
--- /dev/null
+++ b/22046-h/images/img-058.jpg
diff --git a/22046-h/images/img-062.jpg b/22046-h/images/img-062.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e398fee
--- /dev/null
+++ b/22046-h/images/img-062.jpg
diff --git a/22046-h/images/img-066.jpg b/22046-h/images/img-066.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..70d08a0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/22046-h/images/img-066.jpg
diff --git a/22046-h/images/img-070.jpg b/22046-h/images/img-070.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9abc661
--- /dev/null
+++ b/22046-h/images/img-070.jpg
diff --git a/22046-h/images/img-072.jpg b/22046-h/images/img-072.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2639fac
--- /dev/null
+++ b/22046-h/images/img-072.jpg
diff --git a/22046-h/images/img-front.jpg b/22046-h/images/img-front.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ae6430d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/22046-h/images/img-front.jpg
diff --git a/22046.txt b/22046.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6d7f67b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/22046.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,1710 @@
+The Project Gutenberg eBook, Maxim Gorki, by Hans Ostwald, Translated by
+Frances A. Welby
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: Maxim Gorki
+
+
+Author: Hans Ostwald
+
+
+
+Release Date: July 10, 2007  [eBook #22046]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MAXIM GORKI***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Al Haines
+
+
+
+Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this
+      file which includes the original illustrations.
+      See 22046-h.htm or 22046-h.zip:
+      (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/2/0/4/22046/22046-h/22046-h.htm)
+      or
+      (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/2/0/4/22046/22046-h.zip)
+
+
+Transcriber's note:
+
+      The original book did not have a table of contents.
+      One has been created for the reader's convenience.
+
+      In the original book, each page's header changed to reflect
+      the content of its host page.  In this e-book, those headers
+      have been collected into an introductory paragraph at the
+      start of each chapter.
+
+
+
+
+
+Illustrated Cameos of Literature.
+
+Edited by George Brandes
+
+MAXIM GORKI
+
+by
+
+HANS OSTWALD
+
+Translated by Frances A. Welby
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Frontispiece: MAXIM GORKI]
+
+
+
+William Heinemann
+1905
+
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTION
+
+It cannot be denied that the academic expression "Literature" is an
+ill-favoured word.  It involuntarily calls up the Antithesis of Life,
+of Personal Experience, of the Simple Expression of Thought and
+Feeling.  With what scorn does Verlaine exclaim in his Poems:
+
+  "And the Rest is only Literature."
+
+
+The word is not employed here in Verlaine's sense.  The Impersonal is
+to be excluded from this Collection.  Notwithstanding its solid basis,
+the modern mode of the Essay gives full play of personal freedom in the
+handling of its matter.
+
+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.  The Author here admits no temporising with
+his subject.
+
+However foreign the theme may be to him, there is always some point of
+contact between himself and the strange Personality.  There is certain
+to be some crevice through which he can insinuate himself into this
+alien nature, after the fashion of the cunning actor with his part.  He
+tries to feel its feelings, to think its thoughts, to divine its
+instincts, to discover its impulses and its will--then retreats from it
+once more, and sets down what he has gathered.
+
+Or he steeps himself intimately in the subject, till he feels that the
+Alien Personality is beginning to live in him.  It may be months before
+this happens; but it comes at last.  Another Being fills him; for the
+time his soul is captive to it, and when he begins to express himself
+in words, he is freed, as it were, from an evil dream, the while he is
+fulfilling a cherished duty.
+
+It is a welcome task to one who feels himself congenial to some Great
+or Significant Man, to give expression to his cordial feelings and his
+inspiration.  It becomes an obsession with him to communicate to others
+what he sees in his Idol, his Divinity.  Yet it is not Inspiration for
+his Subject alone that makes the Essayist.  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.  The
+picture may in sooth be most successful when the Original is entirely
+remote from the delineator, in virtue of contrary temperament, or
+totally different mentality,--just because the traits of such a nature
+stand out the more sharply to the eye of the tranquil observer.
+
+Since Montaigne wrote the first Essays, this Form has permeated every
+country.  In France, Sainte-Beuve, in North America, Emerson, has
+founded his School.  In Germany, Hillebranat follows the lead of
+Sainte-Beuve, while Hermann Grimm is a disciple of Emerson.  The
+Essayists of To-day are Legion.
+
+It is hard to say whether what is set out in this brief and agreeable
+mode will offer much resistance to the ravages of Time.  In any case
+its permanence is not excluded.  It is conceivable that men, when
+condemned to many months' imprisonment, might arm themselves with the
+Works of Sainte-Beuve for their profitable entertainment, rather than
+with the Writings of any other Frenchman, since they give the
+Quintessence of many Books and many Temperaments.  As to the permanent
+value of the Literature of To-day, we can but express conjectures, or
+at most opinions, that are binding upon none.  We may hope that
+After-Generations will interest themselves not merely in the Classic
+Forms of Poetry and History, but also in this less monumental Mode of
+the Criticism of our Era.  And if this be not the case, we may console
+ourselves in advance with the reflection that the After-World is not of
+necessity going to be cleverer than the Present--that we have indeed no
+guarantee that it will be able to appreciate the Qualities of our
+Contemporaries quite according to their merits.
+
+So much that is New, and to us Unknown, will occupy it in the Future!
+
+GEORGE BRANDES.
+
+Paris, May 1904.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+   Introduction
+
+   Characterization
+
+   A New Romance
+
+   Scenes from the Abysses
+
+   English Translations of Gorki's Works
+
+
+
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+  1.  Maxim Gorki  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . _Frontispiece_
+
+  2.  Maxim Gorki (in 1900)
+
+  3.  Beggar Collecting for a Church Fund
+
+  4.  Tartar Day-Labourer
+
+  5.  Tramps--the Seated Figure is the Original of Luka
+
+  6.  A Page from Gorki's Last Work
+
+  7.  The Bare-footed Brigade on the Volga-Quay,
+      at Nijni Novgorod
+
+  8.  Love-Scene between Polja and Nil,
+      Act 3 of "The Bezemenovs"
+
+  9.  Gambling-Scene, Act 2 of "The Doss-house"
+
+ 10.  A Confabulation, Act 2 of "The Doss-house"
+
+ 11.  Concluding Scene, Act 3 of "The Doss-house"
+
+ 12.  The Actor, in "The Doss-house"
+
+ 13.  Vasilissa, the Keeper of "The Doss-house"
+
+ 14.  Nastja, servant in "The Doss-house"
+
+ 15.  The Baron, in "The Doss-house"
+
+ 16.  Letter to Herr Max Reinhardt
+
+
+
+
+Characterisation; Environment; Gorki's predecessors; Reaction and
+pessimism; Literature and society; Gorki's youth; Hard times; A vagrant
+life; Journalist days; Rapid success; The new heroes; Creatures once
+men; Vagabond philosophy; Accusing symbolism.
+
+
+Within the last few years a new and memorable note has been sounded
+among the familiar strains of Russian literature.  It has produced a
+regeneration, penetrating and quickening the whole.  The author who
+proclaimed the new voice from his very soul has not been rejected.  He
+was welcomed on all sides with glad and ready attention.  Nor was it
+his compatriots alone who gave ear to him.  Other countries, Germany in
+particular, have not begrudged him a hearing; as has too often been the
+case for native genius.  The young Russian was speedily accounted one
+of the most widely read in his own land and in adjacent countries.
+
+Success has rarely been achieved so promptly as by Maxim Gorki.  The
+path has seldom been so smooth and free from obstacles.
+
+Not but that Gorki has had his struggles.  But what are those few
+years, in comparison with the decades through which others have had,
+and still have, to strive and wrestle?  His fight has rather been for
+the attainment of a social status, of intellectual self-mastery and
+freedom, than for artistic recognition.  He was recognised, indeed,
+almost from the first moment when he came forward with his
+characteristic productions.  Nay, he was more than recognised.  He was
+extolled, and loved, and honoured.  His works were devoured.
+
+[Illustration: Maxim Gorki (in 1900)]
+
+This startling success makes a closer consideration and appreciation of
+the author's works and personality incumbent on us.
+
+
+A black, sullen day in March.  Rain and vapour.  No movement in the
+air.  The horizon is veiled in the grey mists that rise from the earth,
+and blend in the near distance with the dropping pall of the Heavens.
+
+And yet there is a general sense of coming Spring.  The elder-bushes
+are bursting, the buds swelling.  A topaz shimmer plays amid the
+shadowy fringes of the light birch stems, and on the budding tops of
+the lime-trees.  The bushes are decked with catkins.  The boughs of the
+chestnut glisten with pointed reddish buds.  Fresh green patches are
+springing up amid the yellow matted grass of the road-side.
+
+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 . . .
+only to roll up a thick dark ball of cloud again next moment.
+Everything is in motion.
+
+The mist clears off, the trees are shaken by the wind till the drops
+fall off in spray.
+
+The sky gets light, and then clouds over again.
+
+But the weary, demoralising, despairing monotony has vanished.
+
+Life is here.
+
+Spring has come.
+
+With all its atmosphere, with all its force and vigour, with its
+battles, and its faith in victory.
+
+
+It is somewhat after this fashion that the personality of the young
+Russian author, and his influence on Russia, and on Russian Literature,
+may be characterised.
+
+In order rightly to grasp the man and his individual methods, together
+with his significance for his mother-country, we must know the
+environment and the relations on which Gorki entered.  Thus only shall
+we understand him, and find the key to his great success in Russia, and
+the after-math of this success in foreign countries.
+
+Maxim Gorki is now just thirty-seven years old.  Ten years ago he was
+employed in the repairing works of the railway in Tiflis as a simple
+artisan.  To-day he ranks among the leading intellects of Russia.
+
+This is an abrupt leap, the crossing of a deep cleft which separates
+two worlds that tower remote on either side.  The audacity of the
+spring can only be realised when we reflect that Maxim Gorki worked his
+way up from the lowest stratum, and never had any regular schooling.
+
+The most subtle analysis of Gorki's talent would, however, be
+inadequate to cover his full significance as a writer.  It is only in
+connection with the evolution of Russian society and Russian literature
+that Gorki, as a phenomenon, becomes intelligible.
+
+
+The educated Russian does not regard his national literature merely as
+the intellectual flower of his nation; it must essentially be a mirror
+of actual social occurrences, of the cultural phase in which any
+particular work originated.
+
+The Russian author does not conceive his task to lie exclusively in
+pandering to the aesthetic enjoyment of his readers, in exciting and
+diverting them, and in providing them with sensational episodes.
+Literature of this type finds no home in the Russia of to-day.  Since
+she first possessed a literature of her own, Russia has demanded
+something more from her writers.  An author must be able to express the
+shades of public opinion.  It is his task to give voice and form to
+what is circulating through the various social classes, and setting
+them in motion.  What they cannot voice in words, what is only
+palpitating and thrilling through them, is what he must express in
+language; and his business is to create men from the universal
+tendencies.  Nay, more, it is his task to reorganise these tendencies.
+
+This explains the general and lively interest felt in Russia for the
+productions of _belles lettres_.  This form of literature is regarded
+as the mirror of the various phases of that astounding development
+which Russia has accomplished during the last sixty years.
+
+First came the reforms of the Fifties and Sixties.  Serfdom was
+abolished, class distinctions were largely broken up, local
+self-government was initiated.  So many reforms were introduced in the
+departments of Justice, of Instruction, of Credit and Commerce, that
+the ground was prepared for a totally new Russia.  A vigorous
+blossoming of Russian literature coincided with this period of
+fermentation.  Turgeniev, Gontscharov, Leo Tolstoi, and Dostoevsky
+found rich nutriment for their imaginative talent in the fresh-turned
+prolific soil of Russian Society.  With, and alongside of, them a
+number of no less gifted authors throve uninterruptedly, till the
+reaction in the second half of the Sixties and in the Seventies fell
+like a frosty rime upon the luxurious blooms, and shrivelled them.  The
+giants were silenced one by one.  Leo Tolstoi remained the sole
+survivor.
+
+With him none but the epigones, the friends of the people, worked on.
+Few writers attained to any eminence.  Among such as also won a hearing
+in Germany must be mentioned Vladimir Korolenko and Chekhov.  These two
+belong to the group known as "the Men of the Eighties."
+
+[Illustration: Beggar collecting for a church fund (_After a sketch by
+Gorki_)]
+
+These years, which immediately preceded the appearance of Gorki, form
+part of the most gloomy period of modern Russian history.  Blackest
+reaction followed the desperate struggles of the Nihilists in the
+Seventies in all departments.  At the threshold of the Century stalked
+the spectre of regicide, to which Alexander II. was the doomed
+victim . . . and over the future hovered the grim figure which banished
+its thousands and ten thousands of gifted young intellectuals to
+Siberia.
+
+This period accordingly corresponded with a definite moral
+retrogression in the ethical condition of the Russian people.
+
+There was a necessary reflection of it in the literature.  This era
+produced nothing of inspired or reformatory force.  A profound
+pessimism stifled all originality.  Korolenko alone, who was living
+during the greater part of this time as a political prisoner in distant
+Yakutsk, where he did not imbibe the untoward influences of the
+reaction, remained unmoved and strong.  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.  They founder on existence and its crushing tyranny.
+
+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.  He
+was, however, so finely organised that his brain responded to all the
+notes of his epoch, and he only emancipated himself by giving them out
+again in his works of art.  And so his "Sea-Gull," "Uncle Vanja," and
+other dramas, novels, and stories portray the blighted, hopeless,
+degenerate men of his day, his country, and its woes . . . like the
+productions of many others who worked alongside of him, but did not
+attain the same heights of imagination.
+
+
+Such was the state of Russian Literature and Russian Society at the
+time of Maxim Gorki's appearance.  He stands for the new and virile
+element, for which the reforms of the Sixties had been the preparation.
+These reforms, one-sided and imperfect as they may have been, had none
+the less sufficed to create new economic conditions.  On the one hand,
+a well-to-do middle-class, recruited almost entirely from
+non-aristocratic strata, sprang up; on the other, an industrial
+proletariat.  Maxim Gorki emerged from this environment: and as a
+phenomenon he is explained by this essentially modern antithesis.  He
+flung himself into the literary movement in full consciousness of his
+social standing.  And it was just this self-consciousness, which
+stamped him as a personality, that accounted for his extraordinary
+success.  It was obvious that, as one of a new and aspiring class, a
+class that once more cherished ideal aims and was not content with
+actual forms of existence, Gorki, the proletaire and railway-hand,
+would not disavow Life, but would affirm it, affirm it with all the
+force of his heart and lungs.
+
+[Illustration: Tartar day-labourer (_After a sketch by Gorki_)]
+
+And it is to this new note that he is indebted for his influence.
+
+
+Gorki, or to give him his real name, Alexei Maximovich Pjeschkov, was
+born on March 14, 1868, in Nijni Novgorod.  His mother Varvara was the
+daughter of a rich dyer.  His father, however, was only a poor
+upholsterer, and on this account Varvara was disinherited by her
+father; but she held steadfast to her love.  Little Maxim was bereft of
+his parents at an early age.  When he was three he was attacked by the
+cholera, which at the same time carried off his father.  His mother
+died in his ninth year, after a second marriage, a victim to phthisis.
+Thus Gorki was left an orphan.  His stern grandfather now took charge
+of him.  According to the Russian custom he was early apprenticed to a
+cobbler.  But here misfortune befell him.  He scalded himself with
+boiling water, and the foreman sent him home to his grandfather.
+Before this he had been to school for a short time; but as he
+contracted small-pox he had to give up his schooling.  And that, to his
+own satisfaction, was the end of his education.  He was no hand at
+learning.  Nor did he find much pleasure in the Psalms in which his
+grandfather instructed him.
+
+As soon as he had recovered from the accident at the shoemaker's, he
+was placed with a designer and painter of ikons.  But "here he could
+not get on"; his master treated him too harshly, and his pluck failed
+him.  This time he found himself a place, and succeeded in getting on
+board one of the Volga steamboats as a scullion.
+
+And now for the first time he met kindly, good-natured people.  The
+cook Smuriy was delighted with the intelligent lad and tried to impart
+to him all that he knew himself.  He was a great lover of books.  And
+the boy was charmed to find that any one who was good-tempered could
+have relations with letters.  He began to consider a book in a new
+light, and took pleasure in reading, which he had formerly loathed.
+The two friends read Gogol and the Legends of the Saints in their
+leisure hours in a corner of the deck, with the boundless steppes of
+the Volga before them, lapped by the music of the waves that plashed
+against the sides of the vessel.  In addition, the boy read all that
+fell into his hands.  Along with the true classics he fed his mind upon
+the works of unknown authors and the play-books hawked about by
+travelling pedlars.
+
+All this aroused a passionate, overpowering thirst for art and
+knowledge in Gorki when he was about fifteen.  Without a notion of how
+he was to be clothed and fed during his student life he betook himself
+to Kasan to study.  His rash hopes soon foundered.  He had, as he
+expressed it, no money to buy knowledge.  And instead of attending the
+Schools he went into a biscuit-factory.  The three roubles (then
+5_s._), which was his monthly salary, earned him a scanty living by an
+eighteen-hour day.  Gorki soon gave up this task, which was too
+exhausting for him.  He lived about on the river and in the harbour,
+working at casual jobs as a sawyer or porter.  At this time he had no
+roof, and was forced to live in the society of the derelicts.  What
+Gorki must have suffered in this company, during his struggle for the
+bare means of subsistence, may be imagined--he sounded the lowest
+depths of human life, and fell into the blackest abysses.
+
+With the best will, and with all his energies, he was unable to attain
+any prospect of brighter days, and sank deeper and deeper into the
+existence of the castaway.
+
+In his twentieth year he gave up the struggle.  Life seemed to him
+devoid of value, and he attempted suicide.  The ball from the revolver
+entered his lung without killing him, and the surgeon managed to
+extract it.  Gorki was ill for some time after this event, and when he
+recovered set about finding new work.
+
+He became a fruit-vendor, as before reading all kinds of scientific and
+literary works with avidity.  But this profession brought him no
+farther than the rest.  He then went to Karazin as signalman and
+operative in the railway works.
+
+However, he made no long stay on the railway.  In 1890 he was obliged
+to present himself at Nijni Novgorod, his native place, for the
+military conscription.  He was not, however, enrolled on account of the
+wound that remained from his attempt at suicide.
+
+In Nijni Novgorod he became acquainted with certain members of the
+educated classes.  At first he wandered up and down selling beer and
+kvass--filling the cups of all who wished to drink. . . .  But he was
+driven to fare forth again, and again took up the life of a vagrant and
+a toper.  In Odessa he found occupation in the harbour and the
+salt-works.  Then he wandered through Besserabia, the Crimea, the
+Kuban, and eventually reached the Caucasus.  At Tiflis he worked in the
+railway sheds.  Here he once more foregathered with educated people,
+particularly with some young Armenians.  His personality and already
+remarkable mental equipment secured him their friendship.  A derelict
+student, whom he afterwards described under the name of Alexander
+Kaluschny, taught him to write and cypher.  He gave keen attention to
+the physical states of an insane friend, who was full of the
+Regeneration of Mankind, and entered his observations in his note-book.
+Gorki possesses a vast number of these note-books, in which he has
+written down his impressions.  At this period he was also studying the
+great poets, Shakespeare, Goethe, Byron.  Most of all he admired
+Manfred, who dominated the Elements and Ahriman.  Everything out of the
+common inspired him.
+
+[Illustration: Tramps--the seated figure is the original of Luka
+(_After a sketch by Gorki_)]
+
+It was at this time that he began to do literary work, in the
+utmost secrecy.  His story, "Makar Chudra," appeared in 1893 in
+the Caucasian journal _Kavkas_, but he was as yet unable to make
+his living by intellectual pursuits, and was still compelled to be
+Jack-of-all-trades.  It occurred to him to muster a travelling company.
+He strapped up a small bundle and sallied forth.  By April he had
+enlisted others of like mind.  A woman and five men presented
+themselves.  The troup increased on the way . . . but Gorki had to dree
+his weird alone, and returned to Nijni Novgorod.
+
+A fortunate accident brought him into relation with the lawyer Lanin, a
+true friend to modern literature, who was not slow to appreciate the
+talent that had found its way to his bureau, and occupied himself most
+generously with the education of the young writer.
+
+Gorki now wrote his first long story.  Various friends of literature
+soon began to take notice of him.  They sent him to the famous Vladimir
+Korolenko, who was then living in Nijni Novgorod, and editing the
+paper, _Russkoe Bogatstvo_.  Korolenko was much interested in Gorki,
+but was unable at that time to offer the young writer any remunerative
+work.  Gorki was obliged to eke out his living by contributing to small
+provincial papers.  He shared the same fate as so many of his fellow
+journalists.  None of the editors offered any sort of honorarium, but
+simply returned his contributions, when, as happened with one of the
+Odessa journals, he asked three kopecks a line from it.  This same
+paper, however, commissioned him to write a report of the World's Fair
+at Nijni Novgorod in the year 1896.
+
+Gorki gladly agreed, and his reports excited general attention.  But
+they were shockingly remunerated, and he was forced to live under such
+wretched conditions that his lungs became affected.
+
+Korolenko now exerted himself seriously on Gorki's behalf.  And the
+advocacy of a power in the literary world effected what all his highly
+characteristic achievements had not accomplished for him.  It made him
+known and desirable.  New journals enlisted him as a permanent
+colleague on their staff.  Henceforward existence was no concern to the
+literary vagabond, who on his own showing had had four teachers: the
+cook on the Volga steamer, the advocate Lanin, the idler whom he
+describes in Kaluschny, and Korolenko.
+
+
+Seldom is it the case that an author comes to his own as early as
+Gorki.  This was undoubtedly due to the courageous manner in which he
+struck out into the social currents that were agitating his country.
+And the rapid impression he made was due as much to the peculiar
+conditions of the Russian Empire as to his own talent.  There, where
+there can be no public expression of schemes for the future, no open
+desire for self-development, Art is always the realisation of greater
+hopes than it can be where a free path has already been laid down.  And
+it is thus that men like Gorki can exert an overwhelming influence
+which is absolutely inconceivable to other nationalities.  It is not
+merely the result of their artistic temperament.  It derives at least
+as strongly from their significance to Humanity, their effect upon
+culture, their aggressive energy.
+
+On the other hand, it would be a perversion to ascribe the success of
+such individuals to circumstances alone, and to what they say, and the
+inflexible virile courage with which they say it.  Talent, genius, the
+why and wherefore, are all factors.  In Russia there are not a few who
+share the experiences and insight of Gorki.  But they lack means of
+expression; they are wanting in executive ability.
+
+Not that many capable men are not also on the scene at present.  But
+maybe they are not the "whole man," who puts the matter together,
+without fear or ruth, as Gorki has done so often.
+
+      *      *      *      *      *      *
+
+[Illustration: A page from Gorki's last work (_Transcribed and
+forwarded by the author to Hans Ostwald_)]
+
+_"As an implacable foe to all that is mean and paltry in the
+aspirations of Humanity, I demand that every individual who bears a
+human countenance shall really be--a MAN!"_
+
+_"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."_
+
+_From "Man."  By Maxim Gorki._
+
+      *      *      *      *      *      *
+
+
+It is vain for Maximovich Pjeschkov not to term himself _Gorki_, the
+"Bitter One."  He opposes a new Kingdom of Heroes in contrast to the
+old hero-world, to the great strategists and wholesale butchers.
+Bluebeard and Toggenburg, Richard Coeur-de-Lion--what are these bloody
+tyrants for us of to-day?  It is impossible to resuscitate them as they
+were of old.  They were,--and have become a form, in which the
+exuberant and universal Essence of Life no longer embodies itself.
+
+But . . . we must have our Heroes still; heroes who master their lives
+after their own fashion, and who are the conquerors of fate.  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.  Here is no bygone ideal newly decked and
+dressed out, trimmed up with fresh finery.  It is the men of our own
+time who are described.
+
+Whether other nations will accept such heroes in fulfilment of their
+romantic aspirations may be questioned.  It seems very doubtful.  The
+"Doss-house" is for the most part too strong for a provincial public,
+too agitating, too revolutionary.  The Germans, for example, have not
+the deep religious feeling of the Russian, for whom each individual is
+a fellow sinner, a brother to be saved.  Nor have they as yet attained
+to that further religious sense which sees in every man a sinless soul,
+requiring no redemption.
+
+To us, therefore, Gorki's "creatures that once were men" appear strange
+and abnormal types.  The principal figure is the ex-captain and present
+keeper of the shelter, the former owner of a servant's registry and
+printing works--Aristides Kuvalda.  He has failed to regulate his life,
+and is the leader and boon companion of a strange band.  His best
+friend is a derelict schoolmaster, who earns a very fair income as a
+newspaper reporter.  But what is money to a man of this type?  He
+sallies forth, buys fruit and sweetmeats and good food with half his
+earnings, collects all the children of the alley in which Kuvalda's
+refuge is situated, and treats them down by the river with these
+delicacies.  He lends the best part of his remaining funds to his
+friends, and the rest goes in vodka and his keep at the doss-house.
+
+Other wastrels of the same type lodge with Kuvalda.  They are all men
+who have been something.  And so Gorki calls them _Bivshiye lyudi_,
+which may be literally translated "the Men Who Have Been" ("Creatures
+that once were Men ").
+
+To our taste the story is too discursive and long-winded.  The
+prolonged introductory descriptions, the too exact and minute
+particularities of external detail, especially in regard to persons,
+destroy the sharp edge of the impression, and obliterate its
+characteristics.  It would have been clearer with fewer words.  Honesty
+bids us recognise a certain incapacity for self-restraint in Gorki.
+
+This, however, is a trifle compared with the vivid, impersonal
+descriptions of the conduct of the derelicts--illuminated by the heroic
+deed of Kuvalda, as by an unquenchable star.  Kuvalda loses his
+mainstay when his comrade, the schoolmaster, dies.  He is enraged at
+the brutal treatment meted out to him and to the other inhabitants of
+the slum by the Officials of the City and the Government.  He embroils
+himself with ill-concealed purpose with his deadly enemy the merchant
+Petunikov and insults the police.  His object is gained.  He is beaten,
+and led away to prison.
+
+Unfortunately Gorki endows his characters with too elevated a
+philosophy.  He pours his own wine into their bottles.  Vagabonds and
+tramps do often indeed possess a profound knowledge of life peculiar to
+themselves, and a store of worldly wisdom.  But they express it more
+unconsciously, more instinctively, less sentimentally, than Gorki.
+
+From the artistic point of view this ground-note of pathos is an
+abiding defect in Gorki.  He is lacking in the limpid clarity of sheer
+light-heartedness.  Humour he has indeed.  But his humour is bitter as
+gall, and corrosive as sulphuric acid.  "Kain and Artem" may be cited
+as an instance.
+
+Kain is a poor little Jewish pedlar.  Artem, the handsome, strong, but
+corrupt lover of the huckstress, is tended by him when he has been
+half-killed by envious and revengeful rivals.  In return for this
+nursing, and for his rescue from need and misery, Artem protects the
+despised and persecuted Kain.  But he has grown weary of
+gratitude--gratitude to the weak being ever a burden to strong men.
+And the lion drives away the imploring mouse, that saved him once from
+the nets that held him captive--and falls asleep smiling.
+
+[Illustration: The bare-footed brigade on the Volga-quay, and Nijni
+Novgorod (_After a sketch by Gorki_)]
+
+This sombre temperament determines the catastrophe of the other
+stories.  They almost invariably close in the sullen gloom of a wet
+March evening, when we wonder afresh if the Spring is really coming.
+
+In "Creatures that once were Men," Gorki's sinister experience and
+pathos are essential factors in the accusing symbolism.  He relates in
+the unpretending style of a chronicler how the corpulent citizens
+reside on the hill-tops, amid well-tended gardens.  When it rains the
+whole refuse of the upper town streams into the slums.
+
+
+
+
+The new romance; Sentiment and humour; Russian middle class; The man of
+the future; Descriptions of nature; Superfluity of detail; The Russian
+proletaire; Psychology of murder; Artistic inaccuracy; Moujik and
+outcast; A poet's idealism.
+
+
+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.
+
+It is a world of heroes, of most romantic heroes, that Gorki delineates
+for us.  But the romance is not after the recipes of the old novelists:
+ancient, mystic, seeking its ideals in the remote past.  This is
+living, actual romance.  Even though some of Gorki's heroes founder
+like the heroes of bygone epochs of literature upon their weakness,
+more of the "Bitter One's" characters are shipwrecked on a deed.
+
+And it is this reckless parade and apotheosis of such men of action
+that accounts for Gorki's huge success in comparison with many another,
+and with the writers of the preceding generation.  It is for this that
+the young minds of his native country rally round him--the country that
+is loaded with clanking fetters.
+
+
+Gorki is dominated by a characteristic passion for strong, abnormal
+men.  This type reappears in almost all his narratives.  Here it is old
+Isergil, whose Odyssey of Love swells to saga-like magnitude.  There we
+find the bold and fearless smuggler Chelkash, in the story of that
+name.  Now it is the brazen, wanton, devoted Malva, who prefers the
+grown man to the inexperienced youth.  Anon, the red Vaska, boots and
+janitor of the brothel.  And there are numbers of other such titans.
+
+Unfortunately Gorki endows many of them with a vein of sentimentality,
+on which account his works are compared with those of Auerbach, in
+certain, more particularly in the aesthetic, Russian circles . . . a
+reproach that is only partially justified.  Emelyan, _e.g._, is a
+notorious and professional robber.  He sallies forth to attack and
+plunder a merchant in the night.  But he encounters a young girl of
+good social position on the bridge which he has chosen for the scene of
+his attack.  She intends to make away with herself.  And in talking to
+her he forgets everything else; she moves him so profoundly that he
+dissuades her from suicide and takes her back to her parents.
+
+Despite its rank improbability and sentimental character this tale has
+a fine humour of its own.  And there is, in particular, one sketch that
+is steeped in humour.  This is the "Story of the Silver Clasp."  Three
+casual labourers break into an old factory and steal a silver clasp.
+One of them relinquishes his share and takes back the clasp.  And all
+the thanks he gets is a rating from the old housekeeper.
+
+These, of course, are only accessory productions, artistic enough, but
+of a lighter character.  Many of the tales unfortunately suffer from a
+hackneyed use of situations, materials, and ideas, suggestive of the
+hack writer.  Gorki's cheap sentiment, and maudlin pity, often result
+in clap-trap and padding which are foreign to the artist proper.  But
+this is the effect of his predilection for individuals of forcible
+character.
+
+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.  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.  And I shall endeavour with all the forces of my soul to
+be steadfast to my inward promptings: to push my way into the densest
+parts of life, to knead it hither and thither, to hinder some, to help
+on others.  It is _this_ that is the joy of life!" . . .
+
+[Illustration: Love-scene between Polja and Nil (_Act III. of "The
+Bezemenovs"_)]
+
+Words like these were bound to have a stimulating and invigorating
+effect after the despondency of the preceding epoch.  This new spirit,
+this new man, gripped his contemporaries in full force.
+
+The result would undoubtedly have been even more striking if Gorki's
+heroes were not invariably tainted with vestiges of the old order.
+They are, indeed, men of action.  A totally different life pulsates in
+Gorki's works; we are confronted with far more virile characters than
+in the works of other Russian authors.  Even the engine driver Nil,
+however, fails to relieve any one of the sufferers from his troubles.
+He removes Polja confidently enough from her surroundings--but only
+leaves the greater darkness behind him.  Even he is as yet unable to
+transform the conditions of life--and he is therefore stigmatised by a
+little of the Russian bluster.
+
+
+"The House of the Bezemenovs" ("The Tradespeople"), Gorki's first
+dramatic work, describes the eternal conflict between sons and fathers.
+The narrow limitations of Russian commercial life, its _borne_
+arrogance, its weakness and pettiness, are painted in grim, grey
+touches.  The children of the tradesman Bezemenov may pine for other
+shores, where more kindly flowers bloom and scent the air.  But they
+are not strong enough to emancipate themselves.  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.
+
+It is refreshing to come upon the other characters, who are of a
+different breed to these shop-keepers.  The vodka-loving, jolly father
+of Polja (Bezemenov's niece, who is exploited and maltreated in this
+house), is, in his contented yet sentimental egoism, a true
+representative of the ordinary Russian, the common man.  And Polja!
+And Nil! . . .  Here is the fresh blood of the future.  How sure they
+both are in their love.  "Ah! what a beautiful world it is, isn't it?
+Wondrously beautiful . . . dear friend. . . .  What a glorious man you
+are. . . ."
+
+Albeit this work is far from being a finished drama, it none the less
+has its special qualities.  These men often talk as glibly as if they
+were essayists, they often seem to be mere vehicles for programmatic
+manifestoes.  But as a whole they are the typical quintessence of the
+Russian people.
+
+
+Other wild and intrepid figures are to be found in the larger works
+that precede "The Tradespeople"--the novels "Foma Gordeyev" and "Three
+Men."  But Gorki's new conception of life is less clearly and broadly
+formulated in these than in Nil, and other subsequent characters.
+These people rather collapse from the superabundance of their vigour
+and the meanness of their surroundings.
+
+
+In "Foma Gordeyev" 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.
+
+[Illustration: Gambling scene (_Act II. of "The Doss-house"_)]
+
+Despite its agonies and martyrdoms, however, there is one marvellously
+inspiring feature about this novel,--its gorgeous descriptions of
+Nature, rich in life and colour.  "Foma Gordeyev" is the romance of
+life on the Volga.
+
+With what intimacy, familiarity, and heart-felt emotion Gorki here
+describes and sees!  The great River, with its diversified
+characteristics, its ominous events, mingles with the life of Man, and
+flows on past us. . . .
+
+It is this characteristic union of the Human-All-Too-Human with his
+impressions of Nature in so many of Gorki's works, that makes them at
+the outset desirable and readable to a large proportion of his public.
+Much of his description of life beyond the social pale would be
+repulsive if it were not for this interpretative nature-painting.
+Especially would this be the case in "Malva."  This robust,
+free-loving, and free-living maiden attracts us by her vigorous
+participation in Nature, when, for instance, she leaps into the water,
+and sports in the element like a fish.
+
+
+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.  He has evolved some significant
+prose-poems from the life of Nature, and the contest of her forces.
+While the sketch, "Spring Voices," is a satire, bristling with tangible
+darts and stings, "The Bursting of the Dam" expresses the full force
+that rages and battles in a stormy sea.  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.  The winds and
+tempests join in a colossal attack upon the unyielding barriers, and
+the rocks are shivered in fragments.
+
+[Illustration: A confabulation (_Act II. of "The Doss-house"_)]
+
+
+Quite different again is the romance entitled "Three Men" (or "Three of
+Them").  The tales and sketches published prior to this work were
+merely founded on episodes, catastrophes, or descriptive passages from
+the author's rich store of material.  They certainly conveyed the
+essence of the life of his characters.  They disclosed the axis of
+these people's existence.  But they are seldom free from a certain
+tiresome impressionism--and often make quite undue pretensions.  The
+didactic is too obvious.  Gorki is not always satisfied with saying,
+here is a bit of life.  He tries to put in a little wisdom.  His form
+is seldom clear and conclusive.  His tales are overladen with detail
+and superfluity of minute description.  In Germany, Gorki owes much to
+his translators.  This is more especially obvious in the scholarly
+translation by August Scholz of "Makar Chudra," Gorki's first published
+work.  At first Scholz only produced a portion of this story.  Later
+on, when all that Gorki had written had its importance, and his
+commercial success was established, the whole of "Makar," which is by
+no means free from obscurities, was translated.
+
+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.
+
+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.  The aspiring proletaire, be he peasant or
+child of the artisan, is for the most part done to death with light
+laughter.  In this the unjustified arrogance of the academic classes
+expresses itself too frequently.  Too often they discover only the
+comic element in the men who have emerged from the ranks, and who,
+while gifted with uncommon energy and intelligence, can neither choose
+nor be chosen for any of the cultured professions.  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.  Nor do they perceive that these aspirants possess much that
+is lacking in themselves--and that not particularly to their credit.
+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.  And so he strives,
+and strives again, for purity--and falls the deeper in the mire.
+
+[Illustration: Concluding scene (_Act III. of "The Doss-house"_)]
+
+Few writers share the happy recklessness peculiar to Gorki.  He is free
+from false modesty, like his young moujik, who is compelled by his
+desire for purity--not by any conventional remorse--to proclaim his
+relations with his landlady and commercial partner, the shopkeeper's
+wife, before all their acquaintances, at one of her entertainments--and
+also to announce himself as the murderer of the old money-lender.  Nor
+is it the guilty sense of Raskolnikov that impels this moujik to
+confession and reparation.  It is his repugnance for the men in
+contrast with whom he stands out as an ideal and promising figure.
+
+And it is here that Gorki seems to us almost to surpass Dostoevsky.
+Raskolnikov is a murderer on theory, a penitent out of weakness.
+Gorki's murderer, however, kills from inward compulsion.  His act, his
+acknowledgment of it, all is sheer naive necessity.  Here is a man who
+feels no compunction for having crushed a worm.
+
+Who, in last resort, is the man that repents his deeds?  Of all the
+criminals we have encountered in doss-houses, shelters, and
+labour-colonies, scarce a single one.  And the deed came nearly always
+like a flash from the blue.  Implacable, dire, and for the most part
+unconscious compulsion, but no premeditated volition, drove them to it.
+And here Gorki is a true creator, even if as artist he ranks below
+Dostoevsky.
+
+[Illustration: 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.  One of the prostitutes bewails her
+wasted life.  Another craves to share all the sufferings of the man who
+has committed murder for her sake.  A third is possessed with a sudden
+passion for truth.  And that in the Justice Room, though she knows that
+her lover, sitting opposite her, is doomed if she deserts him.
+
+At this point Gorki seems, indeed, to have deliberately abjured his
+intimate knowledge of certain classes of the community.  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.  It cuts away the last prop beneath the undermined dam.
+
+And yet it first arouses our suspicion of the probity and reality of
+Gorki's types.  Why should he be so emotional in some places while in
+others he can be so hard and harsh?  He has not yet arrived at
+representation without prejudice.
+
+And then we ask: "How far can his characterisations in general be
+accepted?"
+
+Gorki often sacrifices probability to polemics.  Too often he is merely
+the emotional controversialist.  Bias and Life are with him not always
+welded into the harmonious whole, which one is entitled to claim from
+the genuine artist.
+
+
+To the Teutonic mind the individual works of Gorki, _e.g._, the novel,
+"Three Men," still appear gloomy and sombre.  As a whole, too, they
+affect us sadly; they are oppressive.
+
+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.  This rustic is a contemptible creature.  His
+avarice prompts him to fall on the smuggler and murder him for the sake
+of his gold pieces.  The wounded Chelkash flings the money at him
+contemptuously.  Gorki portrays the much-belauded moujik as a pitiable
+money-grubber, a detestable associate, who loses all higher motives in
+his struggle for the means of existence.
+
+[Illustration: Vasilissa (_Keeper of the "Doss-house"_)]
+
+This, at any rate, is Gorki's belief: it is neither the householders
+nor the peasants who are the custodians and promoters of what is human
+and noble.  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.
+
+
+
+
+Scenes from the Abysses; The new gospel; Gorki's defects; Truth or
+sentimentality; The new Russia; Future development.
+
+
+The men of the "Doss-house" are again of this type.  They live in the
+recesses of a horrible cellar, a derelict Baron, a former convict, a
+public prostitute, and more of the same "cattle."  One man who lodges
+there with his wife is pilloried, because as a worker he stands apart
+from them:
+
+"'I am a man who works!'--as if the rest of us were less than he!  Work
+away if it makes you happier!--why be so cock-a-hoop about it?  If men
+are to be valued for their work, a horse would count for more than a
+man--at least it draws the cart . . . and holds its tongue about it."
+
+And as they speak, so they live.  They are all destitute; but they
+content themselves with carrying on a sort of guerilla warfare against
+the householders.
+
+And yet for some of them this life of brawls and vodka, of theft and
+mendicancy, is a very hell.  Especially for the thief Pepel.  He would
+gladly rise to a purer life.  Alone, he is not strong enough.
+But--with Natasha.
+
+This Natasha is the sister of the woman who keeps the shelter, and who
+herself has relations with Pepel, and does not intend to let him slip
+through her fingers.  She even wishes him to make away with her husband
+in order that she may live undisturbed with the thief.
+
+This is repulsive to Pepel.
+
+At this crisis the wanderer Luka makes his appearance.  He wants to
+help every one.  He is the apostle of goodness and humanity.  He finds
+a tender word for the dying wife of the locksmith.  He talks to the
+drunken actor about a Reformatory, where he can be cured of his
+propensity for drinking.  And he counsels Natasha to fly with Pepel
+from these depths of iniquity.  The keeper of the refuge hears this.
+She torments her sister, and almost does her to death, with her
+husband's assistance.  Pepel is off his head with rage, and actually
+fulfils the woman's wishes, by murdering her husband.
+
+She is triumphant.  And the wayfarer vanishes.  In the last Act the
+other wastrels are collected together.  They are trying to clear up
+their ideas of themselves, and of the world.  One tells how the
+wanderer thought the world existed only for the fittest--as in the
+carpentering trade.  All live--and work--and of a sudden comes one who
+pushes the whole business forward by ten years.
+
+[Illustration: Nastja (_Servant in "The Doss-house"_)]
+
+"Man is the reality . . .  Man who alone is really great . . .  All is
+in Man, all is for Man. . . .  To the health of Man!" is the toast of
+the former convict Satin.
+
+"Be Men!" is the new watchword for Russia.  And thus for Russians the
+"Doss-house" came as a gospel, although Gorki has not yet wrought his
+materials into the supreme conflict that must result in a really great
+tragedy.  "The Doss-house" is not that tragedy.  It presents no titanic
+action, no mighty fate, no clashing shock to reveal the battle of the
+great natural tendencies in Man, and give an immeasurable lift to our
+conceptions of existence.  There is still something that oppresses
+us--there is too much puling and complaint.  Criticism as a whole has
+been deceived by the resounding and pathetic words which it has
+accepted as a profound philosophy.  Philosophy, however, is for the
+study, not the stage.  Our great philosophers have said all that Gorki
+has put into the mouth of his outcasts, and said it far more forcibly.
+His observations on the dignity of Man are his only original and
+impressive contributions.
+
+The critics have gone astray in another direction also.  They have
+insisted on the great compassion that radiates from the piece, as
+embodied in Luka, the wanderer, and have commended this pillar of light
+and salvation.  And they have completely overlooked the fact that it is
+he who is responsible for most of the misfortunes.  In last resort Luka
+brings help to no one, but only succeeds in embroiling the situation,
+and accelerating the catastrophe.
+
+Gorki undoubtedly intended to describe a luminary.  But he failed to
+carry out his purpose consistently.  In spite of himself this apostle
+is unable to effect any good, too often does just the contrary.  The
+action of this character reminds us of Gregor Werle in Ibsen's "Wild
+Duck."
+
+From the purely technical standpoint, moreover, "The Doss-house" is
+full of defects.  The great catastrophe is brought about by
+eavesdropping.  As in the worst melodrama, the _intrigante_ of the
+piece, the lodging-house keeper and mistress of the thief, appears in
+the background just at the most critical point of the confabulation
+between Pepel and his allies, and the vagrant Luka.
+
+A great work of art should scorn such cheap expedients.  Nor are the
+whining descriptions given by several of the castaways of their mode of
+existence, properly speaking, dramatic; they only induce false sympathy.
+
+The same capital fault is evident in Gorki's other productions.  We
+have already touched on the defects of "Three Men."  In "The
+Doss-house" again, our author has struck several wrong chords in his
+characterisation.  He has failed to present the tragedy of the
+derelicts; nor has he in one single instance given a correct artistic
+picture of the occupants of the shelter.  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.  The baron replies: "I am aware
+that I have already sunk deeper than you whereever this is possible."
+And it is only after a pause that the thief is able to reply: "You have
+confounded me, Baron."
+
+[Illustration: The baron (_From "The Doss-house"_)]
+
+This is no speech for men of this type.  Gorki turns himself here into
+a sentimentalist.  The baron should have answered this proposal that he
+should "bark" somewhat as follows: "What will you pay me?  Hum!  What
+can you offer me--a good place?"  Or suggested him knocking him over
+the head.  Then we should have had a drastic representation of the
+depraved derelicts.  Description is wanted, not sophistry.
+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.  We want instances of
+corruption, not nice talk about it.
+
+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.  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.  "The Doss-house" had
+an unparalleled success when it was performed at the Klein Theater in
+Berlin.  The splendid staging made a magnificent achievement of the
+"Scenes from the Abysses," which thrilled and held the audience like
+some colossal work of music.  And the human value of the work entitles
+it to rank with the best that has been produced in recent years on the
+farther side of the Vistula.
+
+Gorki has done well to describe the world and the stratum whence he
+emerged, and which he traversed, in his powerful works.  His writings
+expound the New Russia.  He himself is New Russia.  He is the man who
+has overcome all life's obstacles.
+
+And it is he who holds up new, courageous, virile men to his nation,
+men who have faith and will to live.
+
+He is himself profoundly sympathetic.  His works bring him in a large
+annual income.  But he does not hoard it up.  He does not clutch his
+money.  He knows the value of a helping hand.  In his heart, moreover,
+he is averse to open admiration.  This was apparent in his refusal to
+accept the public homage offered him some two years ago in the Art
+Theatre of Moscow.  Gorki was drinking tea at a buffet with Chekhov, at
+a first performance of "Uncle Wanja," when suddenly the two were
+surrounded by a crowd of curious people.  Gorki exclaimed with
+annoyance: "What are you all gaping at?  I am not a _prima ballerina_,
+nor a Venus of Medici, nor a dead man.  What can there be to interest
+you in the outside of a fellow who writes occasional stories."  The
+Society Journals of Moscow wished to teach Gorki a lesson in manners,
+for having dealt so harshly with the appreciative patrons of the
+theatre.  He replied with the delightful satire: "Of the Author, who
+aimed too high."
+
+While many critics fall into ecstasies over anything that Gorki writes,
+he himself preserves the just perspective, as in the case of this
+public homage.  No one has spoken as uncompromisingly of his theatrical
+pieces as himself.  That alone proves him to be a clever, critical man.
+But it also shows him to be honourable, talented, and clear-headed.
+How few authors would, if they thought some of their own works of minor
+importance, straightway communicate the fact to their public?
+
+      *      *      *      *      *      *
+
+[Illustration: Letter to Max Reinhardt]
+
+
+_Letter to Herr Max Reinhardt_
+
+_"To you, dear Sir, and to your Company, I send my portrait.  I must
+apologise for not doing it before, but had no time.  With it I send an
+album of sketches of 'The Doss-house' as performed at the Art Theatre
+in Moscow.  I do this in the hope of simultaneously expressing my
+gratitude to you for your performance of my piece, and of showing how
+closely you and your ensemble succeeded in reproducing Russia proper,
+in your presentation of the types and scenes in my play.  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._
+
+_"Heartiest greetings to yourself and to your artists.  I greatly
+regret my ignorance of the German language, and am ashamed of it.  If I
+knew German, I could express my sincere thanks to you more plainly.
+With all my heart I wish you luck and success._
+
+_"M. GORKI._
+
+_"NIJNI NOVGOROD,
+  "August 1, 1903."_
+
+      *      *      *      *      *      *
+
+Hence we look forward with interest to Gorki's future contributions,
+whether in poetry or drama.  It is significant of the man and his
+intellect that he has not allowed himself to be saddled by the Theatre
+Devil, but presses forward to fresh tasks and aims.
+
+
+
+
+ENGLISH TRANSLATIONS OF GORKI'S WORKS
+
+
+1.  "The Orloff Couple," "Malva."  Translated by E. Jakowleff and D. B.
+Montefiore (Heinemann), 1901.
+
+2.  "Foma Gordyeeff" ("Thomas the Proud.").  Translated by I. F.
+Hapgood (Fisher Unwin), 1901.
+
+3.  "Makar Chudra."  _Monthly Review_, 1901.
+
+4.  "The Outcasts," "Waiting for the Ferry," "The Affair of the
+Clasps."  Translated by D. B. Montefiore, E. Jakowleff, and V.
+Volkhovsky (Fisher Unwin), 1902; reprinted 1905.
+
+5.  "Three of Them."  Translated by A. Sinden (Fisher Unwin), 1902;
+reprinted 1905.
+
+6.  "Three Men." Translated by C. Home, 1902.
+
+7.  "Tales from Gorki."
+        In the Steppe.
+        Twenty-six of Us and One Other.
+        One Autumn Night.
+        A Rolling Stone.
+        The Green Kitten.
+        Comrades.
+        Her Lover.
+        Chums.
+Translated by R. Nisbet Bain (Jarrold & Sons), 1902.
+
+8.  "Twenty-Six Men and a Girl."
+        My Fellow Traveller.
+        On a Raft.
+        Tschelkasch.
+Translated by E. Jakowleff, D. B. Montefiore, S. K. Michel.  "Greenback
+Library," vol. i. (Duckworth & Co.), 1902.
+
+9.  "Song of the Falcon."  Translated by E. J. Dillon, _Contemporary
+Review_, 1902, and "Maxim Gorky" (Isbister & Co.), 1902.
+
+10.  "Creatures that Once were Men" ("The Outcasts").  Translated by J.
+K. M. Shirazi.  Introduction by G. K. Chesterton.  (Alston Rivers),
+1905.
+
+
+
+***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MAXIM GORKI***
+
+
+******* This file should be named 22046.txt or 22046.zip *******
+
+
+This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
+https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/2/0/4/22046
+
+
+
+Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
+will be renamed.
+
+Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
+one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
+(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
+permission and without paying copyright royalties.  Special rules,
+set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
+copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
+protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark.  Project
+Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
+charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission.  If you
+do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
+rules is very easy.  You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
+such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
+research.  They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
+practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks.  Redistribution is
+subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
+redistribution.
+
+
+
+*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
+
+THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
+PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
+
+To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
+distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
+(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at
+https://www.gutenberg.org/license).
+
+
+Section 1.  General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic works
+
+1.A.  By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
+and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
+(trademark/copyright) agreement.  If you do not agree to abide by all
+the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
+all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
+If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
+terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
+entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
+
+1.B.  "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark.  It may only be
+used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
+agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement.  There are a few
+things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+even without complying with the full terms of this agreement.  See
+paragraph 1.C below.  There are a lot of things you can do with Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
+and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.  See paragraph 1.E below.
+
+1.C.  The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"
+or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works.  Nearly all the individual works in the
+collection are in the public domain in the United States.  If an
+individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
+located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
+copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
+works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
+are removed.  Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
+Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
+freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
+this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
+the work.  You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
+keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
+
+1.D.  The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
+what you can do with this work.  Copyright laws in most countries are in
+a constant state of change.  If you are outside the United States, check
+the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
+before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
+creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
+Gutenberg-tm work.  The Foundation makes no representations concerning
+the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
+States.
+
+1.E.  Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
+
+1.E.1.  The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
+access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
+whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
+phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
+copied or distributed:
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+1.E.2.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
+from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
+posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
+and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
+or charges.  If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
+with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the
+work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
+through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
+Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
+1.E.9.
+
+1.E.3.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
+with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
+must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
+terms imposed by the copyright holder.  Additional terms will be linked
+to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
+permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
+
+1.E.4.  Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
+work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
+
+1.E.5.  Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
+electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
+prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
+active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm License.
+
+1.E.6.  You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
+compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
+word processing or hypertext form.  However, if you provide access to or
+distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
+"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version
+posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),
+you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
+copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
+request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other
+form.  Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
+
+1.E.7.  Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
+performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
+unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+
+1.E.8.  You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
+access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
+that
+
+- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
+     the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
+     you already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  The fee is
+     owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
+     has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
+     Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.  Royalty payments
+     must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
+     prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
+     returns.  Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
+     sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
+     address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to
+     the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
+
+- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
+     you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
+     does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+     License.  You must require such a user to return or
+     destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
+     and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
+     Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
+     money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
+     electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
+     of receipt of the work.
+
+- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
+     distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+1.E.9.  If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
+forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
+both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
+Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark.  Contact the
+Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
+
+1.F.
+
+1.F.1.  Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
+effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
+public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
+collection.  Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
+"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
+property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
+computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
+your equipment.
+
+1.F.2.  LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
+of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
+fees.  YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
+LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
+PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3.  YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
+TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
+LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
+INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
+DAMAGE.
+
+1.F.3.  LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
+defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
+receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
+written explanation to the person you received the work from.  If you
+received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
+your written explanation.  The person or entity that provided you with
+the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
+refund.  If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
+providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
+receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund.  If the second copy
+is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
+opportunities to fix the problem.
+
+1.F.4.  Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
+in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS', WITH NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
+WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
+
+1.F.5.  Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
+warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
+If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
+law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
+interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
+the applicable state law.  The invalidity or unenforceability of any
+provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
+
+1.F.6.  INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
+trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
+providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
+with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
+promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
+harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
+that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
+or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
+work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
+Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
+
+
+Section  2.  Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
+electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
+including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers.  It exists
+because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
+people in all walks of life.
+
+Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
+assistance they need, is critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
+goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
+remain freely available for generations to come.  In 2001, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
+and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
+To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
+and the Foundation web page at https://www.gutenberg.org/fundraising/pglaf.
+
+
+Section 3.  Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
+Foundation
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
+501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
+state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
+Revenue Service.  The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
+number is 64-6221541.  Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
+permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
+
+The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
+Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
+throughout numerous locations.  Its business office is located at
+809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email
+business@pglaf.org.  Email contact links and up to date contact
+information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official
+page at https://www.gutenberg.org/about/contact
+
+For additional contact information:
+     Dr. Gregory B. Newby
+     Chief Executive and Director
+     gbnewby@pglaf.org
+
+Section 4.  Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
+spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
+increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
+freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
+array of equipment including outdated equipment.  Many small donations
+($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
+status with the IRS.
+
+The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
+charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
+States.  Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
+considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
+with these requirements.  We do not solicit donations in locations
+where we have not received written confirmation of compliance.  To
+SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
+particular state visit https://www.gutenberg.org/fundraising/donate
+
+While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
+have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
+against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
+approach us with offers to donate.
+
+International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
+any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
+outside the United States.  U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
+
+Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
+methods and addresses.  Donations are accepted in a number of other
+ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations.
+To donate, please visit:
+https://www.gutenberg.org/fundraising/donate
+
+
+Section 5.  General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.
+
+Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
+concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
+with anyone.  For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project
+Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
+unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we do not necessarily
+keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
+
+     https://www.gutenberg.org
+
+This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
+including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
+subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
+
diff --git a/22046.zip b/22046.zip
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..120a32d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/22046.zip
diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6312041
--- /dev/null
+++ b/LICENSE.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,11 @@
+This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements,
+metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be
+in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES.
+
+Procedures for determining public domain status are described in
+the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org.
+
+No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in
+jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize
+this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright
+status under the laws that apply to them.
diff --git a/README.md b/README.md
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5b02f34
--- /dev/null
+++ b/README.md
@@ -0,0 +1,2 @@
+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
+eBook #22046 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/22046)