"Literary Beginnings: The Short Story," in Maxim Gorky, Twayne Publishers, 1988, pp. 21-36.

[In the following essay, Scherr offers a thematic and stylistic survey of Gorky's short fiction from the 1890s.]

ROMANTIC TALES

Gorky's stories have been partially eclipsed in the popular imagination by his novels, plays, and autobiographical writings; and yet include some of his finest achievements. Of particular importance for an understanding of his literary career are his stories of the 1890s. These, his first published works, introduced new themes, new heroes, and new attitudes to Russian literature. What is more, Gorky developed his literary techniques within the genre of the short story and then applied them in his other fictional (and even some non-fictional) writings.

No less important than their subject matter and form is the role that Gorky's stories played in establishing his literary reputation. During the 1880s and 1890s the short story became a major genre for a number of writers—beginning with Vsevelod Garshin, continuing with Chekhov, and going on to writers of what might, roughly speaking, be called Gorky's generation: Ivan Bunin, Alexander Kuprin, Leonid Andreev, and many others. But none of them had such an overwhelming early success as Gorky. A two-volume collection, Sketches and Stories, was published in 1898, just six years after his first story had appeared. A third volume came out in 1899, followed that year by a second edition of the complete set. The Znanie publishing house issued a new four-volume collection in 1900, and for some time thereafter new and ever larger editions appeared at an average rate of more than one per year. Total sales of Gorky's books soon reached the unprecedented figure of one hundred thousand. Thus even before he became known for his novels and plays, Gorky had achieved a literary fame that enabled him also to emerge at the beginning of the century as an influential social activist.

Gorky's first published story, "Makar Chudra" (1892), may initially seem quite different from his subsequent writings. The tale describes the Gypsy Loiko Zobar, a fearless young man and talented musician, and Radda, the fiercely independent young woman with whom he falls in love. After a great deal of difficulty, Loiko succeeds in getting Radda to declare her love for him, but she insists he submit to her before she will become his wife. Torn between his love and his equally strong desire for freedom, Loiko kills her and is killed in turn by Radda's father. The story contains many romantic elements: exotic descriptions of the Gypsies, highly idealized central figures, and a love intrigue with an almost predictably tragic outcome. All this seems very far from the Gorky who describes the homeless wanderers of Russia's lower depths or the corrupt members of middle-class society.

Yet upon closer examination the romantic elements turn out to owe much to Gorky's interest in folk legends, which went back to the tales he heard from his grandmother. Loiko and Radda were, according to Gorky's own testimony, based on folk legends he had heard. "Makar Chudra" also borrows from folklore many of the metaphors and turns of phrase that distinguish its characters' speech.

Indeed, virtually the whole tale is written in highly stylized language—either that of the lovers or of Makar Chudra, who relates their story to the narrator.

The narration is quite typical for Gorky's stories of the 1890s. The first-person narrator says virtually nothing about himself; after offering a brief description of the setting and of the old Gypsy Makar Chudra, he largely disappears, except for one or two subsequent comments about Makar and a short return at the end of the story. For the most part, then, the words are those of Makar Chudra, who praises the narrator for wandering about and seeing what he can of life. Others are not concerned with you, feels Makar, and you cannot teach others. The only thing to do is wander and be free. With that as a preface, the story he tells about the Gypsy lovers becomes a cautionary tale, an illustration of his own philosophy. The narrator simply listens; it is not clear what he, or Gorky, believes.

A story similar in form to "Makar Chudra" is "Old Izergil" ("Starukha Izergil'," 1894). Both take place by the sea and consist of tales told the narrator by an older person, whose name is also that of the story. The non-Russian characters, the exotic settings, and the influence of folk legends contribute to these works' predominantly romantic aura. "Old Izergil," however, is by far the more complex of the two and gives evidence of Gorky's increasing maturity. Generally a harsh critic of his own writing, Gorky was always to feel that "Old Izergil" was among his very best creations.

Old Izergil relates not one tale but three. The first describes Larra, the humanlike offspring of an eagle and a woman, who kills a maiden after she refuses to marry him. Larra is then cut off from human contact and forced to live forever with his guilt. In the third, equally fantastic, tale, a tribe has hidden from its enemies by migrating to the depths of a swampy forest. A young member of the tribe, Danko, tries to lead his people out. The journey is difficult, and when the others rebel against his leadership, he tears his burning heart from his breast and by its light leads them to freedom before he dies. Sandwiched between the two legends is the earthy story of Izergil's own life, with its succession of loves and adventures.

The structure of "Old Izergil" seems awkward at first. The first and third tales appear to have little to do with the second, while the account of Izergil's romantic escapades contrasts with the fourth portion of the story, scenes in which the narrator and Izergil, by now an old crone, talk directly. But this lack of any obvious cohesiveness turns out to be a strength. The work's theme emerges less from direct statement, as in Makar Chudra's monologue, than through the juxtaposition of quite different plots. The resultant "disunity" is a favorite device of the mature Gorky; in somewhat less blatant form this approach is responsible for the relatively unimportant role that single, unifying plot lines play in his longer stories. The significance of the entire work must be constructed out of its disparate parts. Even "Makar Chudra," where the one-sided dialogue of the opening pages seems at first only loosely related to what follows, utilizes this technique in embryonic form. Only in "Old Izergil," however, is it first employed to full effect.

The two legendary episodes in "Old Izergil" modify the emphasis on freedom seen in "Makar Chudra." To be sure, both Larra and Danko are strong individuals who stand above those around them, but here Gorky stresses their ties to others. Larra cannot kill another with impunity, and his very punishment consists of exile from human contact. Danko tears out his heart not to assert his independence, but as a way of helping his community, at the cost of his life.

How do the tales relate to Izergil herself? As if following Makar Chudra's advice, Izergil had wandered about, but her life ultimately lacks the romantic qualities of the legends she relates. She was proud and valued freedom, yet she lacked constancy or any goal beyond her own pleasure. As she grew older her conquests faded: in her last affair she was the one abandoned. She has spent the last thirty years of her life in Moldavia, where she did once have a husband, but that entire period means little to her. Her willfulness and the punishment that life has dealt her recall Larra's fate, while Danko is the model she should have followed. Izergil has failed to give meaning to her life.

ALLEGORICAL TALES

Throughout the 1890s and later Gorky wrote many works that may be described as "programmatic"—that is, they state his views on life and literature more directly than his ordinary fiction. Not surprisingly, these works tend to be allegorical, and several of them, like "Makar Chudra" and "Old Izergil," employ folk motifs. The earliest is called "About the Siskin Who Lied and the Woodpecker Who Loved the Truth" ("O chizhe, kotoryi lgal, i o diatle—liubitele istiny," 1892). It describes a grove where all the birds, oppressed by the gloomy weather, sing only songs of despair until a single bird turns to "bold songs of freedom." Their spirits lifted, the other birds fly toward the singer, who, it develops, is but a lowly siskin. Though taken aback, they still want to fly off to what the siskin's song promises is a land of happiness until a woodpecker interrupts to claim he possesses the truth while the siskin's songs are nothing but a lie. The woodpecker's speech, full of solemn formality and bureaucratic jargon, contrasts both with the siskin's songs, presented in rhymed iambic tetrameter verse, and with the siskin's impassioned plea to his fellow birds. The woodpecker maintains that the siskin's songs have no basis in reality, and the other birds return to their places, leaving the siskin alone.

The most important theme of the story—and an important concern for Gorky throughout his career—is the nature of truth. For Gorky, the truth is not necessarily good, and lies are not always bad. Anything that reconciles people to a life that is unjust or less rich than it could be is bad; anything, whether truth or falsehood, that causes them to seek a change for the better is good. The siskin is a romantic, perhaps even a revolutionary. He wants the birds to seek happiness in another land. The woodpecker, who feeds on worms and finds his inspiration in dry facts, is a forerunner of the merchants and other middle-class figures in Gorky's stories who fight for the status quo.

A similar message is conveyed by the "Song of the Falcon" ("Pesnia o Sokole," 1894), sung to the narrator by a Crimean shepherd named Rahim. He tells of a grass snake that is crawling in a high gorge above the sea when a mortally wounded falcon falls nearby. The falcon tells the snake of the wonderful life he has lived and in a last effort to fly falls to his death in the sea. The snake, curious, tries to fly as well. He crashes harmlessly on some rocks beneath a cliff and concludes that his earthbound existence is superior to flight. The falcon and the snake are analogous to the siskin and the woodpecker from Gorky's earlier tale; the difference is that the falcon tells not an inspirational lie but the truth.

The animals in the "Song of the Falcon," as Betty Forman has demonstrated, also resemble the eagle and the serpent in a parable from Nietzsche's "Thus Spake Zarathustra" [Forman, "Nietzsche and Gorky in the 1890s," Western Philosophical Systems in Russian Literature, 1979]. The general question of Nietzsche's influence on Gorky is complex and has been the subject of much discussion. Not long after the turn of the century Gorky rejected most of Nietzsche's teaching (though even after the revolution he borrowed the title Untimely Thoughts for his own essays), and by the time he wrote The Life of Klim Samgin he referred to him only disparagingly. Yet it is equally true that critics of Gorky's own time saw much in Gorky that struck them as Nietzschean, even in some of his positive characters. His emphasis on daring and inner strength, the extent to which his heroes are individualists opposed to the rest of society, and his harsh condemnation of bourgeois society—all parallel Nietzsche's views. Certainly Gorky's falcon, who dies in an effort to regain his freedom, could be seen as a Nietzschean protagonist.

In 1901 Gorky published another allegory employing folk motifs, his "Song of the Stormy Petrel" ("Pesnia o Burevestnike"). The stormy petrel as a metaphor of social unrest and a possible harbinger of revolution has literary antecedents in nineteenty-century Russia as well. But, after the publication of this work in the Marxist journal Zhizn', subsequently shut down by the authorities, that association became even stronger. On occasion the phrase was attached to Gorky himself. If the siskin told courageous lies and was ultimately defeated, if the falcon died even as he proclaimed the truth, then the stormy petrel says nothing but soars boldly and triumphantly over the other creatures. The "program" behind this and Gorky's other allegories is the need to envision a better, loftier existence in the inevitable future.

Not all Gorky's allegorical tales contain folk motifs. Several—including "The Reader" ("Chitatel'," 1895-98), "About the Devil" ('Ò cherte," 1898), and "More about the Devil" ("Eshche o cherte," 1899)—employ fantasy, along with a degree of whimsy, to make a statement about the writer's role in society. In "The Reader" an author is accosted one night by a mysterious reader, who asks whether his interlocutor has fulfilled the duties of a writer. According to the reader, the "goal of literature is to help man understand himself, to strengthen his belief in himself, and to develop in him a striving for the truth."

THE VAGABONDS

The narrator in "Makar Chudra," "Old Izergil," and "Song of the Falcon" may tentatively be identified with Gorky himself, whose journeys throughout Russia in the years before he began publishing had taken him to the Ukraine, the Crimea, the Caucasus, and other regions depicted in his stories. This traveler does not focus attention upon himself: after describing the setting he allows someone else to relate a tale. In other works, though, the focus is precisely on the wanderer, a person outside society, who comes sometimes from the lower classes, sometimes from the better-educated strata of Russian society. This hero—the bosiak or vagabond—no longer feels beholden to others. He seeks to live on his own, by his own rules. Gorky felt that neither the urban intelligentsia nor the peasantry could provide guidance in the search for a better society: individuals must begin anew, breaking with old customs and rules. The bosiak rejects the indecisiveness of the educated classes as well as the submissiveness of the peasantry. He is not troubled by guilt and is willing to take what he feels is rightfully his. More than any other single element, the somewhat romanticized image of the vagabond was responsible for the immense popularity that Gorky's stories achieved after the first two volumes of his Sketches and Stories were published. The bosiak struck Gorky's contemporaries as a radically new type of literary hero, one with whom a large portion of the reading public could sympathize.

Upon examination Gorky's vagabond turns out to be a complex and often ambiguous figure. This is true even of "Chelkash" (1894), Gorky's first extensive treatment of the type. Grishka Chelkash is a well-known thief in a large port city, evidently Odessa. His usual accomplice has a broken leg, and so he takes on Gavrila, a young peasant, newly arrived from the country. The robbery that Chelkash has planned goes off smoothly, but at the end of the story a confrontation takes place between Chelkash and Gavrila over the loot. At the story's conclusion each goes his own way.

The critical moment occurs during the final scene. On several earlier occasions violence almost erupts, but each time the situation eases. Just when all danger seems past Gavrila and Chelkash have their altercation. Gavrila has mentioned earlier how much the money would mean to him, and Chelkash gives Gavrila 40 rubles out of the 540 he has been paid for the loot. When Gavrila literally begs for the rest of it, Chelkash contemptuously hands it over, but forcibly takes it back when Gavrila admits that he had thought of killing his partner to obtain all the money. As Chelkash walks away, Gavrila hits him on the head with a rock and then runs off without taking anything back. A short while later he returns, asks Chelkash's forgiveness, and is given most of the money. Gavrila then departs for the country while Chelkash returns to the city.

Without a doubt the peasant comes off worse in the exchange. Each of his actions—begging for the money, hurling the rock, even returning to seek forgiveness—is motivated by a combination of greed and cowardice. Gavrila's ties to his land and his family, traits that have traditionally been powerful in the Russian peasant, only cause an able young man to commit unworthy acts. No wonder that the Populist critics, who saw the future of Russia embodied in the peasantry, disliked the story.

"Chelkash" contains more than a conflict between peasant and vagabond. As is typical for the early Gorky, the story is introduced by a lengthy description of the bustle, cacophony, and oppressiveness of the daily routine in a busy port. The massive ships and machinery dwarf the individual. Chelkash's thievery could be justified as a kind of protest against the reigning order, though Chelkash himself would hardly analyze his actions in such lofty terms. No less important is the depiction of Chelkash. In the opening description he is, suitably for a bosiak, barefoot (bos), but the adjective applied to him most frequently is khishchnyi (rapacious or grasping). The word is most often applied to a bird of prey, which Chelkash is said to resemble, though here it is also used to describe his face, his nose, and even his leanness. Within the same passage he is said to be like a hawk (as in Gorky's allegorical stories, birds are associated with freedom), while the other animals mentioned—wolf, cat—are also significant.

The great care Gorky gave to this and other descriptions is evident from the extensive revisions he made even after the story's original publication. "Chelkash" is not unique in this regard; throughout his life Gorky constantly revised his published works. In the case of his earlier writings he was very likely responding at least in part to what he himself came to view as stylistic excesses, a fault criticized by Chekhov, among others. In a letter to Gorky of 3 December 1898, Chekhov commented on Gorky's collected stories published that year. He praised Gorky's natural talents, but also noted some deficiencies in his writing: "I'll begin with the fact that in my opinion you lack restraint. You are like a spectator in a theater who expresses his ecstasy so unrestrainedly that he keeps himself and others from hearing. This lack of restraint is especially evident in your descriptions of nature, with which you interrupt dialogues. When you read these descriptions you wish that they were more compact, some two or three lines shorter" [Pis'ma (Letters), Vol. 7, 1974-83]. Chekhov also notes Gorky's overuse of such words as languor, whispering, velvetiness; his lack of restraint in depicting women; and the absence of naturalness in his more sophisticated characters. Thus, in reworking "Chelkash" Gorky attempted to correct his tendency to overwrite. For example, while Chelkash is committing the robbery, Gavrila sits surrounded by silence. Originally Gorky elaborated in some detail on the terrible nature of that silence, but later he greatly shortened the passage. Throughout the story Gorky abbreviated descriptions, most often by removing unnecessary adjectives and adverbs. In all, the final version, while lacking the conciseness of a Chekhov story, is clearly a better written and more effective tale than it was originally.

Gorky's works depicting vagabonds often contain a marked autobiographical element. In a letter to his Russian biographer, Ilya Gruzdev, he remarked that the name Chelkash came from a fowler, while the plot of the story was based on a tale he had heard from a bosiak [Arkhiv A. M. Gor'kogo, 1966]. Gorky's experiences are reflected in other works written during the 1890s, where the focus is on the interaction between a bosiak and the narrator: examples include "A Rolling Stone" ("Prokhodimets," 1898) and "Konovalov" (1896). But if earlier the narrator was largely a passive listener, in these he appears as an active participant.

The narrator of "A Rolling Stone" meets Promtov on a wretched night when both have failed to find shelter in a village. An aggressive beggar, Promtov lies, steals, and frightens people to get his way. After they have spent several days together, he tells the narrator his life story. He came from a good family but was a misfit from the start. Although he had no difficulty in attracting women and acquiring money, he more or less by chance fell into the life of a vagabond when he was exiled from Saint Petersburg after a misadventure. He discovers that he likes being a bosiak: "It's pleasant to feel yourself free from obligations, from the various little bonds that tie you down when you are among people." Promtov rejoices not only in his freedom to wander about, but also in his ability to fool people; he has turned all of life into a game.

While Chelkash, a former peasant and a thief, nonetheless displays the romantic aura of the underdog who flouts authority, Promtov is calculating and cynical in his view of the world. Gorky, writing much later when his anti-Nietzschean opinions had been clearly formed, claimed that in Promtov and similar characters he had purposely embodied what he regarded as Nietzschean qualities [Sobranie sochinenii v tridtsati tomakh (Collected Works in Thirty Volumes), 1949-56]. In depicting such figures Gorky substantially modified the unquestioning admiration of strength evident in his portrayal of Loiko Zobar and Danko. Vigor, determination, and independence are still positive traits for Gorky, but his vagabonds can display negative characteristics as well. Their chief merit lies in their rejection of contemporary bourgeois society; they themselves are not necessarily ideal personalities.

Nor is the vagabond always presented as a strong figure. Gorky's Kazan period of the 1880s, especially his bakery work, is recorded in the third part of his autobiographical trilogy, My Universities', those years also provide the background for his long autobiographical story "The Boss" ("Khoziain") and for two of his best fictional pieces from the 1890s: "Creatures That Once Were Men" ("Byvshie liudi") and "Twenty-Six Men and a Girl" ("Dvadtsat' shest' i odna"). Taken as a whole, his "Kazan cycle" represents some of his very best writing.

Plot is of secondary importance in "Konovalov," named for a Kazan baker with whom Gorky worked. If Gorky's recollections are accurate, the structure of the story mirrors the sequence of real-life events on which the story is based. At the outset the narrator (i.e., Gorky) reads about the suicide of Konovalov. He then attempts to explain what might have led to his sad end by first recalling the period when the two worked together and then describing a chance meeting with him sometime afterward in Feodosia. Events are largely undramatic; description prevails over narration. Also, the transition between the two scenes is abrupt (as indeed are the transitions in many of Gorky's longer works, including "Chelkash" and "A Rolling Stone"), and at first the sections seem only loosely connected.

The Konovalov of the first, much longer section is a baker who clearly loves his work. The narrator admires Konovalov's ability to wield huge amounts of dough and to bake batch after batch of bread to perfection. Books fascinate Konovalov, who enjoys having the narrator read to him. A novella by Fedor Reshetnikov (1841-71), a chronicler of the rural and urban poor, produces a great effect on Konovalov, as does an historical account of the seventeenth-century uprising led by the cossack Stenka Razin. The baker is less taken by Dostoevsky's first work, Poor People—not surprisingly given Gorky's antipathy toward Dostoevsky. The narrator tells Konovalov about the hard life of writers, and Konovalov sees their sensitivity to life as resulting in a misery that they attempt to purge through drink. What he says about writers largely applies to himself as well. He has a reputation as a drunkard, and even though he works for a while, eventually he goes on another spree before disappearing from Kazan. Earlier he had spoken of himself as a person who is sometimes so overwhelmed by misery that he feels he cannot go on living. His relations with women are characteristic. He has been close to more than one, but each time he falls into a depression and leaves her. The arrival in Kazan of one young woman he had helped earlier leads directly to the drinking bout that causes him to quit work. He simply cannot shoulder the burden of another's attention. At the same time he blames only himself for his failings: his brother, who had the same upbringing, has made much more of his life. In a moment of despair he says that people like himself do not deserve to live.

When the narrator comes across him in the second part of the story, Konovalov is working as a construction worker on a breakwater on the Crimean coast. At first Konovalov seems to be healthier and happier for having roamed about for the preceding few years, but the narrator realizes that he is still unhappy, still searching for something. Gorky ties together the story's two seemingly disparate sections with a series of parallels. Konovalov's interest in books has not faded, and he has continued to attract women and then abandon them. But the later meeting illuminates the earlier portion in another way as well. When Konovalov and the narrator converse, they are within sight of the calm sea. At the same time their conversation is hampered by the chattering teeth and convulsive movements of a sick vagabond who is staying with Konovalov. The two live in a cave on a hill, just beneath a large boulder that would crush them if it fell. The oppressive and immediate presence of illness and death contrasts with the beauty of the distant sea. The scene evokes the misery that has always dwelled within Konovalov as well as the peace he has sought but cannot attain.

NATURALISTIC TALES

In classifying Gorky's position among writers of the turn of the century, Russian critics have most often referred to him as a critical realist, a term used to describe authors who wrote realistic stories incorporating a critical attitude toward the society of their day. In some of Gorky's works, though, any criticism of society is more implicit than explicit. Such stories portray, in a seemingly neutral manner, the harshness that often exists in human beings and in nature itself.

Two such works—"On a Raft" ("Na plotakh," 1898) and "In the Steppe" ("V stepi," 1897)—are among Gorky's darkest, and also among Chekhov's favorites [according to his letters in Pis'ma, Vol. 8]. In the first tale Silan Petrov has taken away his son's wife. While the son talks with another worker at the back of a raft, Silan and his daughter-in-law embrace at the front. "In the Steppe" is narrated by one of three hungry tramps who come across an ill man with food. They first ask for some of the food, then take the rest by force. In the middle of the night one of the three kills the sick traveler, robs him, and leaves. The other two wake up, discover what has happened, and hastily depart.

What attracted Chekhov to such works? In the first place, they are among Gorky's most concise, most harmoniously composed stories. The first-person narrator is absent, except at the very end of "In the Steppe," and perhaps for that reason there is less description, less effort to set a mood. The atmosphere is established by the events, which begin immediately, and by the dialogue. In addition, with the exception of the final lines of "In the Steppe," Gorky avoids the moralistic or philosophical passages that sometimes mar even his best works. Instead, the ideas emerge in the course of the action.

Much longer and more complex are "Cain and Artyom" ("Kain i Artem," 1898) and "Malva" (1897), two of a group of works from the late 1890s in which Gorky develops insoluble conflicts between characters whose makeup is too different to allow them to understand one another. The dilemmas are reminiscent of those often experienced by better-educated or at least better-bred people in the works of other Russian writers. Part of Gorky's originality is to transpose such psychological dramas to situations involving people who are less knowledgeable and relatively incapable of self-analysis.

Artyom is a handsome, powerful, but lazy bully of twenty-five who lives on handouts he receives from his many female admirers. One night several of Artyom's enemies set upon him when he is drunk, beat him, and leave him for dead. After being nursed back to health by Cain, a Jewish ragman who is often mocked and beaten, Artyom promises him protection. But this promise proves burdensome to Artyom, who finally decides to go back on his word and leave Cain to his own devices.

The story is remarkable among Gorky's longer tales for its lack of philosophizing. Things simply are as they are: Cain exists to be beaten, and Artyom to oppress others. For a brief moment the natural order of things turns around, and as a result something is not quite right. Artyom remains ill at ease in his role of protector, while Cain has a constant presentiment that something will go wrong. After he decides to abandon Cain, Artyom feels no guilt and peacefully dozes off. The strong feel no pity for the weak in Gorky's world.

"Malva" contains one of Gorky's best early portraits of a female character. In some ways, as was noted by Gorky's contemporaries, Malva resembles other women in Gorky's stories, going back to Izergil. All are independent, strong figures who flout conventional rules of morality in much the same way that Gorky's male vagabonds challenge other social norms. Occasionally Gorky tended to sentimentalize his women characters, especially in his treatment of prostitutes. For instance, "The Woman with Blue Eyes" ("Zhenshchina s golubymi glazami," 1895) is about a widow who maintains her dignity even after she turns to prostitution to support her children; the narrator of "Once in Autumn" ("Odnazhdy osen'iu," 1894) tells how a prostitute helped him find shelter when he was cold and hungry; and a lonely prostitute has a youthful narrator write love letters to and from the imaginary title figure in "Boles" (1896). Malva, though, is far from sentimental. She has had a long-standing affair with Vasily, who lives on a spur of land where he works as a fishery watchman. Yakov, the son Vasily has not seen since leaving home five years before, comes to persuade his father to return. With only minimal effort on her part, Malva causes the son to fall in love with her as well. A violent rivalry arises between father and son. In the end, though, Malva goes off with neither, but with Sergei, a powerful, hard-drinking, insolent fisherman who has had his eye on her all along.

Despite their bitter conflict, Yakov and Vasily are more alike than they realize, and eventually reach a tacit understanding. Yakov cannot comprehend his father's abandonment of the land, but then he himself is all too readily seduced by the freer life along the shore and, of course, by Malva herself. The real gulf, however, lies between Yakov and Vasily on the one hand, and Malva on the other. Both men depend upon Malva for their temporary happiness, but she wants true independence. Her interest in them (and no doubt in Sergei as well) is only temporary. She enjoys a much more profound freedom than either of them will ever attain.

LOST ILLUSIONS

Among the stories Gorky wrote in the late 1890s are several in which characters either have ideals that are tarnished or else get a glimpse of a better world that remains beyond their reach. In both cases the result is despair.

"Creatures That Once Were Men" ("Byvshie liudi," 1897; literally "Ex-People") belongs, like Konovalov, to Gorky's Kazan cycle. In a memoir of 1928 Gorky mentions that he first saw the main figure in "Creatures That Once Were Men," Kuvalda, in court, being prosecuted for beating up an innkeeper. Possibly Gorky had this incident in mind when he ended the story with Kuvalda's arrest.

The down-and-outers who inhabit Kuvalda's lodging are influenced by two people. One is Kuvalda himself, a retired army captain of imposing physique and cheerful disposition, but also with a strong inclination to drink that has brought him far down in life. For all his gregariousness and generosity, though, Kuvalda does not help people get back on their feet but encourages them to remain where they are. His major undertaking in the story is to encourage Vavilov, the proprietor of an inn across the street, to bring suit against Petunnikov, owner of the lodging house that Kuvalda runs. Petunnikov is putting up a factory that juts onto land owned by the inn. Vavilov ends up settling with Petunnikov for a trifling sum, but then is forced to give most of the money over to Kuvalda and the other "ex-people" for their help in the suit. Kuvalda fails to stop the factory, though he does get the satisfaction of using the money he obtains to arrange a feast for his fellow creatures.

The other main influence is a man known as the "teacher" because he originally taught. Since then he has worked at other jobs; at the time of the story he is a reporter for a local newspaper. Like Kuvalda, he is well educated and comes from a better background; the two men are in fact friends and drinking companions. The teacher, though, dreams of something better. Although he lacks the will to stop drinking and leave Kuvalda's lodging, he teaches and helps others. The hopeless drunkards at the lodging house are closer to Kuvalda, while those who still have some self-respect are inclined toward the teacher, who writes petitions for his fellow "creatures," publishes notices on their behalf in the paper, and tries to instill in them a degree of pride. At the end of the story, worn out by alcoholism, he is brought back to the lodging mortally ill. He dies as the others carouse on the money they have received from Vavilov's settlement with Petunnikov. The next day, as the teacher's body is taken away, Kuvalda gets into an altercation and is arrested. The "creatures" thus lose both their physical support, Kuvalda, and their spiritual guide, the teacher.

Gorky's masterpiece of the 1890s is a brief tale in which incident, character, and description combine to create a nearly perfect story. "Twenty-Six Men and a Girl" ("Dvadtsat' shest' i odna," 1899) is again set in Kazan. Subtitled "A Poem," it describes the existence of twenty-six men who labor from six in the morning until ten at night working in a damp basement room that houses a bakery. Little brightens their dreary days except for the visits of Tanya, a sixteen-year-old maidservant who works in an embroidery shop on the second floor of the building. When she stops by each morning the men give her pretzels and do various favors for her in the hope that she will continue to visit. Next door to the room where the men make pretzels is another section of the bakery, in which four men prepare rolls under distinctly better working conditions. A new worker in that section, an ex-soldier and something of a dandy, visits the twenty-six men, and on one occasion boasts of his admirers among the women who work upstairs. The baker in the pretzel section claims that their Tanya would be no easy conquest. The ex-soldier promises success within two weeks, a period filled with foreboding for the twenty-six. When Tanya succumbs, the men surround her, shouting angrily at her, for she has taken away their happiness. She contemptuously shouts back, walks through the crowd of men as though they were not there, and never returns.

This work is highly effective for several reasons. One is that it is very tightly constructed. The seduction scene, to take just a single example, is symmetrical: first the twenty-six crowd around, then Tanya is shown going into the cellar, to be followed by the soldier. After the seduction the action is reversed: first the soldier emerges, then Tanya, and finally the men from the bakery crowd around her. Into the middle of all this, as the twenty-six wait, the author inserts an equally symmetrical description of the weather. In Gorky's longer, less intense, and usually less unified stories the descriptions tend to be more leisurely, and acquire power through accumulation. In "Twenty-Six Men and a Girl" the details are spare and the impact sudden. Another factor is the unusually evocative imagery, which in several instances has religious content. The monstrous oven dominating the pretzel bakery resembles a pagan deity, while Tanya herself is depicted as an idol to whom the men make ritual sacrifices. The settings also play a notable role in the narrative. The men's moldy underground chamber is contrasted both to the room in which rolls are produced and to the second floor where Tanya works. When she arrives she stands at the threshold, several steps above where the men work. It is as though others come from a higher and better world unattainable to the twenty-six.

The theme of the story combines a statement on human nature with an insight into the relationship between a group and an individual. As Helen Muchnic has stated succinctly [in From Gorky to Pasternak, 1961], at its core lies "man's tragic inclination to destroy himself unwittingly by setting traps for what he loves and lives by." The story is unusual because it illustrates this tendency, not through the "I" so pervasive in Gorky's early stories, but through a collective "we": the narrator speaks in the plural and never separates himself from the others. Only the baker who prods the ex-soldier into seducing Tanya is referred to individually several times. His position seems to have made him a de facto leader, and so he becomes the group's voice, articulating a belief in Tanya that they all share.

Another aspect of the theme is perhaps best illustrated by reference to a story that Gorky wrote not long before: "Notch" ("Zazubrina," 1897). The prisoner "Notch" enjoys entertaining his fellow inmates. But he has a rival in a playful kitten, which the prisoners also love. Angry at the tiny scene-stealer, he dips the kitten in green paint, at first to the amusement of the other prisoners. When it becomes clear that the kitten is in pain and about to suffocate, Notch's comrades beat him badly. That he eventually recovers his former position is implied by the last paragraph of the story: "The kitten disappeared from that time on. And Notch no longer had to share the attention of the prison's inhabitants with anybody." The group's admiration makes "Notch" a worse person than he would be otherwise.

If we keep "Notch" in mind, the worship of Tanya by the twenty-six men appears in a different light. Granted, she is not cruel, and most commentators on the story have seen her as a positive figure—a person who maintains her independence despite the men's efforts to turn her into an idol. Nevertheless, until she loses her luster at the end she enjoys and even takes advantage of their worship. They give her free pretzels and do small chores for her, but when one of them has the temerity to ask her to mend his only shirt, she refuses with contempt. To them she is an ideal; in reality, she is an ordinary person—and thus her "fall" at the end is nothing unusual. What is more, the workers' interest in Tanya turns them away from their own inner strength. That resource emerges in their singing: all twenty-six sing as a unit, their voices echoing through the shop giving them strength to get through their daily tasks. The true ideal, says Gorky, resides in oneself and in the group to which one belongs; it is futile to seek it in others.