Revolution, and other essays

asking, hither

sking, Whither

up of this f

e memory of t

is a Russian who so rises up and demands. For Gorky, the Bitter One, is essentially a Russian in his grasp on the facts of life and in his treatment. All the Russian self-analysis and insistent introspection are his. And, like all his brother Russians, ardent, passionate protest

Foma Gordyeeff. The rebellion in his blood is something to which their own does not thrill. To them it will be inexplicable that this man, with his health and his millions, could not go on living as his class lived, keeping regular hours at desk and stock exchange, driving close contracts, underbidding his competitors, and exulting in the business disasters of his fellows. It would ap

Ekh, you manager of life! Come, now, you're clever, you know everything - tell me, why do you live? Why do you accumulate money?

environment into which he is born. Ignat, his father, and Mayakin, the godfather, and all the horde of successful merchants singing the paean of the strong and the praises of merciless, remorseless lais

m; and if you see that he is a strong and capable man, help him if you like. But if a man is weak, not inclined to work - spit upon him and go your way. And you must know that w

wed out between glasses of strong liquor. Now co

by that chant he reminds us of Christ, of His holy command to help our neighbour. But men have so ordered their lives that it is utterly impossible for them to act in accordance with Christ's teaching, and Jesus Christ has become entirely superfluous to us. Not once, but, in all probability, a thousand times, we have g

y people who toiled at hard labour. It was strange - why did they live? What satisfaction was it to them to live on the earth? All they did was to perform their dirty, arduous toil, eat poorly; they were miserably clad, addi

its meaning vainly. "Why should I try to live life when I do not know what life is?" he objects when Mayakin strive

es? What have they lived for? But my idea is that everybody ought, without fail, to know solidly what he is living for. Is it possible that a man is born to toil, accumulate money, build a house, beget children, and - die? No; life means something in itself. . . . A man has been born, has lived, has died -

petites he finds no charm. It is all utterly despicable and sordid, but thither his quest leads him and he follows the quest. He knows that everything is wrong, but he cannot right it, cannot tell why. He can only attack and demolish. "What justification have you all in the sight of God? Why do you live?" he

a's: "You blood-suckers! You live on other people's strength; you work with other people's hands! For all this you sha

ct one another, cannot help him; nor can the pilgrims on crowded steamers, nor the verse writers and harlots in dives and boozingkens. And so, wondering, pondering, perplexed, amazed, whirling through the mad whirlpool of life, dancing the dance of

o-day nice. One lays the book down sick at heart - sick for life with all its "lyings and its lusts." But it is a healthy book. So fearful is its portrayal of social disease, so ruthless its s

decisive. She left him to go with the son of a rich vodka-maker. And all that was best in Sofya Medynsky was quickened when she looked upon Foma with the look of the Mother–Woman. She might have been a power

life, and the art of Gorky is the art of realism. But it is a less tedious realism than that of Tolstoy or Turgenev. It lives and breathes from pa

ow. That he hopes, we know, else would he not now be festering in a Russian prison because he is brave enough to live the hope he feels. He knows life, why and how it should be lived. And in c

t, Cali

901.