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Many of the gods whom they worshipped have to-day become dangerous idols. Mankind, I fear, will fail to fulfil its lofty destiny unless it can transcend these earlier ideals, unless it prove able to offer wider horizons to the coming generations. In a word, I love and admire the past; but I wish the future to excel the past. It can; it must.... Maxim Gorki answered as follows:
Andreev has the gift of admiration, and loves to render homage where homage is due, having dedicated his first book to Gorki, and his story of "The Seven Who Were Hanged" to Tolstoi. His style, while marked by the typical yet always startling Russian simplicity, is nevertheless entirely his own, and all his tales and plays are stamped by powerful individuality.
To an educated native Slav, or to a professor of the Russian language, twenty or thirty Russian authors would no doubt seem important; but the general foreign reading public is quite properly mainly interested in only five standard writers, although contemporary novelists like Gorki, Artsybashev, Andreev, and others are at this moment deservedly attracting wide attention.
"Mark Twain and Gorki recognised each other before they were introduced, but neither being able to understand the language of the other, they simply grasped hands and held on more than a minute. . . . Gorki said he had read Mark Twain's stories when he was a boy, and that he had gotten much delight from them. Mark declared that he also had been a reader and admirer of Gorki.
Among recent writers Chekhov is at the farthest remove from his friend Gorki, and most akin to Andreev. It is probable that Andreev learned something from him. Unlike Turgenev, both Chekhov and Andreev study mental disease.
In 1903, a newspaper in Russia sent out thousands of blanks to high school boys and girls all over the country, to discover what books constituted their favourite reading. Among native authors, Tolstoi was first, closely followed by Gorki; among foreign writers, Guy de Maupassant was the most popular!
With the older man's influence, Gorki succeeded in obtaining the entree to the St. Petersburg magazines; and while the Russian critics were at a loss how to regard the new genius, the public went wild. He visited the capital in 1899, and there was intense curiosity to see and to hear him.
A despot, grim and pitiless, was waiting for him round the corner. In other words, the proprietor of his hotel discovered that Mme. Gorki had no right to that name, and amid the cheers of the guests he and his companion were driven shamefully into the street. Were it not for the wanton inconvenience inflicted upon M. Gorki, the comedy of the situation would be priceless.
Indeed, Gorki, in "Varenka Olessova," has put into the mouth of a sensible girl an excellent sketch of the national representative. *Goncharov devoted a whole novel, "Oblomov," to the elaboration of this particular type. "The Russian hero is always silly and stupid, he is always sick of something; always thinking of something that cannot be understood, and is himself so miserable, so m i serable!
Napoleon, seeing that no impression could be made on the Russian left, now sent orders to the Viceroy to carry the great redoubt before Gorki. In spite of the difficulties presented by the broken ground, the three French divisions pressed forward with the greatest gallantry, and, heedless of the storm of grape poured upon them, stormed the redoubt.
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