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Updated: June 20, 2025
Then there was a dancer; then, just after Gorky's visit here, a Russian anarchist woman. After that the coat-makers and shirtwaist-makers began to whisper that Stein's great success was with Kitty Ayrshire. "It is the hardest thing in the world to disprove such a story, as Dan Leland and I discovered.
Gorky's stories, always short enough, have little or no plot, and the characters are barely sketched. But, in these simple frames, he has confined the power of an art which is prolific, supple and profoundly living. Let us take, for example, "The Friends." Dancing Foot and The One Who Hopes are ordinary thieves, the terror of the villagers whose gardens they rob.
"Sit down in the morris chair ... you look dusty and heated ... I'll entertain you ... I'm all alone ... Penton is dictating an article to Ruth. Darrie's washing her hair. I'm the only member of the Leisure Class. I'm lazing here, reading Gorky's latest novel." What an engaging, pretty, naïve, little woman this was! I commented inwardly.
The literary critic, however, in carefully studying the works of these authors, tried to get at the real meaning, the idea between the lines. Gorky's philosophy has often been discussed; a great many men of letters have tried to unravel what there was of pessimism, of indifference or of mystic idealism in the soul of Tchekoff.
On the other hand, Gorky's second attempt, "A Night's Refuge," has been enormously successful. Here, the author takes us into the world of the barefoot brigade. Vasska Pepel, Vassilissa's lover, the proprietor of the night refuge in which he sleeps, loves the sister of his mistress, Natasha by name, a timid and dreamy young girl, who blooms like a lily in this mire.
"The soul is filled with an ardent yet calm joy, you desire nothing, you envy no one.... And it is then that it seems as if on the whole earth there is no one but God and you...." The material inconveniences of such an existence hardly affect Gorky's characters.
The reality which formerly we wanted so ardently, has frozen us and broken us down.... What is there to do? Let us try: perhaps invention and imagination will aid man in raising himself so that he may again glance for a moment at the place which he has lost on earth." All of Gorky's characters curse life, but without ceasing to love it, because they "have the taste for life."
I had already refused to sign the sort of general appeal his friends were making to our principles and pockets because I felt it so wholly idle, and when the paper was produced in Gorky's presence and Clemens put his name to it I still refused.
"They do nothing but construct, they work perpetually, their blood and sweat are the cement of all the edifices of the earth. And yet the remuneration which they receive, although they are crushed by their work, does not give them shelter or enough food really to live on." The enlightened classes are always characterized in Gorky's works by violent traits.
I looked round and saw Sukhanov, Gorky's friend, formerly one of the cleverest writers on the Novaya Jizn. I jumped up and shook hands with him. "What, have you gone over to the Bolsheviks?" I asked. "Not at all," said Sukhanov, smiling, "but I am working here." "Sukhanov thinks that we do less harm than anybody else," said Pavlovitch, and laughed.
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