And here Gorki is a true creator, even if as artist he ranks below Dostoevsky.
[Ill.u.s.tration: 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 s.e.xual affairs, and, in fact, in all relations. Gorki"s harlots on the contrary always have some compelling, touching, n.o.ble trait. One of the prost.i.tutes 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 pa.s.sion 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 cla.s.ses of the community. A prost.i.tute 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 prost.i.tute. 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 ent.i.tled 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 pa.s.sion 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 a.s.sociate, who loses all higher motives in his struggle for the means of existence.
[Ill.u.s.tration: 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 n.o.ble. 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 prost.i.tute, 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 c.o.c.k-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 dest.i.tute; 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 h.e.l.l. 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 a.s.sistance. 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.
[Ill.u.s.tration: 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 t.i.tanic 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 compa.s.sion 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."
[Ill.u.s.tration: 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-cla.s.s 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 a.s.sociates with stronger and more artistic touches, that is, if he had been hard and ruthless, like Maupa.s.sant 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 cla.s.sic tragedy of the ma.s.ses. It contains all that can be demanded of a drama: climax, necessary impulsion, catastrophe. It would not be easy to surpa.s.s 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 ent.i.tles 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 h.o.a.rd 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?
[Ill.u.s.tration: 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 alb.u.m of sketches of "The Doss-house" as performed at the Art Theatre in Moscow. I do this in the hope of simultaneously expressing my grat.i.tude 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._