 | Russia's Tramp Novelist |  |
RUSSIA'S TRAMP NOVELIST
A brief despatch from St. Petersburg recently announced that Gorki, the celebrated tramp novelist, had destroyed the last chapters of his new work, The Moujiks, on which he has been engaged, and that it is believed he has gone back to his old life of vagrancy.
Maximilian Gorki is a curious literary phenomenon, who appeared in the Russian world of letters about seven years ago. A common tramp by profession and instincts, Gorki suddenly came forward as the author of books which, for their human interest and power of character drawing, have not been equalled by any Russian writer since the first romances of Tolstoy. The critics, while marvelling at the prodigy, acknowledged the absolute freshness and novelty of the writer's work, which has met with tremendous popular success, and has to a certain extent revolutionised Russian literature.
According to Ivan Strannik, who introduces his remarkable compatriot to foreign readers in a long article in the Revue de Paris, Gorki was born of very humble parents in Nizhni-Novgorod, a government of middle Russia, in 1868 or 1869—Gorki himself is not quite sure which—and became an orphan when still a child. He was apprenticed to a shoe-maker, but, disliking the sedentary life, he ran away. He likewise deserted from an engraver's office, after which he entered the studio of a painter of religious pictures. Next he was a scullery boy and then assistant to a gardener. He tried all these modes of life, and was content with none of them. When he was fifteen he could barely read, although his grandfather took some pains to make him spell out words from an old family Bible. These early studies, however, only filled him with disgust for learning until the day when, assistant cook on board a steamboat, he was initiated by the chief cook into the joys of French romance, which fired his imagination and filled him with a ferocious desire to educate himself.
He went to Kazan and tried to obtain free tuition in one of the schools, but this he found impossible. Disillusionised, he took a situation as baker's by at the wages of three roubles a month, but soon tiring of this and longing for the fresh air of the open country, he deserted the bakery and became a common country tramp, fraternising with every ragged vagrant he met on the road, but always reading and neglecting no opportunity to educate himself. A few months later he was back in the city, acting as watchman, and afterward he peddled kvass, a kind of sour beverage, in the streets. Then came the opportunity that was to give him his first foothold in the path of literature. Chance brought him into relations with an advocate, who took interest in him and helped him in his education. Then, just as this new life seemed to be developing his genius, his natural restlessness again asserted itself and once more led him to resume his nomadic existence. He tramped all over Russia on foot, exercising every possible calling to eke out an existence, including henceforth that of a man of letters.
He made his literary début with a short story called "Makar Tchoudra," which was published in a country paper. The story was more remarkable for what it promised for the future than for what it gave, the style being as yet unformed and smacking somewhat of the romantic school. The scene is laid in a gypsy camp, and the characters at times lack naturalness. Nevertheless, in this narrative can be seen already Gorki's most marked characteristics—his passion for outdoor life and his inordinate love of music and nature.
Gorki's real début dates from 1893. He made about that time the acquaintance of Korolenko, the writer, and with his assistance published another story, entitled Tchelkache, the success of which was tremendous. From then on Gorki threw aside every convention and strove to give frank and direct expression to his own views of life. As until then his life had been spent in the company of vagrants and he was himself a vagrant, he decided to devote his Muse to singing the "Song of the Tramp."
His favourite form is the short story. During the last seven years he has written thirty, which by their expressive brevity sometimes recall the methods of Guy de Maupassant. The plan of these stories is extremely simple. Often there are not more than two characters—
A young peasant leaves his village to find work. In a seaport town he meets a ne'er-do-well, who persuades him to commit a crime. This entails a mysterious night expedition, which has for its object the robbing of one of the vessels in the harbour. The two men have to run the gauntlet of the coast guards during the terrors of night-time. After escaping a thousand dangers the booty is secured and is soon transformed into gold. So much wealth dazzles the peasant. Pictures of an idle, luxurious life surge through his obscure mind and disturb and tempt him. Dissatisfied at the share his comrade gives him, the peasant attempts to assassinate him and steals his purse. Then, tormented by remorse and fearing that the bloodshed and robbery may bring him bad luck, he returns to the man whom he has almost killed and, humbling himself, offers to return the stolen money. But the wounded man despises him, throws the coveted money in his face and, as a supreme insult, ends by forgiving him.
The plot is made entirely subsidiary to the character drawing. The style, despite its imperfections, is marvellously well adapted to the subject, being vigorous and facile and varying according to the needs of the story, now expressing all the abruptness and coarseness necessary; at other times coloured and poetic, until it reaches almost lyric heights. Gorki is very uneven, according to his moods, and he delights in fantastic pictures. His work lacks premeditation, each chapter representing his mood at the moment of penning it.
All that Gorki relates he has seen. All the scenes on land and sea that he describes, says M. Strannik, he has observed during the course of his adventurous career. Each detail of his mise-en-scène recalls to him some bitter or happy memory. The life of the vagrant he depicts has been his own life. The tramps have been his comrades. He has loved them or hated them. This explains the striking fidelity of his characters to life. He does not idealise the tramp; the sympathy he has for their courage and love of liberty does not blind him. He does not seek to conceal their faults or condone their vices. He paints the reality, but without exaggerating its ugliness. He does not avoid painful or coarse scenes, but even in his most realistic passages he never shocks the reader, because one feels that he is striving only to present the truth as it is, and is not seeking to create a sensation by cheap methods. He merely states things as they are and insists that they cannot be changed, as they depend on immutable laws. Gorki sees in his characters only the spectacle of life. He sees passion convulse them as the wind raises the crests of the waves, and laughter pass over their souls as the sunlight pierces the cloud. He is, in the best acceptation of the word, a realist.
The introduction of the tramp into Russian literature is Gorki's great innovation. The earlier Russian writers were first interested in the cultured classes; later they went as low in the social scale as the moujik. The literature of the peasant, in fact, assumed great importance. It also had political significance and had much to do with the emancipation of the serfs. Yet a large class remained in the shadow—that big army of vagrants, obeying no laws, common to all countries, but larger, perhaps, in Russia than elsewhere. The Russian tramp, like his American brother, is recruited from all classes of society, and one finds among them, in spite of the complete bankruptcy of their past, picturesque signs of their origin, that remain with them to the time when they finally disappear into unknown graves. Old soldiers, former students, printers, nobles, schoolmasters, peasants, each has retained some distinctive mark of his profession. Among his tramps Gorki represents as being particularly debased and devoid of all moral sentiment those vagrants that once belonged to a higher social class. He argues that they have not become tramps in obedience to an instinct of liberty, but rather owing to their idleness and cowardice, which rendered them incapable of leading a well-conducted life. Gorki despises this kind of vagrant, and he never misses an opportunity in his stories to disassociate them from nature's true vagabonds.
Although, for the most part, the tramps in Russia are recruited among the peasants, there is between these two classes much opposition and open hostility. The tramp despises the peasant who lives miserably on the little he has got. The peasants, on the contrary, abominate the tramp, because they fear him and perhaps also because he tempts them to adopt their own idle, irresponsible kind of existence. But the hand-to-mouth life of the tramp, with its lack of principles and domicile, offends the conservative instincts of the true peasant. If some of them join the army of tramps, it is because in some districts the soil does not produce enough to support the population.
The success of Gorki has been tremendous; so great, in fact, that it may have had the pernicious effect of checking his genius. Almost as soon as he realised that he had received a place in literature Gorki tried to take up other subjects. But although familiar with the life of the tramp, he was entirely out of his element when portraying society people, and the few stories he has written dealing with the upper classes are commonplace and did not add to his reputation.
His sudden disappearance from St. Petersburg is taken to mean that once more that restlessness of soul and longing for the unfettered life of the fields that has been with him all his life has again seized him. His friends say that he will reappear as suddenly as he went away, bringing with him more material to add to the store of human documents that have already made him famous.
| Russia's Tramp Novelist | |