"The Birth of a Man" and "The Icebreaker" by Maxim Gorky

"The Birth of a Man"  (1916, 20 pages)
"The Icebreaker" (1914, 32 pages)

Some Rambling Notes on Why Gorky

is not a very  popular writer.  

"The Birth of a Man" and "The Icebreaker" are both included in the collection of Gorky's short stories, Through Russia, first published in 1923.   (All of the stories in the collection  are translated by C. J. Hogarth).   I recently "discovered" that the short stories of Gorky (1868 to 1936-Russia) are amazing looks at life in late Czarist Russia among the poorest of the poor.   I have known off Gorky for many years but just read my first work by him a few days ago.   There are as far as I could find very few blog posts on Gorky.   A little research quickly revealed the reason he is now so little read and is held in almost contempt by many.    (There is some background information on Gorky in my prior two posts on him).


'Gorky is seen as the "pet" of Joseph Stalin.   There are lots of pictures of  Gorky and Stalin together and even a famous in its day painting of Gorky reading to an apparently thrilled Stalin.   There are pictures of Gorky posing with the head of the secret police, with generals, and with Lenin.  He was on stamps and coins and statues all over Russia.   Everyone in Russia at one time had to say they loved his work even if they never read it at all.    To be the pet writer of Stalin had to have been near the literary kiss of death among the readers of the western world.   Meaning this pretty literally,  being the favorite writer of Stalin is on a level with being endorsed as a great writer by Hitler.   I do not yet know if Gorky knew of the horrible consequences of Stalin's policies and turned a blind eye to them in exchange for mansions and great fame or if he sincerely believed Stalin was a great man.  A writer can have barbaric or totally naive political views and still be a great writer.   I think Gorky was not taught in English and American schools because of his political views so no one ended up reading him.

I kind of think as one reads more of Gorky, his work was "pure" up until the Bolsheviks took power and then he became increasingly a political writer.   In Gorky's defense, if Stalin decided to make a "pet" of him it would have been very dangerous to refuse his kindness so maybe Gorky was trapped.

OK enough on my no doubt half baked theories!

The five short stories I have so far read by Gorky (I now have found 17 translated stories online) are incredible depictions of life among the sub-peasants in late Czarist Russian (1895 to 1915 or so).    The poor in his stories make the poor in Hugo or Dickens look comfortable!   The realism of his stories did get him locked up by the Czarist secret police and noticed by Lenin.

If every there was a writer who wrote about those who had no one to speak for them, it was Gorky.   He does not write like Tolstoy or Turgenev of the rooted in place peasant but of the very rootless millions that were turned out by their masters with no where to go and no real way to live.   Millions of the people like those in Gorky's stories died as a result of state policy and the total indifference of the Czarist policies.  

I will just speak very briefly of the two stories by Gorky I most recently read as I will be reading and posting on more of his work in 2012.

"The Birth of a Man" is set in the Russian country side.   It is narrated in the first person by a tramp, a man without a master.   He encounters a group of  "famine pilgrims" out on the road looking for food and facing death by starvation.   One of the women is pregnant and is about to give birth.   The narrator wants to help her but first he has to be sure she has no man in her life that might cause him trouble.   She has been abandoned.   The scenes of the man bringing the baby into the world are like nothing I have read elsewhere.     He knows pretty much nothing about the procedure and it is the woman's first baby.    It is all very moving without being mawkish like one might find in most of the writers of the era.    You will not find a scene like this in the lady writers of the era.

"The Icebreakers" is set on a frozen river.   There are a number of people in the story, all working poor stuck on or around an icebreaker ship whose job it is to keep the river open for traffic.    (If my memory of history is right-and no I was not there in person-workers on icebreakers and naval ships were among the first to support the Bolsheviks with the revolution began.)   Workers have their conflicts with their boss, a 15 year old son of the owner of a business.   The workers steal nails to trade for drink and when the son threatens to tell his father they just tell him go ahead we will just say we  have been stealing for a long time only you never saw it.   The fun in this story is in the normally behind the scenes conversations of the workers with each other.   We also feel a real sense of danger as they try to walk across the thawing ice.

I am very glad I gave Gorky a try.   I will be reading a lot more of his work,  for sure 13 or so more short stories and his major novel about women in the revolution, Mother.   I will post on the ones I think are most worth reading, maybe all of them.


Question- If Gorky knew Stalin was a mass murderer (20+ million as a minimum) and wrote in defense of his policies for the sake of personal comfort, would that turn you off so much that you would not read his work?    I admit whenever I read the work of German writers from the WWII era,  I look to see if they supported the Nazis.   I would probably not read the work of a Filipino writer who was a great supporter of Ferdinand Marcos (an angel compared to Stalin!)

Both of these stories can be downloaded as Kindles or in other formats (and read online) at eBooks@Adelaide, an excellent easy to use source for free e books.

Mel u

"Twenty-Six and One" by Maxim Gorky

"Twenty-Six and One" by Maxim Gorky (1899, 21 pages)

Maxim Gorky (1868 to 1936-Russia) was the "pet" writer of Joseph Stalin.   For many years to criticize the work of Gorky in public in Russia would get you a trip to Siberia or worse.  Not really surprisingly,  many say Gorky was murdered at the order of the director of the secret police.   The great Russian writers had written about the peasants in a romantic way.   There were millions of people in late Czarist Russia so poor that they wished they were serfs on the estate of a Turgenev or Tolstoy.  (There is some background information on Gorky in my prior post on two of his short stories.)   Some say Gorky invented as an important literary figure the character of "The tramp".   (A  tramp was basically a displaced serf or peasant forced out of his ancestral position of slavery and security and forced to roam Russia looking for food and work.)     If this is right, then Gorky paved the way for Waiting for Godot, among many other works.  

Tolstoy and Gorky

Gorky was a hugely productive writer with a giant ego.   In addition to 30 short stories he wrote all sorts of things including a 1000 page memoir, operas, and lots of political writings in opposition to Czarist policies and later in support of the early Soviet state.    


"Twenty-Six and One" (sometimes it is translated as "Twenty-Six Men and a Girl" ) is one of the most famous of Gorky's stories.   The story is set in a large bakery factory.   The twenty six men made biscuits.   They are kept locked in their work place as virtual prisoners.  Their lives are  never ending toil and unrelieved tedium.   They have been together so long they have run out of anything to say to each other than to pursue endless petty quarrels.   Of course there are no women in their grim lives.   They have one joy they all share.   A beautiful sixteen year old girl Tanya visits them every morning and they give her six free biscuits.   They idolize her for her purity and goodness and beauty.  (It seems from this and his other stories, Gorky may have wanted to set the poor of Russia free but women were judged by their looks mostly.)   One day a handsome soldier, a blond, stops by the bakery.   He tells the bakers he knows that men like them cannot attract any women but as he is so handsome and bold and manly he can get any woman he wants.   Some of the bakers foolishly tell him "No you cannot get our pure Tanya".   A bet is quickly made.  The soldier has thirty days to "capture" Tanya.  I will leave the rest of the plot untold.   Gorky knows a great deal about what extreme poverty can do to people.   If ever there was writer who spoke for those without a voice, Gorky is it.   


Gorky lets us see exactly how the bakers lives.  We feel their misery.   These are not the idolized poor in a Victorian serial written for ladies to read over tea.   


I think a lot of potential readers of Gorky are kind of turned off by his status as a Soviet icon. Gorky for sure let himself be used by the state in return for wealth as well as great fame.    At one time in the USA or UK liking Gorky would  have been almost like proclaiming your self a communist.   His work was required reading for generations of Russia school children.   


I really have enjoyed reading the three Gorky short stories I have read so far.   I endorse them to all and see them as near must reading for those into Russian literature and those who want to learn more about life among the "real people" in late Czarist Russia.  


You can download this and other works by Gorky at Manybooks.


I have two more of his short stories to read soon.  I have so far found five of his thirty short stories online.   Some of his short stories are still as English works under copyright due to the date of translation.  (I have no translator credit for "Twenty-Six and One").



Please share your experience with Gorky and if you have no experience yet, give the stories I have posted on a chance.  


One of the very great things about short stories is they let us "try out" a new to us writer without a huge amount of time invested.  


Mel u

Maxim Gorky: Two Great Short Stories

"One Autumn Night" (10 pages, 1901)
"Her Lover" (9 pages,  1904)

One of the many benefits of short stories is they let you try out new to you writers without a huge investment of time.    Yesterday I was looking around on Manybooks (now my first go to web page for free E-books) and I ended up downloading a book from 1930 Best Russian Short Stories, edited and selected by Ignath Potapenko.   (I found nothing when I did a Google search on that name-if you know something about him, please leave a comment or E-mail me.)   In the introduction it is stated that it is the first substantial collection of Russian short stories in English. There are all the expected writers, plus a few writers I have not heard of (I will read and perhaps post on them soon) and there are two stories by Maxim Gorky.   I read both of these stories and I totally loved them.    They fit perfectly Frank O'Connor's  idea that short stories at their best are about sub-groups in society that have no one to speak for them.    Maxim Gorky was the voice of millions of Russians in late Czarist Russian who had been displaced as serfs and left with no where to go but roam the countryside or seek what work they could find in the big cities.  Gorky did not simply observe the poorest of the poor in Czarist Russia, he lived among them for many years.

Gorky with Stalin

  
Gorky (1868 to 1932-Russia) was orphaned at age 12.   He went to live with his grandparents.  His grandfather beat him regularly.   He ran away from the jobs he was given as soon as he could.  From age 21 to 26 the "tramped" all over eastern Russia, working at the roughest of jobs and sleeping where he could and eating what he could.    This experience radicalized Gorky and by age 30 he was supporting the causes of Marxist revolutionaries.   Gorky was taught to read by a cook he met and became an extreme autodidact in the literature of Russian and in anti-Czarist political writings.   Gorky became a journalist and ended up being arrested numerous times.   In 1902 he met and became a life time friend of Lenin.   He led a tumultuous personal and professional life, scandalizing even his  fellow revolutionaries with his womanizing.  He left Russia for a time to seek a warmed climate for health reasons but returned when Stalin invited him back.   He became kind of a pet of Stalin (a dangerous position!).   Stalin endorsed him as the voice of the people.   Long story short, he died under clouded circumstances, some say killed by the head of the Russian Secret Service because Stalin feared what he might say about him.   Stalin was one of the pall bearers at his funeral.   After his death he was turned into a great hero of the people and his stories were assigned reading in Russian schools and expressing a public dislike for them was for a long time a very bad idea.   (There are very interesting articles on Gorky here and here.)   

Gorky and Anton Chekhov

I think one reason he is not more read now is that western intellectuals and teachers were somehow put off by his being raised to the status of a saint of the people during the era of Stalin.   At one point in the USA to admit one liked the work of Gorky would be almost like endorsing communism.   Gorky was identified as the writer of the Bolsheviks when that was a code word for anti-American and anti-British politics.  


"One Autumn Night" is just a beautiful story which tells us a great deal about life among the sub-peasants in late Czarist Russia.  It also shows us Gorky's attitude toward women and lets see how women were thougt of in this period.   The story is narrated by an 18 year old man, basically a homeless tramp.   He is desperately seeking food on a freezing night in Moscow when he sees a young girl eating a thrown away by someone loaf of bread she found in the gutter.  She tells him it is only a little rotten and shares it with him.   They end up sleeping together (of course the narrator finds out she is also 18 and quite beautiful) without sex just for warmth.   It turns out she had fallen in love with a handsome man who had beaten her terribly over and over and has now thrown her out.   The attitude of the woman is amazing and is really a tribute, I think, to how women functioned at the very bottom of society.  It is a powerful statement about the courage and love of the women from the very bottom of late Czarist society. The ending is heartbreaking.   


"Her Lover" is a really hilarious (in a laughing past the grave yard kind of way) story about a young man living in a slum building in Moscow.   One of his neighbors is a very big woman, over six foot tall who has a very unsavory reputation.   The narrator is a prim and proper young man and he tries to avoid any type of contact with the woman.   One day she knocks on his door and asks him to write a letter to her lover for her, she cannot write herself.   At first he is incredulous and basically says how could a woman like you (he describes her in a very Russian image as "a great mastodon of a woman") possibly have a lover.   She tells him her story and she writes him a letter.   She ends up doing his laundry in exchange (the narrator is horrified when she at first she says she wants to do him a favor to repay his help when he thinks she is offering sex) and they become kind of friends but the man always looks down on her.  (It seems even among the Bolsheviks in 1900 in Moscow if a woman is not beautiful, she is not of much value.)   The ending is deeply ironic.


I will be reading more of Gorky's stories soon and will probably post on them also.   


You can download Best Russian Short Stories here in numerous formats, all free.   


The written output of Gorky was huge in all sorts of genres from theater to political hack work.   He is best known now for his short stories.   There are about thirty of them.   I hope to have read them all by year end 2012.   


Please share your experience with Gorky with us.  


Mel u