alexei maximovitch peshkoff was born march 14, 1869, at nijni novgorod. on both his father's and mother's side he belonged to the people; his father followed the trade of a jobbing upholsterer, and his mother was the daughter of a dyer. he was left an orphan when quite young, and he passed then under the care of his grandfather, a cruel and tyrannical old man, who had already so ill-treated young alexei's father when a lad, that he ran away from home.
peshkoff attended school for about five months, but having caught smallpox, his grandfather took him away from school, and sent him at the age of nine as errand-boy to a shoemaker. here the child scalded his hand badly and was sent back to his home. his grandfather next apprenticed him to a draughtsman, from whom young peshkoff ran away. in order to keep himself he went as galley-boy on a volga steamer, where he helped the ship's cook. this cook was a reader, and something of a character; he possessed a small library which he allowed his galley-boy to read, and it was here that the lad felt the first awakening of literary instinct, though he had always, from the time he left school at nine years old, read everything that fell into his hands. the cook's library contained amongst other authors nekrassoff; translations of the works of ann radcliff; a volume of sovrememick, whose editor was tchemishewsky, the translator and commentator of john stuart mill; iscra, and several works in little russian; the lives of the saints, and works by some mystical writers; some odd volumes of dumas, and some freemasons' literature. this curious collection of miscellaneous writings gave young peshkoff, now fifteen, a burning desire to obtain some degree of culture, and awoke in him the wish to write. he left the steamer, and wandered to kazan, where he was told free instruction could be obtained. here, in order to keep himself, he had to enter a bakery at three roubles, or six shillings, a month; and he speaks of this work as being the hardest that he ever did, with the exception of work in the salt mines, which he describes in one of his essays. a story written later in life, called 'the outcasts,' is a truthful reflection of the people amongst whom he lived and worked at this period of his life, and-it contains much that is autobiographical. he lived amongst these outcasts of society, chopping wood and carrying burdens, earning a living as best he could, and in the intervals of manual work picking up what instruction fell in his way. on leaving kazan he tried his luck at tzaritzine, where he worked as a signalman on the railway.
at the age of twenty he had to return to nijni novgorod in order to perform his years of military service, but he failed to pass the health test, and was rejected as not strong enough to serve. for some time after this he sold "kwass" in the streets, until he managed to get a situation as clerk in a lawyer's office. this lawyer, whose name was lanine, eventually took a great interest in the young man, and influenced him much in his reading and general culture. at this time also, peshkoff, being in better circumstances, was able to join a group of young intellectuals amongst whom was federoff, who, on seeing some of peshkoff's writings, declared the youth showed great literary talent but a settled and sedentary life did not suit him, and he never really felt himself at home among these young intellectuals; preferring his wandering life, supporting himself from day to day by unskilled manual labour, and sharing the society of tramps, day-labourers and outcasts. so in 1890 we find him again wandering through southern russia, working one month as a sawyer, the next as a stevedore lighterman, and in 1892 he was employed at tiflis in the caucasus in some railway engineering shops. it was during this period that his first story, 'markar tchoudra,' appeared in a local paper; but his first real literary début was made in 1893 when he published 'tchelkache,' a short story containing marvellous impressionist effects of water and of night.
the budding talent displayed in these and other stories being now recognized, he returned to the volga, where he had spent so much of his youth, and began contributing short stories to the volgeschky viesnick.' these were followed by a longer story, 'emilia pilai,' which appeared in an important moscow paper, the 'russky viedomoski'; and a lucky chance having brought him across korolenko, peshkoff, who had now taken for his nom de plume the title of gorki (the russian for bitter), through the influence of this leading man of letters was able to place his writings in some of the most important periodicals of the day, korolenko did much for him also in the way of advice, and gorki wrote later of this period of his life: "if i learnt little, it was not korolenko's fault, but my own."
broad sympathy with, and understanding of every expression of human nature, seems to be the prevailing characteristic of gorki's writings; whilst his realism has a special quality, in that it is never forced, never voulu, as is too often the case with writers of another class who make literary studies of the lives of the people. gorki, having lived the life of the tramp, of the out-of-work loafer, of the slum inhabitant, is saturated with the detail of that life, and possesses the true artistic faculty necessary for reproducing it. many of his so-called "stories" are rather studies and sketches, so slight is the plot, so impressionist is the form under which he reproduces the "bits of life" with which he has come in contact he seems to succeed in the art of "viewing life as a whole, and viewing it sanely"; but his pictures are of necessity tinged with pessimism, for he is the mouthpiece of the unprivileged, the sweated, the "lapsed and lost" this vein of pessimism is, however, relieved by a spirituality, a sensitiveness to the consolations of music, of light, and cloud, and water effects, of nature's healing inspiration, which wholly redeem his work from the reproach of empty, crushing pessimistic teaching. he is essentially the prophet of revolt,—revolt against the dreariness, the monotony, the inhumanity of drudgery, which keeps men and women working at high pressure like machines, in order that they may be able to earn—just daily bread.... as the shoemaker grischka says in one of the stories published in this volume: "and why do we need daily bread? in order to be able to work i and why do we work, but to obtain daily bread? what's the sense of that?"
he has certainly made very real for us a large class of our fellow human beings whom before we scarcely recognized in any other way than in their outward form of baker, shoemaker, dock-labourer, or vagrant gorki makes them live in his pages, unfolds their psychology, makes us joy with their joys and sorrow with their sorrows, and introduces them—as fellow-sufferers from the all-pervading disease of modern life, ennui and dissatisfaction with existing social conditions—into the great human brotherhood.
gorki acknowledges the four literary influences of his life to have been those of the cook on the steamer, of lanine, of kaligny and of korolenko. of late years he has been forbidden, because of political writings, to enter st petersburg or moscow. three volumes of his works have already been published, and his stories have found their way through translations into many leading french and german reviews.
d. b. m.
