M Gorky and the heroes of his works. Essay on the topic of heroes in the early stories of Maxim Gorky

More about Maxim Gorky and his heroes

The stories of Mr. Maxim Gorky attracted general attention. They talk about them, write about them and, it seems, everyone more or less recognizes the author’s talent and originality of themes. However, “more or less,” and if some, for example, admiring the writings of Mr. Gorky in general, emphasize the artistic tact that seems to dominate them, then others - and, admittedly, with much more right - argue that it is precisely the artistic tact that gives him not enough.

An interesting review from the literary observer of Russkie Vedomosti, Mr. I-t. The venerable critic did not escape Mr. Gorky’s often false idealization of his favorite characters. But it seems to me that the general scheme of this idealization presented by the critic is not entirely correct. Lermontov's Queen Tamara was “beautiful, like a heavenly angel, like a demon - treacherous and evil.” The same contrast between appearance and internal content, according to the critic, is represented by Gorky’s characters, “only with the opposite mathematical sign.” Where Tamara has a plus, Gorky’s tramps have a minus, and vice versa. The appearance and, so to speak, the external side of the behavior of the tramps are ugly: they are dirty, drunk, rude, sloppy, but Tamara’s deceit and anger are replaced among the Chandals of Gorky by “the desire for goodness, for true morality, for greater justice, for care.” about the destruction of evil." In this contrast, a l? Tamara topsy-turvy is the main interest characters stories by Mr. Gorky. To fully understand the critic’s thought, one must pay attention to his comparison of Mr. Gorky’s tramps with the hero of Jean Richepin’s drama “Le chemineau”. This hero is “first of all a knight of freedom.” The shackles of society, family, any kind of attachment to a place, home, the same impressions, the same passion are hateful to him. Of all the strong feelings, only one constantly lives with him - the love of movement, of will, “of the open spaces of fields, big roads, boundless spaces and constant changes.” It was not the force of circumstances that created him into a wandering ragamuffin, today devoted to one occupation, tomorrow left idle, half-starved and homeless; but by his own will he “took his destiny” and made himself a tramp according to principle (“Russian Gazette”, No. 170). We know this feature in Gorky’s chandalas; and they, as we saw last time, are not “forced by circumstances” - at least these circumstances remain in the fog - but by some inner voice, like Ahasfer, they are ordered: walk, walk, walk! But, judging by the presentation of Mr. I - t, the hero of Richpin’s drama (unfortunately, it is unknown to me) is completely alien to the other side of their life and psychology - the side that puts them in close contact with “prisons, taverns and brothels” . According to the critic, le chemineau is not a hunted vagabond, who is treated with suspicion by those who enter into intercourse with him, not a beggar who receives alms and responds with malice to the contempt of others. Like a true knight, he is noble, brave and frank; the doors of every home are open to him, because his intelligence, talents, and outstanding virtues make him an excellent worker, a general benefactor, a remover of evil and a reliable patron of the weak. The drunken, cynical, despised heroes of Mr. Gorky are not like that, as we have seen. In connection with this, there is another difference: le chemineau walks around the world cheerful and cheerful, but in Gorky’s tramps this mood is “replaced by constant anxiety, hidden melancholy, hidden care, which ends in drunkenness.” In the end, Mr. I – t, returning to the contrast between ugly appearance and beautiful inner world, says that in relation to this inner world, the heroes of Mr. Gorky fall into three varieties: in some, the search for truth and the impossibility of finding it predominates, in others, an active desire to establish justice on earth, in others, corrosive skepticism. All this taken together deprives them of vitality and truthfulness, although not to the same extent as Richepin’s chemineau lacks these qualities. This is the final conclusion of Mr. I - t.

For all the wit and seductive completeness of this criticism, I cannot completely agree with it. Gorky's heroes philosophize a lot, too much, and in their philosophizing, which often transforms them from living people speaking on their own into some kind of phonographs, mechanically reproducing what is put into them - in these philosophizing you can sometimes really see hints into these three categories. But most of them, and their general character, cannot be squeezed into these categories. And the very contrast between appearance and inner world can hardly be established in this case with such clarity and certainty as in Lermontov’s Tamara. There the matter is really clear and simple: beautiful in body, treacherous and evil in soul, and from here everything else follows, including the aesthetic effect. In this case, light and shadows, which, according to the critic, are simply in reverse order, are actually much more complex. First of all, we are not talking about the body here and not about appearance at all in the literal sense of the word. The heroes of Mr. Gorky are not some kind of Quasimodo. If, for example, Seryozhka is quite ugly, then Konovalov is almost handsome, and, reading the description of his appearance, I involuntarily remembered a phrase from some French novel: “he exposed his hand, muscular as the hand of a blacksmith, and white as the hand of a duchess.” Or Kuzka Jamb: “he stood in a freely strong pose; from under the unbuttoned red shirt, a wide, dark chest was visible, breathing deeply and evenly, the red mustache moved mockingly, white frequent teeth sparkled from under the mustache, blue, large eyes squinted slyly” (I, 90). This, of course, is not a match for Tamara, not a “heavenly angel,” but in its own way it is still very beautiful. The old woman Izergil herself was once a beauty, and she values ​​beauty very much. She is even sure that “only handsome men can sing well” (II, 306) and that “beautiful people are always brave” (317). The external environment of the tramps is ugly, but even that is not entirely true, because Mr. Gorky often places them on the sea and in the steppes and, together with them, admires the beauty of the horizons that open up. And the taverns, brothels, and lodging houses are, of course, ugly, as well as the rags in which the tramps are clothed instead of the “brocade and pearls” of Queen Tamara, but otherwise they would not be tramps. In all other respects, it is too difficult to draw a boundary line between appearance and inner world. Taverns, prisons, brothels - undoubtedly, appearance, but why is appearance what leads to them and takes place in them? Why is the appearance of drunkenness, cynicism, anger, fights? True, because of all this, something else often appears in Mr. Gorky, something that cheers up the tramps; but from what point of view can one attribute, for example, the robbery and murder of a passing carpenter (“In the Steppe”) by a “student” – to the “search for truth”, or to the “desire to bring justice to the earth”, or to “corrosive skepticism”? The fact is that the views of Mr. Gorky’s tramps on morality and justice have nothing in common with the views professed by the vast majority of his contemporaries. It is not for nothing that Aristide Kuvalda says that he must “smear in himself all the feelings and thoughts” brought up by his previous life, and that “we need something different, different views on life, different feelings, we need something new.” These people stand at the point of “revaluation of all values” and jenseits von gut und b?se, as Nietzsche would say.

Such a charming personality as Richepin portrayed his chemineau naturally attracts women’s hearts, and he does not refuse the joys of love. But, obeying the instinct of a tramp, he leaves one after another the women he has made happy, although “with pain in his heart.” In his old age, tired of the thorns of life, he finds himself in the place where twenty-odd years ago he loved a girl and was loved. The fruit of this love, which has not yet been lived out, has already become an adult guy, and the tramp is attracted by the prospect of relaxing with his family, near a constant hearth. But after some hesitation, he “with sobs” goes away wherever his eyes look, and the drama ends with the words: va, chemineau, chemine! This melodramatic end, essentially just comic, emphasizes the presence in the tramp of that inner, almost mystically powerful voice that dooms him to the existence of Ahasfer. The tramps of Mr. Gorky, although they do not have the virtues of chemineau, are also very happy in love. True, according to the author’s testimony, they lie a lot on this topic, brag, and brag badly, but, for example, he certainly believes Konovalov. And that “them,” that is, women, “had many different ones.” And he left them not because the bonds of love broke off on their own on one side or the other, and not because new love beckoned, but because of the same mystical inner order that did not allow chemineau to sit down. The difference, however, is that Gorky's heroes break the bonds of love without hesitation and without sanglots. The most sensitive of them, Konovalov, only falls into some sadness and melancholy upon parting, but only because, with his sensitivity, he feels sorry for the one being abandoned, feels sorry for her grief and tears, and he himself does not hesitate at all in choosing between the hearth and vagrancy. Konovalov had an affair with a rich merchant's wife Vera Mikhailovna, a most beautiful woman; everything was going well, it would have continued to go just as well, “if not my planet,” says Konovalov, “still left it - that’s why I’m sad!” pulls me somewhere." Another time, Konovalov, using the same sensitivity of his heart, helped a prostitute get out of a brothel. But when the girl understood this in the sense that he would take her to live with him “like a wife,” then, with all his affection for her, Konovalov even got scared: “I am a tramp and I cannot live in one place.” But Konovalov is still at least sad when parting. And here’s how Kuzka Kosyak consoles his beloved, leaving - without any special need - for Kuban: “Eh, Motrya! Many people already loved me, I said goodbye to everyone, and wow - they got married and became sour at work! Sometimes you see it and look at it – you can’t believe your eyes! Are they really the same ones whom I kissed and had mercy on? Well, well! One another is witchy. No, Motrya, it’s not written in my nature to marry, yes, fool, it’s not for me. I don’t exchange my will for any wife, for any hut... I’m bored in one place.” Kuzma’s owner, the miller Tikhon Pavlovich, who accidentally overheard this conversation, about whom we will talk later, tells him that he is not treating girls well: “if, for example, a child? it happened, didn’t it?” - “Tea, it happened; who knows,” Kuzma replies, and to the miller’s further remarks about “sin” he objects: “Why, guys, go figure, they’ll be born in the same order, either from a husband or from a passer-by.” The miller reminds us of the difference in this case between the position of a man and the position of a woman, and Kuzma no longer gives a direct answer to this, but “seriously and dryly” says: “If you think harder, it turns out that no matter how you live, everything is sinful! And so sinful, and so sinful. Said - sinful, kept silent - sinful, did - sinful and did not do - sinful. Can you figure it out here? Should I go to a monastery? Tea, I don’t feel like it.” “Your life is easy and cheerful,” the miller remarks with a certain mixture of envy and respect...

Just as light and have a fun life Some of Gorky's heroines also lead. Old woman Izergil tells how she loved. She was fifteen years old when she got together with some black-moustached “fisherman from the Prut,” but she soon got tired of him and she left with a red-haired Hutsul vagabond; the Hutsul was hanged (for which Izergil burned the informer’s farm); she fell in love with an already middle-aged Turk and lived with him in a harem, from which she ran away with the Turk’s son; then followed a Pole, a Hungarian, again a Pole, another Pole, a Moldavian... Malva, the heroine of the story entitled after her, lives with the fisherman Vasily, flirts and flirts with his son Yakov and finally, having quarreled between father and son, gets together with the daring drunkard Seryozhka , with whom, judging by some signs, she was close at one time before...

Malva is an extremely interesting figure, and we need to dwell on her all the more because in almost all of Gorky’s women there is, in one way or another, a little bit of Malva. This is the same female type that flashed before Dostoevsky throughout almost his entire life: a complex type, also jenseits von gut und böse, since the usual concepts of good and evil are absolutely inapplicable to it - one of the variations on the combination of two famous theses Dostoevsky: “man is a despot by nature and loves to be a tormentor,” “man loves suffering to the point of passion.” The male variations on this theme, no matter how exceptional and painful they may be, often amaze Dostoevsky with their brightness and strength, but the female ones - in “The Gambler”, in “The Idiot”, in “The Brothers Karamazov” - he was decidedly unsuccessful. All these Polinas, Grushenkas, Nastasya Filippovnas and so on. leave you in some kind of bewilderment, although Dostoevsky sometimes brings together even two representatives of this mysterious type (Nastasya Filippovna and Princess Aglaya in The Idiot, Grushenka and Katerina Ivanovna in The Brothers Karamazov). You only feel that the author had some complex plan, which, however, his cruel talent could not cope with. And it’s not without reason that our criticism, which dealt a lot with the female types of Turgenev, Goncharov, Tolstoy, Ostrovsky, passed over Dostoevsky’s women in silence: this is in artistic sense the least interesting point of his gloomy work. Gorky's mallow belongs to the same type, but it is clearer, more understandable mysterious women Dostoevsky. I am, of course, far from the idea of ​​comparing the visual power of Mr. Gorky with the power of one of the truly great artists, and the point here is not in the strength of Mr. Gorky, but in that rough and relatively simple environment in which his Malva grew up and lives and thanks to which her psychology is more elementary, clearer, retaining, however, the same typical features that Dostoevsky tried in vain to capture.

One Russian philosopher divided women into “serpentine” and “cowy”. In this humorous classification, which is not without wit, there is no place for Malva (as, indeed, for many other female types). There can be no talk of resemblance to a cow: Malva is too lively, flexible and resourceful for that, and she doesn’t have that ever-present stamp of motherhood that rests on a cow. With a snake, we are accustomed to connecting the idea of ​​something beautiful and at the same time invariably evil. And Malva is not at all an invariably evil woman, and indeed there is nothing immutable about her. It all consists of the overflow of one mood or feeling into another, often the opposite, but quickly passing, and it itself could not only determine the reasons for these overflows, but even indicate their boundaries, the moments of transition of one mood or feeling into another. And if we need to look for a zoological parallel for her that would more clearly represent her main features, I would say that she, like Dostoevsky’s mysterious heroines, resembles a cat. The same attractiveness, explained by a combination of strength and softness (Malva herself, cynical and dirty, is attractive only to Gorky’s heroes and in people with more subtle requirements would, of course, evoke completely different feelings; but I’m talking about the type, leaving aside for now specifically tramp features); the same crafty resourcefulness and dexterity, the same independence and always readiness for self-defense, sometimes by flight, but sometimes by open and stubborn resistance, turning into an offensive; the same playful tenderness and tenderness, imperceptibly pouring into anger, with which a cat playfully holds the hand caressing her with her front paws, and scratches and gnaws with her hind paws: for the sake of this mixture of sensations, she, like a cat, herself evokes a certain admixture of cruelty, and even to the point of pain, in affection...

I remember that Heine placed a female sphinx in the threshold of his “Book of Songs” - a creature with a woman’s head and chest and with a lion’s body and lion’s, that is, exaggerated cat’s, claws. And this sphinx at the same time makes the poet happy and torments him, caresses him and torments him with his claws:

Umschlang sie mich, meinen armen Leib

Mit den L?wentatzen zerfleischend.

Entz?ckende Marter und wonniges Weh,

Der Schmerz wie die Lust unermesslich!

Die weilen des Mundes Kuss mich begl?ckt,

Verwunden die Tatzen mich gr?sslich...

The reader, who, perhaps, has just been indignant not only at the above humorous division of women into snakey and cow-like, but also at my likening of a well-known human type to a cat, will now perhaps think: why on earth should one rise to the heights of Heine’s poetry about some outcast? , rough malva? Isn't this too much of an honor for her? Can she herself feel and excite in others those subtle shades of complex mental movements that are described by Heine? I think, however, that the reader would not have said this if we were talking about Grushenka from The Brothers Karamazov or Nastasya Filippovna from The Idiot, and yet, in fact, these are corrupt women, although higher vibrations and gravity are available to them. But everyone has their own salty tears. And, finally, I repeat, it’s not actually about Malva at this moment that we’re talking about. Despite the mud in which she bathes, some features of mental life live in her, which were occupied by people of high intelligence and strong artistic talent, but which have hitherto been little studied and are not clear enough. These features boil down mainly to the uncertainty of the boundaries between pleasure and suffering, which we are accustomed to sharply contrast one with the other, as a result of which we put too absolute meaning into the current position: a person seeks pleasure and avoids suffering. The gloomy genius of Dostoevsky sought to turn this aphorism inside out, giving it in this inverted form an equally unconditional meaning. He did not succeed, of course, but with many of his images and paintings, and with his own example, the nature of his creativity, he gave brilliant illustrations of that entzückende Marter and that wonniges Weh, that mixture of suffering and pleasure that undoubtedly exists. This question is too broad and complex to be treated in notes on the essays and stories of Mr. Maxim Gorky, and we will now go straight to Malva. Mr. Gorky’s talent has neither the strength, nor the cruelty, nor the fearlessness of Dostoevsky, but he introduces us to an environment where they do not hesitate in words and gestures, they sing frank songs, swear in strong words, fight casually, and where, therefore, certain mental movements receive a tactile , an almost animalistic expression.

Malva lives with the fisherman Vasily. Vasily is an elderly man who left the village where he left his wife and children to earn money five years ago. He and Malva live happily, but suddenly his son, Yakov, an adult guy with whom Malva immediately begins to flirt, appears. She does this, not only not being embarrassed by the presence of her lover, but also teasing him, and the conversation ends with Vasily brutally beating her.

“She, without gasping, silent and calm, fell on her back, disheveled, red and yet beautiful. Her green eyes looked at him from under her eyelashes and burned with cold, menacing hatred. But he, puffing with excitement and pleasantly satisfied with the outcome of his anger, did not see her look, and when he looked at her with triumph and contempt, she smiled quietly. At first her full lips trembled a little, then her eyes flashed, dimples appeared on her cheeks, and she laughed.” Then Malva fawns over Vasily, assures him that she is pleased with his beatings, and that she was teasing him - “so it was I who deliberately... tortured you,” and, smiling reassuringly, she pressed her shoulder against him. And he glanced sideways towards the hut (where his son remained) and hugged her. - Oh, you... tortured me! Why torture? So I tried. “Nothing,” Malva said confidently, narrowing her eyes. - I’m not angry... because I beat you lovingly? And I’ll pay you for this...” She looked at him point-blank, shuddered and, lowering her voice, repeated: oh, how I’ll pay!”

Simple-minded Vasily sees something pleasant for himself in this promise, but the reader can guess that Malva is harboring anger and revenge. Malva really makes a big nuisance for Vasily: he quarrels with his son and brings the matter to the point that he goes home to the village. But she conceives this plan later, on the advice of the drunkard Seryozhka, and before that she has the following conversation with this Seryozhka. She told Seryozhka that Vasily had beaten her; Seryozhka marveled at how it worked out for her. “If I had wanted to, I wouldn’t have given it,” she objected heartily. - So what are you doing? - I didn’t want to. - Well, then you love the gray cat? - Seryozhka said mockingly and doused her with the smoke of his cigarette. - Well done! and I thought that you weren’t one of those people. “I don’t love anyone,” she said again indifferently, waving away the smoke with her hand. - You're lying, come on? - Why should I lie? – she asked, and from her voice Seryozhka realized that there was really no reason for her to lie. - And if you don’t love him, how do you allow him to beat you? – he asked seriously. - Do I really know? Why are you pestering me?”

Gorky's heroes generally fight a lot, and often beat their women. The most moderate of them in this regard advise: “you should never hit pregnant women on the stomach, chest, and sides... hit them on the neck or take a rope and on soft places” (II, 219). And women do not always protest against these rules. Orlov’s wife says to her husband: “You really hit him on the stomach and sides very painfully... at least you didn’t hit him with your feet” (I, 265). It also happens, however, that the fair sex goes on the offensive. Among the “former people” is the old man Simtsov, unusually happy with his amorous adventures: he “always had two or three mistresses from prostitutes who supported him for two and three days at a time with their meager earnings. They often beat him, but he treated it stoically - for some reason they could not beat him too much - perhaps out of pity” (II, 235). But no matter who beat anyone at Mr. Gorky’s - a man a woman or a woman a man - and these physical exercise and the bitterness, resentment, suffering, and pain that accompany them somehow turn out to be in some connection with affection, love, and pleasure. And, reading the descriptions of these battles, you will inevitably remember the hero of Dostoevsky’s Notes from Underground and his sayings. “Some people, the more she loves, the more quarrels she starts with her husband: so, I love, they say, I torment you a lot and out of love, but you feel...” “Do you know that you can deliberately torment a person out of love.” Or: “Love consists in the right to tyrannize over it, voluntarily granted by the beloved object.” That is why “The Player” and Polina, like many other couples of Dostoevsky, cannot figure out whether they love or hate each other, just as Malva does not know whether she loves or hates Vasily. But in Dostoevsky, people “tyrannize” and “torture” each other in a subtle way, with the help of various biting words, painful pressure on the imagination, etc., but here, in Mr. Gorky, they simply fight. This crude form not only, however, does not interfere with the manifestations of the same intertwining of pleasure with suffering, but even emphasizes it especially clearly. Malva is not the only one who teases her husband or lover into a fight, followed by tender caresses. Here is Matryona, Orlov’s wife (“The Orlov Spouses”): “The beatings embittered her, but evil gave her great pleasure, exciting her whole soul, and she, instead of quenching his jealousy with two words, egged him on even more, smiling at him. face with strange smiles. He was furious and beat her, beat her mercilessly.” And then, when the anger, quite intense, subsided in him and repentance took over him, he tried to talk to his wife and find out why she teased him. “She was silent, but she knew why, she knew that now her, beaten and insulted, awaited his caresses, passionate and tender caresses of reconciliation. For this she was ready to pay every day with pain in her bruised sides. And she was already crying from the sheer joy of anticipation, before her husband had time to touch her” (I, 267).

This also includes the following, for example, cases. When Konovalov announced to his mistress, Vera Mikhailovna, that he could no longer live with her, because he was “drawn somewhere,” she first began to scream and swear, then she reconciled with his decision, and at parting, Konovalov says, “naked My arm is up to my elbow, and how he can bite into the meat with his teeth! I almost screamed. So I grabbed a whole piece for almost... my hand hurt for three weeks. And now the sign is intact” (II, 13). The old woman Izergil talks about one of her many lovers: “He was so sad, sometimes affectionate, and sometimes, like an animal, he roared and fought. Once he hit me in the face. And I, like a cat, jumped onto his chest and sank my teeth into his cheek... From then on, he had a dimple on his cheek, and he loved it when I kissed it” (II, 304).

The old woman Izergil calls her life a “greedy life” (II, 312). Literally the same thing is said in the story “On the Rafts” by one of the characters about Marya: “greedy to live” (I, 63). Malva and others are characterized in the same way. But this is not only the women of Gorky. And Chelkash has a “greedy nature for impressions” (I, 19), and Kuzka Kosyak teaches: “one must live this way and that way - to the fullest” (I, 88). Etc. This explains a lot. This, first of all, removes the mystical veil from the inner voice that prescribes tireless wandering. In the living conditions of Mr. Gorky’s heroes, everywhere is “crowded,” everywhere is a “pit,” as they constantly, even somewhat annoyingly, monotonously repeat. There is a desire, if not to expand and deepen the sphere of impressions, then to change them in space, and even to the point that it is at least worse, but different. And if for some reason this is impossible, then it turns out that artificial stimulation is necessary. It comes, of course, from drunkenness, but not from drunkenness alone. The note of Mr. Gorky about the feelings of Orlov’s beaten wife is worthy of attention: “the beatings embittered her, but evil gave her great pleasure, exciting her whole soul". The whole soul of Matryona Orlova requires work, no matter how painful, just to live “to the fullest.” This need for all-round mental activity, purchased at the price of a mixture of suffering and pleasure, is interestingly illustrated by the story “Tosca.” This is “a page from the life of a miller.”

Melnik Tikhon Pavlovich is not some tramp. He is rich, respected and honored, and enjoys “the feeling of being full and healthy.” But suddenly he became sad for some reason: melancholy overwhelmed him, boredom, and his conscience for various kulak successes began to oppress him. And Tikhon Pavlovich began to remember when this came over him. He was in the city and came across a funeral, in which he was struck by the mixture of poverty and solemnity: many wreaths, many mourners. It turned out that they were burying a writer, and at his grave one of the mourners made a speech that disturbed Tikhon Pavlych. The speaker, praising the deceased, said that he was not understood during his lifetime, because “we covered our souls with the rubbish of everyday worries and got used to living without a soul,” etc. Was it the eloquence of the speaker, the peculiarities of the funeral environment, or something else? influenced, but from then on Tikhon Pavlych was sucked into melancholy, heavy thinking about his “soul covered with the rubbish of everyday worries.” Then Tikhon Pavlych accidentally overheard the above conversation between his employee Kuzka Kosyak and the girl Motrey and he himself had a conversation with Kuzka, in which he tried to maintain an appearance of “morality and decorum,” but in his heart he envied the “easy life” of his cheerful interlocutor. Tikhon Pavlych started talking to his wife on the topic of a soul littered with rubbish; she advised to donate something to the church, to take an orphan into the house, to send for a doctor, but all this did not satisfy the miller. He decided to go to the neighboring village of Yamki to see the school teacher, who had recently exposed one of his kulak tricks in the newspaper. Kuzka advises him differently: “You, master, should go to the city and have a blast there; That would help you." However, the miller is even somewhat offended by this advice and goes to the teacher. But he, sick and bilious, cannot penetrate into the state of mind of the fist he denounced and understand his incoherent speeches. The miller goes to the city, unconsciously following the advice of the tramp Kuzka, and there, in the city, he starts living. All the details of this orgy are uninteresting to us, but some of them need to be remembered.

Dirty tavern. Various drunken, missing people. They are going to sing, there is music - a harmonica. And this is how one of the company teaches the accordion player: “You need to start with sadness in order to put your soul in order, to make it listen... She is sensitive to sadness... Do you understand? Now you throw a bait at her - “Luchinushka,” for example, or “The red sun was setting” - and she will pause, freeze. And then you grab it right away with “Chobots” or “In the Pockets,” and with shot, with flame, with dancing, so that it burns! If you burn her, she will perk up! Then everything went into action. This is where the frenzy begins: you want something and don’t need anything! Longing and joy- so everything will sparkle with a rainbow...” They began to sing... The description of this actual singing (I, 128-133) is one of the best pages in both volumes of Gorky’s stories. There is not even a shadow of that falsehood and those annoying violations of the measure of things that too often offend both the aesthetic sense of readers and their demand for truth. Of the images of the effect of singing familiar to me, Turgenev’s “Singers” can be placed side by side with these pages, and Mr. Gorky will not be ashamed of this comparison. And you understand that the drunken tavern really fell silent at the sounds of this song and that the miller really “had been sitting motionless on a chair for a long time, hanging his head low on his chest and greedily listening to the sounds of the song. They again awakened melancholy in him, but now something caustic-sweet was mixed in with it, tickling his heart... There was something burning and pinching in all these sensations - it was in each of them and, combining, formed in the soul of the miller strange sweet pain“It was as if the big ice floe that was crushing his heart was melting, breaking into pieces, and they were pricking him there, inside.”

"Sweet pain"! - after all, these are literally Heine’s entzückende Marter and wonniges Weh (“sweet flour, blissful pain” in M. L. Mikhailov’s translation). She simultaneously makes the miller happy and torments him, and he tries to express this state with abrupt exclamations: “Brothers! I can't do it anymore! For Christ’s sake, I can’t take it anymore!”, “They pierced my soul! It will be - my longing! You touched me for my aching heart, that is, I have never had anything like this in my life!”, “You touched my soul and cleansed it. Now I feel like - oh, how! I would climb into the fire."

After four days of ugly revelry, Tikhon Pavlovich returns home gloomy and dissatisfied. The author leaves him at this very moment without saying anything about his future fate, but one can guess that, having returned home, he returned to his previous way of life, only occasionally remembering the moments of painfully sweet sensations he experienced according to the recipe of the tramp Kuzka...

These are the roundabout ways by which Gorky’s “hungry to live” heroes obtain the completeness and variety of impressions they need. These paths, obviously, should be placed separately from drunkenness, although they are in contact with it - Matryona Orlova, not drunk, teases her husband to the point of mutual bitterness, in which she finds, however, the source of some “sweet pain.” But the very drunkenness of these people, in addition to its bestially rude manifestations, can receive the explanation that Turgenev puts into the mouth of Veretyev in “The Calm”: “Look at this swallow over there... See how boldly she disposes of her small body wherever he wants, he’ll throw it there! There she flew up, she hit the ground, she even squealed with joy, do you hear? So that’s why I drink – to experience the very sensations that this swallow experiences. Throw yourself wherever you want, rush wherever you please..."

Let's move on. To “throw yourself wherever you want and rush wherever you want” while drunk, that is, to mentally fly around the worlds of fantasy and reality, all you need is vodka. But in order to really move from place to place all over the earth, as Gorky’s heroes want, freedom is needed. Not freedom of movement only, attested by a legal document issued by the authorities, but freedom from all permanent obligations, from all bonds imposed by existing social relations, origin, membership of a certain group, laws, customs, prejudices, rules of generally accepted morality, etc. We see that Gorky’s heroes are all distinguished by their love of freedom in this broadest, boundless sense. Makar Chudra declares as a slave anyone who does not wander the earth wherever they look, but sits down in one place and takes root one way or another: such a person is “a slave as soon as he was born and a slave throughout his life.” For the “greedy for impressions” Chelkash, Gavril is a “greedy slave,” and Chelkash is offended that this slave dares in his own way to “love freedom, which he does not know the price of and which he does not need.” So there is greed and greed. The greedy Gavrila, having collected money, will bury himself in his village “hole,” and the greedy Chelkash will immediately exchange this money for sharp and varied impressions of the north and south, east and west. At all kinds of boundaries, both geographical and moral, real and ideal, these outcasts, or rather, as I already said, the rejected ones, look down from the heights of their “greedy life.” I, as if it were something that cuts it I to the point of intolerance. True, some of them sometimes recall with sadness and even with affection their past, when they were still part of this or that particular social whole and consciously or unconsciously obeyed its routines, but this mood visits them rarely and for a short time, and return to the past they still don’t want to and can’t. In the present, nothing unites them into any strong, permanent whole. “The people... they are huge, but I am a stranger to them and they are a stranger to me... This is the tragedy of my life,” says the “teacher” in “ Former people"(II, 205). We already saw examples of relationships to other social ties last time and will see them again later. For some, this results in tragedy, for others, comedy or even vaudeville, as for Kuzka Kosyak, but this is a matter of temperament, and the essence of the relationship does not change from this.

Some of Gorky’s heroes at times seem to be “looking for the coming city,” but this is just talk, mere literature, and, moreover, not at all characteristic of them. Ideals and dreams that are much more characteristic of them boil down, as we have seen, to complete alienation from people, the complete absence of a “city” in the sense of any kind of community life, or to a completely special type of relationship, which we will now talk about in more detail, or, finally, to plans for general destruction. The monotony with which (like many other things) Gorky’s people express these plans, in other respects seemingly very different, is remarkable. So, we saw, Malva “would beat the whole people and then herself to a terrible death.” So, Orlov dreams of “distinguishing himself at something,” even if it would be “crushing the whole earth into dust,” “generally something like that, to stand above all the people and spit on them from a height and then downside down—and to smithereens!” And here’s Aristide Sledgehammer: “I would be pleased,” he says, “if the earth suddenly burst into flames and burned or was torn to pieces. If only I would die last, looking first at others” (II, 234). To die having done something big, huge, formidable, unable to cope with the existing moral assessment or even contrary to it - such is the dream.

But, in addition to living in the manner of Robinson (and Friday is not necessary, and he can be killed as unnecessary) and plans for universal destruction, Gorky’s heroes also have one more dream, perhaps the most interesting. They are “greedy to live”, for which they need unlimited freedom and they do not agree to obey anyone or anything. But it does not follow from this that each of them individually does not want to subjugate the others. On the contrary, they find special pleasure in subjugating and enslaving others. Chelkash “enjoyed feeling himself as the master of another” - Gavrila. He “enjoyed the guy’s fear and the fact that this is what he, Chelkash, is a formidable man.” He "enjoyed the power with which he enslaved this young, fresh fellow." That is why Orlov dreams of “standing above all people” and doing a huge dirty trick on them all. But you can rise above people not only through dirty tricks, but also through good deeds. And the same Orlov at one time was overcome by a “thirst for selfless achievement” - for these reasons: “He felt like a person of special properties. And he began to feel the desire to do something that would draw everyone’s attention to him, would amaze everyone and make them convinced of his right to feel good” (I, 303). Involuntarily, again and again you remember Dostoevsky with his Stavrogin, who did not know the difference between the greatest feat of self-sacrifice and some brutal deed, and with his numerous illustrations of the enjoyment of power, torment, and tyranny. The thirst for a noble feat showed itself in Orlov when he, together with Matryona, entered service in the cholera hospital. But even there it soon seemed “cramped” to him, and this place of illness, sadness and sighing, which had attracted him with the joy of labor of love, turned out to be a “pit”. During a short period of infatuation with the dream of heroism, he reasoned, for example, like this: “That is, if this cholera were transformed into a man... into a hero... even into Ilya Muromets himself, I would grapple with it! Go to mortal combat! You are strength, and I, Grishka Orlov, are strength - well, who will win? And I would have strangled her and laid down myself... A cross above me in the field and the inscription: “Grigory Andreev Orlov.” Saved Russia from cholera." Nothing more is needed." But when it seemed “crowded” to him, he again took on Matryona, constantly moving from passionate caresses to a brutal fight. Once, for example, he “succumbed” to his wife - he obediently listened to her reproaches and admitted that he was doing something wrong, that he was fighting. But the next day he repented of this spiritual movement and “came with the definite intention of defeating his wife. Yesterday, during the clash, she was stronger than him, he felt it, and it humiliated him in his eyes. It was absolutely necessary that she submit to him again: he did not understand why, but he knew for sure that it was necessary.”

The reader will find similar traits in other heroes and heroines of Gorky. And, as if imbued with this mood of his creations, the author himself puts in one place the following psychological resolution: “No matter how low a person has fallen, he will never deny himself the pleasure of feeling stronger, smarter, even better fed than his neighbor.” (II, 211).

I wrote: " as if imbued with the mood of his creatures.” In fact, it may be quite the opposite: it is not the author, carried away by the very process of creativity, who is imbued with the mood of his characters, but, on the contrary, the author creates people in his own image and likeness, putting into them something of his own, sincere. In any case, the author’s resolution just cited shows that no matter how carefully we look at Mr. Gorky’s tramps, we will not understand them and, in particular, we will not appreciate the degree of their authenticity, until we take a closer look at Mr. Gorky himself.

Until now we have seen tramps, maybe painted on, but, in any case, real. But in the collection of essays and stories by Mr. Gorky there are also those in which tramps are depicted, so to speak, abstract, purified or even allegorical, allegories and symbols of tramping. This is in the first volume “Song of the Falcon” and what Makar Chudra tells about Loik Zobar and Radda, and in the second - the story “About the Siskin who lied, and about the woodpecker - a lover of truth” and what the old woman Izergil tells about Danko . The heroes of these stories - fantastic or semi-fantastic creatures - are just as freedom-loving and greedy to live as the real tramps in Gorky's coverage, but are completely alien to the other side of real tramp life - the world of prisons, taverns and brothels. It is clear how interesting these abstract, fantastic creatures are for understanding the author’s point of view. That sorrow and that disgust, which he often cannot contain when describing drunkenness, rudeness, cynicism, fights of real tramps, naturally disappears, and we can expect to receive in its pure form what raises outcasts above the general level, as in in their own eyes and in the eyes of the author.

Let's start with Makar Chudra's story about Loik Zobar and Radda. This is an old gypsy telling about a young gypsy and a gypsy woman, and his story sparkles with the luxury of oriental colors, hyperbolic comparisons, fabulous details, but I must admit that it gives me the impression of an unsuccessful forgery. However, this is not the point now. Zobar is a handsome man, brave, intelligent, strong, in addition, a poet and plays the violin so well that when in the camp to which Radda belonged they heard his music for the first time, still from afar, the following happened: “To all of us, - says Chudra, “we sensed that that music made us want something like that, after which we there was no need to live, or, if to live, then to be kings over the whole earth ". This “either-or” is already characteristic: either nothing, non-existence, or the peak of peaks. But Makar Chudra can experience this mood in its entirety only in moments of ecstasy caused by miraculous music. Zobar is another matter. And Radda is his match: she is also a real beauty, she is also smart, strong, and brave. It is natural that when fate brings together a young man and a young girl of such exceptional and varied merits, love flares up between them with all the rainbow brilliance of passion and tenderness. Zobar and Radda really fell in love with each other, but, like the real tramps of Mr. Gorky, their love is painfully prickly - even to death. Radda is the same Malva, only raised to some poetic heights. The relationship begins with the fact that Zobar, accustomed to “playing with girls like a gyrfalcon with ducks,” receives a harsh and sarcastic rebuff from Radda. She mocks him angrily, but he either sees something else under this mockery, or is very confident in himself, but only, in front of all the honest people, turns to her with the following speech: “I’ve seen a lot of your sister, oh, a lot!” And no one has touched my heart like you. Eh, Radda, you have filled my soul! Well, what then? Whatever will be will be, and there is no horse on which you can ride away from yourself. I take you as my wife before God, my honor, your father and all these people. But look, my will cannot be contradicted, I am still a free person and I will live the way I want!’ And with these words he approached Radda, ‘gritting his teeth and sparkling his eyes.’ But instead of answering, Radda knocked him to the ground, deftly lashing his leg with a belt whip, and she laughed. Zobar, ashamed and upset, went to the steppe and froze there in gloomy thought. After a while, Radda approached him. He grabbed the knife, but she threatened to break his head with a pistol bullet and then declared her love; however, he says, “I wish, Loiko, I love you more; and I can’t live without you, just as you can’t live without me; “So I want you to be mine both soul and body.” “No matter how you turn, I will defeat you,” she continues and demands that tomorrow he “submit” and express this submission with external signs: publicly, in front of the whole camp, he would bow at her feet and kiss her hand. Zobar appears the next day and makes a speech in front of the camp, in which he explains that Radda loves her will more than his, and he, on the contrary, loves Radda more than his will, and therefore agrees to the conditions set by her, but, he says, “ All that remains is to try whether my Radda has such a strong heart as she showed it to me.” With these words, he thrusts a knife into Radda’s heart, and she dies, “smiling and saying loudly and clearly: “Farewell, hero Loiko Zobar!” I knew you would do this." Then Radda's father comes out and kills Zobar, but he kills, so to speak, respectfully, as one pays a debt to a respected creditor.

Such is love in those fantastic, so to speak, above-ground spheres where Mr. Gorky’s heroes are cleansed of everything that the world of taverns, brothels and prisons pollutes them with. Blood was shed, but not in some drunken fight and not for selfish reasons: Mr. Gorky arranged the matter in such a way that Radda’s blood is shed with her consent and she dies “smiling” and praising the murderer, and her father and Zobar are simply alone gives, and the other receives the debt. Zobar and Radda are greedy to live. Just as in King Lear “every inch is a king,” so in them every inch wants to live. Therefore, they want to be completely free, and love, they feel, is already curtailing this freedom: “I looked,” says Zobar, “that night into my heart and did not find a place in it for my old free life.” If love, from their point of view, does not quite coincide with the definition of Dostoevsky’s hero (“the right to tyrannize over it, voluntarily granted by a loved object”), then, in any case, the element of domination, predominance, power plays a significant role in it. And since Zobar and Radda are equal, the task of conquest turns out to be impossible, and they perish due to this impossibility. But they do not shy away from this destruction and do not regret it.