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[Illustration: A page from Gorki's last work (_Transcribed and
forwarded by the author to Hans Ostwald_)]

_"As an implacable foe to all that is mean and paltry in the
aspirations of Humanity, I demand that every individual who bears a
human countenance shall really be--a MAN!"_

_"Senseless, pitiful, and repulsive is this our existence, in which the
immoderate, slavish toil of the one-half incessantly enables the other
to satiate itself with bread and with intellectual enjoyments."_

_From "Man." By Maxim Gorki._

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It is vain for Maximovich Pjeschkov not to term himself _Gorki_, the
"Bitter One." He opposes a new Kingdom of Heroes in contrast to the
old hero-world, to the great strategists and wholesale butchers.
Bluebeard and Toggenburg, Richard Coeur-de-Lion--what are these bloody
tyrants for us of to-day? It is impossible to resuscitate them as they
were of old. They were,--and have become a form, in which the
exuberant and universal Essence of Life no longer embodies itself.

But . . . we must have our Heroes still; heroes who master their lives
after their own fashion, and who are the conquerors of fate. We cry
out for men who are able to transcend the pettiness of every day, who
despise it, and calmly live beyond it.

And Gorki steps forward with the revelation of the often misrepresented
Destitutes--or the homeless and hearthless--who are despised, rejected,
and abused. And he makes us know them for heroes, conquerors,
adventurers. Not all, indeed, but many of them.

The sketch entitled "Creatures that once were Men," which is in a
measure introductory to the famous "Doss-house" ("Scenes from the
Abysses") is especially illuminating.

Here we have the New Romance. Here is no bygone ideal newly decked and
dressed out, trimmed up with fresh finery. It is the men of our own
time who are described.

Whether other nations will accept such heroes in fulfilment of their
romantic aspirations may be questioned. It seems very doubtful. The
"Doss-house" is for the most part too strong for a provincial public,
too agitating, too revolutionary. The Germans, for example, have not
the deep religious feeling of the Russian, for whom each individual is
a fellow sinner, a brother to be saved. Nor have they as yet attained
to that further religious sense which sees in every man a sinless soul,
requiring no redemption