.

To us, therefore, Gorki's "creatures that once were men" appear strange
and abnormal types. The principal figure is the ex-captain and present
keeper of the shelter, the former owner of a servant's registry and
printing works--Aristides Kuvalda. He has failed to regulate his life,
and is the leader and boon companion of a strange band. His best
friend is a derelict schoolmaster, who earns a very fair income as a
newspaper reporter. But what is money to a man of this type? He
sallies forth, buys fruit and sweetmeats and good food with half his
earnings, collects all the children of the alley in which Kuvalda's
refuge is situated, and treats them down by the river with these
delicacies. He lends the best part of his remaining funds to his
friends, and the rest goes in vodka and his keep at the doss-house.

Other wastrels of the same type lodge with Kuvalda. They are all men
who have been something. And so Gorki calls them _Bivshiye lyudi_,
which may be literally translated "the Men Who Have Been" ("Creatures
that once were Men ").

To our taste the story is too discursive and long-winded. The
prolonged introductory descriptions, the too exact and minute
particularities of external detail, especially in regard to persons,
destroy the sharp edge of the impression, and obliterate its
characteristics. It would have been clearer with fewer words. Honesty
bids us recognise a certain incapacity for self-restraint in Gorki.

This, however, is a trifle compared with the vivid, impersonal
descriptions of the conduct of the derelicts--illuminated by the heroic
deed of Kuvalda, as by an unquenchable star. Kuvalda loses his
mainstay when his comrade, the schoolmaster, dies. He is enraged at
the brutal treatment meted out to him and to the other inhabitants of
the slum by the Officials of the City and the Government. He embroils
himself with ill-concealed purpose with his deadly enemy the merchant
Petunikov and insults the police. His object is gained. He is beaten,
and led away to prison.

Unfortunately Gorki endows his characters with too elevated a
philosophy. He pours his own wine into their bottles. Vagabonds and
tramps do often indeed possess a profound knowledge of life peculiar to
themselves, and a store of worldly wisdom. But they express it more
unconsciously, more instinctively, less sentimentally, than Gorki.

From the artistic point of view this ground-note of pathos is an
abiding defect in Gor