ruary_ 1902.

FOMA GORDYEEFF

"What, without asking, hither hurried _Whence_?
And, without asking, _Whither_ hurried hence!
Oh, many a Cup of this forbidden Wine
Must drown the memory of that insolence!"

"Foma Gordyeeff" is a big book--not only is the breadth of Russia in it,
but the expanse of life. Yet, though in each land, in this world of
marts and exchanges, this age of trade and traffic, passionate figures
rise up and demand of life what its fever is, in "Foma Gordyeeff" it is a
Russian who so rises up and demands. For Gorky, the Bitter One, is
essentially a Russian in his grasp on the facts of life and in his
treatment. All the Russian self-analysis and insistent introspection are
his. And, like all his brother Russians, ardent, passionate protest
impregnates his work. There is a purpose to it. He writes because he
has something to say which the world should hear. From that clenched
fist of his, light and airy romances, pretty and sweet and beguiling, do
not flow, but realities--yes, big and brutal and repulsive, but real.

He raises the cry of the miserable and the despised, and in a masterly
arraignment of commercialism, protests against social conditions, against
the grinding of the faces of the poor and weak, and the self-pollution of
the rich and strong, in their mad lust for place and power. It is to be
doubted strongly if the average bourgeois, smug and fat and prosperous,
can understand this man Foma Gordyeeff. The rebellion in his blood is
something to which their own does not thrill. To them it will be
inexplicable that this man, with his health and his millions, could not
go on living as his class lived, keeping regular hours at desk and stock
exchange, driving close contracts, underbidding his competitors, and
exulting in the business disasters of his fellows. It would appear so
easy, and, after such a life, well appointed and eminently respectable,
he could die. "Ah," Foma will interrupt rudely--he is given to rude
interruptions--"if to die and disappear is the end of these
money-grubbing years, why money-grub?" And the bourgeois whom he rudely
interrupted will not understand. Nor did Mayakin understand as he
laboured holily with his wayward godson.

"Why do you brag?" Foma, bursts out upon him. "What have you to brag
about? Your son--where is he? Your daughter--what is she? Ekh, you
manager of life! Come, now, you're clever, you know everything--tell