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55 pages

English

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Russian writer Maxim Gorky is known for his gritty depictions of life in his home country. In the gripping novella "Creatures That Once Were Men," he conveys an unforgettable portrait of people crushed by the machinations of a system much larger than themselves. Includes an illuminating introduction from beloved English author G.K. Chesterton.

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Publié par	The Floating Press
Date de parution	01 avril 2016
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781776598953
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0100€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

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CREATURES THAT ONCE WERE MEN
* * *
MAXIM GORKY
Contributions by
G. K. CHESTERTON
Translated by
J. K. M. SHIRAZI

*
Creatures That Once Were Men First published in 1905 Epub ISBN 978-1-77659-895-3 Also available: PDF ISBN 978-1-77659-896-0 © 2014 The Floating Press and its licensors. All rights reserved. While every effort has been used to ensure the accuracy and reliability of the information contained in The Floating Press edition of this book, The Floating Press does not assume liability or responsibility for any errors or omissions in this book. The Floating Press does not accept responsibility for loss suffered as a result of reliance upon the accuracy or currency of information contained in this book. Do not use while operating a motor vehicle or heavy equipment. Many suitcases look alike. Visit www.thefloatingpress.com
Contents
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Introductoryby G. K. Chesterton Part I Part II Endnotes
Introductoryby G. K. Chesterton
*
It is certainly a curious fact that so many of the voices of what iscalled our modern religion have come from countries which are not onlysimple, but may even be called barbaric. A nation like Norway has agreat realistic drama without having ever had either a great classicaldrama or a great romantic drama. A nation like Russia makes us feelits modern fiction when we have never felt its ancient fiction. It hasproduced its Gissing without producing its Scott. Everything that ismost sad and scientific, everything that is most grim and analytical,everything that can truly be called most modern, everything that canwithout unreasonableness be called most morbid, comes from these freshand untried and unexhausted nationalities. Out of these infant peoplescome the oldest voices of the earth. This contradiction, like manyother contradictions, is one which ought first of all to be registeredas a mere fact; long before we attempt to explain why things contradictthemselves, we ought, if we are honest men and good critics, toregister the preliminary truth that things do contradict themselves.In this case, as I say, there are many possible and suggestiveexplanations. It may be, to take an example, that our modern Europe isso exhausted that even the vigorous expression of that exhaustion isdifficult for every one except the most robust. It may be that all thenations are tired; and it may be that only the boldest and breeziestare not too tired to say that they are tired. It may be that a manlike Ibsen in Norway or a man like Gorky in Russia are the only peopleleft who have so much faith that they can really believe in scepticism.It may be that they are the only people left who have so much animalspirits that they can really feast high and drink deep at the ancientbanquet of pessimism. This is one of the possible hypotheses orexplanations in the matter: that all Europe feels these things and thatthey only have strength to believe them also. Many other explanationsmight, however, also be offered. It might be suggested thathalf-barbaric countries like Russia or Norway, which have always lain,to say the least of it, on the extreme edge of the circle of ourEuropean civilisation, have a certain primal melancholy which belongsto them through all the ages. It is highly probable that this sadness,which to us is modern, is to them eternal. It is highly probable thatwhat we have solemnly and suddenly discovered in scientific text-booksand philosophical magazines they absorbed and experienced thousands ofyears ago, when they offered human sacrifice in black and cruel forestsand cried to their gods in the dark. Their agnosticism is perhapsmerely paganism; their paganism, as in old times, is merelydevilworship. Certainly, Schopenhauer could hardly have written hishideous essay on women except in a country which had once been full ofslavery and the service of fiends. It may be that these moderns aretricking us altogether, and are hiding in their current scientificjargon things that they knew before science or civilisation were. Theysay that they are determinists; but the truth is, probably, that theyare still worshipping the Norns. They say that they describe sceneswhich are sickening and dehumanising in the name of art or in the nameof truth; but it may be that they do it in the name of some deityindescribable, whom they propitiated with blood and terror before thebeginning of history.
This hypothesis, like the hypothesis mentioned before it, is highlydisputable, and is at best a suggestion. But there is one broad truthin the matter which may in any case be considered as established. Acountry like Russia has far more inherent capacity for producingrevolution in revolutionists than any country of the type of England orAmerica. Communities highly civilised and largely urban tend to athing which is now called evolution, the most cautious and the mostconservative of all social influences. The loyal Russian obeys theCzar because he remembers the Czar and the Czar's importance. Thedisloyal Russian frets against the Czar because he also remembers theCzar, and makes a note of the necessity of knifing him. But the loyalEnglishman obeys the upper classes because he has forgotten that theyare there. Their operation has become to him like daylight, orgravitation, or any of the forces of nature. And there are no disloyalEnglishmen; there are no English revolutionists, because the oligarchicmanagement of England is so complete as to be invisible. The thingwhich can once get itself forgotten can make itself omnipotent.
Gorky is pre-eminently Russian, in that he is a revolutionist; notbecause most Russians are revolutionists (for I imagine that they arenot), but because most Russians—indeed, nearly all Russians—are inthat attitude of mind which makes revolution possible and which makesreligion possible, an attitude of primary and dogmatic assertion. Tobe a revolutionist it is first necessary to be a revelationist. It isnecessary to believe in the sufficiency of some theory of the universeor the State. But in countries that have come under the influence ofwhat is called the evolutionary idea, there has been no dramaticrighting of wrongs, and (unless the evolutionary idea loses its hold)there never will be. These countries have no revolution, they have toput up with an inferior and largely fictitious thing which they callprogress.
The interest of the Gorky tale, like the interest of so many otherRussian masterpieces, consists in this sharp contact between asimplicity, which we in the West feel to be very old, and arebelliousness which we in the West feel to be very new. We cannot inour graduated and polite civilisation quite make head or tail of theRussian anarch; we can only feel in a vague way that his tale is thetale of the Missing Link, and that his head is the head of thesuperman. We hear his lonely cry of anger. But we cannot be quitecertain whether his protest is the protest of the first anarchistagainst government, or whether it is the protest of the last savageagainst civilisation. The cruelty of ages and of political cynicism ornecessity has done much to burden the race of which Gorky writes; buttime has left them one thing which it has not left to the people inPoplar or West Ham. It has left them, apparently, the clear andchildlike power of seeing the cruelty which encompasses them. Gorky isa tramp, a man of the people, and also a critic and a bitter one. Inthe West poor men, when they become articulate in literature, arealways sentimentalists and nearly always optimists.
It is no exaggeration to say that these people of whom Gorky writes insuch a story as this of "Creatures that once were Men" are to theWestern mind children. They have, indeed, been tortured and broken byexperience and sin. But this has only sufficed to make them sadchildren or naughty children or bewildered children. They haveabsolutely no trace of that quality upon which secure government restsso largely in Western Europe, the quality of being soothed by longwords as if by an incantation. They do not call hunger "economicpressure"; they call it hunger. They do not call rich men "examples ofcapitalistic concentration," they call them rich men. And this note ofplainness and of something nobly prosaic is as characteristic of Gorky,the most recent and in some ways the most modern and sophisticated ofRussian authors, as it is of Tolstoy or any of the Tolstoyan type ofmind. The very title of this story strikes the note of this sudden andsimple vision. The philanthropist writing long letters to the DailyTelegraph says, of men living in a slum, that "their degeneration is ofsuch a kind as almost to pass the limits of the semblance of humanity,"and we read the whole thing with a tepid assent as we should readphrases about the virtues of Queen Victoria or the dignity of the Houseof Commons. The Russian novelist, when he describes a dosshouse, says,"Creatures that once were Men." And we are arrested, and regard thefacts as a kind of terrible fairy tale. This story is a test case ofthe Russian manner, for it is in itself a study of decay, a study offailure, and a study of old age. And yet the author is forced to writeeven of staleness freshly; and though he is treating of the world asseen by eyes darkened or blood-shot with evil experience, his own eyeslook out upon the scene with a clarity that is almost babyish. Throughall runs that curious Russian sense that every man is only a man,which, if the Russians ever are a democracy, will make them the mostdemocratic democracy that the world has ever seen. Take this passage,for instance, from the austere conclusion of "Creatures that once wereMen."
Petunikoff smiled the smile of the conqueror and went back into thedosshouse, but suddenly he stopped and trembled. At the door facinghim stood an old man with a stick in his hand and a large bag on hisback, a horrible odd man in rags and tatters, which covered his bonyfigure. He bent under the weight of his burden, and lowered his headon his breast, as if h