So we should have to dissect, weigh, and classify all available facts about Russia past and present in order to get an unclouded understanding of the national temper, just as a similar study of Gorki’s antecedents and life, for instance, would illuminate his literary expressions. Each of these studies would be consistent with the other, for Gorki is a national figure, though, as all such iconoclastic spirits will, he outrussias his own middle-class countrymen in outspoken unfaith in and defiance of the god-of-things-as-they-are. The second great factor for finding the place and potency of the unpleasant, the bitter, and the terrible in fiction consists in the purpose of fiction, which broadly is one of two: either to picture forth life or to interpret life. When the fictional artist--granted that he is clear-headed--sets out to hold the mirror relentlessly up to life, he becomes an extreme realist. When he faithfully paints life as he sees it, sincerely using his selective powers so as to present _what he conceives to be_ types rather than mere personalities, and thus interprets life for those of less penetrative and constructive vision, we have a philosophical realist. When he takes liberties with the _spirit_ of facts (not merely with the facts themselves, which may be just as real in one order as in another), he is a romancer. When he uses facts to support and enforce ideals of his own, he is an idealist. Thus all fiction, so far as it has a respectable purpose at all, falls easily into one class or the other--that which merely represents life, or that which interprets life while it represents it. All the farther motives--amusement, teaching, excoriation, demagoguery, what not--line up behind these two prime purposes. Now, how does all this bear upon the place of unpleasant fiction? Very vitally, and we are considering Gorki--a highly morbid and at times revolting writer--as a notable example of this rather Russian characteristic. In him we have a spirit who looks at facts, despises all palliations, dares greatly for his convictions, and in it all is Russian through and through. Such a man, of such a history, in such a period, in such a land, with such a motive of truth-telling, for such a purpose of reform, _could_ not write pleasant, tinkly fiction. Russians read him because Russia must read him. An author draws men to his message either because they need it without liking it, or like it already. First of all, Gorki is himself--a soul sensitive to the tragic, the morbid, and the bitter--then he boldly gives Russia her own self-made wormwood to drink while she thirsts in the hour of her crucifixion.