Gorky left Tiflis and wandered back to the Volga and there, by
happy chance, met the Little Russian writer, Korolenko, the author
of _Makar's Dream_ and _The Blind Musician_. As editor of _The
Contemporary_, Korolenko introduced him to "great" literature, as he
put it, and in a flash he was made known to all of Russia. He continued
writing in the same vein he introduced in _Makar Chudra_, using the
strong, outcast, rebel types in _Emilian Pibgai_ and _Chalkash_,
which were published in 1895 under Korolenko's editorship, and in
_Konovaloff,_ _Malva_, _Foma Gordyeeff_ his first long novel, and in
the innumerable other works which preceded the supposed "change" in
Gorky's manner. He showed his heroes to Russia as one shows a scene by
pulling back a curtain: "this is what exists; here are men who do not
conform to your laws, not because you have made outcasts of them, but
because they despise you and all your smug respectability."
But he did not say so in so many words, he merely showed this canvas.
The change in Gorky is the change in Russia, which grew from a silent
and brooding mood to one of talk and action. As the Russian people
became more self-conscious so did he, changing from a man torn hither
and thither by circumstances to one who was able to analyze life and
know cause and effect. His very sudden success so early in his life
made it impossible for him to keep on writing and re-writing the same
themes in the same manner as he had begun. He was too great and dynamic
a genius for that. To him as to most Russians the art itself is not the
thing, but the self-expression and the truth. Thus when Gorky swung
out from the life of tramps and wanderers into the intellectual life
of Russia, he found a nation organized into various groups, analyzing
the cause of Russian social and political misery, finding an economic
and materialistic reason for it, and setting about to remedy it. Gorky
joined one of these groups, the Social Democratic Party, was one of
the signers of the petition to the Czar which demanded with an amusing
Russian naïveté that the Czar grant not only economic justice to the
strikers in the steel works of Petrograd, but also a constitutional
assembly, universal suffrage, a direct and secret ballot, and free
speech, free press and freedom of religion! For these demands and the
subsequent demonstration in front of the Winter Palace which resulted
in the notorious massacre of Bloody Sunday, Gorky was imprisoned in the
fortress of Peter and Paul. His prominence and the fact that he was
subject to tuberculosis caused a universal demand for his release. He
was freed after a month and was allowed to stay in Finland and even in
Petrograd for a while during the so-called days of freedom.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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