Taras and his two sons, Andrii and Ostap, go thundering up and down the Russian steppe with the savage avalanche of the Zaporozhe. They fight and carouse and their deeds are mighty—mightier than the deeds of which Homer sang and the performances which Walter Scott sketched. Beside Taras Ivanhoe pales into tin puppet, Ulysses into a lady’s man. What a book! If you know Gogol through his _Dead Souls_, the “humorous” classic of Russia, you will read in amazement his _Taras Bulba_. It is Rabelais with a sword. Through its pages ring the shouts of battle and Gargantuan manhood—Homo Monstrosus.... Once or twice the pale face of a woman peeps out of them and Gogol kicks it back into place with his kazak boot. “Do you want fire, Ostap? Do you want mad blood in your heart? Come ride with me over the steppe to the tents of the Zaporozhe....” When I closed the book with its red shouts still ringing in my ears—with old Taras still burning against the great tree and the magic steppe stretching before me—I thought of the baby-ribbon bards and the querulous quibblers of American letters—and smiled.... Come on, Bulba, there is still blood in America that has not dried, there are still hearts that have not been transformed into pink doilies. Welcome! You can’t shout too loud for me, you can’t swagger too much. The soul of you that left your burning body laughed and roared its way into heaven.... Gorky at His Best and Worst _Chelkash, and Other Stories, by Maxim Gorky. New York: Alfred A. Knopf_ Maxim Gorky is the poorest and most uneven of the Russian writers. He is—or was—a pioneer. He came wailing from lonely roads where the vagrom man sleeps beneath the stars and wonders what there is to life. And his dull, bitter plaints with ferocity as their leit motif soon sounded over the world. When the majority of Russian genius was struggling to “go to the people” Gorky had the advantage of coming from the people.