ki. He is lacking in the limpid clarity of sheer
light-heartedness. Humour he has indeed. But his humour is bitter as
gall, and corrosive as sulphuric acid. "Kain and Artem" may be cited
as an instance.

Kain is a poor little Jewish pedlar. Artem, the handsome, strong, but
corrupt lover of the huckstress, is tended by him when he has been
half-killed by envious and revengeful rivals. In return for this
nursing, and for his rescue from need and misery, Artem protects the
despised and persecuted Kain. But he has grown weary of
gratitude--gratitude to the weak being ever a burden to strong men.
And the lion drives away the imploring mouse, that saved him once from
the nets that held him captive--and falls asleep smiling.

[Illustration: The bare-footed brigade on the Volga-quay, and Nijni
Novgorod (_After a sketch by Gorki_)]

This sombre temperament determines the catastrophe of the other
stories. They almost invariably close in the sullen gloom of a wet
March evening, when we wonder afresh if the Spring is really coming.

In "Creatures that once were Men," Gorki's sinister experience and
pathos are essential factors in the accusing symbolism. He relates in
the unpretending style of a chronicler how the corpulent citizens
reside on the hill-tops, amid well-tended gardens. When it rains the
whole refuse of the upper town streams into the slums.

The new romance; Sentiment and humour; Russian middle class; The man of
the future; Descriptions of nature; Superfluity of detail; The Russian
proletaire; Psychology of murder; Artistic inaccuracy; Moujik and
outcast; A poet's idealism.

And yet it is just this sombre pathos and experience that compel us so
often to recognise in Gorki's types a new category of hero. They are
characterised by their sense of boundless freedom. They have both
inclination and capacity to abandon and fling aside all familiar
customs, duties, and relations.

It is a world of heroes, of most romantic heroes, that Gorki delineates
for us. But the romance is not after the recipes of the old novelists:
ancient, mystic, seeking its ideals in the remote past. This is
living, actual romance. Even though some of Gorki's heroes founder
like the heroes of bygone epochs of literature upon their weakness,
more of the "Bitter One's" characters are shipwrecked on a deed.

And it is this reckless parade and apotheosis of such men of action
that accounts for Gorki's huge success in compar