Maxim Gorky (1868–1936)

I really enjoyed Twenty-Six Men and a Girl, although it’s a much sadder and darker story than I thought it was going to be might. The author does an excellent job of making you feel the crushing monotony and hopelessness of the workers’ lives. The bakery feels like it is a prison, and it’s easy to understand why the men become so attached to Tanya, who brings a little brightness into their world.

What struck me most was how the story explores the way people can turn others into symbols show more instead of seeing them as real human beings. The ending is uncomfortable and disappointing, but that’s exactly the point. It doesn’t provide a happy resolution; the author is showing how poverty, frustration, and unrealistic expectations can bring out the worst in people.

Despite being very short, the story has a lot to say about loneliness, dignity, and the need for hope. It’s not an uplifting read, but it’s a memorable one, and it left me with plenty to think about afterward. show less

Exactly that. Aphorisms abound. Read with the growing ominous thunder of the dawn of the Russian 20th Century in the back of my mind.

Writers with mud on their boots, trading ripostes over tea & dark bread.

I've always liked Maksim Gorky's short stories, the few I have read. His writing is direct, flowing, colorful. The characters are vibrant, as if outlined with black ink, and yet not overly simple or lacking in depth. The plots, as most plots go in short stories, are not complex--most of the stories are character studies, and yet, each story seems to reveal, almost without effort, some wonderfully true aspect of being a human being. What that true thing is may be difficult to pinpoint, show more nevertheless, one feels that something has been revealed to the reader that would have been obscure or even overlooked in another, lesser writer.
Contains: Makar Chudra; The Nightingale; Chelkash; On the Rafts; In the Steppe; Twenty-six Men and a Girl; A Man is Born; Music; The Nightmare; First Love; A Sky-Blue Life show less

This review is for the entire trilogy 'My Childhood', 'My Apprenticeship', and 'My Universities'

When one thinks about Russian classical literature, two names invariably pop up: Dostoevsky and Tolstoy. Often somebody would mention Chekhov in the same breath, some would rightly point out that Pushkin deserves his place on the pedestal, others would insist that Turgenev should be put side-by-side with his two most recognized contemporaries.

Ever since I read 'My Childhood' by Maxim Gorky, the show more first part of his autobiographic trilogy, the trio of Russian giants was firmly established for me : Dostoevsky, Gorky, Tolstoy - in that order.

The first sentence of this book sets the tone:

"Father lay on the floor, by the window of a small, darkened room, dressed in white, and looking terribly long. His feet were bare and his toes were strangely splayed out. His gentle fingers, now peacefully resting on his chest, were also distorted, and the black discs of copper coins firmly sealed his once shining eyes. His kind face had darkened and its nastily bared teeth frightened me"

I did not misspeak - this is one sentence in Russian, fittingly broken up by Ronald Wilks in his English translation (which is supposed to be quite good).

Already after reading this you realize that you are in for something unusual. The book never lets up, it holds you firmly in its grip, you are bound to remember some passages long after the book is closed and put away.

The pen name of the author - Gorky - translates from Russian as 'bitter' and you will get to taste the bitterness when you read this trilogy. Deaths are scattered around the pages, they are noted and recounted in a matter-of-fact voice of a child as regular, commonplace events. But it is not all doom and gloom, the darkness is followed by light and some of the most memorable passages are filled with tenderness and joy.

“For sadness and gladness live within us side by side, almost inseparable; the one succeeding the other with an elusive, inappreciable swiftness.”

“In recalling my childhood I like to picture myself as a beehive to which various simple obscure people brought the honey of their knowledge and thoughts on life, generously enriching my character with their own experience. Often this honey was dirty and bitter, but every scrap of knowledge was honey all the same.”

It is these "simple obscure people" that light the pages of the book. Uneducated, uncouth, rough and often violent these people from the end of the 19th century Russia come alive in short but precise descriptions of the writer at the height of his powers. It is rare to find character sketches so economically executed and yet so complete.

The main two characters are of course grandmother and grandfather of the little Alexei, seemingly representing two opposing forces shaping up his life, leaving the traces of warmth and the scars of anger behind. At the age of fourteen Alexei has to quit his grandparents' home to earn his living.

The second book is translated as 'My Apprenticeship' or 'In the World' and here the voice of a teenager, hardened beyond his years, picks up where the voice of a child left off. Dissatisfied with what he sees around him Alexei aims to break free from this monotonous existence and finds his release in books, in words. He sees education as the only way out.

The third book 'My Universities', probably the weakest of the three, was written seven years after the first two. Alexei meets with students, idealists with a revolutionary agenda. However, he is disillusioned, having lived through the torture of his young years he no longer believes in the inherent goodness of people. There is less hope and more bitterness in this book, probably reflecting the writer's state of mind while in exile. The book ends with Alexei leaving on an aimless journey on foot across Russia that would last for five years.

Gorky was initially extremely critical of the Soviets and personally of Lenin. He eventually returned from his exile in Italy to Soviet Russia and seemingly accepted the ideology of the regime. He was most likely killed by Stalin's thugs. show less