



Produced by Judith Boss.  HTML version by Al Haines.










CREATURES THAT ONCE WERE MEN


By

MAXIM GORKY




INTRODUCTORY.

By G. K. CHESTERTON.

It is certainly a curious fact that so many of the voices of what is
called our modern religion have come from countries which are not only
simple, but may even be called barbaric.  A nation like Norway has a
great realistic drama without having ever had either a great classical
drama or a great romantic drama.  A nation like Russia makes us feel
its modern fiction when we have never felt its ancient fiction.  It has
produced its Gissing without producing its Scott. Everything that is
most sad and scientific, everything that is most grim and analytical,
everything that can truly be called most modern, everything that can
without unreasonableness be called most morbid, comes from these fresh
and untried and unexhausted nationalities.  Out of these infant peoples
come the oldest voices of the earth.  This contradiction, like many
other contradictions, is one which ought first of all to be registered
as a mere fact; long before we attempt to explain why things contradict
themselves, we ought, if we are honest men and good critics, to
register the preliminary truth that things do contradict themselves.
In this case, as I say, there are many possible and suggestive
explanations. It may be, to take an example, that our modern Europe is
so exhausted that even the vigorous expression of that exhaustion is
difficult for every one except the most robust.  It may be that all the
nations are tired; and it may be that only the boldest and breeziest
are not too tired to say that they are tired.  It may be that a man
like Ibsen in Norway or a man like Gorky in Russia are the only people
left who have so much faith that they can really believe in scepticism.
It may be that they are the only people left who have so much animal
spirits that they can really feast high and drink deep at the ancient
banquet of pessimism.  This is one of the possible hypotheses or
explanations in the matter: that all Europe feels these things and that
they only have strength to believe them also.  Many other explanations
might, however, also be offered.  It might be suggested that
half-barbaric countries like Russia or Norway, which have always lain,
to say the least of it, on the extreme edge of the circle of our
European civilisation, have a certain primal melancholy which belongs
to them through all the ages.  It is highly probable that this sadness,
which to us is modern, is to them eternal.  It is highly probable that
what we have solemnly and suddenly discovered in scientific text-books
and philosophical magazines they absorbed and experienced thousands of
years ago, when they offered human sacrifice in black and cruel forests
and cried to their gods in the dark.  Their agnosticism is perhaps
merely paganism; their paganism, as in old times, is merely
devilworship.  Certainly, Schopenhauer could hardly have written his
hideous essay on women except in a country which had once been full of
slavery and the service of fiends.  It may be that these moderns are
tricking us altogether, and are hiding in their current scientific
jargon things that they knew before science or civilisation were.  They
say that they are determinists; but the truth is, probably, that they
are still worshipping the Norns.  They say that they describe scenes
which are sickening and dehumanising in the name of art or in the name
of truth; but it may be that they do it in the name of some deity
indescribable, whom they propitiated with blood and terror before the
beginning of history.

This hypothesis, like the hypothesis mentioned before it, is highly
disputable, and is at best a suggestion.  But there is one broad truth
in the matter which may in any case be considered as established.  A
country like Russia has far more inherent capacity for producing
revolution in revolutionists than any country of the type of England or
America.  Communities highly civilised and largely urban tend to a
thing which is now called evolution, the most cautious and the most
conservative of all social influences.  The loyal Russian obeys the
Czar because he remembers the Czar and the Czar's importance.  The
disloyal Russian frets against the Czar because he also remembers the
Czar, and makes a note of the necessity of knifing him.  But the loyal
Englishman obeys the upper classes because he has forgotten that they
are there.  Their operation has become to him like daylight, or
gravitation, or any of the forces of nature.  And there are no disloyal
Englishmen; there are no English revolutionists, because the oligarchic
management of England is so complete as to be invisible.  The thing
which can once get itself forgotten can make itself omnipotent.

Gorky is pre-eminently Russian, in that he is a revolutionist; not
because most Russians are revolutionists (for I imagine that they are
not), but because most Russians--indeed, nearly all Russians--are in
that attitude of mind which makes revolution possible and which makes
religion possible, an attitude of primary and dogmatic assertion.  To
be a revolutionist it is first necessary to be a revelationist.  It is
necessary to believe in the sufficiency of some theory of the universe
or the State.  But in countries that have come under the influence of
what is called the evolutionary idea, there has been no dramatic
righting of wrongs, and (unless the evolutionary idea loses its hold)
there never will be.  These countries have no revolution, they have to
put up with an inferior and largely fictitious thing which they call
progress.

The interest of the Gorky tale, like the interest of so many other
Russian masterpieces, consists in this sharp contact between a
simplicity, which we in the West feel to be very old, and a
rebelliousness which we in the West feel to be very new. We cannot in
our graduated and polite civilisation quite make head or tail of the
Russian anarch; we can only feel in a vague way that his tale is the
tale of the Missing Link, and that his head is the head of the
superman. We hear his lonely cry of anger.  But we cannot be quite
certain whether his protest is the protest of the first anarchist
against government, or whether it is the protest of the last savage
against civilisation.  The cruelty of ages and of political cynicism or
necessity has done much to burden the race of which Gorky writes; but
time has left them one thing which it has not left to the people in
Poplar or West Ham.  It has left them, apparently, the clear and
childlike power of seeing the cruelty which encompasses them.  Gorky is
a tramp, a man of the people, and also a critic and a bitter one. In
the West poor men, when they become articulate in literature, are
always sentimentalists and nearly always optimists.

It is no exaggeration to say that these people of whom Gorky writes in
such a story as this of "Creatures that once were Men" are to the
Western mind children.  They have, indeed, been tortured and broken by
experience and sin.  But this has only sufficed to make them sad
children or naughty children or bewildered children.  They have
absolutely no trace of that quality upon which secure government rests
so largely in Western Europe, the quality of being soothed by long
words as if by an incantation. They do not call hunger "economic
pressure"; they call it hunger.  They do not call rich men "examples of
capitalistic concentration," they call them rich men.  And this note of
plainness and of something nobly prosaic is as characteristic of Gorky,
the most recent and in some ways the most modern and sophisticated of
Russian authors, as it is of Tolstoy or any of the Tolstoyan type of
mind.  The very title of this story strikes the note of this sudden and
simple vision. The philanthropist writing long letters to the Daily
Telegraph says, of men living in a slum, that "their degeneration is of
such a kind as almost to pass the limits of the semblance of humanity,"
and we read the whole thing with a tepid assent as we should read
phrases about the virtues of Queen Victoria or the dignity of the House
of Commons. The Russian novelist, when he describes a dosshouse, says,
"Creatures that once were Men."  And we are arrested, and regard the
facts as a kind of terrible fairy tale.  This story is a test case of
the Russian manner, for it is in itself a study of decay, a study of
failure, and a study of old age. And yet the author is forced to write
even of staleness freshly; and though he is treating of the world as
seen by eyes darkened or blood-shot with evil experience, his own eyes
look out upon the scene with a clarity that is almost babyish. Through
all runs that curious Russian sense that every man is only a man,
which, if the Russians ever are a democracy, will make them the most
democratic democracy that the world has ever seen.  Take this passage,
for instance, from the austere conclusion of "Creatures that once were
Men."

Petunikoff smiled the smile of the conqueror and went back into the
dosshouse, but suddenly he stopped and trembled.  At the door facing
him stood an old man with a stick in his hand and a large bag on his
back, a horrible odd man in rags and tatters, which covered his bony
figure.  He bent under the weight of his burden, and lowered his head
on his breast, as if he wished to attack the merchant.

"What are you?  Who are you?" shouted Petunikoff.

"A man..." he answered, in a hoarse voice.  This hoarseness pleased
and tranquillised Petunikoff, he even smiled.

"A man!  And are there really men like you?"  Stepping aside he let the
old man pass.  He went, saying slowly:

"Men are of various kinds... as God wills...  There are worse than me
... still worse...  Yes..."

Here, in the very act of describing a kind of a fall from humanity,
Gorky expresses a sense of the strangeness and essential value of the
human being which is far too commonly absent altogether from such
complex civilisations as our own.  To no Western, I am afraid, would it
occur when asked what he was to say, "A man."  He would be a plasterer
who had walked from Reading, or an iron-puddler who had been thrown out
of work in Lancashire, or a University man who would be really most
grateful for the loan of five shillings, or the son of a
lieutenant-general living in Brighton, who would not have made such an
application if he had not known that he was talking to another
gentleman.  With us it is not a question of men being of various kinds;
with us the kinds are almost different animals. But in spite of all
Gorky's superficial scepticism and brutality, it is to him the fall
from humanity, or the apparent fall from humanity, which is not merely
great and lamentable, but essential and even mystical.  The line
between man and the beasts is one of the transcendental essentials of
every religion; and it is, like most of the transcendental things of
religion, identical with the main sentiments of the man of common
sense.  We feel this gulf when theologies say that it cannot be
crossed.  But we feel it quite as much (and that with a primal shudder)
when philosophers or fanciful writers suggest that it might be crossed.
And if any man wishes to discover whether or no he has really learnt to
regard the line between man and brute as merely relative and
evolutionary, let him say again to himself those frightful words,
"Creatures that once were Men."

G. K. CHESTERTON.




Creatures that once were Men.



PART I.

In front of you is the main street, with two rows of miserable looking
huts with shuttered windows and old walls pressing on each other and
leaning forward.  The roofs of these time-worn habitations are full of
holes, and have been patched here and there with laths; from underneath
them project mildewed beams, which are shaded by the dusty-leaved
elder-trees and crooked white willows--pitiable flora of those suburbs
inhabited by the poor.

The dull green time-stained panes of the windows look upon each other
with the cowardly glances of cheats. Through the street and towards the
adjacent mountain, runs the sinuous path, winding through the deep
ditches filled with rain-water.  Here and there are piled heaps of dust
and other rubbish--either refuse or else put there purposely to keep
the rain-water from flooding the houses. On the top of the mountain,
among green gardens with dense foliage, beautiful stone houses lie
hidden; the belfries of the churches rise proudly towards the sky, and
their gilded crosses shine beneath the rays of the sun. During the
rainy weather the neighbouring town pours its water into this main
road, which, at other times, is full of its dust, and all these
miserable houses seem, as it were, thrown by some powerful hand into
that heap of dust, rubbish, and rain-water.  They cling to the ground
beneath the high mountain, exposed to the sun, surrounded by decaying
refuse, and their sodden appearance impresses one with the same feeling
as would the half-rotten trunk of an old tree.

At the end of the main street, as if thrown out of the town, stood a
two-storied house, which had been rented from Petunikoff, a merchant
and resident of the town.  It was in comparatively good order, being
further from the mountain, while near it were the open fields, and
about half-a-mile away the river ran its winding course.

This large old house had the most dismal aspect amidst its
surroundings.  The walls bent outwards and there was hardly a pane of
glass in any of the windows, except some of the fragments which looked
like the water of the marshes--dull green.  The spaces of wall between
the windows were covered with spots, as if time were trying to write
there in hieroglyphics the history of the old house, and the tottering
roof added still more to its pitiable condition. It seemed as if the
whole building bent towards the ground, to await the last stroke of
that fate which should transform it into a chaos of rotting remains,
and finally into dust.

The gates were open, one half of them displaced and lying on the ground
at the entrance, while between its bars had grown the grass, which also
covered the large and empty court-yard.  In the depths of this yard
stood a low, iron-roofed, smoke-begrimed building.  The house itself
was of course unoccupied, but this shed, formerly a blacksmith's forge,
was now turned into a "dosshouse," kept by a retired Captain named
Aristid Fomich Kuvalda.

In the interior of the dosshouse was a long, wide and grimy board,
measuring some 28 by 70 feet.  The room was lighted on one side by four
small square windows, and on the other by a wide door.  The unpainted
brick walls were black with smoke, and the ceiling, which was built of
timber, was almost black.  In the middle stood a large stove, the
furnace of which served as its foundation, and around this stove and
along the walls were also long, wide boards, which served as beds for
the lodgers.  The walls smelt of smoke, the earthen floor of dampness,
and the long wide board of rotting rags.

The place of the proprietor was on the top of the stove, while the
boards surrounding it were intended for those who were on good terms
with the owner and who were honoured by his friendship.  During the day
the captain passed most of his time sitting on a kind of bench, made by
himself by placing bricks against the wall of the courtyard, or else in
the eating house of Egor Vavilovitch, which was opposite the house,
where he took all his meals and where he also drank vodki.

Before renting this house, Aristid Kuvalda had kept a registry office
for servants in the town.  If we look further back into his former
life, we shall find that he once owned printing works, and previous to
this, in his own words, he "just lived!  And lived well too, Devil take
it, and like one who knew how!"

He was a tall, broad-shouldered man of fifty, with a rawlooking face,
swollen with drunkenness, and with a dirty yellowish beard. His eyes
were large and grey, with an insolent expression of happiness.  He
spoke in a bass voice and with a sort of grumbling sound in his throat,
and he almost always held between his teeth a German china pipe with a
long bowl.  When he was angry the nostrils of his big crooked red nose
swelled, and his lips trembled, exposing to view two rows of large and
wolf-like yellow teeth.  He had long arms, was lame, and always dressed
in an old officer's uniform, with a dirty, greasy cap with a red band,
a hat without a brim, and ragged felt boots which reached almost to his
knees.  In the morning, as a rule, he had a heavy drunken headache, and
in the evening he caroused.  However much he drank, he was never drunk,
and so was always merry.

In the evenings he received lodgers, sitting on his brickmade bench
with his pipe in his mouth.

"Whom have we here?" he would ask the ragged and tattered object
approaching him, who had probably been chucked out of the town for
drunkenness, or perhaps for some other reason not quite so simple.  And
after the man had answered him, he would say, "Let me see legal papers
in confirmation of your lies."  And if there were such papers they were
shown.  The Captain would then put them in his bosom, seldom taking any
interest in them, and would say:

"Everything is in order.  Two kopecks for the night, ten kopecks for
the week, and thirty kopecks for the month.  Go and get a place for
yourself, and see that it is not other people's, or else they will blow
you up.  The people that live here are particular."

"Don't you sell tea, bread, or anything to eat?"

"I trade only in walls and roofs, for which I pay to the swindling
proprietor of this hole--Judas Petunikoff, merchant of the second
guild--five roubles a month," explained Kuvalda in a business-like
tone.  "Only those come to me who are not accustomed to comfort and
luxuries.... but if you are accustomed to eat every day, then there is
the eating-house opposite.  But it would be better for you if you left
off that habit.  You see you are not a gentleman.  What do you eat?
You eat yourself!"

For such speeches, delivered in a strictly business-like manner, and
always with smiling eyes, and also for the attention he paid to his
lodgers the Captain was very popular among the poor of the town.  It
very often happened that a former client of his would appear, not in
rags, but in something more respectable and with a slightly happier
face.

"Good-day, your honour, and how do you do?"

"Alive, in good health!  Go on."

"Don't you know me?"

"I did not know you."

"Do you remember that I lived with you last winter for nearly a month
.... when the fight with the police took place, and three were taken
away?"

"My brother, that is so.  The police do come even under my hospitable
roof!"

"My God!  You gave a piece of your mind to the police inspector of this
district!"

"Wouldn't you accept some small hospitality from me?  When I lived with
you, you were..."

"Gratitude must be encouraged because it is seldom met with.  You seem
to be a good man, and, though I don't remember you, still I will go
with you into the public-house and drink to your success and future
prospects with the greatest pleasure."

"You seem always the same...  Are you always joking?"

"What else can one do, living among you unfortunate men?"

They went.  Sometimes the Captain's former customer, uplifted and
unsettled by the entertainment, returned to the dosshouse, and on the
following morning they would again begin treating each other till the
Captain's companion would wake up to realise that he had spent all his
money in drink.

"Your honour, do you see that I have again fallen into your hands?
What shall we do now?"

"The