The Collected Short Stories of Maxim Gorky
Language: English
Pages: 424
ISBN: 0806510757
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
Maxim Gorky continues to be regarded as the greatest literary representative of revolutionary Russia. Born of the people, and having experienced in his own person their sufferings and their misery, he was enabled by his extraordinary genius to voice their grievances and their aspirations for a better life as no academic could.
His international fame rests on a tremendous literary output, including the powerful play "The Lower Depths", the monumental novel of the 1905 Russian Revolution, "Mother", his vital Autobiography and, of course, his short stories. This edition of "The Collected Short Stories of Maxim Gorky" includes his benchmark masterpieces "Creatures That Once Were Men" and "Twenty-Six Men and a Girl" as well as "Chelkash and My Fellow-Traveller" among many others. The collection represents the very best of Gorky's genius.
For this edition the renowned scholar and author Frederic Ewen has written a penetrating new introduction evaluating Gorky's place in the world's literary pantheon.
and give some pleasure to the godly old lady— take these back to her. . . .’ Besides, glory be to God, we’ve earned a bit to buy bread with. Well, good-day; I’ll be going.” “Wait,” the old woman stopped him. “Did you under stand what I read yesterday?” “Me? How could I understand it? I heard it, that’s true, but even then, how did I hear it? Have we ears for God’s Word? W e can’t understand it. Good-by to you.” T H E A F F A I R OF T H E C L A S P S 65 “So-o!” drawled the old woman. “No,
Mishka shook his head and scratched his left shoulder. “ ‘And thinkest thou this, O man, that judgest them which do such things, and doest the same, that thou shalt escape the judgment of God?’ ” “Ma’am,” Mishka began with tears in his voice, “let me go, for God’s sake. . . . I ’ll come some other time to listen. But now I’m awfully hungry. My stomach is rum bling something terrible. W e’ve had nothing to eat since last night.” The old woman shut the book with a bang. “Get along with you! Go!”
would answer by shaking his head. “W ait another day . . . perhaps you’ll get over it,” Kuvalda would propose. The teacher would sigh, and shake his head hopelessly once more. The Captain, seeing that his friend’s thin body trembled with the thirst for the poison, would take some money from his pocket. “In the majority of cases it is impossible to fight against fate,” he would say, as if trying to justify himself before someone. The teacher, however, did not spend all his money on drink. At least
barefoot and bareheaded, clad in old, threadbare, vel veteen breeches, in a dirty print shirt, with a torn collar that displayed his dry, angular bones tightly covered with brown skin. From the ruffled state of his black, slightly grizzled hair and the dazed look on his keen, predatory face, it was evident that he had only just waked up. There was a straw sticking in one brown mustache, another straw clung to the scrubby bristles of his shaved left cheek, and behind his ear he had stuck a
down to stealing in the houses and on the streets?” “What for? Why, there’s goods enough here to last our time—for you and me. By God, there’s enough, Semyonich! So you’ve been filching two cases of goods, eh? Mind, Semyonich, you’d better look out! You’ll get caught one day!” The enraged Semyonich trembled and struggled, splut tering and trying to say something. Chelkash let go of his hand, and with complete composure strode back to the dock gates. The customs-house guard followed him, swear