The Essential Russian Plays & Short Stories. Максим Горький
Come, answer me plainly. (Drinks a goblet of mead.)
Master: Excellent; I’ll send you a few articles; only I don’t know if they’ll suit a paper with Liberal tendencies. The first article is called, “The Positive Values of Serfdom.” The second——
Friend: You want to laugh again.
Master: On the contrary, I want you to laugh. (Picking up a paper.) To tell the truth, a better reply to your remark would be the following passage from “A New Catechism of French Literature.” Here it is. It’s a question of paper-soiling. Listen, what the use is of paper-soiling: “The flourishing condition of paper manufacturers, printers, and booksellers, the diversion of others, the nourishment of one’s own spirit, which almost unceasingly languishes with a thirst for instruction and the acquirement of glory.” Of course, you’ll say that what was written in 1808, can have no significance to the twentieth century, but I——
Friend: You’re not really interested in these old things?
Master: Old things? A paper for September, 1808, to be called old! (To Companion.) Well, I never! (To Friend.) Ah, if you only knew how every novelty excites us, every event of passing life! Why, not long ago a meeting took place between the Emperor Alexander and Napoleon. Would you believe it, our hands shook when we learned what was happening? Just listen. (Reads.) “We speak of the meeting of these Monarchs first as of a splendid event in history, of a meeting which, under all the circumstances, is bound to have the most far-reaching consequences.” — D’you hear! — “The most far-reaching consequences.”
Friend (takes the paper and reads): “The Political, Statistical, and Geographical——” Oh, the devil!
Master: It’s our favourite paper.
Friend: It’s simply incredible. What did you say — “The Positive Values of Serfdom”?
Master: Yes. (Pours him out mead)
Friend: So you seriously advocate serfdom? Thanks, enough; this stuff’s very strong.
Master: So I seriously advocate serfdom! (Pours out for Companion and self) It’s strong only for the weak.
Friend: And you say this?
Master: I am repenting — I had erred. You see, I’m not a god.
Companion (with energy): You are a god!
Master: Not in that sense. You ask for my articles, but that part of me lost its belief in social ideals and died of sorrow. It gave up its place to a despot!
Companion: To a beautiful despot!
Master: And this despot has the audacity to affirm that most people are fools and rogues. To give them the freedom of which you sing: first, there’s no reason for it; and secondly, it’s harmful, because these gentlemen even in bonds are sufficiently dangerous to each other, and in their own interests, that is, in the interests of the majority, their freedom is undesirable. And as Liberals ought to conform in all things with the interests of the majority, so—— (All laugh.) Why, you value everything from the point of view of justice and utility. Well, there you are: from the point of view of justice — there’s no reason for it, and from the point of view of utility — it’s harmful.
Friend (laughs): Excellent sophistry!
Master: All the more as I acknowledge as right neither the point of view of justice nor the point of view of utility. The point of view of beauty, of pleasure — that’s how I regard it.
Friend: But, my dear old chap, if——
Master: Come, don’t let’s quarrel.
Friend: Is modern culture really so non-existent? Have you really turned your back on it?
Master: Modern culture! — H’m. Modern culture! Gad, those damned words turn my hands into fists! I want to roar with rage, I — I want to throw the chairs about. Have you not noticed how this “modern culture,” how it’s destroying beauty ? Can you really look on calmly while it prefers the practicability of speech to its imagery, the colourless costume to the picturesque, while it destroy ceremonies, visits, low bows. In wondrous flowery glades it builds black, smoky masses, leads handsome peasants there and changes their marvellous song into a vicious catch! — Besides, contrasts are necessary for beauty! Why, it’s awful if——
Friend: But, my dear fellow——
Master: And you still want to say that you love beauty in all things. Have shame! The savage has more aesthetic understanding. It’s all over. There will be none rich beyond words, none poor beyond words. Venal love, interested crimes, extravagant Yankee millionaires, ravings about gain, picturesque ragamuffins, all that which is so interesting, and gives such beautiful variety to our life, all is falling into dust, all, all! — It’s interesting just to think what contemporary subjects there will be for the artist. Even war, even that beautiful calamity is swept away with the “no” of modern culture. Oh, this “modern culture”! You can’t imagine a better nursery of vulgarity. It is pitiless to all that is most beautiful. Why, the picturesque little corners of the globe, even they are spoiled with restaurants! Believe me, there will come an hour when Americanism, that ideal incarnation of vulgarity, will catch up in its paws the last poetical little spot of our much-enduring planet and then——
Friend: And then?
Master: The death of art — the decadence of decadence — the empire of the machine — the grandiose factory, and before it an American, in a humble pose and boots he cleans himself——
Friend: H’m — the death of art. Therefore all manifestations of culture should be annihilated, eh? We ought to look to the Vandals? Have I understood you properly?
Master: My dear old fellow, in the matter of knowledge of the truth, we people of the twentieth century are not so very far from the Vandals, but in the matter of destroying all that is most beautiful, all that most adorns life, we have surpassed the Vandals without doubt: beautiful religion, omnipotent knowledge, pleasurable ethics, we laugh at all these, make nothings of them and — and our soul, frightened and sad, is ready to throw us into acid, into the bed of corruption, under the wheels of a locomotive, if only it could stifle in itself the consciousness of this inexpressible horror. You understand how greatly a man must suffer for whom God has ceased to exist, but in whom the religious feeling remains, who has lost a reason for fighting, but in whom both the strength and the desire to fight have remained, who wants to possess the truth and knows he is desiring to grasp the moon, who wants to believe in the magical and the marvellous and under whose nose science has swept all magic.
Friend: But——
Master: I affirm that in man is placed the necessity for horrors in a greater measure than the necessity for deliverance from them. Oh, how I want, how I need ghosts and slippery nymphs and vampires with terrible red eyes. This has been found to be vanity and driven away, but at the same time life without it has become still vainer.
Friend: I don’t understand; are you joking or——
Master: Woe to him whose aesthetic taste is too refined! Woe to him who, as I, looks into the future with bated breath, who desires with all his soul, but does not see there the superman.
Friend: I don’t really understand what you’re looking for! You want the restoration of the long obsolete forms of life.
Master: My dear friend, although perhaps even very highly respected people spread the report of my madness, it’s not really true. I’m not striving for the alteration of social laws. You can’t alter the inevitable. But if I could only fight for the beauty of olden life, if I could only count upon the very smallest success, how happy I should be, with what unweariedness, with what ardour I should set to work! But you remember your evangelist said that the social movement flows naturally from the historical development of society, and, most unfortunately, this is irrefutable. I could shout myself hoarse, crying, “Stop! Whither bound? Go back!” I could shout myself hoarse and not be heard.
Friend: