GORKY, MAXIM

pseudonym of Ru ian author. Left an orphan at 9, he led a roaming life, engaging in almost every variety of occupation, and for a time wandered over Southern Ru ia as a tramp. The sordidne of his experiences prompted an attempt at suicide when he was 19. Later on, these experiences stood him in stead.as a realistic writer of stories portraying the lowest depths of human life and experience. His first story, Makar Chudra, appeared in 1892, and its striking quality gave notice that a new force had arisen in Ru ian literature. Many other stories followed, all of them enhancing his reputation. In 1906 he visited several Huropean countries where he received a marked welcome, but a later trip to the United States was marred by criticism from the fact that he was accompanied by a woman, not his wife. His principles were radical, and he frequently came into conflict with the Czar’s Government, being twice arrested and banished. At the outbreak of the war he joined the Ru ian Army and in 1917 took part in the movement that led to the deposition of the Czar. Although he has disagreed with the Bolshevist authorities on some points, he has been to a certain extent the spokesman of the Soviet. During the famine of 1922, his appeals for help to the foreign governments of the world were poignant and powerful. His work, while exceedingly brilliant in characterization, is imbued with the pe imism and sense of futility that mark Ru ian fiction in general. His publications include: Ywenty-six and One, 1902; Heartache, and the Old Woman Izerofel, 1905, The Individualists, 1906; The Spy, 1908; A Confe ion, 1910; My Childhood, 1915; In the World, 1917; Reminiscences of L. N. Tolstoy, 1920. Among his plays may be mentioned The Smug Citizen, and a Night’s Lodging, the latter portraying the most appalling depths of human degradation.