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Stories of the Steppe
Stories of the Steppe
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Introduction
MAXIM GORKY, the Bitter Voice of Russia, can tell fairy tales whose coloring has all the richness of oriental twilights and whose cadences are garlands woven of sea-spray and wind-blossoms. His stories of the steppe are not propagandistic, and with the exception of the powerful tale Because of Monotony, they are not sordid pictures of realistic misery, but they are sweet fairy lullabies that the gods must sing to the baby angels when they are sad and weary with their contemplation of human sorrows. These tales are filled with longing, and throughout that longing there is a thread of red fire that at times bursts forth into a flaming prophecy of hope. Perhaps Gorky, in writing those strange, wonderfully magical fairy tales, was unconsciously rehearsing that strangest and most wonderful fairy tale of them all,— the great Russian Revolution.
He who has no love for music had better leave these stories alone, as they will have no charm for him. He who prefers society to sunsets will find these stories dull and colorless,— as colorless as the clouds at the close of the day are to a blind man. But those who have the capacity for enjoying the silent music of the night, the barely audible purling of sea-waves in the distance, the soft pit-a-pat of the wind-dance on the prairie, will be charmed by these stories as they have rarely been charmed in their waking hours. For these stories of the steppe have all the magic of dreams; their atmosphere envelopes you and permeates your every pore, sinking deep into your heart through every one of your five senses, and through a sixth sense, too,— a sense whose very indefinable vagueness makes it the most vivid of them all. For it is that sense,— or shall I call it religious experience,— which enables you to realize eternity in the single tick of a clock and infinity in a drop of water. It is that sense which sometimes catches you unawares, as you pass on your prosaic road of jagged experiences between a dream and a dream, when suddenly turning your head, you see God nodding and smiling to you as he pauses for an instant in this labor of creating new worlds.
The Russians, we are told, are dreamers. Fortunate Russians I The greatest and finest and most enduring things in the world are the handiwork of dreamers. Men of action who are
unable to dream are the destroyers of the world; they are the Hindenburgs, the Hohenzollems, those brute forces that cannot leave their imprint on the sands of time unless the sand is soaked in human blood. It is the dreamers, men like Gorky and Tolstoi, who out of the elements of sea and land can build a fairy tale and out of the chaos of tyranny and suffering can create a nation of free men and women.
Maxim. Gorky is one of the supreme dreamer-revolutionists of the present day, and the stories of the steppe are among his most wonderful visions. The translators have been rather free in their rendering, for it has required the utmost care to reproduce the tang and the perfume of the Russian steppe on American soil. A dream of such fine coloring and melody can be totally shattered by the introduction of the slightest jarring note, and the translators hope that at least a fraction of the beauty of the original has been preserved in this version.
— H. T. S.
MAXIM GORKY, the Bitter Voice of Russia, can tell fairy tales whose coloring has all the richness of oriental twilights and whose cadences are garlands woven of sea-spray and wind-blossoms. His stories of the steppe are not propagandistic, and with the exception of the powerful tale Because of Monotony, they are not sordid pictures of realistic misery, but they are sweet fairy lullabies that the gods must sing to the baby angels when they are sad and weary with their contemplation of human sorrows. These tales are filled with longing, and throughout that longing there is a thread of red fire that at times bursts forth into a flaming prophecy of hope. Perhaps Gorky, in writing those strange, wonderfully magical fairy tales, was unconsciously rehearsing that strangest and most wonderful fairy tale of them all,— the great Russian Revolution.
He who has no love for music had better leave these stories alone, as they will have no charm for him. He who prefers society to sunsets will find these stories dull and colorless,— as colorless as the clouds at the close of the day are to a blind man. But those who have the capacity for enjoying the silent music of the night, the barely audible purling of sea-waves in the distance, the soft pit-a-pat of the wind-dance on the prairie, will be charmed by these stories as they have rarely been charmed in their waking hours. For these stories of the steppe have all the magic of dreams; their atmosphere envelopes you and permeates your every pore, sinking deep into your heart through every one of your five senses, and through a sixth sense, too,— a sense whose very indefinable vagueness makes it the most vivid of them all. For it is that sense,— or shall I call it religious experience,— which enables you to realize eternity in the single tick of a clock and infinity in a drop of water. It is that sense which sometimes catches you unawares, as you pass on your prosaic road of jagged experiences between a dream and a dream, when suddenly turning your head, you see God nodding and smiling to you as he pauses for an instant in this labor of creating new worlds.
The Russians, we are told, are dreamers. Fortunate Russians I The greatest and finest and most enduring things in the world are the handiwork of dreamers. Men of action who are
unable to dream are the destroyers of the world; they are the Hindenburgs, the Hohenzollems, those brute forces that cannot leave their imprint on the sands of time unless the sand is soaked in human blood. It is the dreamers, men like Gorky and Tolstoi, who out of the elements of sea and land can build a fairy tale and out of the chaos of tyranny and suffering can create a nation of free men and women.
Maxim. Gorky is one of the supreme dreamer-revolutionists of the present day, and the stories of the steppe are among his most wonderful visions. The translators have been rather free in their rendering, for it has required the utmost care to reproduce the tang and the perfume of the Russian steppe on American soil. A dream of such fine coloring and melody can be totally shattered by the introduction of the slightest jarring note, and the translators hope that at least a fraction of the beauty of the original has been preserved in this version.
— H. T. S.
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