“What disgust, what poverty of thought, impudence of ignorance and cynicism”
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125 years ago, on April 16, 1898, the two-volume Essays and Stories by Maxim Gorky was published – the first book edition made him a recognized writer and allowed him to scold his colleagues with full right. This occupation captivated the future spiritual leader of Soviet writers and the “founder of Soviet literature” – he was so consistent in few things as in criticizing incorrect Russian literature.
1
I do not like our modern literature also for its pessimism. Life is not as bad as they like to portray it in books, it is brighter. And a person in life is better than in a book, even a talented one. He is more difficult. In my opinion, writers offend people. Of course, I hate it too. What to do? Became a professional.
Letter to Ilya Repin, 1899
2
The devil would take it – literature, together with a writer and with its usual reader and admirer – because I “piss”, he – “reads” – well, so what? We, too, read everything—Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, Shchedrin and Uspensky, and much more, and—what’s the use? One pleasure.
Letter to Leonid Sredin, 1900
3
You see, I feel that sending students into soldiers is an abomination, a blatant crime against the freedom of the individual, an idiotic measure of scoundrels gorged on by the authorities. My heart is boiling, and I would be glad to spit in the impudent faces of misanthropes who will read your Northern Flowers and praise them, just as they praise me. This is outrageous and disgusting to the point of inexpressible anger at everything – at the “flowers”, “Scorpions” and even at Bunin, whom I love, but do not understand – how his talent, beautiful, like matte silver, he will not sharpen into a knife and will not poke them where necessary?
Letter to Valery Bryusov, 1901
4
They are disgusting, these sour-sweet, passive-friendly Russian intellectuals, disgusting to the point of disgust. You – either die defending what you love – if you love – or be silent and wilted, idiotic cactus, if you do not know how to love. To love means to fight and win.
Letter to David Aizman, 1907
5
Yesterday I received issues of Russkaya Mysl and Obrazovanie, read several articles, and could not sleep the whole night out of melancholy and out of spite. What’s happened? Is this Russian literature? What disgust, what poverty of thought, impudence of ignorance and cynicism! People who go to the holy battlefield to vomit on it – such people should be beaten.
Letter to Konstantin Pyatnitsky, 1908
6
Kuprin wrote the story “Seasickness” – for me this work is a dirty trick, I can only explain it by the fact that the author was drunk when he “created” this rubbish, but I can’t justify it.
Letter to Konstantin Pyatnitsky, 1908
7
My attitude to pessimism and to all other expressions of the mental disintegration of the personality in Russian literature is becoming more and more hostile. It seems to me that in a country as young as Rus’, among a people who are just beginning to live, pessimism is a harmful phenomenon, for me it is a product of the destruction of an individual who is deprived of the feeling of his organic connection with the world and therefore dies. Drama. <...> But I’m tired of her. Tired of subjectivism, alien to a person who groans, cries, denies everything, emphasizes the terrible, cruel.
Letter to David Aizman, 1908
8
Every day brings some kind of surprise – “Shulamith” by Kuprin, poems by “modernists” – every day someone stands before you naked and covered in rotten ulcers.
Letter to Konstantin Pyatnitsky, 1908
9
For 50 years now, as Russian literature with Russian life – Sherochka with Masherochka – has been steadily dancing their sad waltz in two steps: one – the romantic, two – the realistic, and – you know, it’s very boring and very harmful. “Our life is very sad,” the Russian citizen whines. “Oh, how sad our life is!” literature echoes him. “So I’m right!” – triumphantly announces the inhabitant, lowering his hands. Life begins to create legends: “Ah, let’s create a legend!” – Literature howls and encourages the layman to create small-criminal deeds. All this is very boring.
Letter to Lyudmila Nikiforova, 1909
10
Showing the world your scratches, scratching them in public and pouring pus over them, splashing people with your bile in the eyes, as many do, and our evil genius Fyodor Dostoevsky did the most disgusting thing of all – this is a vile occupation and harmful, of course.
Letter to Leonid Andreev, 1912
eleven
The writers of our time have become especially disgusted lately because they go around without pants and backwards in front of people, mournfully showing the world their painful place, and this place hurts because they don’t know where to sit quietly.
Letter to Leonid Andreev, 1912
12
But that you like the poems of Klychkov, Klyuev and others like them—very gifted people, but few serious ones and not yet poets—this is bad, forgive me! <...> All this is rubbish, fashionable rags, exaggerated popular prints, and even tongue-blazing.
Letter to Dmitry Semenovsky, 1913
13
To praise anything in Russia is an unforgivable crime. I watch with amazement, almost with horror, how disgustingly people are decomposing, “cultured” only yesterday. B. Zaitsev mediocrely writes the lives of the saints. Shmelev is something unbearably hysterical. Kuprin does not write – he drinks. Bunin rewrites the “Kreutzer Sonata” under the title “Mitina’s Love”. Aldanov – also writes off L. Tolstoy. I am not talking about Merezhkovsky and Gippius. You cannot imagine how hard it is to see all this. OK. All will pass.
Letter to Konstantin Fedin, 1925
14
I read Pilnyak’s scandalous story “The Tale of the Unextinguished Moon” – what is the title? This gentleman disgusts me, although, at the beginning of his writing, I highly praised him. But now he writes as if he were a small detective: he wants to convey, but to whom? – does not decide. And it brings right and left at the same time. Very bad. And – what an ugly language all this is heard!
Letter to Alexei Chapygin, 1926
15
I had Leonov, who reminded me very much of Leonid Andreev in 1903-1904, the years of his greatest success. Knows – little, about himself – the artist – cares badly.
Letter to Sergei Sergeev-Tsensky, 1927
16
I did not expect that you would like Mariengof’s “Roman”, I reacted negatively to it. The author is an obvious nihilist; the figure of Yesenin is depicted by him maliciously, the drama is not understood. And this is a deeply instructive drama, and it is worth no less than Yesenin’s poems. Never before has a village, colliding with a city, smashed its forehead so spectacularly and so painfully. This drama will repeat itself over and over again.
Letter to Dolmat Lutokhin, 1927
17
The book of poems will be titled “Surdina Blizzard” – this speaks of a person’s deafness to the spirit of the language. Our language develops unhealthy, at random.
Letter to Ilya Gruzdev, 1929
18
Zamyatin is too smart for an artist and in vain allows his mind to lure his talent towards satire. “We” is a desperately bad, completely unfertilized thing. Her anger is cold and dry, it is the wrath of an old maid.
Letter to Ilya Gruzdev, 1929
19
Our “folk” songs were composed by ministers like I. I. Dmitriev, princes – Vyazemsky, Countess Rostopchina, composed by Tsyganov, Vonlyarlyarsky, Vostokov, Veltman, Zhadovskaya and a number of others. They, I think, also distorted the original texts of folk songs. <...> As an example of text distortion, I will indicate “Hey, let’s go.” Chaliapin – and everyone – sing this barge song, introducing into it “neither to the village, nor to the city” the words from the ritual girl’s song, which was sung in seven – “Let’s develop a birch, develop a curly hair.” Judge for yourself: why the devil do barge haulers “develop birch trees”?
Letter to Ilya Gruzdev, 1929
20
The verb “shrink” is clearly artificial and ridiculous, it sounds as if it combines three words: boredom, skin, revived. Of course, it would not be worth arguing about the inclusion of one ugly word in the literary language. But the fact is that Comrade Panferov, despite his indisputable talent, has generally unfavorable relations with the literary language.
“About one discussion”, 1934
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