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Chelkash and Other Stories
Facsimile reprint. Originally published: New York: Knopf, 1929
Contents:
Preface
Chelkash
Comrades
One autumn night
In the steppe
Twenty-six of us and one other
The green kitten
A rolling stone
Her lover
Chums
Contents:
Preface
Chelkash
Comrades
One autumn night
In the steppe
Twenty-six of us and one other
The green kitten
A rolling stone
Her lover
Chums
260 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1894
About the author
Maxim Gorky
1,793 books1,803 followersRussian writer Aleksei Maksimovich Peshkov (Russian: Алексей Максимович Пешков) supported the Bolshevik revolution of 1917 and helped to develop socialist realism as the officially accepted literary aesthetic; his works include
The Life of Klim Samgin
(1927-1936), an unfinished cycle of novels.
This Soviet author founded the socialist realism literary method and a political activist. People also nominated him five times for the Nobel Prize in literature. From 1906 to 1913 and from 1921 to 1929, he lived abroad, mostly in Capri, Italy; after his return to the Soviet Union, he accepted the cultural policies of the time.
This Soviet author founded the socialist realism literary method and a political activist. People also nominated him five times for the Nobel Prize in literature. From 1906 to 1913 and from 1921 to 1929, he lived abroad, mostly in Capri, Italy; after his return to the Soviet Union, he accepted the cultural policies of the time.
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Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews
May 23, 2020
آثار کورگی تصویری است مرکب از افرادی که از کرامت ذاتی خود آگاهند و سرشارند از انرژی و میل به تغییر، و همچنین کسانی که در برابر شرایط تحقیرآمیز به زانو درآمدهاند. او میکوشد در لابلای شرایط دشوار، وحشیانه و تحقیرآمیز زندگی، درخشش جرقههای انسانیت در این مردمان را تصویر کند. گورکی ایمان راسخ داشت که نقش فرهنگ در بیداری روحی و اخلاقی انسان و آگاهی او از ارزش و جایگاه خودش ، برای موفقیت انقلاب ، مهمتر از سازوکارهای سیاسی و اقصادی است.
گورکی راه ورود بی خانمان ها، کولی ها و پابرهنگان را به داستان و رمان گشود. پابرهنگانِ گورکی، قهرمانانی بالقوّه اند در سیمای آوارگان و خانه به دوشان. آزادگی، آزادی خواهی، اندیشه های ناب، داشتن روح سرکش و ناآرام و همچنین نگنجیدن در قالب های تعریف شده ی زندگی را می توان از ویژگی های پابرهنگان گورکی دانست.او پابرهنه هایش را به غرور مجهّز کرد.آنها با همه ی ضعف ها و نواقصشان بدون شک از پتانسیل ذهنی بسیار بالایی برخوردارند. این پرسوناژها فصیح و حاضرجواب هستند و نسبت به بسیاری از اربابان ،به مراتب خردمندتر و جالب توجه ترند. ولگردان گورکی، گاهی حتّی لقمه نانی ندارند که با آن شکمشان را سیر کنند، امّا به نظر می رسد در حقیقت این را می توانند بفهمند که انسان تنها برای لقمه ای نان زندگی نمی کند.
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.
********
یک چیز کسر دارم و میدانم آن چیز در دنیا وجود دارد!می فهمی؟زندگی میکنم و دنبال آن میگردم برای به دست آوردنش غصه میخورم، اما آن چیز چیست، نمیدانم....
********
انسان در زندگانی پناهگاه و یاوری ندارد و کسی در فکر او نیست.گناه مجازات سخت دارد ولی گناه نکردن در زندگانی میسر نیست...
********
محبوب شجاعم، بار دیگر خداحافظ!حالا تو دوباره مانند عقاب آزادی.اما آزادی به چه درد تو میخورد؟آیا تاکنون از خود این سوال را کرده ای؟!
********
انسان همه چیز را با مقیاس کوشش های خود اندازه میگیرد و اگر سنگی ساده را از قله ی کوه آرارات بیاورد، آن سنگ در نظرش گرانبها خواهد بود....
********
مردمانی هستند که با یک نگاه، آدمی را تسخیر میکنند وتو از اینکه تسلیم آنان میشوی، نه تنها احساس شرم و خجالت نمیکنی، بلکه به این اَعمال میبالی...
گورکی راه ورود بی خانمان ها، کولی ها و پابرهنگان را به داستان و رمان گشود. پابرهنگانِ گورکی، قهرمانانی بالقوّه اند در سیمای آوارگان و خانه به دوشان. آزادگی، آزادی خواهی، اندیشه های ناب، داشتن روح سرکش و ناآرام و همچنین نگنجیدن در قالب های تعریف شده ی زندگی را می توان از ویژگی های پابرهنگان گورکی دانست.او پابرهنه هایش را به غرور مجهّز کرد.آنها با همه ی ضعف ها و نواقصشان بدون شک از پتانسیل ذهنی بسیار بالایی برخوردارند. این پرسوناژها فصیح و حاضرجواب هستند و نسبت به بسیاری از اربابان ،به مراتب خردمندتر و جالب توجه ترند. ولگردان گورکی، گاهی حتّی لقمه نانی ندارند که با آن شکمشان را سیر کنند، امّا به نظر می رسد در حقیقت این را می توانند بفهمند که انسان تنها برای لقمه ای نان زندگی نمی کند.
.
.
********
یک چیز کسر دارم و میدانم آن چیز در دنیا وجود دارد!می فهمی؟زندگی میکنم و دنبال آن میگردم برای به دست آوردنش غصه میخورم، اما آن چیز چیست، نمیدانم....
********
انسان در زندگانی پناهگاه و یاوری ندارد و کسی در فکر او نیست.گناه مجازات سخت دارد ولی گناه نکردن در زندگانی میسر نیست...
********
محبوب شجاعم، بار دیگر خداحافظ!حالا تو دوباره مانند عقاب آزادی.اما آزادی به چه درد تو میخورد؟آیا تاکنون از خود این سوال را کرده ای؟!
********
انسان همه چیز را با مقیاس کوشش های خود اندازه میگیرد و اگر سنگی ساده را از قله ی کوه آرارات بیاورد، آن سنگ در نظرش گرانبها خواهد بود....
********
مردمانی هستند که با یک نگاه، آدمی را تسخیر میکنند وتو از اینکه تسلیم آنان میشوی، نه تنها احساس شرم و خجالت نمیکنی، بلکه به این اَعمال میبالی...
January 3, 2021
Three stories.
Makar Chudra ---- 1892, his first short story
Chelkash ----- 1895. [about an experienced thief and a young man he meets, they row together]
Twenty-six Men and a Girl ----- 1899. [often regarded as his best short story]
I want to know where he got all his experience on the sea, e.g. where Chelkash is set. The sea is powerfully described in this story.
These stories describe such depressingly violent and cruel behavior that I sometimes had difficulty continuing to read them. But even in translation, the writing is powerful, and descriptions of landscape lyrical. I was struck by two mentions of music:
In 26 Men, where dozens of men toil in a dark basement making pretzels [bagels?] every waking hour more or less as slaves,
"During the work somebody would suddenly heave a deep sigh, like a weary horse, and begin softly to sing one of those long-drawn-out songs whose mournfully tender melody always lightens the heavy burden of the singer's heart. One of the men would sing while we listened in silence to the lonely song, and it would die away beneath the oppressive basement ceiling like the languishing flames of a campfire in the steppe on a wet autumn night, when the grey sky hangs over the earth like a roof of lead. Then another singer would join the first...And then several voices at once would take up the song---it would be lashed up like a wave, grow stronger and louder, and seem to break open the damp, heavy walls of our stony prison.
All 26 are singing, loud voices brought to harmony by long practice; the song breaks against the stone walls, moaning and weeping, and stirs the heart with a prickly pain, reopening old wounds and wakening anguish in the soul..." [and it goes another for another paragraph]
"His first short story, "Makar Chudra", was published in 1892 by the newspaper Kavkaz (The Caucasus) in Tiflis [=Tbilisi, Georgia], where he spent several weeks doing menial jobs, mostly for the Caucasian Railway workshops. The pen name Gorky reflected his simmering anger about life in Russia and a determination to speak the bitter truth. .... Gorky wrote incessantly, viewing literature less as an aesthetic practice than as a moral and political act that could change the world. He described the lives of people in the lowest strata and on the margins of society, revealing their hardships, humiliations, and brutalisation, but also their inward spark of humanity."
"Alexei Maximovich Peshkov (1868 – 1936), pen name Maxim Gorky, was a Russian and Soviet writer, a founder of the socialist realism literary method, and a political activist."
"Gorky was active in the emerging Marxist communist movement. He publicly opposed the Tsarist regime, and for a time closely associated himself with Vladimir Lenin and Alexander Bogdanov's Bolshevik wing of the party. For a significant part of his life, he was exiled from Russia and later the Soviet Union. In 1932, he returned to the USSR on Joseph Stalin's personal invitation and lived there until his death in June 1936."
"Born in Nizhny Novgorod, Gorky became an orphan at the age of eleven. He was brought up by his grandmother and ran away from home at the age of twelve in 1880. After an attempt at suicide in December 1887, he travelled on foot across the Russian Empire for five years, changing jobs and accumulating impressions used later in his writing."
"In 1916, Gorky said that the teachings of the ancient Jewish sage Hillel the Elder deeply influenced his life: "In my early youth I read...the words of...Hillel: 'If thou art not for thyself, who will be for thee? But if thou art for thyself alone, wherefore art thou'? The inner meaning of these words impressed me with its profound wisdom...The thought ate its way deep into my soul, and I say now with conviction: Hillel's wisdom served as a strong staff on my road, which was neither even nor easy. I believe that Jewish wisdom is more all-human and universal than any other; and this not only because of its immemorial age...but because of the powerful humaneness that saturates it, because of its high estimate of man."
The old Gypsy man on the steppe, Makar Chudra, tells about a Gypsy who played violin:
"You felt like crying and laughing at the same time when listening to him. Now you'd hear someone moaning bitterly, pleading for help and lacerating your heart with a knife; now the steppe telling the heavens a fairy tale, a sad tale; now a maid weeping, bidding farewell to her beloved!...Every fibre in your body understood that song, and you became its slave, body and soul."
Makar Chudra ---- 1892, his first short story
Chelkash ----- 1895. [about an experienced thief and a young man he meets, they row together]
Twenty-six Men and a Girl ----- 1899. [often regarded as his best short story]
I want to know where he got all his experience on the sea, e.g. where Chelkash is set. The sea is powerfully described in this story.
These stories describe such depressingly violent and cruel behavior that I sometimes had difficulty continuing to read them. But even in translation, the writing is powerful, and descriptions of landscape lyrical. I was struck by two mentions of music:
In 26 Men, where dozens of men toil in a dark basement making pretzels [bagels?] every waking hour more or less as slaves,
"During the work somebody would suddenly heave a deep sigh, like a weary horse, and begin softly to sing one of those long-drawn-out songs whose mournfully tender melody always lightens the heavy burden of the singer's heart. One of the men would sing while we listened in silence to the lonely song, and it would die away beneath the oppressive basement ceiling like the languishing flames of a campfire in the steppe on a wet autumn night, when the grey sky hangs over the earth like a roof of lead. Then another singer would join the first...And then several voices at once would take up the song---it would be lashed up like a wave, grow stronger and louder, and seem to break open the damp, heavy walls of our stony prison.
All 26 are singing, loud voices brought to harmony by long practice; the song breaks against the stone walls, moaning and weeping, and stirs the heart with a prickly pain, reopening old wounds and wakening anguish in the soul..." [and it goes another for another paragraph]
"His first short story, "Makar Chudra", was published in 1892 by the newspaper Kavkaz (The Caucasus) in Tiflis [=Tbilisi, Georgia], where he spent several weeks doing menial jobs, mostly for the Caucasian Railway workshops. The pen name Gorky reflected his simmering anger about life in Russia and a determination to speak the bitter truth. .... Gorky wrote incessantly, viewing literature less as an aesthetic practice than as a moral and political act that could change the world. He described the lives of people in the lowest strata and on the margins of society, revealing their hardships, humiliations, and brutalisation, but also their inward spark of humanity."
"Alexei Maximovich Peshkov (1868 – 1936), pen name Maxim Gorky, was a Russian and Soviet writer, a founder of the socialist realism literary method, and a political activist."
"Gorky was active in the emerging Marxist communist movement. He publicly opposed the Tsarist regime, and for a time closely associated himself with Vladimir Lenin and Alexander Bogdanov's Bolshevik wing of the party. For a significant part of his life, he was exiled from Russia and later the Soviet Union. In 1932, he returned to the USSR on Joseph Stalin's personal invitation and lived there until his death in June 1936."
"Born in Nizhny Novgorod, Gorky became an orphan at the age of eleven. He was brought up by his grandmother and ran away from home at the age of twelve in 1880. After an attempt at suicide in December 1887, he travelled on foot across the Russian Empire for five years, changing jobs and accumulating impressions used later in his writing."
"In 1916, Gorky said that the teachings of the ancient Jewish sage Hillel the Elder deeply influenced his life: "In my early youth I read...the words of...Hillel: 'If thou art not for thyself, who will be for thee? But if thou art for thyself alone, wherefore art thou'? The inner meaning of these words impressed me with its profound wisdom...The thought ate its way deep into my soul, and I say now with conviction: Hillel's wisdom served as a strong staff on my road, which was neither even nor easy. I believe that Jewish wisdom is more all-human and universal than any other; and this not only because of its immemorial age...but because of the powerful humaneness that saturates it, because of its high estimate of man."
The old Gypsy man on the steppe, Makar Chudra, tells about a Gypsy who played violin:
"You felt like crying and laughing at the same time when listening to him. Now you'd hear someone moaning bitterly, pleading for help and lacerating your heart with a knife; now the steppe telling the heavens a fairy tale, a sad tale; now a maid weeping, bidding farewell to her beloved!...Every fibre in your body understood that song, and you became its slave, body and soul."
September 1, 2020
Thieves, gypsies, and slaves are the subjects of these three short stories from Pre-Revolutionary Russia.
Reputation - 5/5
Maxim Gorky was officially canonized as a Great Soviet Artist when he was invited back to the USSR from exile by Stalin himself in the early 1930s. Now Gorky's portrait, with his walrus moustache and permanently furrowed brow, is ubiquitous in Russia; his name lends itself to countless libraries, parks, and metro stations. In Russia's pantheon of her great literary figures, Gorky is always present.
But outside of Russia, Gorky is largely ignored. There, his reputation is based mostly on his autobiographical works; Westerners seem interested in him merely for his character sketches of other famous men (Tolstoy, Chekhov, Lenin, etc.) and the window he provides into Pre-Revolutionary Russia.
Point - 4/5
Without Maxim Gorky, it would be hard to imagine the wretchedness of Russia before the Revolution. His realism is positively meaner and more disgusting than Dickens or Marx. Readers who find Dostoevsky to be "gritty," are likely to be scandalized by Gorky. He himself spent his early years traveling around the Russian Empire, consorting with the types of characters portrayed in these stories. He understood acutely how people lived in the lower depths of society. His descriptions of their lives are often repulsive and humiliating, but they are never bleak.
Gorky had that one superb quality of so many Russian writers - empathy. He gives a fair treatment to all his characters, no matter how vile they first appear.
Chelkash is a story about a dirty, drunken thief. He loafs around the docks at night, stealing cargo from docked ships so he can get the money for his next binge. For these jobs he needs an accomplice, and on the night of this adventure he lures a principled, boyish peasant into helping him. In the hands of a lesser writer we could end up with an ambiguous story about youth corrupted by older cynicism - idealism lost to a rough world - all that average garbage.
Gorky gives us something better. He widens his lens and reserves judgement. Both Chelkash and the boy are at once base and noble, and they both affect each other. Their confrontation at the end is powerful because Gorky has given us a sympathy for both of them. What you get is a first-rate Russian short story. 5/5
Makar Chudra is a tale of gypsy pride. It fits into that long tradition of literate Russians living among gypsies and other savages. A lot of good literature has come out of it, from Pushkin and Lermontov to Tolstoy. 4/5
Twenty-six Men and a Girl is not as naughty as it sounds, but it does take place in the gutter. 4/5
Recommendation - 4/5
If realism is your kind of thing, I highly recommend Gorky - particularly if you like the tradition of Knut Hamsun on to Charles Bukowski and the like. Gorky lived in a much nastier time and place than any of them, and yet emerges with more humanity.
If you're into Russian literature, you must read him. If you resent him for his politics, you can at least respect him for his view that the point of writing is to change society. It's this idea that makes him the founder of Socialist Realism, and, regardless of your opinion of that movement and what came after him, Gorky is a worthy writer.
Enjoyment - 5/5
I very much like Gorky for his art and for his life. He was an artist who did not shrug the responsibility his society placed on him. In some ways, he even invented that responsibility. At a time when many of Russia's more squeamish intellectuals (Tsvetaeva, Bunin, Nabokov, etc.) escaped abroad and spent their lives complaining about the new society of the Soviets from a safe distance, Gorky found a way to live with the fate of his nation. His relationship with the Bolsheviks was complicated, but he behaved nobly throughout it all. He never whined about his lot, he never wrote outright propaganda. He toed the line between a man of thought and action, and in the end, he was rewarded for it by a society that at various times persecuted and hailed him as a hero.
Reputation - 5/5
Maxim Gorky was officially canonized as a Great Soviet Artist when he was invited back to the USSR from exile by Stalin himself in the early 1930s. Now Gorky's portrait, with his walrus moustache and permanently furrowed brow, is ubiquitous in Russia; his name lends itself to countless libraries, parks, and metro stations. In Russia's pantheon of her great literary figures, Gorky is always present.
But outside of Russia, Gorky is largely ignored. There, his reputation is based mostly on his autobiographical works; Westerners seem interested in him merely for his character sketches of other famous men (Tolstoy, Chekhov, Lenin, etc.) and the window he provides into Pre-Revolutionary Russia.
Point - 4/5
Without Maxim Gorky, it would be hard to imagine the wretchedness of Russia before the Revolution. His realism is positively meaner and more disgusting than Dickens or Marx. Readers who find Dostoevsky to be "gritty," are likely to be scandalized by Gorky. He himself spent his early years traveling around the Russian Empire, consorting with the types of characters portrayed in these stories. He understood acutely how people lived in the lower depths of society. His descriptions of their lives are often repulsive and humiliating, but they are never bleak.
Gorky had that one superb quality of so many Russian writers - empathy. He gives a fair treatment to all his characters, no matter how vile they first appear.
Chelkash is a story about a dirty, drunken thief. He loafs around the docks at night, stealing cargo from docked ships so he can get the money for his next binge. For these jobs he needs an accomplice, and on the night of this adventure he lures a principled, boyish peasant into helping him. In the hands of a lesser writer we could end up with an ambiguous story about youth corrupted by older cynicism - idealism lost to a rough world - all that average garbage.
Gorky gives us something better. He widens his lens and reserves judgement. Both Chelkash and the boy are at once base and noble, and they both affect each other. Their confrontation at the end is powerful because Gorky has given us a sympathy for both of them. What you get is a first-rate Russian short story. 5/5
Makar Chudra is a tale of gypsy pride. It fits into that long tradition of literate Russians living among gypsies and other savages. A lot of good literature has come out of it, from Pushkin and Lermontov to Tolstoy. 4/5
Twenty-six Men and a Girl is not as naughty as it sounds, but it does take place in the gutter. 4/5
Recommendation - 4/5
If realism is your kind of thing, I highly recommend Gorky - particularly if you like the tradition of Knut Hamsun on to Charles Bukowski and the like. Gorky lived in a much nastier time and place than any of them, and yet emerges with more humanity.
If you're into Russian literature, you must read him. If you resent him for his politics, you can at least respect him for his view that the point of writing is to change society. It's this idea that makes him the founder of Socialist Realism, and, regardless of your opinion of that movement and what came after him, Gorky is a worthy writer.
Enjoyment - 5/5
I very much like Gorky for his art and for his life. He was an artist who did not shrug the responsibility his society placed on him. In some ways, he even invented that responsibility. At a time when many of Russia's more squeamish intellectuals (Tsvetaeva, Bunin, Nabokov, etc.) escaped abroad and spent their lives complaining about the new society of the Soviets from a safe distance, Gorky found a way to live with the fate of his nation. His relationship with the Bolsheviks was complicated, but he behaved nobly throughout it all. He never whined about his lot, he never wrote outright propaganda. He toed the line between a man of thought and action, and in the end, he was rewarded for it by a society that at various times persecuted and hailed him as a hero.
Read
September 14, 2024Good, chelkash the best story out of the 3
June 3, 2011
This follows the story of a young man(Gavrila) who is looking for work down the shipyard/docks. He's looking to earn enough money to travel back to his hometown. He comes across the town drunkard, Chelkash, and Chelkash offers him a job. Not asking any questions, the man agrees and they set out in boat and head out to sea. The young man realizes too late that he is part of a huge heist. Chelkash promises him plenty of money when they arrive back home, and, reluctantly, Gavrila takes the deal. The robbery goes off well and they end up back at the docks. Gavrila is given his share, and Chelkash tells him of his plans on how he is going to spend his money; wasting it all on alchohol. Gavrila suddenly becomes overwhelmed with greed, and he throws a rock at Chelkash. Gavrila immediately feels badly about his actions and pleads forgiveness from Chelkash. Disgusted at Gavrila, Chelkash throws the rest of the money at him.
Gavrila seems to go into it with the thought process of "If only I could have enough money to do this, then I would be happy". In this case, all he wanted was to return home and live as a free man. Somewhere during the last talk he was having with Chelkash, that all changed in an instant.
Gavrila seems to go into it with the thought process of "If only I could have enough money to do this, then I would be happy". In this case, all he wanted was to return home and live as a free man. Somewhere during the last talk he was having with Chelkash, that all changed in an instant.
August 16, 2007
This slim book contains three tales- the title tale, Makar Chudra, and Twenty-Six Men And A Girl. Gorky's style is quite different from the pre-Chekhovians, such as Nikolai Gogol, Leo Tostoy and Fyodor Dostoevsky. A series of adventures that bonds the two title characters- a vagrant, and his young `understudy' Gavrila, before fate rend them from each other. The basic thought is how far should a person go simply for money. These tales, at least, display Gorky was a talented writer, and a worthy successor to Chekhov and his predecessors in the Russian short story
June 15, 2012
Greed is bad, Being free is good, and don't judge other people. The summation of the three short stories and the seeds of the Russian Proliterian...ahhh Russians...
June 17, 2020
Three stories here by the pilgrim writer.
The title story "Chelkash" - after an indifferent start in Odessa port, and a whole lot of stilted prose (I don't know who's at fault for the mechanical tone or the feeling of psychological falsity that often pervades older stories - if it's only partly the translator, then some of it must also be due to the writer and the prevailing style of the times?) - well, anyway, after Chelkash and his shagred Gavrila finally take to the sea for a nighttime mission of crime, the story springs to life over the division of the spoils, coming to its dramatic peak on a bleak morning on a sandy stretch of the Black Sea coast. Those final few pages of action and insight are well worth the earlier flaws.
The other two are decent but nothing really special - "Makar Chudra" is a tragic steppe romance featuring the dashing Loiko Zobar and the fiery scornful Radda. The final story "26 Men and a Girl" is a proletarian tale, the first couple of pages of which have some of the strongest writing I've yet read by Gorky, two solid stolid pages of blocky brick-like prose, describing hard labour in a stifling underground bakery: an absolutely perfect marriage of form and content.
The title story "Chelkash" - after an indifferent start in Odessa port, and a whole lot of stilted prose (I don't know who's at fault for the mechanical tone or the feeling of psychological falsity that often pervades older stories - if it's only partly the translator, then some of it must also be due to the writer and the prevailing style of the times?) - well, anyway, after Chelkash and his shagred Gavrila finally take to the sea for a nighttime mission of crime, the story springs to life over the division of the spoils, coming to its dramatic peak on a bleak morning on a sandy stretch of the Black Sea coast. Those final few pages of action and insight are well worth the earlier flaws.
The other two are decent but nothing really special - "Makar Chudra" is a tragic steppe romance featuring the dashing Loiko Zobar and the fiery scornful Radda. The final story "26 Men and a Girl" is a proletarian tale, the first couple of pages of which have some of the strongest writing I've yet read by Gorky, two solid stolid pages of blocky brick-like prose, describing hard labour in a stifling underground bakery: an absolutely perfect marriage of form and content.
April 3, 2019
Human thoroughly the whole way through. Gorky’s three stories here collected make enough noise to convince the reader of their veracity. One feels the blue sky floating ahead as the narrative fills Russian countryside. The taste of avarice is a metallic flavor blossoming the tongue as Cheklash closes its final pages. And the plight of poverty and labor can be felt in the bones, just as prisoners and serfs that populate these stories deeply know them.
May 18, 2019
Early but masterful stories
July 22, 2021
"boredom is not a burden anyone should bear", not even a bakery owner in Russia!
November 10, 2024
The collection is extremely short, 3 stories each only about 25 pages, so that was sort of disappointing. Especially as the short stories are really interesting, an undercurrent of desperation and sadness perfuse them all, with emotional outbursts (often self-destructive) punctuating the stories and highlighting the tragedies. Extremely well written and engaging, Chelkash was my favorite (the tension between the thief Chelkash and the boy was amazing), with the other two tales about the gypsy lovers and the bakers being equally enjoyable with piercing insight into humanity but being slightly more predictable.
September 4, 2017
This collection microcosmically elucidates the plight of Russia's underclass during the final years of the 19th century. It's with this socio-historical backdrop that Maxim Gorky sets out to explore timeless universal themes: love, trust, irony, mortality, etc. While devoid of verboseness, Gorky succeeds at being impactive in his description of characters and their environments. I don't speak/read Russian, but I can't imagine these stories possessing any more literary vigor than is contained in their English translations. Read on, comrades!
December 19, 2014
I can easily give 5 stars for all the stories in this collection. Chekhov, Gorky and Poe were the best short story writers walked in this earth and among them , Maxim Gorky has a uniqueness, coz most of this stories are based on actual life events of people who suffered gravely. He could make readers feel a great sympathy for his characters.
Want to Read
April 21, 2013Good.
June 3, 2015
Simple stories that become treasures through the telling.
May 3, 2019
My first time reading Gorky, won't be the last.
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