Are you looking for read ebook online? Search for your book and save it on your Kindle device, PC, phones or tablets. Download The Man who was Afraid PDF full book. Access full book title The Man who was Afraid by Maksim Gorky. Download full books in PDF and EPUB format.
Author: Maxim Gorky Publisher: The Floating Press ISBN: 1776598938 Category : Fiction Languages : en Pages : 480
Book Description
Russian writer Maxim Gorky rocketed into the upper pantheon of his country's literary culture with Foma Hordyeff, one of his first full-length novels. The young protagonist Foma Gordyeff has been born into privilege, but he's not sure whether he wants to pursue the lifestyle of his father, a successful merchant.
Author: Maxim Gorky Publisher: ISBN: 9781540674364 Category : Languages : en Pages : 206
Book Description
ABOUT sixty years ago, when fortunes of millions had been made on the Volga with fairy-tale rapidity, Ignat Gordyeeff, a young fellow, was working as water-pumper on one of the barges of the wealthy merchant Zayev.Built like a giant, handsome and not at all stupid, he was one of those people whom luck always follows everywhere-not because they are gifted and industrious, but rather because, having an enormous stock of energy at their command, they cannot stop to think over the choice of means when on their way toward their aims, and, excepting their own will, they know no law. Sometimes they speak of their conscience with fear, sometimes they really torture themselves struggling with it, but conscience is an unconquerable power to the faint-hearted only; the strong master it quickly and make it a slave to their desires, for they unconsciously feel that, given room and freedom, conscience would fracture life. They sacrifice days to it; and if it should happen that conscience conquered their souls, they are never wrecked, even in defeat-they are just as healthy and strong under its sway as when they lived without conscience.At the age of forty Ignat Gordyeeff was himself the owner of three steamers and ten barges. On the Volga he was respected as a rich and clever man, but was nicknamed "Frantic," because his life did not flow along a straight channel, like that of other people of his kind, but now and again, boiling up turbulently, ran out of its rut, away from gain-the prime aim of his existence. It looked as though there were three Gordyeeffs in him, or as though there were three souls in Ignat's body. One of them, the mightiest, was only greedy, and when Ignat lived according to its commands, he was merely a man seized with untamable passion for work. This passion burned in him by day and by night, he was completely absorbed by it, and, grabbing everywhere hundreds and thousands of roubles, it seemed as if he could never have enough of the jingle and sound of money. He worked about up and down the Volga, building and fastening nets in which he caught gold: he bought up grain in the villages, floated it to Rybinsk on his barges; he plundered, cheated, sometimes not noticing it, sometimes noticing, and, triumphant, be openly laughed at by his victims; and in the senselessness of his thirst for money, he rose to the heights of poetry. But, giving up so much strength to this hunt after the rouble, he was not greedy in the narrow sense, and sometimes he even betrayed an inconceivable but sincere indifference to his property. Once, when the ice was drifting down the Volga, he stood on the shore, and, seeing that the ice was breaking his new barge, having crushed it against the bluff shore, he ejaculated:"That's it. Again. Crush it! Now, once more! Try!""Well, Ignat," asked his friend Mayakin, coming up to him, "the ice is crushing about ten thousand out of your purse, eh?""That's nothing! I'll make another hundred. But look how the Volga is working! Eh? Fine? She can split the whole world, like curd, with a knife. Look, look! There you have my 'Boyarinya!' She floated but once. Well, we'll have mass said for the dead."The barge was crushed into splinters. Ignat and the godfather, sitting in the tavern on the shore, drank vodka and looked out of the window, watching the fragments of the "Boyarinya" drifting down the river together with the ice."Are you sorry for the vessel, Ignat?" asked Mayakin."Why should I be sorry for it? The Volga gave it to me, and the Volga has taken it back. It did not tear off my hand.""Nevertheless.""What-nevertheless? It is good at least that I saw how it was all done. It's a lesson for the future. But when my 'Volgar' was burned-I was really sorry-I didn't see it. How beautiful it must have looked when such a woodpile was blazing on the water in the dark night! Eh? It was an enormous steamer.""Weren't you sorry for that either?"
Author: Maxim Gorky Publisher: ISBN: Category : Languages : en Pages : 470
Book Description
Gorky was a complicated man. He was a friend of the people. He supported the revolutionary movement in Russia, until it started to devour its own children. He lived in exile, until he was lured back to Russia by Stalin and money. He was used as a propagandist for the State until he was placed under house arrest and died in mysterious circumstances.
Author: Maxim Gorky Publisher: CreateSpace ISBN: 9781516867769 Category : Languages : en Pages : 386
Book Description
INTRODUCTORY NOTE. OUT of the darkest depths of life, where vice and crime and misery abound, comes the Byron of the twentieth century, the poet of the vagabond and the proletariat, Maxim Gorky. Not like the beggar, humbly imploring for a crust in the name of the Lord, nor like the jeweller displaying his precious stones to dazzle and tempt the eye, he comes to the world, -nay, in accents of Tyrtaeus this commoner of Nizhni Novgorod spurs on his troops of freedom-loving heroes to conquer, as it were, the placid, self-satisfied literatures of to-day, and bring new life to pale, bloodless frames. Like Byron's impassioned utterances, "borne on the tones of a wild and quite artless melody," is Gorky's mad, unbridled, powerful voice, as he sings of the "madness of the brave," of the barefooted dreamers, who are proud of their idleness, who possess nothing and fear nothing, who are gay in their misery, though miserable in their joy. Gorky's voice is not the calm, cultivated, well-balanced voice of Chekhov, the Russian De Maupassant, nor even the apostolic, well-meaning, but comparatively faint voice of Tolstoy, the preacher: it is the roaring of a lion, the crash of thunder. In its elementary power is the heart rending cry of a sincere but suffering soul that saw the brutality of life in all its horrors, and now flings its experiences into the face of the world with unequalled sympathy and the courage of a giant. For Gorky, above all, has courage; he dares to say that he finds the vagabond, the outcast of society, more sublime and significant than society itself. His Bosyak, the symbolic incarnation of the Over-man, is as naive and as bold as a child-or as a genius. In the vehement passions of the magnanimous, compassionate hero in tatters, in the aristocracy of his soul, and in his constant thirst for Freedom, Gorky sees the rebellious and irreconcilable spirit of man, of future man, -in these he sees something beautiful, something powerful, something monumental, and is carried away by their strange psychology. For the barefooted dreamer's life is Gorky's life, his ideals are Gorky's ideals, his pleasures and pains, Gorky's pleasures and pains. And Gorky, though broken in health now, buffeted by the storms of fate, bruised and wounded in the battle-field of life, still like Byron and like Lermontov, "-seeks the storm As though the storm contained repose." And in a leonine voice he cries defiantly: "Let the storm rage with greater force and fury!" HERMAN BERNSTEIN. September 20, 1901.