| Show personality of maxim gorky gorky s physical type is maligned by most of the photographs pub dished writes one who interviewed him recently jn these photographs he looks nervous anaemic hunted sentimental the maxim gorky whom I 1 left a week ago among the ever green woods on the baltic coast Is a tall straight deep cheated large boned man who tow ered like a giant over the squat ger mane and stunted peasants who are now struggling for racial do minion on the coast in features he is as tar removed from the refined weak faced Intelli gents as from the submissive apathetic the forehead is broad furrowed deeply when he talks and surmounted by a mop of dark hair the eyes gray serene slightly defiant the nose big not unlike tolstoy s but even more shapeless the big mouth somewhat grim and the aw now fringed with a scanty red brown beard grown in jail square massive and resolute you feel at once that this is a hessed masterful man a man in whom character is even more remarkable than intellect when he was a cabin toy aged 16 on a volga steamer he read the tern pest and A midsummer nights dream and was immensely impressed by them but as he loved the altera ture of england as a whole for its sanity and joyousness he rejected everything tinged with asceticism or puritan restriction of human joy thus he could not appreciate dante or even milton though his failure to un der stand the english poet he ted partly to the badness of the rus sian translation admiring both he compared shelley to the varicolored glittering alps and byron to the men acang caucasus for bret harte for kipling and among humorists for mark twain he expressed unbounded love but be could not understand the later kipling and denounced the ex besses of imperialism whether brit ish american or russian with vigor ous contempt the national ideal he said should be to be strong not to be perpetually proving one s self strong strength is shown in restraint for revealed religion and in particular for the religion of state and lashed churches he had no respect |
